Mandarin reflected that the cessation of break-ins was more likely due to the all-night talking point now run by university volunteers at the community clinic — and that the patrol car seemed more interested in observing callers for potential dope busts than in discouraging prowlers. Instead, he said: “That’s my point, Ed. Routine break-ins follow a routine pattern. Rip off a TV, stereo, small stuff that can easily be converted into cash. Maybe booze or drugs, if any’s around. Petty theft.
“Doesn’t hold for whoever hit Stryker’s office. Hell, he never kept anything around there to attract a burglar.”
“So the burglar made a mistake. After all, he couldn’t know what was there until he looked.”
Russ shook his head. “Then he would have taken the typewriter — beat up as it is — or finished the half bottle of Gallo sherry Curtiss had on the shelf. Doubt if he would have recognized any of his books as worth stealing, but at least he would have taken something for his trouble.”
“Probably knew the stuff wasn’t worth the risk of carrying off,” the detective pointed out. “Left it to try somewhere else. Looked like the door on the leathershop was jimmied, though we haven’t contacted the guy who leases it. It’s a standard pattern, Russ. Thief works down a hallway room by room until he gets enough or someone scares him off. Probably started at Stryker’s office, gave it up and was working on another door when he got scared off.”
“Ed, I know Curtiss’s office as well as I know my own. Every book in that place had been picked up and set down again. Someone must have spent an hour at it. Everything had been gone through.”
“Well, I’ve been up in his office before, too,” Saunders recalled, “and I’d be surprised if anyone could remember what kind of order he kept his stuff in — if there was any order I don’t know — maybe the thief was up on his rare books. Say he was scanning title pages for first editions or something.”
“Then he passed up a nice copy of Lovecraft’s The Outsider that would have brought him a couple hundred bucks.”
“Did he? I never heard of it. I meant stuff like Hemingway and all— things you’d likely know were valuable. Or maybe he was just checking for money. Lot of people keep maybe ten or twenty dollars lying around the office for emergencies — stuck back in a drawer, behind a picture, inside a book or something.”
Mandarin snorted and finished his beer. He signalled for two more despite the other’s protest.
“Look, Russ,” Saunders argued gently, “why are you making such a big thing out of this? So far as we can tell, nothing was taken. Just a simple case of break and enter — thief looks the place over a bit, then gives up and moves on. It’s routine.”
“No, it isn’t.” Mandarin’s thin face was stubborn. “And something was missing. The place was too neat, that’s the conclusion. Usually Curtiss had the place littered with notes, pieces of clippings, pages of manuscript, wadded-up rough drafts — you’ve seen how it is. Now his desk is clean, stuff’s been picked up off the floor and shelves. All of it gone — even his wastebaskets!”
“Do you want to report a stolen wastebasket, Russ?” Saunders asked tiredly.
“Goddamn it all, can’t you put it together? Somebody broke into Curtiss’s office, spent a good deal of time gathering up all of his notes and pages of manuscript — all of it, even the scrap paper — then piled it into the wastebasket and walked out. Who’d stop a man who was walking down the alley with a wastebasket full of paper?”
Saunders decided he’d have that third beer — if for no better reason than to keep the psychiatrist from downing it. “Russ, it seems to me you’re ignoring the obvious. Look, you’ve been gone for a few days, right? Now isn’t it pretty’ likely that Curtiss just decided to tidy the place up? So he goes through all his stuff, reorganizes things, dumps all his scrap paper and old notes into the wastebasket, sets the wastebasket out to be picked up, and takes the stuff he’s working on for the moment on home with him.”
“That place hasn’t been straightened out in years — since the fire inspectors got on his ass.”
“So he figured it was high time. Then later some punk breaks in, sees there’s nothing there for him, moves on. Why not, Russ?”
Mandarin seemed to subside. “Just doesn’t feel right to me, is all,” he muttered.
“So why would somebody steal Curtiss’s scrap paper, can you tell me?”
Mandarin scowled at his beer.
“Morbid souvenir hunters? Spies trying to intercept secret information? Maybe it was ghosts trying to recover forbidden secrets? Hell, Russ— you’ve been reading too many of Stryker’s old thrillers.”
“Look, I don’t know the motives or the logic involved,” Russ admitted grandiosely. “That’s why I say it isn’t routine.”
The detective rolled his eyes and gave it up. “All right, Russ. I can’t go along with your half-assed logic, but I’ll make sure the department checks into this to the best of our ability. Good enough?”
“Good enough.”
Saunders grunted and glanced at his watch. “Look, Russ. I got to make a phone call before I forget. What do you say you wait around and after I get through I’ll run you on back to your place?”
“My car’s just over at the clinic.”
“Are you sure…”
“Hell, I can drive. Few beers don’t amount to anything.”
“Well, wait here a minute for me,” urged Saunders, deciding to argue it later. He lifted his sweaty bulk from the chair’s sticky vinyl and made for the pay phone in the rear of the bar.
Mandarin swore sourly and began to stuff the rinds of pizza crust into one of the empty bottles. Heartburn, for sure. He supposed he ought to get headed home.
“Well, well, well. Dr Mandarin, I presume. This is a coincidence. Holding office hours here now, Doctor?”
Russ glowered upward. A grinning face leaned over the table. Russ continued to glower.
Natty in double-knit slacks and sportshirt, Brooke Hamilton dropped onto Saunder’s vacated chair. “Rather thought I’d find you here, actually,” he confided. “Believe you and the old man used to drop by here regularly, right?”
Hamilton was drinking beer in a frosted mug. It made an icy puddle on the cigarette-scarred tabletop. Mandarin had a private opinion of people who drank beer in frosted mugs.
“Really a shock hearing about old Stryker,” Hamilton went on. “Really too bad — though I’m sure a man like Stryker never would have wanted to die in bed. A man of action, old Curtiss. A living legend now passed on to the realm of legends. Yes, we’re all going to miss the old man. Not many of the old pulp greats left around. Well, sic transit.” He made a toast.
Mandarin did not join him. He had met Hamilton at various cocktail parties and writers’ symposiums around the University. He was quite popular in some circles — taught creative writing, edited several “little magazines” and writers’ projects, was prominent at gatherings of regional writers and camp followers. His own writing consisted of several startlingly bad novels published by various local presses — often after Hamilton had cornered their editors at some cocktail affair.
Stryker had loathed him — calling him at one such gathering an ingratiating, self-serving, conceited phoney. Hamilton had been within earshot, but chose not to hear. Their admiration was mutual. Since Hamilton was in the habit of referring to Stryker as an over-the-hill pulp hack, Mandarin was not moved by the man’s show of grief.
“Where’s the funeral, Dr Mandarin — or do you know?”
Mandarin shook his head, measuring the distance to the other man’s Kirk Douglas chin. “No body found yet,” he said.