The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,67

didn’t belong there?

Now where was I going to get pajamas and a robe?

I found some interesting answers to that question, the most fanciful of which involved a daring burglary of Brooks Brothers, and I was just finishing my third drink when a woman came over to my table and said, “Well, which are you? Lost or stolen or strayed?”

“A. A. Milne,” I remembered.

“Right!”

“Somebody’s mother. James James Morrison Morrison—”

“Weatherby George Dupree,” she finished for me. “Now how did I know that you would know? Perhaps it’s because you look so soulful. And so lonely. It’s said that loneliness cries out to loneliness. I don’t know who said that, but I don’t believe it was Milne.”

“Probably not,” and there was a silence, and I should have invited her to join me. I didn’t.

No matter. She sat down beside me anyhow, a supremely confident woman. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and a string of pearls and she smelled of costly perfume and expensive whiskey, but then that last was the only kind Big Charlie sold.

“I’m Eve,” she said. “Eve DeGrasse. And you are—”

I very nearly said Adam. “Donald Brown,” I said.

“What’s your sign, Donald?”

“Gemini. What’s yours?”

“I have several,” she said. She took my hand, turned it, traced the lines in my palm with a scarlet-tipped index finger. “‘Yield’ is one of them. ‘Slippery When Wet’ is another.”

“Oh.”

The waitress, unbidden, brought us both fresh drinks. I wondered how many it would take before this woman looked good to me. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, exactly, but that she was a sufficient number of years older than I to be out of bounds. She was well built and well coiffed, and I suppose her face had been lifted and her tummy tucked, but she was old enough to be—well, not my mother, maybe, but perhaps my mother’s younger sister. Not that my own mother actually had a younger sister, but—

“Do you live near here, Donald?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“Sometimes one can sense these things.” Her hand dropped to my thigh, gave a little squeeze. “You’re all alone in the big city.”

“That’s right.”

“Staying in some soulless hotel. Oh, a comfortable room, I’m sure of that, but lifeless and anonymous. And so lonely.”

“So lonely,” I echoed, and drank some of my Scotch. One or two more drinks, I thought, and it wouldn’t much matter where I was or who I was with. If this woman had a bed, any sort of a bed, I could pass out in it until daybreak. I might not win any points for gallantry that way, but I’d at least be safe, and God knew I was in no condition to wander the streets of New York with half the NYPD looking for me.

“You don’t have to stay in that hotel room,” she purred.

“You live near here?”

“Indeed I do. I live at Big Charlie’s.”

“At Big Charlie’s?”

“That’s right.”

“Here?” I said stupidly. “You live here in this saloon?”

“Not here, silly.” She gave my leg another companionable squeeze. “I live at the real Big Charlie’s. The big Big Charlie’s. Oh, but you’re from out of town, Donald. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Charlemagne equals Charles the Great equals Big Charlie. That’s how they named this place, because the owner’s a couple of fags named Les and Maurie, and they could have called it More or Less, only they didn’t. But you’re from out of town so you don’t know there’s an apartment building around the corner called the Charlemagne.”

“The Charlemagne,” I said.

“Right.”

“An apartment house.”

“Right.”

“Around the corner. And you live there.”

“Right you are, Donald Brown.”

“Well,” I said, setting my glass down unfinished. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

I recognized the doorman and the concierge and Eduardo, the kindly elevator operator. None of them recognized me. They didn’t even take a second glance at me, perhaps because they didn’t take a first glance at me, either. I could have been wearing a gorilla suit and they’d have been just as careful to avert their eyes. Ms. DeGrasse was, after all, a tenant, and I don’t suppose I was the first young man she’d ever pulled out of Big Charlie’s and brought on home, and the staff was no doubt well tipped to keep their eyes in their sockets where they belonged.

We rode the elevator clear to the fifteenth floor. I’d gulped air furiously as we walked from the bar to the building, but it takes more than a few lungfuls