The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,5

a bad cold, say, and couldn’t smell the booze on his breath and the smoke in his hair and clothes. Even so you might have guessed from the way he took the stairs, pausing on the landings to catch his breath, and still having to take his time on the final flight of steps.

“Captain Hoberman,” Candlemas greeted him, and shook his hand. “And this is—”

“Mr. Thompson,” I said quickly. “Bill Thompson.”

We shook hands warily. Hoberman was wearing a gray suit, a blue-and-tan striped tie, and brown shoes. The suit looked like what you used to see on third-level Soviet bureaucrats before perestroika. The only man I knew who could look that bad in a suit was a cop named Ray Kirschmann, and Ray’s suits were expensive and well-cut; they just looked to have been tailored for somebody else. Hoberman’s outfit was a cheap suit. It wouldn’t have looked good on anybody.

We went into Candlemas’s apartment and reviewed the plan. Captain Hoberman was expected within the hour on the twelfth floor of a high-security apartment building at Seventy-fourth and Park. He was my ticket into the building. Once he got me past the doorman, he’d go keep his appointment while I kept an appointment of my own four floors below.

“You will be alone,” he assured me, “and uninterrupted. Captain Hoberman, you will be how long on the twelfth floor? An hour?”

“Less than that.”

“And you, Mr. uh Thomas, will be in and out in twenty minutes, although you could take all night if you wished. Should the two of you arrange to meet up and leave the building together? What do you think?”

I thought I should have skipped the whole thing and hopped into the first cab when I had the chance. Instead of riding off with a beautiful woman, I’d wound up learning more than I wanted to know about Chinese herbs. I’d spent the past two weeks watching Humphrey Bogart movies, and it seemed to have done something to my judgment.

“It sounds unnecessarily complicated,” I said. “It’s not all that hard to get out of a building, unless you’ve got a TV set under your arm or a dead body over your shoulder.”

It’s not that hard to get into a building, either, if you know what you’re doing. I’d said as much to Candlemas the previous day, suggesting that we could get along without Captain Hoberman. But he wasn’t having any. The captain was part of the package. I needed my captain about as much as Toni Tennille needed hers, and had as little chance of dumping him.

Hoberman paused at each landing on the way down the stairs, too, and when we got outside he took hold of the cast-iron railing while he got his bearings. “You tell me,” he said. “Where’s the best place to get a cab?”

“Let’s walk,” I said. “It’s only three blocks.”

“One of ’em’s crosstown.”

“Even so.”

He shrugged, lit a cigarette, and off we went. I counted that a victory, but changed my mind when he steamed on into the Wexford Castle, an Irish bar on Lexington Avenue. “Time for a quick one,” he announced, and ordered a double shot of vodka. The bartender, who looked like a man who’d seen everything but remembered none of it, poured from a bottle with a label showing a Russian wearing a fur hat and a fierce grin. I started to say that we were supposed to get to our destination by midnight, but before I had the sentence out the captain had downed his drink.

“Something for you?”

I shook my head.

“Then let’s get going,” he said. “Supposed to get there before midnight. That’s when the late shift comes on duty.”

We hit the street again, and the drink seemed to loosen him up. “Here’s a question for you,” he said. “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

“It’s a question, all right.”

“Known that fellow a long time, have you?”

Thirty-two hours, getting on for thirty-three. “Not too long,” I admitted.

“What do you make of this? When he told me about you, he didn’t use your actual name. He called you something else.”

“Oh?”

“I want to say Road and Track, but that’s not it. Road and Car? Makes no sense. Roadieball?” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, but it sure wasn’t Thompson. Wasn’t even close.”

“Well, he’s getting on in years,” I said.

“Hardening of the brain,” he said. “That how you read it?”

“I don’t think it’s that extreme, but—”

“It’s enough to worry me,” he said, “and I don’t mind telling you that.