The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (12 page)

I
stayed right where I was, and she stayed right where she was, and the gun stayed right where it was. In her hand, wobbling a little but not a lot, and pointed straight at me.

It didn’t look like a cannon. The guns that get pointed at fictional detectives always look like cannons, and the holes in their muzzles are said to resemble caverns. This gun was undeniably small, just the right size proportionally for her small hand. The latter, I noted now, was a well-shaped hand, its fingernails painted the exact shade of her blouse and her lipstick. And the gun, of course, was black, a flat black automatic pistol with no more than a two-inch barrel. Everything about this lady was red or black. Her favorite birds, I felt certain, were the red-winged blackbird and the scarlet tanager. Her favorite author would have to be Stendhal.

The phone rang. Her eyes flicked toward it, then returned to me. “I’d better answer that,” I said.

“You move and I shoot.”

“It might be someone important. Suppose it’s
Dialing for Dollars?
”

Was it my imagination or had her finger tightened on the trigger? The phone went on ringing. She was done looking at it, though, and I was incapable of looking at anything but the gun.

I don’t like guns. They are cunning little machines crafted exclusively for the purpose of killing people, and it is a purpose I deplore. Guns make me nervous and I do what I can to avoid them, and consequently I don’t know a great deal about them. I did know that revolvers have cylinders, which makes them suitable for Russian roulette, whereas automatics, of which my guest’s was an example, are generally fitted with safety catches. When engaged, such a device prevents one from depressing the trigger sufficiently to fire the gun.

I could see what might have been a safety catch toward the rear of the gun’s muzzle. And I had read enough to know that persons unfamiliar with guns sometimes forget to disengage the safety catch. If I could tell whether the safety was on or off, then perhaps—

“It’s loaded,” she said. “In case that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re wondering something,” she said. Then she
said, “Oh,” and flicked the safety catch with her thumb. “There. Now don’t you try anything, you understand?”

“Sure. If you could just point that thing somewhere else—”

“I don’t want to shoot somewhere else. I want to be able to shoot you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that.” The phone had stopped ringing. “I don’t even know you. I don’t even know your name.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I just—”

“It’s Marilyn.”

“That’s a step.” I tried my winningest smile. “I’m Bernie.”

“I know who you are. You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

“You’re Marilyn.”

“I’m Marilyn Margate.”

“Not the actress?”

“What actress?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. The way you said your name I thought you expected me to recognize it. I don’t. Do you suppose it’s possible you’ve got the wrong Bernard Rhodenbarr? I know it’s not a very common name but there might be more than one of us. My name is Bernard
Grimes
Rhodenbarr, Grimes was my mother’s maiden name, like Bouvier or Flanders, so—”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“You bastard. Bouvier. Flanders. You killed Wanda.” This time it wasn’t my imagination; her finger definitely tightened on the trigger. And the thing was finally beginning to look like a cannon, and its mouth like the black hole of Calcutta.

“Look,” I said, “you’re making a terrible mistake. I’ve never killed anybody in my life. It bothers me to step on a cockroach. I’m the guy who taught Gandhi how to be nonviolent. Compared to me, Albert Schweitzer was a mad-dog killer. I—”

“Shut up.”

I shut up.

She said, “You don’t know who I am, do you? I thought my last name would tip you off. Rabbit Margate is my brother.”

“Rabbit Margate.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“George Edward Margate, but everybody called him Rabbit. They arrested him this afternoon and charged him with burglary and murder. They say he killed Wanda Tuesday night. My brother never killed anybody.”

“Neither did I. Look—”

“Shut up. Either you killed her or you know who did. And you’re gonna cop to it. You think I’m letting my kid brother go up for a murder he didn’t commit?
The hell I am. Either you’re gonna confess or I’m gonna shoot you dead.”

The phone rang again. She didn’t pay any attention to it, and I didn’t pay it much mind myself beyond idly wondering who it might be. Was it my caller of a few minutes ago? Was it the person whose call I’d failed to answer when I went out to dinner? Was it the one who’d hung up on me, or the one of the night before who wanted to buy the V-Nickel? Or all of the above, or none of the above?

