The Burglar Who Liked To Quote Kipling Part 21

"Nothing," I frowned. It had seemed big, compared to the little nickel-plated item I'd seen in the Sikh's enormous hand.

Which reminded me.

"Francis Rockland," I said. "The cop who was wounded outside my bookshop. What gun was he shot with? Did you find that out?"

"You still say you weren't there, huh?"

"Dammit, Ray-"

"Okay, okay. Well, he wasn't shot with the Marley Devil Dog, Bern, because the killer left it on the floor of the Porlock apartment. Is that what you were gettin' at?"

"Of course not."

"Oh. You had me goin' for a minute there. Rockland was shot-well, it's hard to say what he was shot with."

"No slug recovered?"

"Right. The bullet fragmented."

"There must have been fragments to recover."

He cleared his throat. "Now I'll deny I said this," he said, "but from what I heard, and n.o.body exactly spelled it out for me, but puttin' two and two together-"

"Rockland shot himself."

"That's how it shapes up to me, Bern. He's a young fellow, you know, and bein' nervous and all..."

"How bad were his injuries?"

"Well, it seems he lost a toe. Not one of the important ones."

I thought of Parker, going around breaking important bones. Which toes, I wondered, were the important ones?

"What did you find out about Rockland?"

"Well, I asked around, Bern. The word I get is he's young all right, which we already knew, but he's also the kind of guy who can listen to reason."

"How do you translate that?"

"I translate it Money Talks."

"There's not enough money in this one to make much noise," I said. "Unless he'll operate on credit."

"You're askin' a lot, Bern. The poor kid lost a toe."

"He shot it off himself, Ray."

"A toe's a toe."

"You just said it wasn't an important one."

"Even so-"

"Would he settle for future payment if he got a piece of the bust? If he's the ambitious kid you say he is, he'd be crazy not to."

"You got a point."

I had more than a point. I had a whole bunch of things to tell him, some of which provoked argument, some of which did not. At the end I told him to take it easy and he told me to take care.

It sounded like good advice for both of us.

The owner of Milo Arms, Inc., had a commendable sense of humor. His Yellow Pages ad showed the company trademark, the Venus de Milo's limbless torso with a holster on her hip. Who could resist?

I make it a point to stay out of gun shops, but one thing I've noticed is that I don't generally notice them. They're almost invariably located one flight above street level. I guess they're not that keen on the drop-in trade and the impulse shoppers.

Milo Arms didn't break the rule. They had the second floor of a weary red brick building on Ca.n.a.l between Greene and Mercer. The shop on the ground floor sold plumbing supplies and the upper floors bad been carved into residential units. I was loitering in the vestibule, reading names on doorbells, when a young couple left the building, the smell of an illicit herb trailing after them. The girl giggled infectiously while her escort held the door for me.

The gun-shop door was a solid wooden one with the torso-c.u.m-holster motif repeated, along with an extensive list of the death-dealing items on sale within. There was the usual run of locks, plus a padlock on the outside.

I gave a knock and was rea.s.sured to hear neither a human response nor the guttural greeting of an attack dog. Just blessed silence. I got right to work.

The locks weren't much trouble. The padlock had a combination dial that looked like an interesting challenge, and if I hadn't been out in public view and urgently pressed for time, I might have sandpapered my fingertips and tried out my Jimmy Valentine impression. Instead I tried my hacksaw blade on the thing, and when that didn't work-it was a d.a.m.ned good lock, made of d.a.m.ned good steel-I took the easy way out and unscrewed the hasp from its mounting on the jamb. There's tricks to every trade, and if you just live long enough you get to use 'em all.

G.o.d, what a grim place! I was only inside for five minutes or so, but what an uncomfortable five minutes they were. All those guns, all close together like that, reeking of oil and powder and whatever else it is that makes them smell the way they do. Infernal machines, engines of death and destruction, killers' tools.

Ugh.

I locked up carefully on my way out. The last thing I wanted to do was make it easy for some maniac to rip off a wholesale lot of guns and ammo. I even took the time to remount the padlock, leaving the hasp more tightly bolted to the jamb than I'd found it.

Guns!

Busy, busy, busy.

I found Carolyn at the Poodle Factory, where she was catching up on her bookkeeping and not enjoying it much. "This is such an unpleasant unpleasant business," she said, "that you'd think there'd be money in it, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. Well, at least there's a big show coming up at the Armory." business," she said, "that you'd think there'd be money in it, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. Well, at least there's a big show coming up at the Armory."

"Does that mean business for you?"

"Sure. You can't win ribbons with a dirty dog."

"That sounds like a proverb. How were the Blinns?"

"Their usual charming selves. I pigged out on shortbread."

"Beats Twinkies and Devil Dogs. Was Gert happy to see her bracelet back?"

"Oh," she said. "Yeah, I guess so."

"You guess so?"

"We mainly concentrated on the photographs," she said, all crisp efficiency now. She spread out the four snapshots on the mottled Formica counter. "Gert never saw this guy before in her life," she said, pointing. "She's sure about that. She doesn't think she saw this one, either, but she can't swear to it."

"But she recognized the other two?"

Her forefinger hovered above one of the snaps. She'd been nibbling the nail again, I noticed. "This dude," she said, "has been around a lot. No idea when she first saw him but it was a while ago. He's been there with Madeleine and he's also been there alone, entering or leaving the building by himself."

"Fascinating. What about our other friend?"

