The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart

  Ordinarily I don’t like to hang around after I break into somebody’s home. It’s an unnecessary risk, and one I prefer to avoid. But I couldn’t think of a safer spot than where I was right now. I was like Mowgli, holed up in an abandoned building. No one lived here, and it took some imagination to believe that anyone ever had.

  I could take my time. No one would be coming back.

  I didn’t note the time when I let myself into Ilona’s place, but it was just past midnight when I left it. I walked over to Third Avenue to catch a cab headed uptown, and sprinted the last twenty yards to snag one cruising across the intersection.

  “Running yet,” Max Fiddler said. “Can’t be the herbs. How could they work so fast? He makes miracles, this Chinaman, but even miracles take a little time to work. When did I see you, three, four nights ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “No, it was two nights ago. I know it for a fact, because right after I dropped you off the second time I picked up the woman with the monkey. Where to?”

  “Seventy-first and West End.”

  “Right where I dropped you and then picked you up again. And then we took the Transverse and I dropped you at—gimme a minute—”

  “Take all the time you want,” I said.

  “—Seventy-sixth and Lexington,” he said triumphantly. “Am I right or am I right?”

  “You’re right.”

  “Some memory, eh?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Ginkgo.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ginkgo biloba,” he said. “An herb! Comes from the ginkgo trees, you see ’em around town, got a funny little leaf shaped like a fan. I take these pills, my Chinaman told me about them, you get ’em in any health food store. I used to have a memory like Swiss cheese, now I got a memory like a hawk.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “You want to test me on state capitals, names of the presidents, be my guest.”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “Or New York streets, anywhere in the five boroughs. Or something else. Go ahead, try and stump me.”

  “Well, here’s an easy one. Did I happen to leave my attaché case in your cab the other night?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “You want to know how I remember? I got this picture in my mind, you’re limping away from the cab, the case is knocking against your leg with each step you take.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. And even more amazing, I thought, was that I had managed to forget for a moment there that I already knew where the attaché case was. Ray Kirschmann had shown it to me yesterday, with an incomprehensible six-letter word printed on its side in blood.

  “Ginkgo,” he said. “I recommend it.”

  “Maybe I’ll get some. Except it’s not my memory that bothers me so much as the feeling I get sometimes that I’m not thinking too clearly.”

  “It’s good for that, too. Mental clarity!”

  “That’s what I could use.”

  “Also a ringing in the ears.”

  “It gives it to you or gets rid of it?”

  “Gets rid of it!”

  “Well, that’s good to know,” I said, “although that’s not something I’ve had to worry about.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet,” I agreed. “Tell me about the woman and the monkey.”

  He told me about the woman and the monkey in considerable detail, but I don’t know that it constituted much of a testament to his memory, or to the efficacy of ginkgo biloba. I’ve never touched the stuff myself, and I expect to remember the whole episode long into my dotage. All I’ll say is this—the woman had a well-developed figure (“Cantaloupes!” Max Fiddler said), while the monkey was a scrawny specimen with a mean little sour apple of a face. And they both should have been ashamed of themselves.

  The story of their courtship carried us all the way to my corner. He was reaching to throw the flag when I told him to wait a minute.

  “You said New York streets,” I said. “Anywhere in the five boroughs, you said.”

  “So?”

  “How about Arbor Court?”

  “Arbor Court,” he said. “There’s only one Arbor Court and it’s in Manhattan. Is that the one you mean?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “In the Village, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Child’s play,” he said. “I thought you’d give me something hard, like Broadway Alley or Pomander Walk, but the best you can do is Arbor Court. Do I know Arbor Court? Of course I know Arbor Court, and you could take away my ginkgo and I’d still know it.”

  “You know how to get there from here?”

  “Why wouldn’t I know? Over to Broadway, then down Columbus and Ninth Avenue and Hudson Street, and then you pick up Bleecker and take it until you swing right on Charles, and—”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  He put a hand on the back of his seat, turned around, and looked at me. “You want to go there?”

  “Why not?”

  “You want me to wait, and you’ll go inside and get whatever you came here to get?”

  “No,” I said, sinking back into my seat. “Let’s just go straight downtown.”

  “To the Village. To Arbor Court.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, and pulled away from the curb. “Arbor Court, coming up. You know what I think? I think there’s a pattern developing here. Night before last I picked you up on Broadway and Sixty-seventh and brought you here, and ten minutes later I picked you up here and took you somewhere else. Tonight I pick you up and bring you here, and this time you don’t even get out of the cab before we’re off to someplace else. Next time you know what? You’re going to be able to skip this intersection altogether.”

  “You may be right.” It was going to be a long ride. “Say,” I said, “I was wondering. Have you ever had anything else happen in your cab like what happened with the woman and the monkey?”

  It took three anecdotes to get us all the way to Carolyn’s place, and I’m not sure I believe the one with the two sailors and the little old lady. I suppose it’s possible, but it certainly strikes me as highly unlikely. Still, it passed the time.

