The Burglar Who Liked To Quote Kipling Part 2

I got comfortable on the pillow sofa while Carolyn put the final touches on the terrier's pedicure and popped him back in his cage. During the course of this she complained at length about her lover's misbehavior. Randy had come home late the previous night, drunk and disheveled and marginally disorderly, and Carolyn was sick of it.

"I think it's time to end the relationship," she told me, "but the question is how do I feel feel about ending the relationship? And the answer is I don't about ending the relationship? And the answer is I don't know know how I feel because I can't get in how I feel because I can't get in touch touch with my feelings, and I figure if I can't get in touch with them I might as well not feel them altogether, so let's go someplace with a liquor license, because all I want to feel right now is better. And how was with my feelings, and I figure if I can't get in touch with them I might as well not feel them altogether, so let's go someplace with a liquor license, because all I want to feel right now is better. And how was your your day, Bernie?" day, Bernie?"

"A little long."

"Yeah, you do look faintly tuckered. Let's go, huh? I'm so sick of the smell of this place. I feel like I'm wearing Wet Dog perfume."

We ducked around the corner to a rather tired saloon called the b.u.m Rap. The jukebox leaned toward country and western, and Barbara Mandrell was singing about adultery as we took stools at the long dark bar. Carolyn ordered a vodka martini on the rocks. I asked for club soda with lime and got a nod from the bartender and a puzzled stare from Carolyn.

"It's October," she said.

"So?"

"Lent's in the spring."

"Right."

"Doctor's orders or something? Giving the old liver a rest?"

"Just don't feel like a drink tonight."

"Fair enough. Well, here's to crime. Hey, did I just say something wrong?"

So that got me onto the subject of Ray Kirschmann and his mink-loving wife, and it became Carolyn's turn to make sympathetic noises. We've become good at playing that role for one another. She's crowding thirty, with Dutch-cut dark-brown hair and remarkably clear blue eyes. She stands five-one in high heels and never wears them, and she's built like a fire hydrant, which is dangerous in her line of work.

I met her around the time I took over the bookshop. I didn't know Randy as well because I didn't see as much of her; the Poodle Factory was a solo venture of Carolyn's. Randy's a stewardess, or was until she got grounded for biting a pa.s.senger. She's taller and thinner than Carolyn, and a year or two younger, and faintly flighty. Randy and I are friends, I suppose, but Carolyn and I are soulmates.

My soulmate clucked sympathetically. "Cops are a pain," she said. "Randy had an affair with a cop once. I ever tell you?"

"I don't think so."

"She had this phase she went through, three months or so of panic before she was ready to come out as a lesbian. I think it was some kind of denial mechanism. She slept with dozens of men. This one cop was impotent and she made fun of him and he held his gun to her head and she thought he was going to kill her. Which somebody ought to, and why the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l am I talking about her again, will you tell me that?" am I talking about her again, will you tell me that?"

"Beats me."

"You got anything on tonight? You still seeing the woman from the art gallery?"

"We decided to go our separate ways."

"What about the crazy poet?"

"We never really hit it off."

"Then why don't you come by for dinner? I got something sensational working in the slow cooker. I put it in this morning before I remembered how mad I was. It's this Flemish beef stew with beer and shallots and mushrooms and all kinds of good things. I got plenty of Amstel for us to wash it down with, plus some Perrier if you're serious about this temperance bit."

I sipped my club soda. "I wish I could," I said. "But not tonight."

"Something on?"

"Just that I'm beat. I'm going straight home, and the most active thing I intend to do is say a quick prayer to St. John of G.o.d."

"Is he somebody I should know about?"

"He's the patron saint of booksellers."

"Yeah? Who's the patron saint of dog groomers?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know."

"I hope we've got one. I've been bitten and scratched and peed on and I ought to have someplace to turn. As far as that goes, I wonder if there's a patron saint of lesbians. All those cloistered nuns, there d.a.m.n well ought to be. Seriously, do you suppose there is?"

I shrugged. "I could probably find out. I only know about St. John of G.o.d because Mr. Litzauer had a framed picture of him in the back room of the shop. But there must be books with lists of the patron saints. I've probably got something in the store, as far as that goes."

"It must be great, having that shop. Like living in a library."

"Sort of."

"The Poodle Factory's like living in a kennel. You going? Hey, have a nice night, Bern."

"Thanks. And I'll check out St. Sappho tomorrow."

"If you get a chance. Hey, is there a patron saint of burglars?"

"I'll check that, too."

