The Burglar in the Rye - By Lawrence Block Page 0,3

tend to take bears, and to want to keep them as souvenirs. Especially honeymoon couples. Except one couple—the woman wanted to take Paddington home, and the husband wanted his deposit back. I don’t have much hope for that marriage.”

“Did they keep the bear?”

“They did, and he’ll probably wind up fighting her for custody of it when they divorce. For most couples, though, it’s never a question. They want the bear. Europeans, except for the English, don’t generally take the bears in the first place. Japanese always take bears to their room, sometimes more than one. And they always pay for them and take them home.”

“And take pictures of them,” I ventured.

“Oh, you have no idea! Pictures of themselves, holding their bears. Pictures of me, with or without the bears. Pictures of them and their bears on the street in front of the hotel, and posed in front of poor Eddie’s painting, and in their rooms, and in front of the various rooms where some of our more famous guests lived or died. What do you suppose they do with all the pictures? When can they possibly find the time to look at them?”

“Maybe there’s no film in the camera.”

“Why, Mr. Peters!” he said. “What a devious mind you have.”

He had no idea.

Bear or no bear, Room 415 didn’t look like $155 a night plus tax. The maroon carpet was threadbare, the dresser top scarred here and there by neglected cigarettes, and the one window looked out on an airshaft. And, as any member of the Friars Club would be quick to tell you, the room was so small you had to go out to the hall to change your mind.

But I hadn’t expected anything different. The Paddington was a great deal for its permanent residents, who paid less for a month in a spacious one-bedroom apartment than a transient paid for a week-long stay in a room like mine. There was, I suppose, a trade-off; the transients paid a premium to bask in the painter-writer-musician glamour of the place, and subsidized the artists who lived there year-round and provided the glamour.

I wasn’t too sure how the little chap in the floppy blue hat fit into the equation. Charming or twee, as you prefer, it made good marketing sense, giving the hotel a human (well, ursine) face while constituting a small profit center in its own right. If half the guests took bears, and if half of those decided they couldn’t part with their bears, and if the per-bear markup was a conservative fifty percent, well, it would come to enough annually to pay the light bill, or a good chunk of it, anyway. Enough, at the very least, to make the operation cost-effective.

There was a mantelpiece above a fireplace that had long since been bricked up and plastered over, and that’s where I placed Paddington, where he could have a good look around and make sure that everything was all right. “I’d let you look out the window,” I told him, “but there’s nothing to see out there. Just a brick wall, and a window with the shade down. And maybe that’s a good idea, drawing the shade. What do you think?”

He didn’t say. I drew the shade, tossed my small suitcase onto the bed, popped the catches, and opened it. I put my shirts and socks and underwear in the dresser, hung a pair of khakis in the tiny closet, closed the suitcase, and stood it against a wall.

I looked at my watch. It was time I got out of there. I had a business to run.

I said goodbye to the bear, who paid about as much attention as my cat does when I say goodbye to him. I pulled the door shut. That was enough to engage the snap lock, but I double-locked the door with my key before taking the elevator to the lobby.

The pair of women had ended their conversation, or at least taken it somewhere else. The guy with the long face and high forehead and horn-rimmed shades had put down GQ and picked up a paperback. I walked over and dropped my key at the desk. It was an actual brass key, unlike the computerized plastic key cards the newer hotels use, and it had a heavy brass fob attached, designed to punish you for walking off with it by ripping a hole in your pocket. I was happy to leave it, glad of an excuse to pass the desk and have a quick