The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,103

to order another round and I caught her hand on the way up. “No more for me,” I told her.

“Aw, come on, Bern,” she said. “It’s been weeks since we had drinks together after work, and on top of that it’s a holiday. Get in the spirit of it, why don’t you?”

“We’re supposed to remember the war dead,” I said, “not join them. Anyway, I’ve got somewhere to go.”

“Where’s that?”

“Guess,” I said.

In The Big Shot, Humphrey Bogart plays Duke Berne, a career criminal who’s trying to go straight because a fourth felony conviction will put him in prison for life. But he can’t stay away from it, and goes in on the planning of an armored-car heist. The head of the gang is a crooked lawyer, and the lawyer’s wife is Bogart’s old sweetheart. She won’t let Bogie risk his life, and keeps him from participating in the robbery by holding him in his room at gunpoint. A witness picks him out of a mug book anyway, which strikes me as questionable police work, but that’s my professional point of view showing.

The lawyer’s jealous, and screws up Bogie’s alibi, and he winds up going down for the count. There’s a prison break, and Bogie gets away, but one thing after another goes wrong, until finally Bogie hunts down the rat lawyer and kills him. He’s shot, though, and dies in the hospital.

That was the first picture, and I’d never seen it before. I got caught up in it, too, and maybe that was why I didn’t eat much of the popcorn, or it may have been because I’d been munching peanuts at the Bum Rap. Either way, I had more than half a barrel left at intermission. I had to use the john—beer’s like that—but I went and came back without hitting the refreshment counter.

I didn’t feel like seeing the guy with the goatee, or any of the other regulars I’d gotten to know by sight. I just felt like sitting alone in the dark and watching movies.

The second picture was The Big Sleep, and whoever put the program together had been having fun, combining two pictures with near-identical titles. But of course this was the classic, based on the Chandler novel with a screenplay by William Faulkner, starring Bogie and Bacall and featuring any number of good people, including Dorothy Malone and Elisha Cook, Jr. I won’t summarize it for you, partly because the plot’s impossible to keep straight, and partly because you must have seen it. If not, well, you will.

Ten minutes into the picture, at a moment when I was really immersed in what was happening on the screen, I heard the rustle of cloth and got a whiff of perfume, and then someone was settling into the seat beside me. A hand joined mine in the popcorn barrel, but it wasn’t groping for popcorn. It found my hand, and closed around it, and didn’t let go.

We both watched the screen, and neither of us said a word.

When the movie ended we were the last ones to leave the theater, still in our seats when the credits ended and the house lights came up. I guess neither of us wanted it to be over.

On the street she said, “I bought a ticket. And then the man told me to get my money back. He said you left a ticket for me.”

“He’s a nice man. He wouldn’t lie to you.”

“How did you know I would come?”

“I didn’t think you would,” I said. “I didn’t know if I would ever see you again, sweetheart. But I thought it was worth a chance.” I shrugged. “It was just a movie ticket, after all. It wasn’t an emerald.”

She squeezed my hand. “I would take you to my apartment, but it is not mine anymore.”

“I know. I was there.”

“So you will take me to yours.”

We walked, and neither of us spoke on the way. Inside, I offered to make drinks. She didn’t want one. I said I’d make coffee. She told me not to bother.

“This afternoon,” she said. “You said we went to the movies together, but that we were no more than friends.”

“Good friends,” I said.

“We went to bed together.”

“What are friends for?”

“Yet you did not let anyone know we went to bed together.”

“It must have slipped my mind.”

“It did not slip your mind,” she said with cool certainty, “nor will it ever slip from mine. I will never forget it, Bear-naard.”

“It made such an impression on you,” I said, “that