The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,2

than I.

I picked my way in, albeit with my eyes open, and before I even locked the door behind me I took a quick tour of the apartment. Once upon a time I didn’t bother to do this, and it later turned out that there was a dead person in the apartment, and the situation proved an embarrassment of the rankest order. Experience is as effective a teacher as she is because one does tend to remember her lessons.

No dead bodies. No live bodies except my own. I went back and locked both locks, plopped my attaché case upon a Victorian rosewood love seat, slipped my hands into a pair of skintight sheer rubber gloves, and went to work.

The name of the game I was playing was Treasure Hunt. “I’d like to see you strip the place to the four walls,” Craig had said, and I was going to do my best to oblige him. There seemed to be more than four walls—the living room I’d entered, a full dining room, a large bedroom, a small bedroom that had been set up as a sort of den and television parlor, and a kitchen with a fake brick floor and real brick walls and a lot of copper pots and pans hanging from iron hooks. The kitchen was my favorite room. The bedroom was all chintzy and virginal, the den angular and uninspired, and the living room an eclectic triumph featuring examples of bad taste down through the centuries. So I started in the kitchen and found six hundred dollars in the butter compartment of the refrigerator door.

Now the refrigerator’s always a good place to look. A surprising number of people keep money in the kitchen, and many of them tuck it into the fridge. Cold cash, I suppose. But I didn’t pick up the six hundred by playing the averages. I had inside information.

“The slut keeps money in the refrigerator,” Craig had told me. “Usually has a couple hundred stashed in the butter keeper. Keeps the bread with the butter.”

“Clever.”

“Isn’t it just? She used to keep marijuana in the tea canister. If she lived where people have lawns she’d probably store it with the grass seed.”

I didn’t look in the tea canister so I don’t know what kind of tea it contained. I put the cash in my wallet and returned to the living room to have a shot at the desk. There was more money in the top right-hand drawer, maybe two hundred dollars at most in fives and tens and twenties. It wasn’t enough to get excited about but I was getting excited anyway, the automatic tickle of excitement that starts working the instant I let myself into someone else’s abode, the excitement that builds every time I lay hands on someone else’s property and make it my own. I know this is all morally reprehensible and there are days when it bothers me, but there’s no getting around it. My name is Bernie Rhodenbarr and I’m a thief and I love to steal. I just plain love it.

The money went in my pocket and became my money, and I started slamming through the other drawers in the little kneehole desk, and several in a row contained nothing noteworthy and then I opened another and right on top were three cases of the sort that good watches come in. The first one was empty. The second and third were not. One of them was an Omega and the other was a Patek Philippe and they were both gorgeous. I closed the cases and placed them in my attaché case where they belonged.

The watches were choice but that was it for the living room and it was actually more than I’d expected. Because the living room like the kitchen was just a warm-up. Crystal Sheldrake lived alone, although she often had overnight guests, and she was a woman with a lot of valuable jewelry, and women keep their jewelry in the bedroom. I’m sure they think they do it so it’s handy when they’re getting dressed, but I think the real reason is that they sleep better surrounded by gold and diamonds. It makes them feel secure.

“It used to drive me crazy,” Craig had said. “Sometimes she left things lying out in plain sight. Or she’d just toss a bracelet and a necklace in the top drawer of the bedside table. She had the bedside table on the left-hand side, but I suppose they’re both hers now so check