{"id":1638,"date":"2026-01-03T21:42:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/burglars-cant-be-choosers-block-lawrence\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T21:42:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:42:22","slug":"burglars-cant-be-choosers-block-lawrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/burglars-cant-be-choosers-block-lawrence\/","title":{"rendered":"Burglars Can’t Be Choosers – Block, Lawrence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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\nChapter<\/span>
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\nOne<\/span>
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A<\/span><\/span> handful of minutes after nine I hoisted my Bloomingdale\u2019s shopping bag and moved out of a doorway and into step with a tall blond fellow with a faintly equine cast to his face. He was carrying an attach\u00e9 case that looked too thin to be of much use. Like a high-fashion model, you might say. His topcoat was one of those new plaid ones and his hair, a little longer than my own, had been cut a strand at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe meet again,\u201d I said, which was an out-and-out lie. \u201cTurned out to be a pretty fair day after all.\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiled, perfectly willing to believe that we were neighbors who exchanged a friendly word now and then. \u201cLittle brisk this evening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I agreed that it was brisk. There wasn\u2019t much he might have said that I wouldn\u2019t have gladly agreed with. He looked respectable and he was walking east on Sixty-seventh Street and that was all I required of him. I didn\u2019t want to befriend him or play handball with him or learn the name of his barber or coax him into swapping shortbread recipes. I just wanted him to help me get past a doorman.<\/p>\n

The doorman in question was planted in front of a seven-story brick building halfway down the block, and he\u2019d been very nearly as stationary as the building itself during the past half-hour. I\u2019d given him that much time to desert his post and he hadn\u2019t taken advantage of it, so now I was going to have to walk right past him. That\u2019s easier than it sounds, and it\u2019s certainly easier than the various alternatives I\u2019d considered earlier\u2014circling the block and going through another building to get into the airshaft behind the building I wanted, doing a human fly act onto the fire escape, torching my way through steel grilles on basement or first-floor windows. All of those things are possible, I suppose, but so what? The proper method is Euclidean in its simplicity: the shortest route into a building is through its front door.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d hoped that my tall blond companion might be a resident of the building himself. We could have continued our conversation, such as it was, right through the lobby and onto the elevator. But this was not to be. When it was clear that he was not going to turn from his eastward course I said, \u201cWell, here\u2019s where I get off. Hope that business in Connecticut works out for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

This ought to have puzzled him, as we hadn\u2019t talked about any business in Connecticut or elsewhere, but perhaps he assumed I\u2019d mistaken him for someone else. It hardly mattered. He kept on walking toward Mecca while I turned to my right (toward Brazil), gave the doorman a quick unfocused nod and smile, warbled a pleasant \u201cGood evening\u201d at a gray-haired woman with more than the traditional number of chins, chuckled unconvincingly when her Yorkie made snapping sounds at my heels, and strode purposefully onto the self-service elevator.<\/p>\n

I rode to the fourth floor, poked around until I found the stairway, and walked down a flight. I almost always do this and I sometimes wonder why. I think someone must have done it in a movie once and I was evidently impressed, but it\u2019s really a waste of time, especially when the elevator in question is self-service. The one thing it does is fix in your mind where the stairs are, should you later need them in a hurry, but you ought to be able to locate stairs without scampering up or down them.<\/p>\n

On the third floor, I found my way to Apartment 311 at the front of the building. I stood for a moment, letting my ears do the walking, and then I gave the bell a thorough ring and waited thirty thoughtful seconds before ringing it again.<\/p>\n

And that, let me assure you, is not a waste of time. Public institutions throughout the fifty states provide food and clothing and shelter for lads who don\u2019t ring the bell first. And it\u2019s not enough just poking the silly thing. A couple of years back I rang the bell diligently enough at the Park Avenue co-op of a charming couple named Sandoval, poked the little button until my finger throbbed, and wound up going directly to jail without passing Go. The bell was out of order, the Sandovals were home scoffing toasted English muffins in the breakfast nook, and Bernard G. Rhodenbarr soon found himself in a little room with bars on the windows.<\/p>\n