I rode three different subway trains to Broadway and Eighty-sixth and walked a block to Murder Ink, where I sold my shopping bag full of books to Carol Bremer. She got all my vintage mysteries; I could do better wholesaling them to her than waiting for somebody to pick them off my shelves.

She said, "Charlie Chan, Philo Vance-this is wonderful, Bernie. I've got want-list customers for all this stuff. Buy you a drink?"

For a change everybody wanted to buy me a drink. I told her I'd take a rain check, left her shop just in time to miss a bus on West End Avenue, and walked the sixteen blocks downtown to my apartment. It was a nice crisp fall afternoon and I figured I could use the walk. You don't get all that much fresh air and exercise in a bookstore.

There was mail in my box. I carried it upstairs and put it in the wastebasket. I was half-undressed when the phone rang. It was a woman I know who runs a day-care center in Chelsea, and the parent of one of her charges had just given her two tickets to the ballet, and wasn't that terrific? I agreed that it was but explained I couldn't make it. "I'm bushed," I said. "I've ordered myself to go to bed without supper. I was just about to take the phone off the hook when it rang."

"Well, drink some coffee instead. What's-his-name's dancing. You know, the Russian."

"They're all Russians. I'd fall asleep in the middle. Sorry."

She wished me pleasant dreams and broke the connection. I left the phone off the hook. I'd have enjoyed eating Carolyn's beef stew and I'd also have enjoyed watching the Russian hop around the stage, and I didn't want the phone to let me know what else I was missing. It made an eerie sound for a while, then fell into a sullen silence. I finished undressing and turned off the lights and got into bed, and I lay there on my back with my arms at my sides and my eyes closed, breathing slowly and rhythmically and letting my mind go here and there. I either dreamed or daydreamed, and I was in some sort of doze when the alarm went off at nine o'clock. I got up, took a quick shower and shave, put on some clean clothes, and made myself a nice cup of tea. At a quarter after nine I put the phone back on the hook. At precisely nine-twenty it rang.

I picked it up and said h.e.l.lo. My caller said, "There's been no change."

"Good."

"Things are as planned at your end?"

"Yes."

"Good," he said, and rang off. No names, no pack drill. I looked at the telephone receiver for a moment, then hung it up, then thought better of it and took it off the hook once again. It whined for a while, but by the time I was done with my tea it was quiet.

I finished dressing. I was wearing a three-piece navy pinstripe suit, a Wedgwood-blue shirt, a tie with narrow green and gold diagonal stripes on a navy field. My shoes combined black calfskin moccasin-toe uppers and thick crepe soles. Wearing them, I made no sound as I scurried around the apartment, gathering up one thing and another, making my final preparations.

While my shoes were silent, my stomach was rumbling a bit. I hadn't eaten anything since lunch some nine hours earlier. But I didn't want to eat, and I knew better than to drink anything.

Not now.

I checked, made sure I had everything. I went out into the hall, double-locked my own door, then rode the elevator past the lobby to the bas.e.m.e.nt, letting myself out via the service entrance to avoid pa.s.sing my doorman.

The air had an edge to it. It wasn't cold enough for mink, but it was certainly topcoat weather. I had mine over my arm, and I took a moment to put it on.

Was there a patron saint of burglars? If so, I didn't know his name. I murmured a quick prayer, addressed it to whom it might concern, and set off to resume my life of crime.

CHAPTER Three.

Halfway across the Queensboro Bridge, I happened to glance at the fuel gauge. The needle was all the way over to the left, way past the big E, and I had what suddenly looked like a mile of bridge stretching out in front of me. I could see myself running out of gas smack in the middle of the East River. Horns would blare all around me, and when horns blare, can cops be far behind? They'd be understanding at first, because motorists do get stranded all the time, but their sympathy would fade when they learned I was driving a stolen car. And why, they might wonder, had I stolen a car without checking the gas?

I was wondering much the same thing myself. I stayed in lane and let my foot rest easy on the accelerator, trying to remember what the ecology commercials were always telling me about ways to conserve gasoline. No fast starts, no jamming on the brakes, and don't spend too much time warming up on cold mornings. Sound advice, all of it, but I couldn't see how it applied, and I clutched the steering wheel and waited for the engine to cut out and the world to cave in.

Neither of these things happened. I found a Chevron station a block from the bridge and told the attendant to fill the tank. The car was a sprawling old Pontiac with an engine that never heard about fuel crises, and I sat there and watched it drink twenty-two gallons of high-test. I wondered what the tank's capacity might be. Twenty gallons, I decided, figuring the pumps were crooked. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

The tab came to fifteen dollars and change. I gave the kid a twenty and he gave me a smile in return and pointed to a sign on a pillar between the two pumps. You had to have exact change or a credit card after 8 P P.M. Help us thwart crime, Help us thwart crime, the sign urged. I don't know that they were thwarting anything, but they were certainly taking the profit out of it. the sign urged. I don't know that they were thwarting anything, but they were certainly taking the profit out of it.

