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

she’d still have a pulse.”
    “The medical cause, Ray, and don’t tell me she stopped breathing.”
    “Well, she damn well did,” he said, “and that’s about all we know for sure at this point. A couple of uniforms got the call and found her layin’ in the middle of her living room floor. When I got there a gal from the medical examiner’s office was standin’ by to tell me she couldn’t find a bullet hole or a stab wound or any bangs and bruises.”
    “Maybe she had a heart attack.”
    “First thing I thought of,” he said. “She walks in, some mug’s turnin’ her house upside down, and she’s scared and upset and she can’t catch her breath.”
    “Essentially,” Carolyn said, “you’re saying the poor woman was verklempt .”
    “If that means what it sounds like, then that’s what she was. And you always think of people as gettin’ a big shock and fallin’ over, but is that what gives you a heart attack? Then why are they always blaming it on steak dinners at Peter Luger’s?”
    “The shock comes when they bring the bill,” I said, “and you find out they don’t take plastic.”
    “So it coulda been her heart, but it coulda been twenty other things, and that’s why we’re waitin’ on the autopsy. But you know the law, Bernie. You’d have to, to break it as often as you do. Even if she died of a bee flyin’ up her nose, the burglar’s goin’ down for murder.”
    “ ‘When the commission of a felony leads to a death, the perpetrator of that felony is guilty of homicide.’ ”
    “Felony murder,” he said. “When I was at the Police Academy, they had an example that stuck in my mind. A guy’s writin’ out a forged check, and a drop of ink from the pen flies up in the face of the intended mark, and the guy has an allergic reaction and dies on the spot. And the forger goes away on a murder charge. Neat?”
    “It couldn’t happen nowadays,” Carolyn said. “You’d pretty much need a fountain pen, wouldn’t you?”
    “I don’t think it ever happened. The point’s not what happened, it’s how the law works.”
    “Haphazardly at best,” I said. “Ray, if you really think I had anything to do with this—”
    “Aw, I know you didn’t, Bernie. Let’s say you were there. She pays off the cab, she walks in, and there you are, checkin’ out the valuables.”
    “And then what happens?”
    “I dunno. I guess she flops on the floor. What else do you do when you get a heart attack?”
    “Take aspirin,” I said, “and call 911.”
    “I guess she didn’t get the chance. But that’s the thing, Bernie. If you’d been there—”
    “Which I wasn’t.”
    “Which I know, because what you woulda done is called 911 your own self. Am I right?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t just leave her there to die, Ray.”
    “See? Case closed. You weren’t there.”
    “And yet you,” Carolyn said, “are here.”
    He nodded. “I guess I was just wonderin’ if you heard anything, Bernie.”
    “As a matter of fact, I did.”
    “You did?”
    “Just now,” I said. “Right here, from you.”
    “Oh. For a minute there—”
    “Well, how else would I hear anything? It’s not as though I have friends in the business. I got locked up once, Ray, and one of the things they told me when they let me out was to avoid contact with other criminals.”
    “And you took the advice to heart.”
    “And followed it to the letter, because nothing could have been easier. I didn’t hang out with criminals before I went away, and the ones I met on the inside didn’t make me eager to continue the association.”
    Ray nodded. “If you weren’t an incorrigible criminal yourself,” he said, “it’d be hard to believe you were any kind of a crook at all. What did I call you before, Bernie?”
    “I think you said I was the last of the gentleman burglars.”
    “A vanishin’ breed,” he said, “although I don’t know as there was ever too many of them around. You’re the only one I ever