  The ARNOW bell went unanswered, and I didn’t let myself in. I could have, and wouldn’t have needed my tools, as Carolyn and I have keys to each other’s stores and apartments. But I figured it would be quicker to go looking for her, and I found her in the second place I tried, a bar called Henrietta Hudson’s. When I went in I got a whole batch of looks ranging from wary to hostile, and then Carolyn spotted me and called me by name and the other women relaxed, knowing it was safe to ignore me.

  Carolyn was at the bar drinking Scotch and listening to a willowy woman with improbable red hair. Her name was Tracey and I’d met her before, along with her lover, Djinn, who could have posed as her twin except that her equally unconvincing hair color was ash blond. You rarely saw one without the other, but they had evidently had a falling-out, which was why Tracey was knocking back shots of Jaegermeister and telling Carolyn her troubles, which seemed to be legion.

  Carolyn introduced me, and Tracey was polite enough, but when it was clear that I wasn’t just passing through she turned gracefully away from Carolyn and joined a conversation on her other side. “Move down a little ways, Bern,” Carolyn suggested. “That’ll give us more room.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “You are,” she said, “which means I owe you a big one. It’s all over between her and Djinn, and she’s about one drink away from inviting me to go home with her, and I’m about two drinks away from agreeing. Where are you going?”

  “Home,” I said, “so you can have a chance to get on with your life.”

  “Get back on your stool, Bern. The last thing I want is to go home with her.”

  “Why? I think she’s gorgeous.”

  “No argument there, Bern. S
he’s a beauty. So’s Djinn, and when they broke up forever a year ago last November it was Djinn who told me her troubles and went home with me, and within a week the two of them were back together again and it was months before Tracey would speak to me. They break up three times a year and they always get back together again. Who needs it? That’s not what I’m looking for these days, a quick little tumble in the feathers. I want something meaningful, something that might lead somewhere. Like you and Ilona might have, from the way you were talking this morning.” My face must have shown something, because hers darkened. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I stepped in it, didn’t I? If I stopped to think, I would have wondered what you were doing in a dyke bar at one in the morning. What happened to the course of true love? It’s not running smooth?”

  “It’s not running,” I said. “Can we go somewhere and have a drink?”

  “We’re in a bar, Bern. We can have a drink right here.”

  “Someplace a little quieter.”

  “The tables are quieter. You want to take a table?”

  “Someplace really quiet,” I said, “and where I won’t be the only person in the room with a Y chromosome.”

  “Let’s see. There’s Omphalos on Christopher Street. Everyone there’s got a Y chromosome.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Not Slumgullion’s, that’s all college kids and noise. Oh, I know. There’s that place around the corner on Leroy Street. They don’t get a gay crowd or a straight crowd. Nobody goes there. It’s always dead.”

  “It sounds perfect,” I said. “I hope we can get in.”

  It was just us and the bartender. He gave us our drinks and left us alone, and I brought Carolyn up to date.

  “That’s just so strange about Ilona,” she said. “The last you saw of her…”

  “She was sleeping like a lamb.”

  “And you never spoke to her afterward? No, you called and there was nobody home. And then you went there, and there was really nobody home. It’s hard to believe she moved out, Bern. Are you sure she wasn’t downstairs doing her laundry?”

  “She took everything, Carolyn.”

  “Well, maybe everything was dirty. You know how a person’ll put off doing the laundry, and the first thing you know there’s nothing to wear, so you do it all at once.”

  “And she took the dry cleaning the same day,” I said. “And all her shoes to the shoemaker.”

  “I guess it’s pretty farfetched, huh?”

  “And her books to be rebound, and her pictures to be framed, and—”

  “I get the point, Bern. It was a dumb idea.”

  “All she left,” I said, “is a little Scotch tape residue on the wall, where the map was hanging. And her fingerprints, maybe, but for all I know she wiped the place down before she took off.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask you one. Why would she disappear like that?”

  “I don’t know, Bern. Was it something you said?”

  “Very funny.”

  “You know what I mean. What was she like afterward?”

  “Sad. But she said lovemaking always makes her sad.”

  “Right away? I don’t get sad until the next morning, when I wake up and find out who I went home with.” She shuddered at a memory and chased it with a sip of Scotch. “If it always makes her sad,” she said, “maybe that explains why it took her two weeks to get around to it. But I still don’t get the disappearing act.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Do you think she could have been abducted?”

  “I thought of that. But if you were going to kidnap her, why pack up all her things?”

  “That way she disappears without a trace.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When’s the last day of the month, Tuesday? Wednesday whoever took her calls her landlord and tells him he can rent the place, because she’s not coming back. So he looks and everything’s gone but the furniture, and you said you thought that came with the place?”

  “It didn’t look like anything she would have picked out for herself.”

  “So she’s gone, bag and baggage, and he gets a new tenant in there and that’s it. Gone without a trace.”

