The Whenabouts of Burr Read Online Free PDF Page A

age, plus or minus twenty percent. And the thing is written by hand, not photocopied; and, as best as our experts can tell, it’s not a forgery.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, it’s not a forgery?” Ves demanded. “What is it then, if it’s not a forgery? How can it be… Hello, Mrs. Montefugoni. Come in, come in.”
    â€œNew pot of coffee,” Mrs. Montefugoni said, bearing the tray before her as proudly as her eight-year-old self had borne the statue of the sacred lamb on feast day in the procession through the narrow streets of her native village. “And tartes for the Commissioner. The cream-fill ones, like he likes.” She set the tray down on the coffee table and replaced the empty silver coffeepot with the full silver coffeepot. “And your mail,” she added, indicating a clutch of envelopes on one side of the tray.
    â€œMail,” Romero repeated distractedly, picking up the envelopes and staring down at them. “Mail. Mrs. Montefugoni, why do you do this? I have asked you several times not to do this, but I can’t seem to convince you. It isn’t right, Mrs. Montefugoni. It is my mail, after all.” Swift looked at his friend intently, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Mrs. Montefugoni didn’t look embarrassed, ashamed, frightened, or hurt; merely stubborn. “I told you,” she said. “Many times. It is for my sister’s boy, Vincenti Gerabaldi. He is a collector. Only nine years old, you understand. And you get so many letters from foreign places—and you do not yourself collect . . .”
    Then Nate noticed that the upper right hand corners of three of the envelopes had been neatly cut off. “Stamps!” he said.
    â€œ Si ,” Mrs. Montefugoni said. “ Si . He collect the stamps. And he is very serious, you know. He soak the stamps in some special thing to take them off the paper. And he does not paste them in the, you know, album. At first, when he first get the album, he pasted the stamps in over their pictures—you know they have these little pictures in the book, the album—with white paste. Then he find out he was wrong. Now he uses these tweezers and these little gummy things to stick them in the book. He is very serious.”
    â€œA collector!” Nate said, a gleam in his eye.
    â€œBut couldn’t you wait until I open the letters, then rip the stamps off?” Ves complained.
    â€œThat must be it!” Nate said, slapping the table.
    â€œWhat you mean, ‘rip’,” Mrs. Montefugoni demanded. “I cut neat with scissors. You rip open letter, destroy stamp.”
    Nate poured a fresh cup of coffee and leaned back, gloating. “Of course! Who else?”
    â€œThey’re my letters,” Ves said, weakly fighting a rearguard action.
    â€œDocument collector?” Nate wondered aloud. “Autograph collector?”
    â€œStamp collector,” Ves explained. “A nine-year-old stamp collector. Mrs. Montefugoni, perhaps we could reach a compromise. Listen: I promise to open the envelopes carefully and save the stamps for your sister’s boy if you will only, please, bring me my mail in its pristine, uncut form.”
    â€œNo, the Constitution, Ves. That must be it! A collector! A Goddam—excuse me, Mrs. Montefugoni—collector.”
    â€œNo need to use the bad language,” Mrs. Montefugoni said, raising her head to a martyric angle. “You no want me to cut off stamps—ever so neat with snips like I do—then I not evermore cut them off. You rip off envelopes like you want. I find some substitute perversion for my sister’s boy Vincenti Gerabaldi.” She left the room with a full head of steam.
    â€œShe’ll pout for days, now that she has an excuse,” Romero said. “I’ll end up having to raise her salary. Try to stay, if not pure of heart, at least clean of mouth in Mrs. Montefugoni’s presence,