This bell was in order. When my second ring brought no more response than my first, I reached a hand beneath my topcoat\u2014last year\u2019s model, not plaid but olive\u2014and drew a pigskin case from my trouser pocket. There were several keys in the case and several other useful things as well, these last made of the finest German steel. I opened my case, knocked on the door for luck, and set to work.<\/p>\n

A funny thing. The better your building, the higher your monthly rental, the more efficient your doorman, why, the easier it\u2019s going to be to crack your apartment. People who live in unattended walkups in Hell\u2019s Kitchen will fasten half a dozen deadbolt locks to their doors and add a Segal police lock for insurance. Tenement dwellers take it for granted that junkies will come to kick their doors in and strong-arm types will rip the cylinders out of their locks, so they make things as secure as they possibly can. But if the building itself is so set up as to intimidate your garden variety snatch-and-grab artist, then most tenants make do with the lock the landlord provides.<\/p>\n

In this case the landlord provided a Rabson. Now there\u2019s nothing tacky about a Rabson lock. The Rabson is very good. But then so am I.<\/p>\n

I suppose it took me a minute to open the lock. A minute may be long or short, significant or inconsequential. It is long indeed when you are spending it inserting burglar\u2019s tools into a lock of an apartment manifestly not your own, and when you know that during any of its sixty seconds another door down the hallway might open and some Nosey Parker might want to know just who you think you are and just what you think you are doing.<\/p>\n

No one opened a door, no one got off the elevator. I did creative things with my finely tempered steel implements, and the tumblers tumbled and the lock mechanism turned and the deadbolt drew itself deliberately back and disengaged. When that happened I let out the breath I\u2019d been holding and drew a fresh one. Then I wiggled my picks a little more and opened the spring lock, which was child\u2019s play after the deadbolt, and when it snicked back I felt that little surge of excitement that\u2019s always there when I open a lock. It\u2019s a little like a roller coaster ride and a little like sexual triumph, and you may make of all that what you will.<\/p>\n

I turned the knob, eased the heavy door inward half an inch or so. My blood was really up now. You never know for certain what\u2019s going to be on the other side of the door. That\u2019s one of the things that makes it exciting, but it also makes it scary, and it\u2019s still scary no matter how many times you\u2019ve done it.<\/p>\n

Once the lock\u2019s open, though, you can\u2019t do it an inch at a time like an old lady slipping into a swimming pool. So I pushed the door open and went inside.<\/p>\n

The room was dark. I closed the door behind me, turned the bolt, dug a penlight flash out of my pocket and played the beam around. The drapes were drawn. That explained the room\u2019s utter darkness, and it meant I might as well turn the lights on because no one could see in from the building across the street. Apartment 311 fronted on Sixty-seventh Street but with the drapes drawn it might as well have been fronting on a blank wall.<\/p>\n

The wall switch near the door turned on a pair of table lamps with leaded glass Tiffany-type shades. They looked like reproductions to me but they were nice ones. I moved around the room, taking time to get the feel of it. I\u2019ve always done this.<\/p>\n

Nice room. Large, about fifteen by twenty-five feet. A highly polished dark oak floor with two oriental rugs on it. The larger one was Chinese and the smaller one at the far end of the room might have been a Bokhara, but I couldn\u2019t tell you for sure. I suppose I ought to know more about rugs but I\u2019ve never taken the time to learn because they\u2019re too much trouble to steal.<\/p>\n

Naturally I went over to the desk first. It was a nineteenth-century rolltop, oaken and massive, and I\u2019d probably have been drawn to it simply because I like desks like that, but in this case my whole reason for being in this apartment was tucked away in one of its drawers or cubbyholes. That\u2019s what the shifty-eyed and pear-shaped man had told me, and who was I to doubt his word?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this big old desk,\u201d he had said, aiming his chocolate eyes over my left shoulder. \u201cWhat you call a rolltop. The top rolls up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClever name for it,\u201d I\u2019d said.<\/p>\n

