Burglars Can't Be Choosers (8 page)

S
he didn’t have to knock any plants over the next morning. I was awake and out of bed a few minutes after nine. I took a shower and looked around for something to shave with. Rod had left his second-string razor behind. I found it in the medicine chest hiding behind an empty Band-Aid box. It was an obsolete Gillette that hadn’t been used in at least a year and hadn’t been cleaned in at least a year and a day. The old blade was still in it and so was the crud and whiskers from Rod’s last shave with it. I held it under the faucet stream, but that was like trying to sweep out the Augean stables with a child’s toy broom.

I decided to call Ruth and ask her to bring things like toothpaste and a toothbrush and shaving gear. I looked up Hightower in the Manhattan
white pages and found it was a commoner name than I would have guessed, but none of the Hightowers were named Ruth or lived on Bank Street. I called Information and an operator with a Latin accent assured me that there were no listings in that name or on that street. After I’d put the phone down I told myself there was no reason to question the competence of a telephone operator just because English looked to be her second language, but all the same I dialed 411 again and put another operator through the same routine. Her accent was pure dulcet Flatbush and she didn’t do any better at finding Ruth’s number.

I decided she was probably unlisted. What the hell, she wasn’t an actress. Why should she have a listed phone?

I turned on the television set for company, put up a pot of coffee, and went back and looked at the phone some more. I decided to dial my own number to see if there were any cops in the place at the moment. I picked up the phone, then put it down when I realized I wasn’t sure of my number. It was one I never called, since when I was out there was never anybody home. This sort of surprised me; I mean, even if you never call your own number you have to know it to give it out to people. But I guess that doesn’t happen often in my case. Anyway, I looked it up and there it was, and I’m happy to say I recognized it once I saw it. I dialed
and nobody answered, which stood to reason, and I put the phone back in its cradle.

I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard footsteps ascending the staircase and approaching the door. She knocked but I let her use her keys. She came in, all bright-eyed and buoyant, carrying a small grocery bag and explaining that she’d brought bacon and eggs. “And you’ve already got coffee made,” she said. “Great. Here’s this morning’s
Times.
There’s not really anything in it.”

“I didn’t think there would be.”

“I suppose I could have bought the
Daily News
too but I never do. I figure if anything really important happens the
Times
will tell me about it. Is this the only frying pan he owns?”

“Unless he took the others on tour with him.”

“He’s not very domestic at all. Well, we’ll have to deal with the material at hand. I’m relatively new at harboring fugitives but I’ll do my best to harbor you in the style to which you are accustomed. Is it called harboring a fugitive if you do it in somebody else’s apartment?”

“It’s called accessory after the fact to homicide,” I said.

“That sounds serious.”

“It ought to.”

“Bernie—”

I took her arm. “I was thinking about that earlier, Ruth. Maybe you ought to bail out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You could wind up buying a lot of trouble.”

“That’s crazy,” she said. “You’re innocent, aren’t you?”

“The cops don’t think so.”

“They will when we find the real killer for them. Hey, c’mon, Bern! I’ve seen all the old movies, remember? I know the good guys always come through in the end. We’re the good guys, aren’t we?”

“I’d certainly like to think so.”

“Then we’ve got nothing to worry about. Now just tell me how you like your eggs and then get the hell out of here, huh? There’s room for me and the roaches in this kitchen and that’s about all. What are you doing, Bernie?”

“Kissing your neck.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay, I guess. Actually you could do it some more if you’d like. Hmmmm. You know, that’s sort of nice, Bernie. I could learn to like that.”

We were polishing off the eggs when the phone rang. The service was on the ball and picked up midway through the fourth ring.

Which reminded me. “I tried to call you earlier,” I said, “but your number’s unlisted. Unless you’ve got it listed in your husband’s name or something like that.”

“Oh,” she said. “No, it’s unlisted. Why were you trying to call?”

“Because I need a shave.”

“I noticed. Your face is all scratchy. Actually I sort of like it, but I can see where you’d want to shave.”