I decided it didn’t matter much, and the ringing stopped, and I said, “George Edward Margate. Rabbit Margate. So you’re Rabbit’s sister Marilyn.”

“Then you
do
know him!”

“Nope. Never heard the name until tonight. But now I know who he is. He’s the one who hit the Colcannon place Tuesday and left the radio on.”

“You were there. You just admitted it.”

“And Rabbit was there. Wasn’t he?”

Her expression was wary. “Where do you get off asking the questions? You’re not the cops.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not the killer, either. I didn’t kill anyone Tuesday night. And neither did your brother.”

“You’re saying he didn’t do it.”

“That’s right. He didn’t. He burgled the place though, didn’t he? He went in through the skylight in the bedroom. Was he all by himself?”

“No. Wait a minute. You don’t get to ask me questions, for chrissake. I don’t have to say he was there and I don’t have to say he was with somebody.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s all right, Marilyn. Rabbit didn’t kill anybody.” I took a breath. It seemed like a good time for disarming candor. “
I
was there,” I said, “after Rabbit and his partner had come and gone. The Colcannons weren’t home when they burgled the place, and they weren’t back yet when I was there, either.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Nobody can prove I was there in the first place, either. And I
can
prove I didn’t meet the Colcannons, because Herbert Colcannon had a nice long look at me through a one-way mirror the other morning and he couldn’t identify me.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s what they said, that there was another suspect named Rhodenbarr but he was cleared because Colcannon hadn’t seen him before. But he identified Rabbit and I know he never saw Rabbit, so I thought maybe it was a mistake or you paid somebody off or something. I don’t even
know
what I thought. All I knew was my brother was in trouble for something he didn’t do, and I figured if I got the person who really did it—”

“But I’m not that person, Marilyn.”

“Then who is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I, and—” She broke off abruptly and looked at the gun in her hand as if wondering how it had gotten there. “It’s loaded,” she said.

“I figured it was.”

“I almost shot you. I wanted to. As if shooting you would solve everything for Rabbit.”

“It would have solved everything for me. But not in a positive way.”

“Yeah. Look, I—”

Knock knock knock!

No question who was knocking this time. I cautioned Marilyn with a finger to my lips, then approached her and put those same lips inches from her gold teardrop earring. “Cops,” I whispered. I pointed to the bathroom door and she didn’t waste time asking questions. She scooted for the bathroom, gun in hand, and she was just closing the door as my latest unannounced guest repeated his knocking.

I asked who it was. “It’s who you thought it was, Bern. Open the door, huh?”

I unlocked my locks and admitted Ray Kirschmann. He was wearing the same suit he’d worn yesterday and now it was wet, which didn’t improve the fit any. “Rain,” he said heavily, and removed his hat, holding it so that all the water which had collected in the brim could spill onto my floor.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I’ve had this problem with the floorboards drying out. I was hoping somebody’d come along and water them. What you could do sometime, Ray, is you could call first.”

“I did. Line was busy.”

“Funny. I wasn’t on the phone.” Maybe he’d tried while someone else was ringing. “What brings you?”

“The goodness of my heart,” he said. “These days I been doin’ you nothin’ but favors. Drivin’ you to your store twice. And stoppin’ in tonight to let you know you’re in the clear on the Colcannon job. They already got one of the guys who did it.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Guy named George Margate. Young guy, but he’s got a pretty good sheet on him already. Two, three busts for B and E. Never roughed anybody up before, but you know the young ones. They’re not what you’d call stable. Maybe his partner was a rough piece of work, or maybe they had drugs in ’em. We found a Baggie full of marijuana in his refrigerator.”

“The killer weed.”

“Yeah. The marijuana’s not what hangs him. It’s what else we found at his place. He’s been livin’ in two rooms on Tenth Avenue in the Forties, maybe a block and a half from the tenement he grew up in. Hell’s Kitchen, except you’re supposed to call it Clinton now so’s people’ll forget it’s a slum. We tossed his two rooms and he’s got half of Colcannon’s house packed
away there. Silver, Jesus, he had a whole service for twelve in sterling plus all of these bowls and platters. Worth a fortune.”

