“Candlemas walked into my store Tuesday, and the following night I committed illegal entry at about the same time that he was committing homicide. By Friday afternoon, Tiglath Rasmoulian knew enough about me to come into my shop and point a gun at me. For God’s sake, he even knew my middle name.”
“Grimes.”
“Right. Now what time was there for word to get around? The only two people who knew I was involved were Candlemas and Hoberman, and Hoberman was dead.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the girl?”
“Ilona.”
“Or course.”
After a moment I said, “I thought of that myself. That she didn’t walk into my shop by accident. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. But all we ever did was go to the movies, and all we ever talked about was what we’d just seen on the screen. If she was setting me up, she was taking her time about it. And then, when she had me ready to slay dragons, or at least jump through hoops for her, she disappeared. I don’t get it.”
“It’s puzzling. But then the Anatrurians are a puzzling people.”
“Evidently.”
“Candlemas is puzzling enough to be Anatrurian. Did he have an accent?”
I shook my head. “He spoke educated American English. I’d guess he was born here, though not necessarily in New York. His name certainly doesn’t sound Anatrurian.”
“He sounds like the sort of fellow who could have had many names over the course of a lifetime. Candlemas would be English. It’s a church holiday, you know. In the winter, if I’m not mistaken, after Twelfth Night but well before Lent. It celebrates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of the infant Christ in the temple. Early in the year, probably so many days before or after a new moon. Hugo Candlemas-perhaps it is indeed the name he was born with. It would be an odd one to invent.”
“Names,” I said. “Candlemas, Tsarnoff, Rasmoulian. All I’ve got is a batch of names and nothing to go with them. Maybe I should drop the whole thing.”
“Why don’t you?” he said. “You don’t have a great investment. A night’s work went for nothing, but I suspect that must happen now and then in your line of work.”
“More than now and then,” I said.
“I can understand your infatuation with the woman. But she would seem to have disappeared voluntarily. Have you any reason to suspect she’s in danger? Or in need of your assistance?”
“No. And if she wants to see me again I’m not that hard to find.”
“Exactly.” He leaned forward, eyes bright. “It can’t be hope of profit, can it? Since you don’t know who has the portfolio or even what’s in it, you can’t be counting on it to make you rich. The police aren’t after you, so you don’t need to solve the crime in order to clear yourself. So why don’t you go back to selling books and breaking into people’s houses?”
“I feel committed,” I said.
“Just that, then. You feel committed, irrespective of the illogic of it all, and without regard to the consequences. You’re in all the way, and devil take the hindmost.”
“I guess it sounds pretty stupid.”
“Stupid? By God, my boy, if we’d had a few more like you in Anatruria it might have been a different story.” He sat up straight, rubbed his hands together. “I have some ideas,” he said. “It’s been a while, but I’m not entirely without experience in these matters.”
He drew lines and circles on his note pad as he talked, suggesting avenues of approach, clarifying what we did and didn’t know so far. I didn’t see the point of the lines and circles, but his thinking was right on target.
“This is great,” I said at length, “but I’m taking up far too much of your time, and-”
“My time? You’ll be taking up far more of it before we’ve seen this through to the end. If you’re committed, so am I.”
“But why? I mean, you’re not remotely involved, so-”
“I don’t know if this will make any sense to you,” he said evenly. “But there was a time when Cappy Hoberman and I worked together as if our lives depended upon it, as indeed they did. I hadn’t seen him in years, I’d lost all contact with him, and when he turned up with that mouse like a Greek bearing gifts it turned out that we didn’t have a great deal to say to each other. Whatever we’d once been to one another, a vast stretch of years had passed. There was all that water under the bridge, or over the dam, or wherever it goes.
“Water.” He snorted. “If we’d been kin, I’d say that blood was thicker than water. But we were something else. We were partners in an enterprise, and that slender fact puts me under an obligation. I don’t expect you to understand this. I’m sure it’s hopelessly old-fashioned.” He sat up straighter, raised his voice a notch. “But when your partner is killed, you’re supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t matter how you felt about him, or what sort of man he was. He was your partner, and you’re supposed to do something about it.”
I looked at him. “Mr. Weeks,” I said, “this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
“Indeed it could,” he said, and reached to pump my hand. “Indeed it could. But let’s forget Mr. Weeks and Mr. Thompson, shall we? I’ll call you Bill, and I’d like you to call me Charlie.”
“Uh,” I said.
“Is something the matter?”
“Charlie,” I said, “there’s one more thing I forgot to tell you.”
CHAPTER Fifteen
“I feel good about this,” Charlie Weeks said. “A man needs a purpose in life. He needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I think we’ll make a good team.”
“I think you’re right, Charlie.”
“I don’t understand what’s taking so long,” he said, and extended a hand toward the elevator call button. I beat him to it. “Give it a good poke this time,” he urged. “Maybe the connection’s worn.”
“He’s probably stuck on another floor,” I said, “helping someone with luggage or a key that’s stuck in a lock. Listen, there’s no reason for you to stand out here in the hall. I’m sure he’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” he assured me. But when a few more minutes passed without the elevator’s appearing, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearly impatient. “I suppose I could get to work on our project,” he said. “If you’re sure you won’t feel I’ve abandoned you.”
“Please,” I said. “I feel guilty wasting your time like this.”
The elevator still hadn’t come by the time he disappeared into his own apartment and drew the door shut. I wasn’t greatly surprised; the attendant would have had to be psychic to stop on our floor, as I’d faked pressing the button. I gave Charlie Weeks another minute, just in case he might remember one last thing that would send him darting into the hallway again. When he failed to reappear, I took the stairs down to the eighth floor.
Well, why not? I had my picks with me, never having returned home to unload them the previous evening. When I arranged to drop in on Weeks, I’d had it in the back of my mind to pay a call downstairs after I’d ended my visit. I hadn’t really expected much from my conversation with Weeks, and was counting on him as much for entrée to the Boccaccio as for what he could tell me about Hoberman.
It turned out he’d been able to tell me a lot, and had wound up enlisting as my partner. And it did seem like the start of a beautiful friendship, and I suppose I could have told him I wanted to pay another visit to the fellow four flights below, but I decided to keep it to myself. Otherwise the beautiful friendship might turn out to be stillborn. Because I was in Charlie’s building, after all, and people with a very cavalier attitude toward burglary are apt to turn into law-and-order hard-liners as soon as a burglar starts operating close to home. After all, I’d met Charlie the first time under false pretenses, in order to knock off 8-B, and I’d turned up today flying the same false colors and with the same goal in mind. I’d been almost out the door before I’d gotten around to telling him that I was Bernie Rhodenbarr and not Bill Thompson.