The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,45

good idea, too. This is no night for you to be alone.”

“That’s not it.”

“And I wouldn’t want you going uptown on the subway in your condition, or even in a cab.”

“Neither would I,” I said, “but that’s not it, either. I want to get an early start tomorrow.”

“An early start on what?”

“The case.”

“What case?”

“What case?” I stared at her. “Have I been talking to myself? Haven’t you been paying any attention? A man’s dead, a portfolio is missing, a beautiful woman has disappeared—”

“Bern,” she said, “all those things are true, and at least one of them is a shame, but what does it have to do with you?”

“I have to do something about it,” I said.

“That’s the booze talking, Bern.”

“No, I said, its me.”

“It sounds like you,” she said, “but I think it’s the booze. Ilona packed up and moved out. If she wants to be found, she knows how to get in touch with you. If she doesn’t want to be found, what do you want with her? I know it was wonderful, what the two of you had, but evidently she’s profoundly neurotic or leading some kind of a double life, and as soon as you begin to get close to her she runs away. I’ve known women like that, Bern. None of them ever disappeared quite so abruptly, but some of them pulled things that weren’t all that different.”

“I have to find Ilona,” I said, “but that’s not the main thing I have to do. I have to solve the case.”

“How?”

“By recovering the portfolio that was stolen out from under me, and finding out more about those documents that Tsarnoff and Rasmoulian are so hot to get hold of. And by figuring out what CAPHOB means and what it’s doing on the side of my attaché case. But most of all by catching the person who committed murder in that fourth-floor flat on East Seventy-sixth Street.”

“Bern,” she said gently, “don’t you think that’s a job for the police?”

“No, it’s not. It’s my job.”

“How do you figure that?”

“When your partner is killed,” I said, “you have to do something about it. Maybe he wasn’t much good and maybe you didn’t like him much, but that doesn’t matter. He was your partner, and you’re supposed to do something about it.”

“Gee,” she said. “I never thought of it that way. I have to admit, Bern, when you put it like that it sounds so forceful and clear-cut that it’s hard to argue with you.”

“Why, thank you, Carolyn.”

“You’re welcome. ‘He was your partner, and you’re supposed to do something about it.’ I’ll have to remember that.” She looked sharply at me. “Wait a minute. Who said that?”

“I did,” I said. “Just a minute ago.”

“Yeah, but Sam Spade said it first. In The Maltese Falcon, when Miles Archer is murdered. Maybe it’s not word for word, but that’s exactly what he said.”

I thought about it. “You know,” I said, “I think you’re right.”

She reached out a hand, laid it on top of mine. “Bern,” she said, “do you want to know what I think? I think you’ve been going to too many movies.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re starting to get yourself mixed up with Humphrey Bogart,” she said, “and that can be dangerous. The line’s a great one, but it doesn’t fit the situation.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Hugo Candlemas wasn’t your partner. If he was anything, he was an employer. He hired you to steal that portfolio, and he never even paid you.”

“That’s true. On the other hand, I never stole the portfolio.”

“And it’s not as though the two of you got to be best friends. I know you identified his body this afternoon, but look at all the trouble you had doing it.”

“I didn’t have any trouble.”

“That’s not the way it sounded when you told me about it. You hemmed and hawed and told Ray a lot of crap about how you’ve got a better memory for names than faces. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Something like that.”

“So if his features were that faintly etched on your memory—”

“His features were etched upon my memory,” I said, “as if by a diamond on glass.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. Don’t tell me what I said.”

“I’m sorry, Bern.”

“I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to snap at you. That was Bogart talking just then, not me.” I picked up my glass. The vodka was gone but some of the ice had melted, so I took a swallow of that. “All I needed at the morgue was one quick look,” I said.