I told her about the lack of shaving cream and the state of Rod’s razor. “I thought you could pick them up on your way over here.”

“I’ll go get them now. It’s no trouble.”

“If I’d had your number I could have saved you a trip.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” she said. “I don’t mind. Is there anything else you need?”

I thought of a few things and she made a small list. I took a ten out of my wallet and made her take it. “There’s really no rush,” I said.

“I’d just as soon go now. I was just thinking, Bernie. Maybe it’s not a good idea to use the telephone.”

“Why not?”

“Well, couldn’t the people at the service tell if it was off the hook or if you were talking to someone? I think they could even listen in, couldn’t they?”

“Gee, I don’t know. I’ve never understood just how those things work.”

“And they know Rod’s out of town, and if they knew someone was in his apartment—”

“Ruth, they usually let the phone ring twenty times before they get around to answering it. That’s how efficient they are. The only time they pay attention to a subscriber’s line is when it’s ringing, and even then their attention isn’t too terribly keen.”

“The last time it rang they got it right away.”

“Well, accidents happen, I suppose. But you don’t really think there’s any risk in using the phone, do you?”

“Well—”

“There can’t be.”

But when she went out I found myself standing next to the phone and staring at it as if it were a potential menace. I picked up the receiver and started dialing my own apartment—I remembered the number this time—but halfway through I decided the hell with it and hung up.

While she shopped I did up the breakfast dishes and read the paper. All the
Times
had to tell me was that I was still at large and I already knew that.

This time I hadn’t bothered locking the door, and when she knocked I went over and opened it for her. She handed me a paper bag containing a razor, a small package of blades, shaving cream, a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. She also gave me forty-seven cents change from my ten-dollar bill. Every once in a while something
like that comes along to demonstrate that all this talk about inflation is not entirely unwarranted.

“I’ll be going out in a few minutes,” she said. “You can shave then.”

“Out? You just got here.”

“I know. I want to go to the library. And check the
Times Index
—we talked about that last night. I don’t know how else we’re going to learn anything about Flaxford unless I go track down his ex-wife and talk to her.”

“That sounds like more trouble than it’s likely to be worth.”

“The
Times?
I just go to Forty-second and Fifth—”

“I know where the library is. I mean the ex-wife.”

“Well, it might not be any trouble at all, actually. Do ex-wives come to memorial services for their ex-husbands? Because that’s where I’m going this afternoon. There’s a memorial service for him at two-thirty. What’s the difference between a memorial service and a funeral?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think it’s whether or not you have the body around. I guess the police are probably hanging onto the body for an autopsy or something. To make sure he’s really dead.”

“They already established cause and time of death.”

“Well, maybe they just aren’t releasing the body, or maybe it’s being shipped somewhere.
I
don’t know. But that’s the difference, isn’t it? You can’t have a funeral without a corpse, can you?”

“Tell that to Tom Sawyer.”

“Funny. Maybe I’ll go over to that bar. Pandora’s Box.”

“Just Pandora’s. Why would you go there?”

“I don’t know. The same reason I’m going to the memorial service, I suppose. On the chance that I might run into the little man who wasn’t there.”

“I don’t see why he would be at the memorial service.”

She shrugged. “I don’t either. But if he’s a business acquaintance of Flaxford’s he might have to go, and anything’s possible, isn’t it? And if he’s not at the service he might be drowning his sorrows at Pandora’s.”

And she went on to explain her reasons for thinking Pandora’s might be our friend’s regular hangout, and they were pretty much the same reasons which had led me to drop in there for a beer the night before. If he was at the bar or the memorial chapel, she felt certain she’d recognize him from my description.

We sat around talking about this and other things for perhaps another hour before she decided it was time for her to head uptown. Several times I was on the point of mentioning that I’d gone to
Pandora’s myself just a matter of hours ago, but for one reason or another I never did get around to it.

