The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,94

tabs on Michael here. And he was someone with a lot of fake ID, because in addition to forged identification in the name of Hugo Candlemas, he also had high-quality counterfeit passports in the names Jean-Claude Marmotte and Vassily Souslik. That gives it away. I should have known before, but—”

“The last name you mentioned,” Tsarnoff said. “Say it again, sir, if you please.”

“Vassily Souslik.”

“Souslik,” he said, and chuckled. “Very good, sir. Very good indeed.”

“What is so good?” Rasmoulian demanded. “It is good because he has a Russian name? I do not understand.”

“Now that you mention it,” Ray said, “neither do I. I’m the one told you about those names, Bernie, and they didn’t mean a thing to me, an’ if they meant anything to you I never heard a peep out of you about it. What in hell’s a sousnik, anyway?”

“A souslik,” I said. “Not a sousnik. And it’s a Russian word, which is why Mr. Tsarnoff understood it and why the rest of us didn’t, although you’ll find it in some English dictionaries and encyclopedias. And it means a large ground squirrel indigenous to Eastern Europe and Asia.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake,” Ray said, “that explains everything, don’t it? A big fat squirrel. That cracks the case wide open, all right.”

“What it does,” I said, “is identify Candlemas for us. So does his French alias, because a marmot is pretty much the same thing as a souslik. But I should have known earlier on if I’d been paying attention to what he called himself this time around. Candlemas is a church festival commemorating the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of the infant Christ in the temple. But it’s celebrated on the same date every year like Christmas, not tied to the lunar calendar like Easter.”

Someone asked the date.

“February second,” I said.

They met this with mystified silence and shared the silence like Quakers through whom God had, for the moment, nothing to say. Then Wilfred, silent skulking Wilfred, said, “My favorite holiday.”

Everybody looked at him.

“Groundhog’s Day,” he said. “Second of February. Most useful holiday of the year. He pops out, he don’t see his shadow, you got yourself an early spring. Bright sunny day, he sees his shadow, forget about it. Six more weeks of winter.”

I said, “The groundhog, the souslik, the marmot. All names for—”

“The woodchuck,” said Charlie Weeks, smiling his tight little smile. “Alias Chuck Wood, alias Charles Brigham Wood. Disappeared into Europe after the balloon went up in Anatruria. Some people thought he was killed. The rest of us figured he was the one who sold us out.”

I let that last pass. “Candlemas was the woodchuck,” I agreed. “I guess he kept tabs on people from afar. He knew where Michael was living, and he knew that his old friend the mouse was in the same building. But he couldn’t approach the mouse himself.”

“I’d had enough of him in Anatruria,” Weeks said.

“So he used Hoberman as his cat’s-paw,” I said, and frowned at the metaphor, an inappropriate one among all these rodents.

“And when Cappy had served his purpose,” Weeks said, “the woodchuck killed him.”

“In his own apartment?”

“Why not?”

“And on his own rug? Candlemas might sacrifice an old friend, but why throw in a valuable rug?”

“How valuable?” Ray wanted to know. I couldn’t tell him, and Tsarnoff suggested dryly that we consult the rug peddler in our midst for an evaluation.

“Stop that!” Rasmoulian said. “Why does he do that? I am not an Armenian. I know nothing about carpets. Why does he say these things about me?”

“The same reason you call me a Russian,” Tsarnoff said smoothly. “Willful ignorance, my little adversary. Willful ignorance founded on malice and propelled by avarice.”

“I shall never call you a Russian again. You are a Circassian.”

“And you an Assyrian.”

“The Circassians are legendary. The women are exquisite whores, and the males are castrated young and make great gross eunuchs.”

“The Assyrians at their height were noted chiefly for their savagery. They have dwindled and died out to the point where the few in existence are wizened dwarves, the genetically warped spawn of two millennia of incestuous unions.”

We were making progress, I was pleased to note. For all the verbal escalation, neither Rasmoulian’s hand nor Wilfred’s had moved so much as an inch toward a concealed weapon.

“Candlemas didn’t kill Hoberman,” I said. “Even if he didn’t care about the rug, even if he had some dark reason to want Hoberman out of the picture, the timing was all wrong. Would he risk having