"Artie thinks he saw them together once. And Gert says he's got a familiar look about him."

"I'll borrow this one," I said, picking one up. "See you when I see you."

The Gresham's lobby had changed some since Rudyard Whelkin had described it to me over the phone. Carolyn was gone and so was the shopping bag lady. There was a junkie nodding on a bench, but he didn't look Eurasian to me. Perhaps he'd taken over when the Eurasian went off duty.

The phone Whelkin had used was in use now. An immense woman was talking on it. Too large for the booth, she was standing outside it and bellowing into the mouthpiece, telling someone that she had paid back the money, that she didn't owe nothing to n.o.body. Her presumptive creditor was evidently hard to convince.

The little man behind the desk possessed a skin the sun had never seen. He had tiny blue eyes and a small and virtually lipless mouth. I showed him the picture I'd taken from Carolyn. He gave it a long and thoughtful took, and then he gave that same long and thoughtful look to me.

"So?" he said.

"Is he in?"

"No."

"When did he leave?"

"Who remembers?"

"I'd like to leave him a message."

He handed me a pad. I had my own pen. I wrote Please call as soon as possible Please call as soon as possible and signed it and signed it R. Whelkin, R. Whelkin, not to be cute but because it was the only name I could think of other than my own. A cinch he wasn't using it here, anyway. not to be cute but because it was the only name I could think of other than my own. A cinch he wasn't using it here, anyway.

I folded the slip, pa.s.sed it to the clerk. He took it and gazed blankly at me. Neither of us moved. Behind me, the immense woman was announcing that she didn't have to take that kind of language from n.o.body.

"You'll want to put the message in his box," I said.

"In a while."

Now, I thought. So I can see what room he's in.

"I better do it soon," he went on, "before I forget who the message is for. You didn't put his name on it, did you?"

"No."

"Come to think of it, who is is it for?" it for?"

"You got no call to call me that," the large woman said firmly. "A name like that, I wouldn't call a dog by a name like that. You watch what you call me."

The desk clerk had wispy eyebrows. I don't suppose they'd have been equal to their G.o.d-given task of keeping perspiration from dripping into his eyes, but it probably didn't matter because he probably avoided ever working up a sweat. He had enough eyebrows to raise, though, and he raised them now. Eloquently.

I put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. He gave me a key to Room 311. Fifteen minutes later, on my way out, I gave it back to him.

The large woman was still on the phone. "Talk about a snota.s.s," she was saying, "I'll tell you who's a snota.s.s. You're a snota.s.s, if you want my opinion."

Back in the Pontiac, back downtown again. G.o.d, was there no end to this? Back and forth, to and fro, hither and yon, pillar to post. Interminable.

The lot on Na.s.sau Street was still unattended. A sign informed me it was illegal to leave a car there under such circ.u.mstances. It was not an illegality I could take too seriously at the moment. Violators, the sign a.s.sured me, would be towed at the owner's expense. It was a risk I was prepared to run.

I found a phone, dialed WOrth 4-1114. I didn't expect anyone to answer and n.o.body did.

I walked down to Pine Street and east to the building Prescott Demarest had emerged from hours earlier. (Hours? Weeks of subjective time.) Now only half as many windows showed lights as had done so earlier. I wished for a clipboard or a briefcase, something to make me look as though I belonged.

The lobby attendant was dozing over a newspaper but he snapped into consciousness as I entered the building. He was an older man with a tired face, probably eking out a pension. I walked toward him, then halted in mid-stride and let myself be overcome by a coughing fit. While it subsided I checked the building directory on the wall and picked out a likely firm for myself.

"Bless you," the old man said.

"Thanks."

"You want to watch that cough."

"It's the weather. Nice one day and nasty the next."

He gave me a knowing nod. "It didn't used to be like this," he said. "Weather was always something you could count on, and now everything's changed."

I signed in. Name-Peter Johnson. Firm-Wickwire and McNally. Floor-17. Name-Peter Johnson. Firm-Wickwire and McNally. Floor-17. At least I wasn't calling myself Whelkin for lack of imagination. And Peter Johnson was nicely anonymous. If Wickwire and McNally was a sizable firm, they very likely had a Peter Johnson in their employ. Or a John Peterson, or something close. At least I wasn't calling myself Whelkin for lack of imagination. And Peter Johnson was nicely anonymous. If Wickwire and McNally was a sizable firm, they very likely had a Peter Johnson in their employ. Or a John Peterson, or something close.

I rode the elevator to the seventeenth floor. Not that he would have been likely to check the indicator, but why be sloppy? I scooted down three flights of stairs and searched the corridors until I found a door with Tontine Trading Corp. painted on its frosted gla.s.s. The office within was completely dark, as were all the other offices I'd pa.s.sed. Sat.u.r.day night is the loneliest night in the week, let me tell you.

It's also the longest and I had places to go and people to see. I put my ear to the gla.s.s, rapped smartly on the wooden part of the door, listened carefully, then popped the lock with a strip of flexible steel in not much more time than it takes to tell about it.

Office locks are often like that, and why shouldn't they be? There's not much point in hanging a pickproof whizbang of a lock on a door with a window in it. All you get for your trouble is a lot of broken gla.s.s.

Besides, there was a man downstairs to keep people like me from walking off with the IBM Selectrics, and what else was there to steal? I certainly didn't find anything. When I left the Tontine office-and walked up to 17 and rode down from there-I didn't have anything with me that I hadn't carried into the building.