The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block Page A

rains. So the thing is, Bern, if you’re out there and it starts rainin’ money, don’t forget you got a partner.”

CHAPTER
Eleven
    C arolyn came over around twelve-fifteen with a sack of carry-out from Mamoun’s. We had a felafel sandwich apiece and split a side order of roasted peppers. They made a nice mint tea there and we each drank a container of it. The stuff comes with the sugar already in it, and that reminded Carolyn of the sugar hangover she’d had the day before, and that reminded her of Abel, and she wondered aloud what he was having for lunch, what sort of yummy good he was ingesting even as we spoke.
    “He’s not,” I said.
    “How do you know?”
    “He’s dead,” I said, and while she sat staring at me I told her what I had learned from Ray Kirschmann. He had told me to remember I had a partner, and I had indeed remembered, but somehow I hadn’t had the heartto go straight to the Poodle Factory and ruin Carolyn’s day. So I’d opened the store instead, and dawdled in it, figuring it would be time enough when I saw her. Then she’d appeared with lunch and I had postponed the revelation so as to avoid ruining our appetites, and then, once the subject had come up, I’d blurted.
    She listened all the way through, her frown deepening all the while. When I’d finished, and after we had spent a few minutes telling each other what a fine man Abel was and how obscene it was that he’d been murdered, she asked me who did it.
    “No idea.”
    “You think it was the same ones who murdered Wanda Colcannon?”
    “I don’t see how. The police don’t suspect a link between the Colcannon burglary and Abel’s death. Ray does. He’s positive there’s a connection. But the only thing that connects Colcannon and Abel is us, and we’re not connected with either one of the murders. So there’s no real link between the house on West Eighteenth Street and the apartment on Riverside Drive, except that we took something from one place and left it at the other.”
    “Maybe that’s the link.”
    “The coin?”
    She nodded. “Twelve hours after we left it with him he was dead. Maybe someone killed him for it.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Who would even know he had it?”
    “Somebody he was trying to sell it to.”
    I thought it over. “Maybe. Say he got up yesterday morning and called somebody to come over and have a look at the coin. Guy comes over, has a look, likes what he sees. More than that—one look and he knows he has to own the coin.”
    “But he can’t afford it.”
    “Right. He can’t afford it but he has to have it, and he gets carried away and picks up something heavy. Like what?”
    “Who knows? A bookend, maybe.”
    A natural object for her to think of, given our surroundings. And, in those very surroundings, she had once picked up a bronze bust of Immanuel Kant which I’d been using as a bookend in the philosophy and religion section, only to bounce it off the skull of a murderer who’d been holding a gun on me at the time.
    “Maybe a bookend,” I agreed. “He gets carried away, brains Abel with the bookend, puts the 1913 V-Nickel in his pocket, and away he goes. And on his way he locks up after himself.”
    “Huh?”
    “The doors were locked. Remember the police locks with the sliding bolts? The killer locked up after. Now I tend to do that after a burglary, picking the locks all over again, but who else do you know who does? Andwhat passionate numismatist would think to do it, let alone have the ability?”
    “Why wouldn’t he just lock the door with Abel’s keys?”
    “Oh,” I said.
    “Did I say something wrong, Bern?”
    “I would have thought of it myself sooner or later,” I said sullenly. “In another minute I would have thought of it.”
    “It’s just that you’re not used to the idea of locking and unlocking doors with a key.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Anyway, it’s interesting he thought of it. Most people would just get out of there and be