The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) by Lawrence Block Page B

another citizen taking in the art, and checking them out while I’m at it.”
    “An unaccompanied citizen.”
    “Not if you’d like to keep me company.”
    Her eyes lit up. “I was your henchperson once before, Bern. Remember?”
    “Like it was yesterday. This’ll be a little different. We won’t be doing anything illegal.”
    “Sure we will,” she said. “I’ll be a part of a criminal conspiracy. That’ll give it an edge, even if all we’ll be doing is looking at paintings.”

    Over the next few days, I made a couple of preliminary visits to scout the terrain. Then on the Thursday Carolyn joined me and I finally set foot inside the place.
    I figured out which door led to the basement and noted its proximity to the restroom. I visited the restroom, examined the window. By the time we got out of there, I knew how I was going to pull it off.
    “Their security’s good,” I told Carolyn on our way downtown. “But it’s not perfect.”
    “You found a hole in it.”
    “I think so. A pinhole, but I think I’ll be able to widen it.”
    “It won’t be a job for two, will it? I didn’t think so. I played a small part, and that’s something. And I’ve been wanting to get to the museum for a long time.”
    “That reminds me,” I said.
    “What’s this, Bern?”
    “A present,” I said. “The Modern Library edition of Swann’s Way . Now that the Galtonbrook’s off your list, you can kick back and start reading Proust.”

 

    Time passed.
    It’ll do that, have you noticed? Some days crawl and some days fly, but they all have the same number of hours, and each of them comes from wherever days come from and goes wherever they go. The moving finger writes, and what do you get?
    Like the fellow who lifted sixteen tons, what I got was another day older. But instead of getting deeper in debt, I put Mr. Smith’s bounty to good use, paying what I owed and holding the rest in reserve. But first I passed along the bonus $5000 to Carolyn, who protested that all she did was keep me company on an innocent visit to an off-the-beaten-track museum.
    “And you even paid the five bucks admission charge,” she said.
    “True, but you used your own Metrocard on the subway. And you were a participant in a criminal conspiracy, as you pointed out earlier. An accessory to the fact, an accomplice.”
    “More of an accessory before the fact, Bernie. I did my accessorizing on Thursday, and it wasn’t until last night that the fact came along. You’d think I’d have to be more involved to wind up with five grand.”
    “Well . . .”
    “What?”
    “Well,” I said, “I was thinking. The Galtonbrook’s closed today. When they open up tomorrow, there’s only one thing that might make them the slightest bit suspicious.”
    “The fact that one of their treasures is missing?”
    “They’d never notice. But sooner or later somebody’ll jiggle the panel over the restroom window and discover it’s being held in place by duct tape.”
    I didn’t have to draw her a map. “But if you were to show up tomorrow morning, for a five-dollar admission charge you could visit the restroom and put the bolts back.” She grinned. “But you were there just yesterday, in your Mets cap and your parrot shirt. Wouldn’t it be safer if you had a trusty henchperson to run that little errand for you?”
    “I can supply the bolts,” I said, “and the screwdriver. All you’d need would be five minutes in the restroom.”
    “Any woman who spends less than five minutes in a public restroom,” she said, “is a traitor to her sex.”
    “It won’t take any longer than that. And putting the bolts in will be quicker and easier than taking them out, because some of them didn’t really want to budge.”
    “So they’ll be glad to get back where they belong. Okay, Bern. You talked me into it. It sounds like fun, and it’ll give me something to do to earn the five thousand dollars. But even so the book would have been