Read Online The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online Page A

anyway for a check to reveal them, and—”
    “Forget I mentioned it, okay?”
    “Forget you mentioned what?”
    “Can’t remember. Well, let’s just— shit, ” she said, and moved to answer the phone. “Hello? Huh? Hold on, I just—shit, they hung up.”
    “Who?”
    “The Nazi. I’m supposed to look in the mailbox. I looked, remember? All I got was my Con Ed bill and that was enough bad news for one day. And there was nothing in the slot at the Poodle Factory except a catalog of grooming supplies and a flier from one of the animal cruelty organizations. There won’t be another delivery today, will there?”
    “Maybe they put something in the box without sending it through the mail, Carolyn. I know it’s a federal offense but I think we’re dealing with people who’ll stop at nothing.”
    She gave me a look, then went out to the hall. She came back with a small envelope. It had been folded lengthwise for insertion through the small slot in the mailbox. She unfolded it.
    “No name,” she said. “And no stamp.”
    “And no return address either, and isn’t that a surprise? Why don’t you open it?”
    She held it to the light, squinted at it. “Empty,” she said.
    “Open it and make sure.”
    “Okay, but what’s the point? For that matter, what’s the point of stuffing an empty envelope into somebody’s mailbox? Is it really a federal offense?”
    “Yeah, but they’ll be tough to prosecute. What’s the matter?”
    “Look!”
    “Hairs,” I said, picking one up. “Now why in—”
    “Oh, God, Bernie. Don’t you see what they are?” She gripped my elbows in her hands, stared up at me. “They’re the cat’s whiskers,” she said.
    “And you’re the cat’s pajamas. I’m sorry. That just came out. Are they really? Why would anybody do that?”
    “To convince us that they mean business.”
    “Well, I’m convinced. I was convinced earlier when they managed to get the cat out of a locked room. They’ve got to be crazy, cutting off a cat’s whiskers.”
    “That way they can prove they’ve actually got him.”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. One set of whiskers looks a lot like another one. I figure you’ve seen one set, you’ve seen ’em all. Jesus Christ.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “We can’t get the Mondrian out of the Hewlett.”
    “I know that.”
    “But I know where there’s a Mondrian that I could steal.”
    “Where, the Museum of Modern Art? They’ve got a couple. And there are a few in the Guggenheim too, aren’t there?”
    “I know one in a private collection.”
    “The Hewlett’s was in private hands, too. Now it’s in public hands, and unless it gets to be in our hands soon—”
    “Forget that one. The one I’m talking about is still in a private collection, because I saw it last night.”
    She looked at me. “I know you went out last night.”
    “Right.”
    “But you didn’t tell me what you did.”
    “Well, you can probably guess. But what I did first, what got me into the building, is I appraised a man’s library. A nice fellow named Onderdonk, he paid me two hundred dollars to tell him what his books were worth.”
    “Were they worth much?”
    “Not compared to what he had hanging on his wall. He had a Mondrian, among other things.”
    “Like the one in the Hewlett?”
    “Well, who knows? It was about the same size and shape and I think the colors were the same, but maybe they’d look completely different to an expert. The thing is, if I could get in there and steal his Mondrian—”
    “They’ll know it’s not the right one because it’ll still be on the wall at the Hewlett.”
    “Yeah, but will they want to argue the point? If we can hand them a genuine Mondrian worth whatever it is, a quarter of a million is the figure they came up with—”
    “Is it really worth that much?”
    “I have no idea. The art market’s down these days but that’s about as much as I know. If we can give them a Mondrian in exchange for a stolen