He had ignored this. \u201cYou\u2019ll see it the minute you walk in the room. Big old mother. He keeps the box in the desk.\u201d He moved his little hands about, to indicate the dimensions of the box we were discussing. \u201cAbout like so. About the size of a box of cigars. Maybe a little bigger, maybe a little smaller. Basically I\u2019d call it cigar-box size. Box is blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue leather. Covered in leather. I suppose it\u2019s wood under the leather. Rather than being leather straight through. What\u2019s under the leather don\u2019t matter. What matters is what\u2019s inside the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s inside the box?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat don\u2019t matter.\u201d I stared at him, ready to ask him which of us was to be Abbott and which Costello. He frowned. \u201cWhat\u2019s in the box for you,\u201d he said, \u201cis five thousand dollars. Five kay for a few minutes\u2019 work. As to what\u2019s actually inside the box we\u2019re talking about, see, the box is locked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n

His eyes moved from the air above my left shoulder to the air above my right shoulder, pausing en route to flick contemptuously at my own eyes. \u201cLocks,\u201d he said, \u201cprolly don\u2019t mean too much to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLocks mean a great deal to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis lock, the lock on the box, you prolly shouldn\u2019t open it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBe a very bad idea for you to open it. You bring me the box, you get the rest of your money, and everybody\u2019s happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I said. \u201cI see what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re threatening<\/span> me,\u201d I said. \u201cHow curious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The eyes widened but only for a moment. \u201cThreats? Not for the world, kid. Advice and threats, there\u2019s a world of difference. I wouldn\u2019t dream of threatening you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I wouldn\u2019t dream of opening your blue leather box.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeather-covered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot that it makes a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHardly. What color blue?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDark blue, light blue, robin\u2019s egg blue, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, powder blue. What color?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to bring the wrong blue box.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry about it, kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you say so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust so it\u2019s a blue leather box. Unopened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGotcha.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since that conversation I\u2019d been whiling away the hours trying to decide whether I\u2019d open the box or not. I knew myself well enough to recognize that any lock constitutes an immediate temptation for me, and when I\u2019ve been cautioned against opening a particular lock that only increases the attraction of it.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I\u2019m not a kid anymore. When you\u2019ve been inside a couple of times your judgment is supposed to improve, and if it seemed likely that there was more danger than profit in opening the elusive blue box\u2026<\/p>\n

But before I came to terms with the question I had to find the box, and before I did that I had to open the desk, and I wasn\u2019t even ready to tackle that project yet. First I wanted to get the feel of the room.<\/p>\n

Some burglars, like some lovers, just want to get in and get out. Others try to psych out the people they\u2019re thieving from, building up a whole mental profile of them out of what their houses reveal. I do something a little different. I have this habit of creating a life for myself to suit the surroundings I find myself in.<\/p>\n

So I now took this apartment and transformed it from the residence of one J. Francis Flaxford to the sanctum sanctorum of yours truly, Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr. I settled myself in an oversized wing chair upholstered in dark green leather, swung my feet up on the matching ottoman, and took a leisurely look at my new life.<\/p>\n

Pictures on the walls, old oils in elaborate gilded frames. A little landscape that clearly owed a lot to Turner, although a lesser hand had just as clearly held the brush. A pair of old portraits in matching oval frames, a man and a woman eyeing each other thoughtfully over a small fireplace in which not a trace of ash reposed. Were they Flaxford\u2019s ancestors? Probably not, but did he attempt to pass them off as such?<\/p>\n

No matter. I\u2019d call them my ancestors, and make up outrageous stories about them. And there\u2019d be a fire in the fireplace, casting a warm glow over the room. And I\u2019d sit in this chair with a book and a glass, and perhaps a dog at my feet. A large dog, a large old<\/span> dog, one not given to yaps or abrupt movements. Perhaps a stuffed dog might be best all around\u2026.<\/p>\n

