The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block Page A

the partner, make him the heavy, turn state’s evidence and cop to a lesser charge. Good lawyer and the right attitude and what do you bet he’s on the street in three years?”
    “No bet, Phil. Three years, four at the outside. You want to close the store, Bernie? We’ll just take a little ride downtown.”
    The fog lifted slowly. I’d been so relieved at not being robbed that it took a minute or two to realize I was being arrested, which is no pleasure in and of itself. They were talking to each other as if I weren’t even in the room, but it was easy to see that I was the intended object of this merry little Phil-and-Dan patter. (Phil was the one with the sideburns, Dan the poetry lover.) According to their private script, I was supposed to be shaking in my Pumas even as they spoke.
    Well, it was working.
    “What’s it all about?” I managed to ask.
    “Some people would like to talk to you,” Dan said.
    “About what?”
    “A little visit you paid last night to a house on Eighteenth Street,” Phil said. “A little unannounced call.”
    Shit, I thought. How had they tagged us for Colcannon? My stomach turned with the beginnings of despair. It’s particularly disheartening to be charged with a crime, I’ve found, when it’s one you’ve committed. There’s rather less opportunity for righteous indignation.
    “So let’s get going,” Dan said. He set the book of poems on the counter. I found myself hoping his last name was McGrew, and that Phil would shoot him.
    I’d just opened the store and now I had to close it. “Am I under arrest?” I asked.
    “Do you want to be?”
    “Not especially.”
    “Well, if you come with us voluntarily we won’t have to arrest you.”
    That seemed fair enough. Phil helped me drag the bargain table inside, so I guessed that Dan ranked him. I locked the door and closed the gates, and while I was doing this they made the predictable jokes about a burglar locking up his own place, and how I didn’t have to worry about forgetting my keys. Real side-splitters, let me tell you.
    Their car was a blue-and-white police cruiser. Phil drove while I sat in back with Dan. A couple blocks from the store I said, “What am I supposed to have done, anyway?”
    “As if you didn’t know.”
    “Right, as if I didn’t. It happens I don’t, so humor me. What’s the charge?”
    “He’s cool now,” Dan said to Phil. “Notice how the professional attitude comes into play? He was nervous before, but now he’s cool as a pickle.” He turned to me and said, “There’s no charge. How can there be a charge? We didn’t arrest you.”
    “If you arrested me, what would the charge have been?”
    “Just hypothetically?”
    “Okay.”
    “Burglary, first degree. And homicide, first degree.” He shook his head. “You poor bastard,” he said. “You never killed anybody before, did you?”

CHAPTER
Six
    H erbert and Wanda Colcannon had not stayed in Pennsylvania overnight after all. They had indeed driven out to Berks County, where they’d bred their beloved Bouvier to the chosen champion. Then they’d boarded Astrid overnight with the stud’s owner, evidently a recommended procedure, and drove back to New York for dinner with business associates of Herbert’s and an evening at the theater. After-theater drinks kept them out late, and they’d arrived home after midnight, intending to get a night’s sleep and drive back to Pennsylvania first thing in the morning.
    Instead, they had walked in on a burglary in progress. The burglars relieved Herbert of his cash and Wanda of the jewels she was wearing, then attempted to tie them up. When Herb protested, he got a punch in the mouth for his troubles. This provoked a volubleprotest from Wanda, which earned her a couple of whacks on the head. Herb saw her fall and lie there motionless, and that was the last thing he saw, because that was when he got hit on the head himself.
    When he came to he was tied up, and it took him a while to work