I have a couple of credit cards. I've even opened doors with them, although it's not the cinch TV shows might lead you to believe. But I didn't want a record of my presence in Queens, nor did I want anyone copying down the Pontiac's license number. So I let the little snot keep the change, which got me a mean grin, and I drove east on Queens Boulevard mumbling to myself.

It wasn't the money. What really troubled me was that I'd been driving around unwittingly with an empty tank. The thing is, I don't steal cars very often. I don't even drive them all that frequently, and when I do go and rent one for a weekend in the country, the Olins people give it to me with the tank full. I can be halfway to Vermont before I even have to think about gasoline.

I wasn't going to Vermont tonight, just to Forest Hills, and I could have gone there easily enough on the E train. That's how I'd made the trip a few days earlier when I did some basic reconnaissance. But I hadn't felt like coming home by subway, preferring as I do to avoid public transportation when my arms are full of somebody else's belongings.

And when I found the Pontiac on Seventy-fourth Street, I'd figured it for a sign from on high. GM cars are the easiest for me to get into and the simplest to start, and this one had Jersey plates, so no one would be surprised if I drove it eccentrically. Finally, the owner was unlikely to report it stolen. He'd parked it next to a fire hydrant, so he'd have to a.s.sume the cops had towed it away.

Jesse Arkwright lived in Forest Hills Gardens. Now Forest Hills itself is a nice solid middle-cla.s.s neighborhood set south of Flushing Meadows in the very center of the Borough of Queens. Three out of four houses there contain at least one woman who plays mah-jongg when she's not at a Weight Watchers meeting. But Forest Hills Gardens is an enclave within an enclave, a little pocket of haute bourgeoise haute bourgeoise respectability. Every house is three stories tall, with gables and a tile roof. All of the lawns are manicured, all of the shrubbery under tight discipline. A neighborhood a.s.sociation owns the very streets themselves, keeping them in good repair and restricting on-street parking to neighborhood residents. respectability. Every house is three stories tall, with gables and a tile roof. All of the lawns are manicured, all of the shrubbery under tight discipline. A neighborhood a.s.sociation owns the very streets themselves, keeping them in good repair and restricting on-street parking to neighborhood residents.

Cars from underprivileged neighborhoods make frequent forays into the quiet streets of Forest Hills Gardens, their occupants darting out to knock down matrons and make off with alligator handbags. And private police cruisers patrol those same streets twenty-four hours a day to keep that sort of thing to a minimum. It's not Beverly Hills, say, where every pedestrian is perforce a suspicious character, but the security's pretty tight.

It's even tighter on Copperwood Crescent, an elegant semicircle where ma.s.sive piles of stone and brick sprawl on s.p.a.cious wooded lots. The residents of Copperwood Crescent include a shipping-line heir, two upper-echelon mafiosi, the owner of a chain of budget funeral parlors, and two to three dozen similarly well-heeled citizens. One private cop car has as its sole responsibility the safeguarding of Copperwood Crescent, along with four adjoining and similarly exclusive streets-Ironwood Place, Silverwood Place, Pewterwood Place, and Chancery Drive.

If Forest Hills Gardens is the soft underbelly of Queens, Copperwood Crescent is the ruby in its navel.

I didn't have any trouble finding the ruby. On my earlier trip I'd walked all around the neighborhood armed with pocket atlas and clipboard-a man with a clipboard never looks out of place. I'd found Copperwood Crescent then and I found it now, barely slowing the Pontiac as I rolled past Jesse Arkwright's house, an enormous beamed Tudor number. On each of the three floors a light burned in a mullioned window.

At the end of Copperwood Crescent I took a sharp left into Bellnap Court, a quiet block-long cul-de-sac that was out of bounds for the Copperwood-Ironwood-Silverwood-Pewterwood-Chancery patrol car. I parked at the curb between a couple of sizable oaks and cut the engine, removing my jumper wire from the ignition.

You need a sticker to park on the street, but that's to keep commuters from cluttering the area during daylight hours. n.o.body gets towed at night. I left the car there and walked back to Copperwood Crescent. If the patrol car was on the job, I didn't see it, nor did I notice anyone else walking about.

The same three lights were lit in the Arkwright house. Without hesitation I walked the length of the driveway at the right of the house. I shined my pencil-beam flashlight through a garage window. A gleaming Jaguar sedan crouched on one side of the garage. The other stall was quite empty.

