The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,102

about me. When it turned out Candlemas was dead all along, I figured he must have done some talking before he died, probably to the man who killed him. Rasmoulian knew me by name, not by sight, so he hadn’t followed Candlemas or Ilona to my store, or spotted me with Hoberman and followed me home.”

“And you knew Charlie Weeks had called him. How did you know that?”

“When I called Weeks and went over to his apartment,” I said, “he didn’t know what the hell I wanted. He really did think I was some guy named Bill Thompson who’d come up on the elevator with Cappy Hoberman. When I said I wanted to talk to him, he probably thought I’d heard something about Hoberman’s death, but not that I had anything to do with the burglary.”

“But if Tiggy told him…”

“Tiggy told him Candlemas had admitted hiring a burglar to break into the king’s apartment. But Weeks didn’t know that burglar was the guy who’d said two words to him in the hallway. Then, once we started talking, he put two and two together.”

“And?”

“And he tried to keep what he knew to himself, but he made a slip. When I said how Rasmoulian had known my middle name, he said, ‘Grimes.’ Now where did that come from?”

“Maybe you told him.”

I shook my head. “When it was time to leave,” I said, “he was still calling me Bill Thompson, pretending he didn’t have a clue that wasn’t my real name. If he knew the Grimes part, he’d know about the Bernie and the Rhodenbarr, too. So he knew more than he should, and for all his talk about joining forces he was keeping what he knew to himself. I played along, but I knew then and there that he was more than an old friend of Hoberman’s and a ticket into the building. He was involved clear up to his hat.”

“And when did you know Candlemas was the woodchuck?”

“Not as soon as I might have. The names on the passports did it for me. Not Souslik, I had to check some reference books before I found out what a souslik was, but I recognized the word ‘marmot’ even if Candlemas did give it a French-style ending on his fake Belgian passport. Then I looked up ‘Candlemas’ and found out it was just Groundhog’s Day with hymns and incense.”

“Wilfred’s favorite holiday.”

“Yes, and wasn’t that a revelation?” I transferred some beer from my bottle to my glass, then from the glass to me. “I should have guessed earlier. On my first visit to Candlemas’s apartment, one of the knickknacks I noticed was what I took for a netsuke.”

“What kind of a rodent is that, Bern?”

“You know, those little ivory carvings the Japanese collect. They originally functioned something like buttons for securing the sash on a kimono, but for a long time now they’ve made them as objets d’art. I didn’t look close at the one Candlemas had, but I figured it was ivory, and that it was supposed to be a beaver but the tail was broken off.”

“And actually it was a woodchuck?”

“It was still there yesterday,” I said, and took a little velvet drawstring bag from my pocket, and drew Letchkov’s bone woodchuck from it. “If I’d been paying attention I would have known it wasn’t a beaver. It’s a perfect match for Charlie Weeks’s mouse—the bone’s yellowed in just the same way. You know, when Charlie showed me the mouse, I got a little frisson.”

“That’s a rodent, right?”

I gave her a look. “It’s a feeling,” I said. “I knew there was something familiar about the mouse, but I couldn’t think what it was. Anyway, Candlemas was the woodchuck, and he kept his carved totem all those years. I guess he had the mouse, too, and gave it to Hoberman to pass on to Weeks.”

“Why did he need Hoberman? If he was the woodchuck, he knew Weeks as well as Hoberman did. Why couldn’t he sneak you into the Boccaccio himself?”

“I’m not positive,” I said. “He may have been afraid of the reception he’d get from Weeks. Remember, Weeks had spread the story that Candlemas had sold out the Anatrurians. Candlemas knew he hadn’t, but he couldn’t afford to find out if Weeks really believed it. Either way, he might not get a warm reception from the mouse.”

“So he figured he’d be safer using Hoberman.”

“But not safe enough,” I said.

She had more questions and I had most of the answers. Then she started