Books. There was a floor lamp beside my chair, its bulb at reading height. The wall behind the chair was lined with bookshelves and another small case of books, one of those revolving stands, stood on the floor alongside the chair. On the other side of the chair was a lower table holding a silver cigarette dish and a massive cut-glass ashtray.<\/p>\n

All right. I\u2019d do a lot of reading here, and quality stuff, not modern junk. Perhaps those leather-bound sets were just there for show, their pages still uncut. Well, it would be a different story if I were living here. And I\u2019d keep a decanter of good brandy on the table beside me. No, two decanters, a pair of those wide-bottomed ship\u2019s decanters, one filled with brandy, one with a vintage port. There\u2019d be room for them when I got rid of the cigarette dish. The ashtray could stay. I liked the size and style of it, and I might want to take up smoking a pipe. Pipes had always burned my tongue in the past, but perhaps as I worked my way through the wisdom of the ages, feet up on the hassock, book in hand, port and brandy within easy reach, a fire glowing on the hearth\u2026<\/p>\n

I spent a few minutes on the fantasy, figuring out a little more about the life I\u2019d lead in Mr. Flaxford\u2019s apartment. I suppose it\u2019s silly and childish to do this and I know it wastes time. But I think it serves a purpose. It gets rid of some tension. I get wired very tight when I\u2019m in someone else\u2019s place. The fantasy makes the place my own home in a certain way, at least for the short time I\u2019m inside it, and that seems to help. I\u2019m not convinced that\u2019s why I started doing it in the first place, or why I\u2019ve continued.<\/p>\n

The time I wasted couldn\u2019t have amounted to very much, anyway, because I looked at my watch just before I put my gloves on to go to work and it was only seventeen minutes after nine. I use sheer skintight rubber gloves, the kind doctors wear, and I cut out circles on the palms and backs so my hands won\u2019t perspire as much. As with other skintight rubber things, you don\u2019t really lose all that much in the way of sensitivity and you make up for it in peace of mind.<\/p>\n

The desk had two locks. One opened the rolltop and the other, in the top right-hand drawer, unlocked that drawer and all the others at once. I probably could have found the keys\u2014most people stow desk keys very close to the desk itself\u2014but it was faster and easier to open both locks with my own tools. I\u2019ve never yet run into a desk lock that didn\u2019t turn out to be candy.<\/p>\n

These two were no exception. I rolled up the rolltop and studied the usual infinite array of pigeonholes, tiny drawer upon tiny drawer, cubicle after cubicle. For some reason our ancestors found this an efficient system for the organization of one\u2019s business affairs. It\u2019s always seemed to me that it would have to be more trouble keeping track of what bit of trivia you stowed in what arcane hiding place than it would be to keep everything in a single steamer trunk and just rummage through it when there was something you needed. But I suppose there are plenty of people who get enormously turned on by the notion of a place for everything and everything in its place. They\u2019re the people who line up their shoes in the closet according to height. And they remember to rotate their tires every three months, and they set aside one day a week for clipping their fingernails.<\/p>\n

And what do they do with the clippings? Stow \u2019em in a pigeonhole, I suppose.<\/p>\n

The blue leather box wasn\u2019t under the rolltop, and my pear-shaped client had so positioned his little hands as to indicate a box far too large for any of the pigeonholes and little drawers, so I opened the other lock and released the catches on all the lower drawers. I started with the top right drawer because that\u2019s where most people tend to put their most important possessions\u2014I\u2019ve no idea why\u2014and I worked my way from drawer to drawer looking for a blue box and not finding one.<\/p>\n

I went through the drawers quickly, but not too quickly. I wanted to get out of the apartment as soon as possible because that\u2019s always a good idea, but I had not committed myself to pass up any other goodies the apartment might contain. A great many people keep cash around the house, and others keep traveler\u2019s checks, and still others keep coin collections and readily salable jewelry and any number of interesting things which fit neatly enough into a Bloomingdale\u2019s shopping bag. I wanted the four thousand dollars due me upon delivery of the blue box\u2014the thousand I\u2019d received in advance bulged reassuringly in my hip pocket\u2014but I also wanted whatever else might come my way. I was standing in the apartment of a man who did not evidently have to worry about the source of his next meal, and if I got lucky I might very well turn a five-thousand-dollar sure thing into a score big enough to buy my groceries for the next year or so.<\/p>\n

