Free Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block Page A

motive. If we knew more about him we might know what to look for.”
    “Don’t the police—”
    “The police already know who killed him. There won’t ever be any investigation, Ruth, because as far as they’re concerned I’m guilty and the case is closed. All they have to do is get their hands on me. That’s why the frame works so perfectly. It may be that there’s only one person in the world with a motive for killing Flaxford, but no one will ever know about it because Flaxford’s murder is all wrapped up and tied with a ribbon and the card has my name on it.”
    “I could go to the library tomorrow. I’ll check The New York Times Index. Maybe they ran something on him years ago and I can read all about it in the microfilm room.”
    I shook my head. “If there was anything juicy they’d have dug it up and run it in his obit.”
    “There might be something that would make some kind of connection for us. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
    “I suppose so.”
    She walked half a dozen steps in one direction, then retraced them, then turned and began the process anew. It was a reasonably good Caged Lion impression. “I can’t just sit around,” she said. “I get stir crazy.”
    “You’d hate prison.”
    “God! How do people stand it?”
    “A day at a time,” I said. “I’d take you out for a night on the town, Ruth, but—”
    “No, you have to stay here,” she said. “I realize that.” She picked up one of the papers, turned pages. “Maybe there’s something on television,” she said, and it turned out that there was a Warner Brothers gangster thing on WPIX. The whole crew was in it—Robinson, Lorre, Greenstreet, and a ton of great old character actors whose names I’ve never bothered to learn but whose faces I’d never forget. She sat on the couch next to me and we watched the whole thing, and eventually I did manage to put an arm around her and we sort of cuddled, doing a little low-level necking during the commercials.
    When the last villain got his and they rolled the final credits she said, “See? The bad guys always lose in the end. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”
    “Life,” I announced, “is not a B picture.”
    “Well, it ain’t no De Mille epic either, boss. Things’ll work out, Bernie.”
    “Maybe.”
    The eleven o’clock news came on and we watched it until they got to the part we were interested in. There were no new developments in the Flaxford murder, and the report they gave was justan abbreviated version of what we’d seen a few hours earlier. When they cut to an item about a drug bust in Hunts Point Ruth went over to the set and turned it off.
    “I guess I’ll go now,” she said.
    “Go?”
    “Home.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “Bank Street. Not far from here.”
    “You could stick around,” I suggested. “There’s probably something watchable on the tube.”
    “I’m pretty tired, actually. I was up early this morning.”
    “Well, you could, uh, sleep here,” I said. “As far as that goes.”
    “I don’t think so, Bernie.”
    “I hate to think of you walking home alone. At this hour and in this neighborhood—”
    “It’s not even midnight yet. And this is the safest neighborhood in the city.”
    “It’s sort of nice having you around,” I said.
    She smiled. “I really want to go home tonight,” she said. “I want to shower and get out of these clothes—”
    “So?”
    “—and I have to feed my cats. The poor little things must be starving.”
    “Can’t they open a can?”
    “No, they’re hopelessly spoiled. Their names are Esther and Mordecai. They’re Abyssinians.”
    “Then why did you give them Hebrew names?”
    “What else would I call them, Haile and Selassie?”
    “That’s a point.”
    I followed her to the door. She turned with one hand on the knob and we kissed, and it was very nice. I really wanted her to stay, and she made a rather encouraging sound down deep in her throat and ground herself against me a