  “Why not just leave her stuff? Then no one would even know she was missing. I wouldn’t even have a clue she’d moved out if there’d been clothes in the closet and all the other stuff where it had been last night.”

  “So that means she must have left voluntarily.”

  “I would think so,” I said. “And she packed everything because she wanted to keep it. Maybe she was behind in her rent or skipping out on a lease, maybe that’s why she left so abruptly, but there has to be more to it than that. Why didn’t she call me? Even if she wasn’t going to meet me at the movies, why stand me up? Why not spend a quarter and clue me in?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know how to break it to you.”

  “Break what to me?”

  “If she’d broken it,” she said, “then we’d know. Bern, she must have done her own packing. Anybody else would have packed up the sheets and blankets along with everything else.”

  “Whereas she’d leave them behind because she regarded them as contaminated?”

  “She would know if they came with the apartment, and sometimes they do in furnished rooms or sublets. What about the kitchen stuff?”

  “There was a two-burner hot plate and tabletop refrigerator. I didn’t notice any pots or pans.”

  “She probably ate out all the time.”

  “As far as I know, all she ever ate was popcorn. And half of an eclair.” I shrugged. “I didn’t check to see if there was anything in the fridge. Maybe I should have. I had a slice of pizza for lunch and popcorn for dinner.”

  “That’s terrible, Bern.”

  “Well, I had a real breakfast,” I said. “At least I think I did. It’s hard to remember.”

  “We should get you something to eat.”

  “We should get me something to drink,” I said, and carried our glasses back to the bar.

  A little later she said, “Bernie, I keep thinking that I ought to tell you to go easy on the booze. And then another voice tells me to let you drink all you want.”

  “That second voice,” I said, “is the voice of truth and reason.”

  “I don’t know about that, Bern. You’re putting a lot of alcohol into an empty stomach.”

  “That’s a good place for it,” I said. “Anyway, I wouldn’t call it empty.” I patted the organ in question. “Popcorn takes up a lot of space,” I said. “If you want to fill a stomach, you can’t beat popcorn.”

  “It’s all air, Bern.”

  “It’s heavier than air. If it were all air, it wouldn’t stay in the barrel. It would float away.”

  “Bern…”

  “I ate a whole barrel of it all by myself,” I said.

  “That’s what they call them, barrels. Or sometimes they call them tubs.”

  “I know.”

  “Usually I only have half a barrel, because Ilona has the other half. You want to know something? When she wasn’t there at a quarter to seven, I knew she wasn’t coming. Before I bought the tickets, I knew.”

  “How did you know, Bern?”

  “I just knew,” I said. “The way you know a thing.” I thought about what I’d just said. “Well, the way you know certain things,” I amended. “That’s not the way I know Pierre is the capital of South Dakota, for example. I know that because Mrs. Goldfus made us learn all the state capitals.”

  “Who was Mrs. Goldfus and why would she do a thing like that?”

  “She was my fifth-grade teacher, and she did it because it was her job.”

  “All the state capitals. And you never forgot them?”

  “I never forgot Pierre. I may have forgotten some of the others. If I take enough ginkgo biloba I’ll be able to tell you which ones I forgot. Except once I remember them, how will I know they were forgotten for a while there?”
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  “It’s confusing.”

  “You said it.”

  I picked up my drink and looked at it. It was vodka on the rocks, and it wasn’t Ludomir, because they didn’t carry the brand. This, I decided, was probably just as well.

  “I knew she wouldn’t be there tonight,” I said, “and it doesn’t matter how I knew. I just knew.”

  “Got it, Bern.”

  “I bought two tickets anyway. I probably could have gotten a refund on one of them, but I didn’t even try.” I snapped my fingers. “Easy come, easy go.”

  “You said it.”

  “And I could have bought a small barrel of popcorn instead of a large one, because by then I definitely knew she wasn’t going to show. But what did I do? I went right ahead and bought a large one.”

  “Easy come, easy go?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth. I told you how I got twenty dollars out of Tiglath Rasmoulian, didn’t I?”

  “You did, Bern.”

  “It was like taking candy from a baby. So why not blow it on popcorn?”

  “They get twenty dollars for a barrel of popcorn?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Bern, no matter how much popcorn you’ve got in your stomach, I think you’re starting to feel your drinks.”

  “Was I talking loud, Carolyn?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Damn,” I said, and dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know why that happens.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about, Bern. Especially since there’s nobody around to hear us.”

  “Good point.”

  “And it’s probably not a bad idea for you to get a little bit drunk. Maybe it’ll help you forget her.”

  “Forget who?”

  “Gee,” she said. “I never thought it would work that fast.”

  “Oh, Ilona? I can’t forget her, Carolyn.”

  “That’s what you think now,” she said earnestly, “but we’ve been friends a long time, and think of all the women we’ve both had to forget over the years. And where are they now? Forgotten, every last one of them. Time heals all wounds, Bern, especially when it’s got a little Scotch to back it up.”

  “I’m drinking vodka tonight.”