Free The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block

evidently gone somewhere herself. The Poodle Factory was closed, with a cardboard sign hanging on the back of the door. B ACK A T , the sign said, and beneath it the movable clock hands pointed to one-thirty.
    I looked in at the coffee shop on the corner of Broadway but didn’t see her. There was a pay phone on the wall at the back but it looked a little too exposed. Iwalked north a block and checked the felafel place. She wasn’t there, either, but their pay phone was a little more private. I ordered a cup of coffee and a hummus sandwich. I wasn’t especially hungry but I hadn’t had anything since my roll for breakfast and figured I probably ought to eat. I ate most of my sandwich, drank all of my coffee, and made sure I got some dimes in my change.
    The first call I made was to Abel Crowe. The Post was on the street by now, and I didn’t have to look at it to know that Wanda Colcannon would be spread all over page three. Her murder might even get the front page, unless something more urgent displaced it, like a projected invasion of killer bees from South America. (Once, during the Son of Sam foofaraw, they’d given the entire front page to a photo of David Berkowitz asleep in his cell. SAM SLEEPS! the headline shrieked.)
    At any rate, the murder was general knowledge by now and one medium or another was sure to call it to Abel’s attention. Any stolen object with a six-figure price tag is hot enough to blister the skin, but homicide always turns up the heat, and Abel would not be happy. Nor could I make him happy, but I could at least assure him that we were burglars, not murderers.
    I let the phone ring an even dozen times. When my dime came back I stood there for a minute, then tried the number again. One sometimes misdials, and telephone-company equipment sometimes misbehaves.
    No answer. I’d dialed his number from memory and there was no directory handy to confirm my recollection, so I let Information check it for me. I’d remembered correctly, but to be on the safe side I dialed it yet again, and when there was still no answer I gave up. Maybe he was already out selling the coin. Maybe he was at his favorite bakery on West Seventy-second Street, buying up everything in sight. Maybe he was napping with the phone’s bell muffled, or soaking in the tub, or tempting muggers in Riverside Park.
    I dialed 411 again and let them look up another number for me. Narrowback Gallery, on West Broadway in SoHo. The phone rang four times, just long enough for me to decide I wasn’t destined to reach anybody this afternoon, and then Denise Raphaelson answered, her voice scratchy from the cigarettes she chain-smoked.
    “Hi,” I said. “Are we set for dinner tonight?”
    “Bernie?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    There was a pause. “I’m a little confused,” she said finally. “I’ve been painting my brains out and I think the fumes are starting to get to me. Did we have a dinner date for tonight?”
    “Well, yeah. It was sort of mentioned casually. Too casually, I guess, if it slipped your mind.”
    “I should write these things down,” she said, “but I never do. I’m sorry, Bernie.”
    “You made other plans.”
    “I did? I don’t think I did. Of course if I could forget a dinner date with you, I could forget other things at least as easily. For all I know I’m throwing a party tonight. Truman and Gore are coming, and Hilton wanted a quick look at my latest work before he does his piece for the Sunday Times, and Andy said he’d bring Marlene if she’s in town. What do you suppose it’s like being one of those people that people know who you are without hearing your last name? I bet if I was Jackie I’d still have to show ID to cash a check at D’Agostino’s.”
    Telephonic whimsy is her specialty. We’d first met over the phone when I was trying to find an artist without knowing anything about him but his last name. She’d told me how to manage that, and one thing had led to another, as it so often does. We