Once she was gone, the day sagged. She was out doing things, pointless or otherwise, and all I had to do was hang around and kill time. I decided I should have put on the wig and the cap and tagged along after her, and I decided that would have been pretty stupid, since the cops would certainly have a man on duty at the service just as a matter of routine. I found myself wondering if Ruth was aware of this possibility, and if she knew enough not to attract attention there or to be followed when she left.

When you have nothing better to worry about, you make do with what you’ve got. I decided I ought to let her know about this danger. But I couldn’t call her because I didn’t have her number and anyway she was going straight to the library. Of course I could call the library and have her paged, except I was by no means certain that they would page people, although I could always claim it was a matter of life and death….

No, all that would do was draw attention. So I could put on the wig and the cap and go up to the library and tell her, and no doubt I would corner her in a room where three cops were browsing at the moment, and she’d call me by name, and my cap and wig would fall off.

So instead I went and shaved. I took as much time as possible doing this, soaping and rinsing my face four or five times first, then shaving very carefully and deliberately. I treated myself to the closest shave I’d had in years—unless you count my departure from the Flaxford apartment, heh heh—and I left my moustache unshaven, figuring that it might become a useful part of my disguise, no doubt combining nicely with wig and cap.

Then I dragged the cap and the yellow wig out of the closet and tried them on, and I scrutinized the patch of eighth-of-an-inch fur on my upper lip, and I returned wig and cap to closet shelf and lathered up again and erased the attempted moustache altogether.

And that was about the size of it. I had done as thorough a job of shaving as I possibly could, and the only way to invest more time in the process would be to shave my head. It’s an indication of my state of mind that there was a point when I actually considered this, thinking that my wig would fit much better if I had no hair of my own underneath it. Fortunately the notion passed before I could do anything about it.

At one point I did dial my own apartment again, just out of boredom. I got a busy signal and it spooked me until I realized that it didn’t necessarily mean my phone was off the hook. It could mean that the circuits were busy, which happens
often enough, or it could mean that someone else was trying to call me and he’d gotten connected first. I tried a few minutes later and the phone rang and no one answered it.

I went back to the television set and hopped around the channels. WOR had some reruns of
Highway Patrol
and I sat back and watched Broderick Crawford giving somebody hell. He’s always been great at that.

I took out my little ring of keys and picks and weighed it in my hand, while weighing in my head the possibility of giving some of the other apartments in the building a quick shuffle. Just to keep my hand in, say. I could check the buzzers downstairs, get the names, look them up in the phone book, determine over the phone who was home and who wasn’t, and go door to door to see what would turn up. Some clothing in my size, say, or some cat food for Esther and Mordecai.

I never really gave this lunacy
serious
consideration. But I was so desperate for things to think about that I did give it some thought.

And then somewhere along the line I dozed off in front of the television set, paying token attention to the story until some indeterminate point where it faded out and my own equally uninspired dreams took over. I don’t know exactly when I fell asleep so there’s no way of saying just how long I
slept, but I’d guess it was more than an hour and less than two.

Maybe a noise outside woke me. Maybe my nap had simply run its course. But I’ve always thought it was the voice itself; I must have heard and recognized it on some subconscious level.

Whatever the cause, I opened my eyes. And stared. And blinked furiously and stared again.

It was a few minutes after five when Ruth got back. I’d very nearly worn out the rug by then, pacing back and forth across its bare threads, scuttling periodically to the phone, then backing away from it without so much as lifting the receiver. At five o’clock the TV news came on but I was too tautly wired to watch it and could barely pay attention while a beaming chap rattled on and on about something hideous that had just happened in Morocco. (Or Lebanon. One of those places.)

Then Ruth’s step on the stairs and her key in the lock, and I opened the door before she could turn the key and she popped energetically inside and spun around to lock the door, the words already spilling from her lips. She seemed to have no end of things to tell me about the weather outside and the facilities at the public library and the service for J. Francis Flaxford, but she might as well have been speaking whatever they speak in Morocco (or Lebanon) for all the attention I was able to pay her.