CHAPTER Seventeen

I slept soundly and woke up early, managing to get dressed and out the door without waking Carolyn, who looked so blissful curled up on the couch that I couldn’t feel too guilty for taking her bed. I walked across town, pausing at my bookshop only long enough to feed Raffles and give him fresh water, then catching the IRT at Union Square and riding to the Hunter College stop at Sixty-eighth and Lex. I walked six blocks up and two blocks over, stopping en route at a deli for a container of coffee and a bagel. When I got to where I was going I found a good doorway and lurked in it, passing the time by sipping the coffee and gnawing at the bagel. I kept my eyes open, and when I finally saw what I’d come there to see I retraced my steps, but this time I passed up the deli and went straight to the subway station.

I caught another train, this one headed downtown, and got off at Wall Street. There’s no more peaceful place in the city on a Sunday morning, when the engines of commerce have ground to a halt. It’s never entirely deserted. I saw joggers on training runs, chugging away, and folks wandering around singly and in pairs, intent on enjoying the stillness.

I’d come to use the phone.

There were more convenient phones, including one in the bookstore and another in Carolyn’s apartment, but you can never be sure you’re not calling someone with one of those gadgets on his phone that displays the number you’re calling from. I was reasonably certain Ray Kirschmann wouldn’t have anything like that at his home in Sunnyside, if only because he wouldn’t want to spend the extra $1.98 a month, or whatever they charge for the service. But he’d have the resources of the New York Police Department, and thus could probably get the folks at NYNEX to trace the call.

If he traced it to a pay phone in the West Village, he’d guess I was at Carolyn’s apartment. So I had to go someplace, and Wall Street seemed as good a choice as any. Let him trace the call, and let him race down to the corner of Broad and Wall, and let him wonder if I was planning to knock over the New York Stock Exchange.

Even so, I saved him for last.

My first call was to the fat man, and my first thought was that the card was a phony, or that I’d dialed wrong. Because the man who answered didn’t sound fat.

I know, I know. You can’t judge a book by its cover (but try to get a decent price for it if it’s stained or water-damaged, or, God forbid, missing altogether). Nor can you tell much about a body by the voice that comes out of it, which is a good thing for the phone-sex industry. All that notwithstanding, the voice I heard didn’t sound like one that might have come out of a man who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, had a beak like an eagle, and wore a white suit. It sounded instead as though its owner never got past the sixth grade, moved his lips on the rare occasions when he read something, spent his most productive hours with a pool cue in his hand, and, when not using that cue for massé shots, was skinny enough to hide behind it.

I asked to speak to Mr. Tsarnoff, and he asked me what I wanted.

“Tsarnoff,” I said confidently, “and you’re not him. Tell him it’s the man who wasn’t at the bookstore yesterday.”

There was a pause. Then a voice-a round voice, a rich voice, a voice that hit every consonant smack on the head and got the last drop of flavor out of every syllable-said, “In point of fact, sir, there is no end of people who were not at that bookstore yesterday. Or at any bookstore, on any occasion.”

Now this was more like it. This was the kind of voice I’d had in mind, a voice that could have introduced The Shadow.

“I’m obliged to agree with you,” I said. “Ours is a subliterate age, sir, and the frequenter of bookstores a rare reminder of a better day.”

“Ah,” he said. “It’s good of you to call. I believe you have found something that belongs to me. I trust you’re aware there’s a substantial reward offered for its return.”

I asked if he could describe it.

“A sort of leather envelope stamped in gold,” he said.

“And its contents?”

“Diverse contents.”

“And the amount of the reward?”

“Ah, did I not say, sir? Substantial. Unquestionably substantial.”

“Sir,” I said, “I must say I like your style. Were I in possession of the article you seek, I’ve no doubt we could come to terms.”

There was a pause, but not a very long one. “The subjunctive mode,” he said, “would seem to imply, sir, that you are not.”

“The implication was deliberate,” I said, “and the inference sound.”

“Yet one has the sense that there is more to the story.”

It was a pleasure having this sort of conversation, but it was also a strain. “It is my earnest hope, sir, to be able to report altered circumstances, and indeed to have it in my power to claim your generous reward.”

“Your hope, sir?”

“My hope and expectation.”

“I am gladdened, sir, for expectation promises ever so much more than hope alone. When might this hope be fulfilled, if I might ask?”

“Anon,” I said.

“Anon,” he echoed. “A word that makes up in charm what it sacrifices in precision.”

“It does at that. ‘Shortly’ might be more precise.”

“I’m not sure that it is, but I daresay it’s a shade more encouraging.”

“It is my intention,” I said, “to call you later today, or perhaps tomorrow, to suggest a meeting. Will I be able to reach you at this number?”

“Indeed you will, sir. If I am not at home myself, you may leave word with the lad who answers the telephone.”

“You’ll hear from me,” I said, and rang off.

My next call was to my partner, Charlie Weeks. I told him I’d held off calling until he returned from his morning walk.

“You had an ample margin for error,” he said. “I’m a creature of habit in my old age, I’m afraid. I wake up at the same time every day without setting a clock. I’ve got halfway through the Sunday Times already.”

“The plot thickens,” I said. “I think you’re right about what happened to Hoberman. I think Candlemas killed him.”

“It seems the likeliest explanation,” he said, “but leaves us high and dry for the time being, since Candlemas himself seems to have disappeared.”

“I have some ideas about that.”

“Oh?”

“But this is no time to go into them,” I said, “and I wouldn’t want to do it over the phone.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“I wonder if I could come to your apartment. This evening, say? On the late side, if it’s all right with you. Eleven o’clock?”

“I’ll have the coffee made,” he said. “Or will you want decaf at that hour?”

I told him I could handle the hard stuff.

There was nothing for it. I spent another quarter and called Ray Kirschmann’s home number in Queens. When a woman answered I said, “Hi, Mrs. Kirschmann. It’s Bernie Rhodenbarr. Is Ray in? I hate to disturb him on a Sunday morning, but I’m calling from up in New Hampshire.”

“I’ll see if he’s in,” she said, a phrase I’ve always found puzzling no matter who uses it, a secretary or a spouse. I mean, who are they kidding? Don’t they already know if he’s in or not, and don’t they think I know?

Her reconnaissance mission took a few minutes, and I wished she would shake a leg. I had plenty of quarters left, but I didn’t want a recorded operator to cut in and ask me for one. It wouldn’t do wonders for my credibility.

But that commodity turned out to be thin on the ground anyway, as it turned out. “ New Hampshire,” were the first words Ray said, and he invested them with a full measure of contempt. “In a pig’s eye, Bernie.”

“I was going to stay in Pig’s Eye,” I told him, “but all the motels were full, so I wound up in Hanover. How’d you happen to know that, Ray?”

“The only thing I know for sure,” he said, “is you’re no more in New Hampshire than you are in New Zealand.”