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

cat, don’t you think they’d go for it? They’d have to be crazy to turn it down.”
    “We already know they’re crazy.”
    “Well, they’d also have to be stupid, and they couldn’t be too stupid if they managed to swipe the cat.” I grabbed her phone book, looked up Onderdonk’s number, dialed it. I let it ring a dozen times and nobody answered it. “He’s out,” I said. “Now let’s just hope he stays out for a while.”
    “What are you gonna do, Bern?”
    “I’m going home,” I said, “and I’m going to change my clothes and put some handy gadgets into my pockets—”
    “Burglar’s tools.”
    “And then I’m going to the Charlemagne, and I’d better get there before four or someone’ll recognize me, the doorman or the concierge or the elevator operator. But maybe they won’t. I was wearing a suit last night and I’ll dress down this time around, but even so I’d rather get there before four.”
    “How are you going to get in, Bern? Isn’t that one of those places that’s tighter than Fort Knox?”
    “Well, look,” I said, “I never told you it was going to be easy.”
     
    I hurried uptown and changed into chinos and a short-sleeved shirt that would have been an Alligator except that the embroidered device on the breast was not that reptile but a bird in flight. I guess it was supposed to be a swallow, either winging its way back to Capistrano or not quite making a summer, because the brand name was Swallowtail. It had never quite caught on and I can understand why.
    I added a pair of rundown running shoes, filled my pockets with burglar’s tools—an attaché case wouldn’t fit the image I was trying to project. I got out a clipboard and mounted a yellow pad on it, then set it aside.
    I dialed Onderdonk’s number again and let it ring. Nobody answered. I looked up another number and no one answered it, either. I tried a third number and a woman answered midway through the fourth ring. I asked if Mr. Hodpepper was in, and she said I had the wrong number, but that’s what she thought.
    I stopped at a florist on Seventy-second and picked up an assortment for $4.98. It struck me, as it has often struck me in the past, that flowers haven’t gone up much in price over the years, to the point where they’re one of the few things left that give you your money’s worth.
    I asked for a small blank card, wrote Leona Tremaine on the envelope, and inscribed the card Fondly, Donald Brown. (I thought of signing it Howard Hodpepper but sanity prevailed, as it now and then does.) I paid for the flowers, taped the card to the wrapping paper, and went outside to hail a cab.
    It dropped me on Madison Avenue around the corner from the Charlemagne. A florist’s delivery boy does not, after all, arrive by taxi. I walked to the building’s front entrance and moved past the doorman to the concierge.
    “Got a delivery,” I said, and read from the card. “Leona Tremaine, it says.”
    “I’ll see she gets them,” he said, reaching for the bouquet. I drew it back.
    “I’m supposed to deliver ’em in person.”
    “Don’t worry, she’ll get ’em.”
    “Case there’s a reply,” I said.
    “He wants his tip,” the doorman interposed. “That’s all he wants.”
    “From Tremaine?” the concierge said, and he and the doorman exchanged smiles. “Suit yourself,” he told me, and picked up the intercom phone. “Miz Tremaine? Delivery for you, looks like flowers. The delivery boy’s bringing them up. Yes, ma’am.” He hung up and shook his head. “Go on up,” he said. “Elevator’s over there. It’s apartment 9-C.”
    I glanced at my watch in the elevator. The timing, I thought, could not have been better. It was three-thirty. The doorman, the concierge and the elevator operator were not the crew who’d seen me enter last night, nor had they been around when I left with Appling’s stamps in my attaché case. And in half an hour they’d go off duty, before they’d had a chance to