The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

"Huh?"

"Now I can use your bathroom."

When he emerged from it I was sipping a glass of orange juice and feeling more alert, if not altogether on top of things. "You just dropped in to use the John," I said. "Right?"

"You kiddin', Bern? I came by to see you. We don't see each other that often."

"I know. It's been ages."

"It seems I only see you when somebody gets killed. You had overnight company, huh? That's not bad, two nights in a row."

"The other night I was at her place."

"Same lady, huh?"

"That's right."

"Handy."

"Ray, it's always wonderful to see you," I said, "but I overslept and I'm late getting to the store as it is, and-"

"Business comes first, right?"

"Something like that."

"Sure, I know how it is, Bern. I wouldn't be here myself if it wasn't business. Who's got the time for social calls, right?"

"Right."

"So I guess you got yourself an alibi for last night. The little lady who smoked all the cigarettes."

"She's not so little. There are those who would call her gawky. And I already told Richler all that. I'll give her name if I absolutely have to, if I'm charged and booked, but until then-"

"That's the night before last, Bern. The Colca

"What about last night?"

"Tell me about it. Matter of fact, take it from when I dropped you off at the store yesterday around noon. Run it down for me."

"What's last night got to do with anything?"

"You first, Bern."

He listened attentively, and I could almost see wheels turning behind his forehead. Just because his integrity's for sale doesn't change the fact that Ray Kirschma

When I was finished he frowned, sucked at his teeth, clucked his tongue, yawned, and allowed as to how my alibi sounded pretty good.

"It's not an alibi," I said. "It's what I did yesterday. An alibi's when something happened and you have to prove you didn't do it."

"Right."

"What happened?"

"Friend of yours got hisself killed. Least he used to be a friend of yours. Before you went straight and gave up burgling for books."

I felt a chill. He could have meant anyone but I knew without a moment's doubt just who it was that he was talking about.

"A top fence. What the papers'll call a notorious receiver of stolen goods, except they better say alleged because he never took a fall for it. Somebody got into his apartment yesterday and beat him to death."

CHAPTER Ten

"You're not a suspect," Ray assured me. "Nobody on the case even gave a thought to you. Then I went in this morning and I got the word on Crowe and the first person I thought of was you. 'Here I just saw my old friend Bernie Rhodenbarr yesterday,' I said to myself, 'and here's an old friend of his that turns up murdered, and one thing Crowe and the Colca

"Nothing."

"Yeah. But what do you know besides that?"

We were in the same car we'd ridden in a day ago, and once again he was driving me to my store. I told him I hadn't seen Abel Crowe since a friend and I had watched the fireworks from his living-room window almost a year ago.

"Yeah, that's some view," he said. "I dropped by on my way to your place just to see what I could see. What I could see was half of Jersey from the living-room window. That's where they found the body, over by the window, all crumpled in a heap. You never saw him since the Fourth of July?"

"We may have talked a few times on the phone, but not recently. And I haven't seen him since last July."

"Yeah. What happened yesterday, a neighbor rang his bell around six, six-thirty in the afternoon. When he didn't answer she got concerned and checked with the doorman, and he didn't remember Crowe leavin' the buildin'. An old man like that, you worry about his heart or maybe he had a fall, things like that. The guy was seventy-one."

"I didn't realize he was that old."

"Yeah, seventy-one. So the doorman went upstairs, or more likely he sent somebody, the elevator operator or a porter or somebody, and they tried the door. But that didn't do 'em any good because he had police locks like you got on your door. A different model, the kind with the bolt that slides across."

"I know."

"Oh, yeah? You remember his locks clear from last July?"

"Now that you mention it I do. The business I was in, you tend to pay attention to locks."

"I'll bet you do. What they did, they banged on the door and tried to get an answer, and then they called the precinct and a patrolman was sent up, and what could he do? He tried to force the door and you can't with a lock like that, and finally someone got the bright idea to call a locksmith, and by the time they found someone who would come and he finally got there and managed to open the lock it must have been close to ten o'clock."

Indeed it must have. It wasn't too much earlier than that when I last tried Abel's number, and if they'd gotten in earlier some cop would have answered Abel's telephone.

"They almost expected to find the old man lyin' dead there," he went on. "What they didn't expect was to find him murdered."

"There's no question it was murder?"

"No question at all. The Medical Examiner on the scene said so, although you didn't have to be a doctor to see it. It wasn't one blow. Somebody hit him a lot of times in the face and over the head."

"God."

"Time of death's a guess at this stage, but the ballpark figure is early afternoon yesterday. So you could have raced up there after I dropped you at the store, killed the old man, then raced back down to open up for business. Just a little lunch-hour homicide. Except that's not your style an' we both know it, plus I got a look at your face when I told you about Crowe bein' dead, Bern, and you were learnin' it for the first time."

We caught a light at Thirty-seventh Street and he braked the car. "The thing is," he said, "it's a coincidence, isn't it? Colca

"Was Crowe's apartment robbed?"

"It wasn't taken apart. If anybody stole anything it didn't show. I got there long after the lab crew came and went, but even so there wasn't much of a mess. But maybe the killer knew where to look. Did Crowe keep large sums of cash around the apartment?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Sure you would, but we'll let it pass. Maybe it was straight robbery and murder, with the killer forcing the old man to fork over the money, then killing him. Or maybe it was somebody with a reason to kill him, a motive. He have any enemies?"

"Not that I know of."

"Maybe he cheated somebody and yesterday it caught up with him. He had a long life. You can make a lot of enemies in seventy-one years."

"He was a nice man. He ate pastries and quoted Spinoza."

"And bought things from people who didn't own them."

I shrugged.

"Who did the Colca

"How would I know?"

"You had some co

"How?"

"Maybe the old man set it up. Fences do that all the time, set up a place and get a burglar to knock it off. Maybe he did that and then there was an argument over the payoff. When Wanda Colca

"I suppose it's possible."

We batted it around until we were at the curb in front of Barnegat Books. I'd glanced at the Poodle Factory as we drove by and Carolyn was open for business. I started to thank Ray for the ride but he interrupted me with a heavy hand on my shoulder.