I sipped my club soda. “I wish I could,” I said. “But not tonight.”
“Something on?”
“Just that I’m beat. I’m going straight home, and the most active thing I intend to do is say a quick prayer to St. John of God.”
“Is he somebody I should know about?”
“He’s the patron saint of booksellers.”
“Yeah? Who’s the patron saint of dog groomers?”
“Damned if I know.”
“I hope we’ve got one. I’ve been bitten and scratched and peed on and I ought to have someplace to turn. As far as that goes, I wonder if there’s a patron saint of lesbians. All those cloistered nuns, there damn well ought to be. Seriously, do you suppose there is?”
I shrugged. “I could probably find out. I only know about St. John of God because Mr. Litzauer had a framed picture of him in the back room of the shop. But there must be books with lists of the patron saints. I’ve probably got something in the store, as far as that goes.”
“It must be great, having that shop. Like living in a library.”
“Sort of.”
“The Poodle Factory’s like living in a kennel. You going? Hey, have a nice night, Bern.”
“Thanks. And I’ll check out St. Sappho tomorrow.”
“If you get a chance. Hey, is there a patron saint of burglars?”
“I’ll check that, too.”
I rode three different subway trains to Broadway and Eighty-sixth and walked a block to Murder Ink, where I sold my shopping bag full of books to Carol Bremer. She got all my vintage mysteries; I could do better wholesaling them to her than waiting for somebody to pick them off my shelves.
She said, “Charlie Chan, Philo Vance-this is wonderful, Bernie. I’ve got want-list customers for all this stuff. Buy you a drink?”
For a change everybody wanted to buy me a drink. I told her I’d take a rain check, left her shop just in time to miss a bus on West End Avenue, and walked the sixteen blocks downtown to my apartment. It was a nice crisp fall afternoon and I figured I could use the walk. You don’t get all that much fresh air and exercise in a bookstore.
There was mail in my box. I carried it upstairs and put it in the wastebasket. I was half-undressed when the phone rang. It was a woman I know who runs a day-care center in Chelsea, and the parent of one of her charges had just given her two tickets to the ballet, and wasn’t that terrific? I agreed that it was but explained I couldn’t make it. “I’m bushed,” I said. “I’ve ordered myself to go to bed without supper. I was just about to take the phone off the hook when it rang.”
“Well, drink some coffee instead. What’s-his-name’s dancing. You know, the Russian.”
“They’re all Russians. I’d fall asleep in the middle. Sorry.”
She wished me pleasant dreams and broke the connection. I left the phone off the hook. I’d have enjoyed eating Carolyn’s beef stew and I’d also have enjoyed watching the Russian hop around the stage, and I didn’t want the phone to let me know what else I was missing. It made an eerie sound for a while, then fell into a sullen silence. I finished undressing and turned off the lights and got into bed, and I lay there on my back with my arms at my sides and my eyes closed, breathing slowly and rhythmically and letting my mind go here and there. I either dreamed or daydreamed, and I was in some sort of doze when the alarm went off at nine o’clock. I got up, took a quick shower and shave, put on some clean clothes, and made myself a nice cup of tea. At a quarter after nine I put the phone back on the hook. At precisely nine-twenty it rang.
I picked it up and said hello. My caller said, “There’s been no change.”
“Good.”
“Things are as planned at your end?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, and rang off. No names, no pack drill. I looked at the telephone receiver for a moment, then hung it up, then thought better of it and took it off the hook once again. It whined for a while, but by the time I was done with my tea it was quiet.
I finished dressing. I was wearing a three-piece navy pinstripe suit, a Wedgwood-blue shirt, a tie with narrow green and gold diagonal stripes on a navy field. My shoes combined black calfskin moccasin-toe uppers and thick crepe soles. Wearing them, I made no sound as I scurried around the apartment, gathering up one thing and another, making my final preparations.
While my shoes were silent, my stomach was rumbling a bit. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch some nine hours earlier. But I didn’t want to eat, and I knew better than to drink anything.
Not now.
I checked, made sure I had everything. I went out into the hall, double-locked my own door, then rode the elevator past the lobby to the basement, letting myself out via the service entrance to avoid passing my doorman.
The air had an edge to it. It wasn’t cold enough for mink, but it was certainly topcoat weather. I had mine over my arm, and I took a moment to put it on.
Was there a patron saint of burglars? If so, I didn’t know his name. I murmured a quick prayer, addressed it to whom it might concern, and set off to resume my life of crime.
CHAPTER Three
Halfway across the Queensboro Bridge, I happened to glance at the fuel gauge. The needle was all the way over to the left, way past the big E, and I had what suddenly looked like a mile of bridge stretching out in front of me. I could see myself running out of gas smack in the middle of the East River. Horns would blare all around me, and when horns blare, can cops be far behind? They’d be understanding at first, because motorists do get stranded all the time, but their sympathy would fade when they learned I was driving a stolen car. And why, they might wonder, had I stolen a car without checking the gas?
I was wondering much the same thing myself. I stayed in lane and let my foot rest easy on the accelerator, trying to remember what the ecology commercials were always telling me about ways to conserve gasoline. No fast starts, no jamming on the brakes, and don’t spend too much time warming up on cold mornings. Sound advice, all of it, but I couldn’t see how it applied, and I clutched the steering wheel and waited for the engine to cut out and the world to cave in.
Neither of these things happened. I found a Chevron station a block from the bridge and told the attendant to fill the tank. The car was a sprawling old Pontiac with an engine that never heard about fuel crises, and I sat there and watched it drink twenty-two gallons of high-test. I wondered what the tank’s capacity might be. Twenty gallons, I decided, figuring the pumps were crooked. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.
The tab came to fifteen dollars and change. I gave the kid a twenty and he gave me a smile in return and pointed to a sign on a pillar between the two pumps. You had to have exact change or a credit card after 8 P.M. Help us thwart crime, the sign urged. I don’t know that they were thwarting anything, but they were certainly taking the profit out of it.
I have a couple of credit cards. I’ve even opened doors with them, although it’s not the cinch TV shows might lead you to believe. But I didn’t want a record of my presence in Queens, nor did I want anyone copying down the Pontiac ’s license number. So I let the little snot keep the change, which got me a mean grin, and I drove east on Queens Boulevard mumbling to myself.
It wasn’t the money. What really troubled me was that I’d been driving around unwittingly with an empty tank. The thing is, I don’t steal cars very often. I don’t even drive them all that frequently, and when I do go and rent one for a weekend in the country, the Olins people give it to me with the tank full. I can be halfway to Vermont before I even have to think about gasoline.