“I remember when it was hardly worth stealing,” I said nostalgically. “Then it went from a dollar twenty-nine an ounce to forty dollars an ounce. I remember when
gold
was less than that.”

“Yeah. Found some furs, too. Floor-length ranch mink, marten jacket, something else I don’t remember. Straight off the list we had from Colcannon, right down to the furriers’ labels. All told, we found better’n half of what Colcannon reported as missin’, plus some stuff he never listed, because who’s got a complete inventory of everythin’ right at his fingertips? We figure they split the loot down the middle and the other half’s at the partner’s place, unless they fenced it already.”

“Who’s the partner?”

“We don’t know yet. He’ll tell us when he dopes out that it’s the only way he’s gonna pull short time, but right now he’s James Cagney in every prison movie you ever saw.”

“How did you get on to him, Ray?”

“Usual way. Somebody snitched. Maybe he was braggin’ in the bars, or just lookin’ good and showin’ a lot of money, and somebody took two an’ two an’ put ’em together. Neighborhood he lives in, every third person on the street is a snitch, and the Colcannon job
was close to home. What was it, a mile away? Mile and a half?”

I nodded. “Well,” I said, “thanks for dropping by to tell me, Ray. I appreciate it.”

“Actually,” he said, “it’s like the other day. I mostly came by to use your bathroom.”

“It’s out of order.”

“Oh yeah?” He went on walking toward the door. “Sometimes these things fix themselves, you know? Or maybe I can fix it for you. I had an uncle was a plumber, showed me a thing or two some years back.”

Had she locked the door? I held my breath and he tried the knob and it was locked.

“Door’s stuck,” he said.

“Must be the weather.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that goin’ around. Old retired burglar like yourself, Bern, you oughta be able to get the door open for me.”

“A man loses his touch.”

“Isn’t that just the truth.” He walked from the bathroom door to my window and gazed out through the gloom. “I bet you could see the Trade Center,” he said, “if the weather was half decent.”

“You could.”

“And old Abel Crowe got to look over at Jersey all the time. I swear the crooks all get picture-book views. What I get from my window is a close-up of Mrs. Houlihan’s washline. You know what I keep wantin’ to
do, Bern, is tie up Colcannon and Crowe. We got no leads on Crowe, see. Nobody knows nothin’.”

“What does Rabbit know about Abel?” Oh, God, why was I calling him that?

“Rabbit?” He frowned, blinked. “I told you, he’s Cagney playin’ tough. I don’t think he ever heard the name, but he’s got a partner, right? Even if we don’t know who it is.”

“So?”

“What you could tell me, Bern, is would anybody try to peddle jewels and silver to Abel Crowe?”

I thought about it, or tried to look as though that was what I was doing. “Abel never took furs,” I said. “Stamps, coins, jewelry—that was his field. Silver? Oh, if I found myself with a Revere tankard on my hands, Abel was one of several men I might have offered it to. But garden-variety silver? He’d have had no interest in it. Of course it might be different since silver shot up in price, but who in his right mind would need a fence for it now? You just take it to any of those places where they buy silver by weight for the melting pot. Or you let somebody with a legitimate front do it for you, if you’re afraid you’ll have trouble cashing a check. You don’t need a fence. No, I can’t see anybody taking bulk silver to Abel.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I figured. Who’s in your bathroom, Bern?”

“Greta Garbo.”

“She wanted to be alone, huh?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Well, I don’t figure she’d lie about somethin’ like that. Anymore’n you’d lie about it. I know she’s not the same woman who was here the other night. No cigarettes in the ashtrays. And this is a different perfume. I didn’t smell it here before tonight.”

“It’s, uh, getting late, Ray.”

“Uh-huh. It never does get earlier, does it? What did you get out of Colcannon’s safe, Bern?”

“I never got into it.”

“He listed a couple of things that were in the safe. A watch and some jewelry. Earrings, I think it was. They didn’t turn up at Margate’s. Be funny if we found them up on Riverside Drive, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I’ll tell you, Bern, half the time I don’t know myself. All I do is poke around and see where it gets me. Like doin’ a jigsaw puzzle by trial and error, pickin’ up different pieces and tryin’ ’em this way an’ that an’ seein’ what works an’ what doesn’t.”