Because I no longer like to work any more than I have to. It\u2019s a thrill, no question about it, but the more you work the worse the odds get. Crack enough doors and sooner or later you are going to fall down. Every once in a while you\u2019ll get arrested and a certain number of arrests will stick. Four, five, six jobs a year\u2014that ought to be plenty. I didn\u2019t think so a few years ago when I still had things to prove to myself. Well, you live and you learn, and generally in that order.<\/p>\n

I gave those drawers a fast shuffle, down one side and up the other, and I found papers and photograph albums and account ledgers and rings full of keys that probably didn\u2019t fit anything and a booklet half-full of three-cent stamps (remember them?) and one of a pair of fur-lined kid gloves and one of a pair of unlined pigskin gloves and one ear-muff of the sort that your mother made you wear and a perpetual calendar issued in 1949 by the Marine Trust Company of Buffalo, New York, and a Bible, King James version, no larger than a pack of playing cards, and a pack of playing cards, Tally-Ho version, no larger than the Bible, and a lot of envelopes which probably still had letters in them, but who cared, and stacks of canceled checks bearing various dates over the past two decades, held together by desiccated rubber bands, and enough loose paper clips to make a chain that would serve as a jump rope for a child, or perhaps even for an adult, and a postcard from Watkins Glen, and some fountain pens and some ball pens and some felt pens and no end of pencils, all with broken tips, and\u2026<\/p>\n

And no coin collections, no cash, no traveler\u2019s checks, no bearer bonds, no stock certificates, no rings, no watches, no cut or uncut precious stones (although there was a rather nice chunk of petrified wood with felt glued to the bottom so it could be used as a paperweight), no gold bars, no silver ingots, no stamps more precious than the three-cent jobs in the booklet, and, by all the saints in heaven, no blue box, leather or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Hell.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t make me happy, but neither did it make me throw up. What it made me do was straighten up and sigh a little, and it made me wonder idly where old Flaxford kept the Scotch until I reminded myself that I never drink on a job, and it made me think about the cigarettes in the silver dish until I recalled that I\u2019d given up the nasty things years ago. So I sighed again and got ready to give the drawers another look-see, because it\u2019s very easy to miss something when you\u2019re dealing with a desk that is such a reservoir of clutter, even something as substantial as a cigar box, and I looked at my watch and noted that it was twenty-three minutes of ten, and decided that I would really prefer to be on my way by ten, or ten-thirty at the very latest. Once more through the desk, then, to be followed if necessary by a circuit of other logical hiding places in the living room, and then if need be a tour of the apartment\u2019s other rooms, however many there might be of them, and then adieu, adieu. And so I blew on my hands to cool them as they were beginning to sweat a bit, not that blowing on them did much good, encased in rubber gloves as they were, and this may well have led me to sigh a third time, and then I heard a key in the lock and froze.<\/p>\n

The apartment\u2019s tenant, J. Francis Flaxford, was supposed to be off the premises until midnight at the very least.<\/p>\n

By the same token, the blue box was supposed to be in the desk.<\/p>\n

I stood facing the door, my hip braced against the desk. I listened as the key turned in the lock, easing back the deadbolt, then turning farther to draw back the spring lock. There was an instant of dead silence. Then the door flew inward and two boys in blue burst through it, guns in their hands, the muzzles trained on me.<\/p>\n

\u201cEasy,\u201d I said. \u201cRelax. It\u2019s only me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Book Preview Chapter One A handful of minutes after nine I hoisted my Bloomingdale\u2019s shopping bag and moved out of a doorway and into step with a tall blond fellow with a faintly equine cast to his face. He was carrying an attach\u00e9 case that looked too thin to be of much use. Like a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-1638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lawrence-block"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}