Ellie’s eyes flashed. “Now you just wait a damned minute,” she said. “Don’t you think Bernie has a right to know who got him into this mess? He’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit and he’s taking a chance every time he sets foot outside, and he has to go around wearing a disguise-”
“The hair,” Wes said. “I knew something was different. You dyed your hair.”
“It’s a wig.
“Really? It looks remarkably natural.”
“God damn it,” Ellie said. “How can you have the nerve to tell us the woman doesn’t want her name mentioned?”
“Well, she doesn’t.”
“Well, that’s too bad. You’ll just have to tell us who she is or else.”
“Or else what?” he asked. Reasonably, I thought.
Ellie frowned, then glanced at me for help. But I was getting flashes and the tumblers were beginning to drop. Brill hadn’t known me, hadn’t even known I was a burglar. But this woman had hired him to rope me in, selecting him because he was an actor who had made a career out of playing underworld types. She didn’t know any real underworld types, nor did she know any real burglars except for me, but she did know who I was and where I lived and what I looked like and how I kept the wolf away from my door.
I said, “Wait a minute.”
“You can’t let him get away with it, Bernie.”
“Just hold it for a minute.”
“You can’t. We found him and we trapped him and now he’s supposed to tell us what we want to know. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”
I closed my eyes and said, “Cool it, will you? Just for a minute.” And the last tumbler tumbled and the mental lock eased open so sweetly, so gently, like the petals of a flower, like a yielding lady. I opened my eyes and beamed at Ellie, then turned the warmth of my smile on Wesley Brill.
“He doesn’t have to tell me a thing,” I said to Ellie. “It’s enough that he told me it was a woman. That triggered it, really. A woman who doesn’t know anything about crime except that a guy named Bernie Rhodenbarr burgles for a living. I know who she is.”
“Who?”
“Does she still live in the same place, Wes? Park Avenue, right? I don’t remember the address offhand but I could draw you a floor plan of the apartment. I tend to remember the layout of places where I’ve been arrested.”
Brill was perspiring. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and he wiped them away not with his whole hand but with an extended index finger. The gesture was very familiar. I must have seen him do it dozens of times in movies.
“Mrs. Carter Sandoval,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you about the Sandovals, Ellie? Of course I did. Her husband had a monster coin collection that I’d taken an interest in. He also had a monster of a gun and his doorbell was out of order and he and his wife were home when I came a-calling. I’m sure I told you about this.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I thought so.” I grinned at Brill. “Her husband was head of CACA. That’s not a bathroom word, it stands for the Civic Anti-Crime Association or something like that. It’s a group of high-minded pests who push for everything from more foot patrolmen on the beat to investigations of political and judicial corruption. The sonofabitch held a gun on me and I tried to buy my way out, and he was the wrong man to offer a bribe to. He even wanted to prosecute me for attempted bribery but he wasn’t a cop, for God’s sake, and there’s no law against trying to bribe a private citizen. At least I don’t think there is, but come to think of it I’m probably wrong. There’s a law against just about everything, isn’t there? Of course I didn’t know he was the head CACA person. All I knew was that he did something terribly profitable on Wall Street and thought rare coins were a hell of a hedge against inflation. Does he still have the coins, Wes?”
Brill just stared at me.
“I remember them well,” I said. I was enjoying this. “And they would remember me, Wes. I saw them the night I was arrested, of course, but they were also on hand when I went before the judge. They didn’t have to be. I copped a plea to a lesser charge, and don’t think that didn’t take some doing. Carter Sandoval wasn’t nuts about the idea of that. But somebody must have taken him aside and explained that the courts would never get anything done if every criminal went through the ritual of a jury trial, and he must have decided it would get more of us evildoers off the streets if the system was allowed to go along as usual, so he and his wife showed up to watch me stand up and plead guilty and get sent away to the license plate factory. I suppose he figured it would be good publicity for his cause with him there to watch justice triumph. And I think he got a personal kick out of it, too. He seemed pretty attached to those coins and thoroughly steamed at the thought of me violating the sanctity of his home.”
“Bernie-”
“She was a lot younger than him. She must have been around forty or close to it, so I guess she’s around forty-five now. Good-looking woman. A little too much jawline for my taste, but maybe she was just setting her jaw with determination the times I saw her. Is her hair still the same color, Wes?”
“I never told you her name.”
“That’s true, Wes, and I wish you would. It’s on the tip of my tongue. It’s not Carla and it’s not Marla and what the hell is it?”
“Darla.”
Something made me glance at Ellie. Her shoulders were set and her head cocked forward. She looked to be concentrating intently. “Darla Sandoval,” I said. “Right. That ring any kind of a bell for you, Ellie?”
“No. I don’t think you mentioned her name before. Why?”
“No reason. Why don’t you call her, Wes?”
“She calls me. I’m not supposed to call her.”
“Call her and see if she wants the box back.”
“But you don’t have the box, Bernie.” He eyed me in his oblique fashion. “Or do you? I’m getting more confused by the minute. Do you have the box or don’t you?
“I don’t.
“I didn’t think so because you didn’t even believe there was a box. You didn’t get the box from Flaxford’s apartment, then. Did you see it there and-”
“No.”
“You went through the desk? There was a desk there, wasn’t there? A large rolltop?”
“There was, and I went through it pretty carefully. But I couldn’t find any kind of blue box in it.”
“Shit,” he said, and this time he didn’t think to apologize to Ellie. I don’t think she minded. I’m not even sure she heard him. She seemed to have something else on her mind.
“That means they got it,” he said.
“Who?”
“Whoever killed him. You didn’t commit the murder or steal the box, so somebody else did both those little things and that’s why the box was gone when you got there. So that’s the end of everything.”
“Call Darla.”
“What’s the point?”
“I know where the box is,” I said. “Call her.”
Chapter Thirteen
Her hair was still blond, and if she had changed much in any other respect I didn’t notice it. She was still slim and elegant, with strength in her face and assurance in her carriage. Wes and I met her as arranged over the phone at a brownstone apartment a few blocks from the one I’d been caught burgling a few years back. She opened the door, greeted me by name, and told Wes his presence would not be necessary.
“You run along, Wesley. It’s quite all right, Mr. Rhodenbarr and I will work things out.” It was the dismissal of a servant, and whether he liked it or not he took it without a murmur. She was swinging the door shut even as he was turning. She bolted it-with the burglar already inside, I thought-and favored me with a cool and regal smile. She asked if I’d like a drink and I said Scotch would be fine and told her how to fix it.
While she made the drinks I stood around thinking of Ellie. She’d decided rather abruptly that she wouldn’t come along to meet Darla Sandoval. A quick glance at her watch, a sudden realization that it was much later than she’d thought, an uncertain bit of chatter about an unspecified appointment for which she was already late, a promise to meet me back at Rodney’s apartment later on, and away she went. I’d see her later, after her appointment had been kept, after her legendary cats had been fed, after her legendary stained-glass sculpture had been assembled…