Burglars Can't Be Choosers - By Lawrence Block Page 0,2
in one of its drawers or cubbyholes. That’s what the shifty-eyed and pear-shaped man had told me, and who was I to doubt his word?
“There’s this big old desk,” he had said, aiming his chocolate eyes over my left shoulder. “What you call a rolltop. The top rolls up.”
“Clever name for it,” I’d said.
He had ignored this. “You’ll see it the minute you walk in the room. Big old mother. He keeps the box in the desk.” He moved his little hands about, to indicate the dimensions of the box we were discussing. “About like so. About the size of a box of cigars. Maybe a little bigger, maybe a little smaller. Basically I’d call it cigar-box size. Box is blue.”
“Blue.”
“Blue leather. Covered in leather. I suppose it’s wood under the leather. Rather than being leather straight through. What’s under the leather don’t matter. What matters is what’s inside the box.”
“What’s inside the box?”
“That don’t matter.” I stared at him, ready to ask him which of us was to be Abbott and which Costello. He frowned. “What’s in the box for you,” he said, “is five thousand dollars. Five kay for a few minutes’ work. As to what’s actually inside the box we’re talking about, see, the box is locked.”
“I see.”
His eyes moved from the air above my left shoulder to the air above my right shoulder, pausing en route to flick contemptuously at my own eyes. “Locks,” he said, “prolly don’t mean too much to you.”
“Locks mean a great deal to me.”
“This lock, the lock on the box, you prolly shouldn’t open it.”
“I see.”
“Be a very bad idea for you to open it. You bring me the box, you get the rest of your money, and everybody’s happy.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see what you’re doing.”
“Huh?”
“You’re threatening me,” I said. “How curious.”
The eyes widened but only for a moment. “Threats? Not for the world, kid. Advice and threats, there’s a world of difference. I wouldn’t dream of threatening you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t dream of opening your blue leather box.”
Since that conversation I’d been whiling away the hours trying to decide whether I’d open the box or not. I knew myself well enough to recognize that any lock constitutes an immediate temptation for me, and when I’ve been cautioned against opening a particular lock that only increases the attraction of it.
On the other hand, I’m not a kid anymore. When you’ve been inside a couple of times your judgment is supposed to improve, and if it seemed likely that there was more danger than profit in opening the elusive blue box…
But before I came to terms with the question I had to find the box, and before I did that I had to open the desk, and I wasn’t even ready to tackle that project yet. First I wanted to get the feel of the room.
Some burglars, like some lovers, just want to get in and get out. Others try to psych out the people they’re thieving from, building up a whole mental profile of them out of what their houses reveal. I do something a little different. I have this habit of creating a life for myself to suit the surroundings I find myself in.
So I now took this apartment and transformed it from the residence of one J. Francis Flaxford to the sanctum sanctorum of yours truly, Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr. I settled myself in an oversized wing chair upholstered in dark green leather, swung my feet up on the matching ottoman, and took a leisurely look at my new life.
Pictures on the walls, old oils in elaborate gilded frames. A little landscape that clearly owed a lot to Turner, although a lesser hand had just as clearly held the brush. A pair of old portraits in matching oval frames, a man and a woman eyeing each other thoughtfully over a small fireplace in which not a trace of ash reposed. Were they Flaxford’s ancestors? Probably not, but did he attempt to pass them off as such?
No matter. I’d call them my ancestors, and make up outrageous stories about them. And there’d be a fire in the fireplace, casting a warm glow over the room. And I’d sit in this chair with a book and