Good.

I went to the side door. Below the bell on the doorjamb was an inch-square metal plate slotted for a key. A red light glowed within, indicating that the burglar alarm was set. If I were Mr. Arkwright, equipped with the proper key, I could insert it in the slot and turn off the alarm. If, on the other hand, I were to insert anything other than the proper key, sirens would commence to sound and some signal would go off in the nearest police station.

Fine.

I rang the doorbell. The car was gone and the alarm was set, but you just never know, and the burglar least likely to wind up in the slam is the sort of chap who wears suspenders and a belt, just in case. I'd rung this bell before, when I'd come calling with my clipboard, asking meaningless questions in aid of a nonexistent sewer survey. As then, I listened to the four-note chime sound within the huge old house. I pressed my ear to the heavy door and listened carefully, and when the chimes quit echoing I heard nothing at all. No footsteps, no sign of human life. I rang again, and again I heard nothing.

Good.

I walked around to the rear of the house again. For a moment I just stood there. It was pleasant enough, the air uncharacteristically clear and clean. The moon wasn't visible from where I stood but I could see a scattering of stars overhead. What really awed me was the silence. Queens Boulevard was only blocks away but I couldn't hear any of its traffic. I suppose the trees kept the noise at bay.

I felt hundreds of miles from New York. The Arkwright house belonged in a Gothic novel, brooding over windswept moors.

Myself, I had no time for brooding. I put on my rubber gloves-skintight, their palms cut out for comfort's sake-and went to have a look at the kitchen door.

Thank G.o.d for burglar alarms and pickproof locks and tight security systems. They all help discourage the amateurs even as they give the citizenry a nice sense of safety and well-being. Without them, everybody would stash all the good stuff in safe-deposit boxes. Beyond that, they help make burglary the challenging occupation I've always found it. If any splay-fingered oaf could do as well, what fun would it be?

The Arkwright home had a first-rate burglar alarm, Fischer Systems' model NCN-30. I could see for myself that it was wired to all the ground-floor doors and windows. It might or might not have been connected to higher windows-most people don't take the trouble-but I didn't want to walk up a wall to find out one way or the other. It was simpler to rewire the system.

There are a few ways to beat a burglar alarm. One brutally direct method calls for cutting the lines supplying power to the house. This does lack subtlety-all the lights go out, for openers-and it's counter-productive when you're dealing with a good system like the NCN-30, because they have fail-safe devices that trigger them under such circ.u.mstances. (This can have interesting ramifications during a power failure, incidentally.) Ah, well. I used some wires of my own, splicing them neatly into the picture, wrapping their ends ever so neatly with electrical tape, and by the time I was done the alarm was working as well as it had ever worked, but for the fact that it no longer covered the kitchen door. A regiment of cavalry could parade through that door without NCN-30 kicking up a fuss. The whole operation was more than your average burglar could do, and isn't it lucky that I'm not your average burglar?

With the alarm hors de combat, hors de combat, I turned my attention to the thick oak door, an I turned my attention to the thick oak door, an hors hors of another color. A skeleton key opened its original lock, but there were two others, a Segal and a Rabson. I held my little flashlight in one hand and my ring of picks and probes in the other and went to work, pausing now and again to press an ear against the thick wood. (It's like seash.e.l.ls; if you listen carefully you can hear the forest.) When the last tumbler tumbled I turned the k.n.o.b and tugged and shoved and nothing happened. of another color. A skeleton key opened its original lock, but there were two others, a Segal and a Rabson. I held my little flashlight in one hand and my ring of picks and probes in the other and went to work, pausing now and again to press an ear against the thick wood. (It's like seash.e.l.ls; if you listen carefully you can hear the forest.) When the last tumbler tumbled I turned the k.n.o.b and tugged and shoved and nothing happened.

There was a manual bolt on the inside. I ran the flashlight beam down the edge of the door until I located it, then made use of a handy little tool I'd fashioned from a hacksaw blade, slipping it between door and jamb and working it to and fro until the bolt parted. I tried the door again, and wouldn't you know there was a chain lock that stopped it when it was three inches ajar? I could have sawed through that as well, but why? It was easier to slip my hand inside and unscrew the chain lock from its moorings.

I pushed the door all the way open and made an illegal entry a crooked accountant would have been proud of. For a moment I just stood there, glowing, radiant. Then I closed the door and locked the locks. I couldn't do anything about the bolt I'd sawed through, but I did take a moment to restore the chain bolt.

Then I set out to explore the house.

There's absolutely nothing like it.