I used the loo, lit a fire under the leftover coffee (with a match, the pilot didn’t work), and let one of the cats check me out. He was a Burmese and nothing intimidated him. His buddy, a wary-eyed Russian Blue, reposed on the double bed, where he tried to blend with the patchwork quilt. I scratched the Burmese behind the ear and he made that bizarre sound they make and rubbed his head against my ankle. I guess I passed inspection.
The coffee boiled. I poured a cup, took a taste, and got flashes of the mug of doctored coffee Madeleine Porlock had given me. I poured it out, heated some water and made some tea, and fortified the brew with an authoritative slug of California brandy from a bottle I found on the shelf over the sink.
It was six-thirty when I kept my appointment at Chez Porlock, and I’d bolted from the place during the seven o’clock newscast. I didn’t look at my watch again until I was sitting in Carolyn’s wicker chair with my feet up, the second cup of brandied tea half gone and the Russian Blue purring insanely in my lap. It was then just eighteen minutes after nine.
I moved the cat long enough to turn Carolyn’s radio to one of the all-news stations, then settled back on the chair again. The cat reclaimed his place and helped me listen to a report on the Turkish earthquake and the presidential veto. There was a disgruntled Albanian holding a couple of people hostage up in Washington Heights, and a reporter on the scene did more than was necessary to put me right in the picture. I stroked the Russian Blue patiently while his Burmese buddy sat on top of a bookcase and made yowling noises.
It was coming up on eleven o’clock when I heard Carolyn’s key in the lock. By then I’d switched to an FM jazz station and I had both cats on my lap. I stayed where I was while she unlocked the door, and as she opened it I said, “It’s me, Carolyn. Don’t panic.”
“Why should I panic?” She came in, closed the door, locked up. “Been here long? I was over at the Dutchess and you know what that’s like. Except you probably don’t, because they don’t allow men in there.” She slipped off her jacket, hung it on a doorknob, walked toward the coffeepot, then spun around suddenly and stared at me. “Hey,” she said. “Did we make a date that I forgot?”
“No.”
“Randy let you in? I thought she was visiting her goddam aunt in Bath Beach. What was she doing here? Did she go out to Brooklyn afterward or what?”
“I haven’t seen Randy.”
“Then how’d you get in, Bernie?”
“I sort of let myself in.”
“Yeah, but where’d you get a key?” She frowned at me. Then light dawned. “Oh,” she said, “I get it. Other people need keys. You’re like Casper the Ghost. You walk through walls.”
“Not exactly.”
The cats had deserted my lap and were brushing themselves passionately against her ankles, desperate to be fed. She ignored them.
She said, “Bernie?”
“The radio.”
“Huh?”
“It’ll answer part of your question.”
She listened, cocked her head. “Sounds like Monk,” she said. “But I don’t know, it’s not as choppy as Monk and he’s doing a lot of things with his left hand.”
“It’s Jimmy Rowles, but that’s not what I meant. After the record ends, Carolyn.”
After the record ended we got a quickie commercial for a jazz cruise to the Bahamas, and I had to explain that that wasn’t it either. Then they gave us the eleven o’clock news, and high time, too. The Turkish earthquake, the flaky Albanian, the probable presidential veto, and then the extraordinary news that a convicted burglar, Bernard Rhodenbarr by name, was sought in connection with the murder of one Madeleine Porlock, who had been shot to death in her own apartment on East Sixty-sixth Street.
The announcer moved on to other matters. Carolyn cut him off in the middle of a sentence, looked at me for a moment, then went over to the kitchen area and fed the cats. “Chicken and kidneys tonight,” she told them. “One of your all-time favorites, guys.”
She stood for a moment with her back to me, her little hands on her hips, watching the wee rascals eat. Then she came over and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I should have known it was Jimmy Rowles,” she said. “I used to catch him at Bradley’s all the time. I haven’t been going there lately because Randy hates jazz, but if we break up, which I think we’re in the process of doing, the hell, I’ll get to the jazz clubs more, so it’s an ill wind, right?”
“Right.”
“Madeleine Doorlock? Funny name.”
“Porlock.”
“Still unusual. Who was she, Bern?”
“Beats me. We were strangers until this afternoon.”
“You kill her?”
“No.”
She crossed her legs at the knee, planted an elbow on the upper knee, cupped her hand, rested her chin in it. “All set,” she announced. “You talk and I’ll listen.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a long story.”
CHAPTER Nine
It was a long story, and she listened patiently through the whole thing, leaving the bed only to fetch the brandy bottle. When I finished she cracked the seal on a fresh bottle and poured us each a generous measure. I’d given up diluting mine with tea and she’d never started.
“Well, here’s to crime,” she said, holding her glass on high. “No wonder you almost spilled your club soda last time I said that. You were all set to go out and commit one. That’s why you weren’t drinking, huh?”
“I never drink when I work.”
“I never work when I drink. Same principle. This is all taking me a little time to get used to, Bernie. I really believed you were a guy who used to be a burglar, but now you’d put all of that behind you and you were selling used books. Everything you told that policeman-”
“It was all true up to a point. I don’t make a profit on the store, or maybe I do. I’m not much of an accountant. I buy and I sell, and I probably come out ahead, even allowing for rent and light bills and the phone and all. If I worked harder at it I could probably make enough to live on that way. If I hustled, and if I shelved paperbacks instead of wholesaling them, and if I read the want ads in AB every week and sent out price quotes all over the place.”
“Instead you go out and knock off houses.”
“Just once in a while.”
“Special occasions.”
“That’s right.”
“To make ends meet.”
“Uh-huh.”
She frowned in thought, scratched her head, sipped a little brandy. “Let’s see,” she said. “You came here because it’s a safe place for you to be, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, that’s cool. We’re friends, aren’t we? I know it means I’m harboring a fugitive, and I don’t particularly give a shit. What are friends for?”
“You’re one in a million, Carolyn.”
“You bet your ass. Listen, you can stay as long as you like and no questions asked, but the thing is I do have some questions, but I won’t ask them if you don’t want.”
“Ask me anything.”
“What’s the capital of South Dakota? No, seriously, folks. Why’d you wait until the Arkwrights came home? Why not just duck in and out quick like a bunny? I always thought burglars preferred to avoid human contact.”
I nodded. “It was Whelkin’s idea. He wanted the book to be stolen without Arkwright even realizing it was gone. If I didn’t take anything else and didn’t disturb the house, and if the book was still there when Jesse Arkwright played his bedtime game of pocket billiards, it would be at least a day before he missed it. Whelkin was certain he’d be the prime suspect, because he wants the book so badly and he’s had this feud with Arkwright, and an alibi wouldn’t really help because Arkwright would just figure he hired someone to do it.”