Burglars Can't Be Choosers (10 page)

“In the hands and in the heart.” I felt myself blushing at the phrase. “Well, it’s true. When I was twelve years old I taught myself how to open the bathroom door. You could lock it from inside by pressing this button on the doorknob and then the door could be opened from the inside but not from the outside. So that nobody would walk in on you while you were on the toilet or in the tub. The usual privacy lock. But of course you can press the button on the inside and then close the door from the outside and then you’ve locked yourself out of it.”

“So?”

“So my kid sister did something along those lines, except what she did was lock herself in and then just sit there and cry because she couldn’t turn the knob. My mother called the Fire Department and they took the lock apart and rescued her. What’s so funny?”

“Any other kid who went through that would decide to become a fireman. But you decided to become a burglar.”

“All I decided was I wanted to know how to open that lock. I tried using a screwdriver blade to get a purchase on the bolt and snick it back, but it didn’t have the flexibility. I could almost manage it with a table knife, and then I thought to use one of those plastic calendars insurance men pass out that you keep in your wallet, you know, all twelve
months at a glance, and it was perfect. I figured out how to loid that lock without even having heard of the principle involved.”

“Loid?”

“As in celluloid. Any time you’ve got a lock that you can lock without a key, you know, just by drawing the door shut, then you’ve got a lock that can be loided. It may be hard or easy depending on how the door and jamb fit together, but it’s not going to be impossible.”

“It’s fascinating,” she said, and she gave that little shivery shudder again. I went on talking about my earliest experiences with locks and the special thrill I’d always found in opening them, and she seemed as eager to hear all this as I was to talk about it. I told her about the first time I let myself into a neighbor’s apartment, going in one afternoon when nobody was home, taking some cold cuts from the refrigerator and bread from the bread drawer, making a sandwich and eating it and putting everything back the way I’d found it before letting myself out.

“The big thing for you was opening locks,” she said.

“Opening locks and sneaking inside. Right.”

“The stealing came later, then.”

“Unless you count sandwiches. But it didn’t take long before I was stealing. Once you’re inside a place it’s a short step to figuring out that it might
make sense to leave with more money than you brought with you. Opening doors is a kick, but part of the kick comes from the possibility of profit on the other side of the door.”

“And the danger?”

“I suppose that’s part of it.”

“Bernie? Tell me what it’s like.”

“Burglary?”

“Uh-huh.” Her face was quite intense now, especially around the eyes, and there was a thin film of perspiration on her upper lip. I put a hand on her leg. A muscle in her upper thigh twitched like a plucked string.

“Tell me how it feels,” she said.

I moved my hand to and fro. “It feels very nice,” I said.

“You know what I mean. What’s it like to open a door and sneak into somebody else’s place?”

“Exciting.”

“It must be.” Her tongue flicked at her lower lip.

“Scary?”

“A little.”

“It would have to be. Is the excitement, uh, sexual?”

“Depends on who you find in the apartment.” I laughed a hearty laugh. “Just a joke. I suppose there’s a sexual element. It’s obvious enough on a symbolic level, isn’t it?” My hand moved as I
talked, to and fro, to and fro. “Tickling all the right tumblers,” I went on. “Stroking here and there, then ever so gently easing the door open, slipping inside little by little.”

“Yes—”

“Of course your crude type of burglar who uses a pry bar or just plain kicks the door in, he’d be representative of a more direct approach to sex, wouldn’t he?”

She pouted. “You’re joking with me.”

“Just a little.”

“I never met a burglar before, Bernie. I’m curious to know what it’s like.”

Her eyes looked blue now and utterly guileless. I put a finger under her chin, tipped her head up, placed a little kiss upon the tip of her nose. “You’ll know,” I told her.

“Huh?”

“In a couple of hours,” I said, “you’ll get to see for yourself.”

It made perfect sense to me. She was remarkably good at getting people to tell her things over the phone, and maybe she could worm Wesley Brill’s address out of his agent first thing in the morning, but why wait so long? And why chance the agent’s passing the word to Wesley? Or, if the agent was in on the whole thing, why set his teeth on edge?

On the other hand, Peter Alan Martin’s office
was located on Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, and if there was anything easier than knocking off an office building after hours I didn’t know what it was. At the very least I’d walk out of the building with Brill’s address a few hours earlier than we’d get it otherwise, and without arousing suspicions. And if I got lucky—well, it had the same attraction as any burglary. You didn’t know what you might find, and it could always turn out to be more than you’d hoped for.

“But you’ll be out in the open,” Ruth said. “People might see you.”

“I’ll be disguised.”

Her face brightened. “We could get some make-up. Maybe Rod has some around. I’ll make you up. Maybe a false moustache for a start.”

“I tried a real moustache this afternoon and I wasn’t crazy about it. And make-up just makes a person look as though he’s wearing make-up, and that’s the sort of thing that draws attention instead of discouraging it. Wait here a minute.”

I went to the closet, got the wig and cap, took them into the bathroom and used the mirror to adjust them for the best effect. I came out and posed for Ruth. She was properly appreciative, and I bowed theatrically, and when I did so the cap and wig fell on the rug in front of me. Whereupon she laughed a little more boisterously than I felt the situation absolutely required.

“Not that funny,” I said.

“Oh, nonsense. It was hysterical. A couple of bobby pins will make sure that doesn’t happen. It could be embarrassing if your hair fell off on the street.”

Nothing happened last night, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t mentioned that I’d gone out on my own and I felt it would be awkward to bring it up now.

It was around nine when we left the apartment. I had my ring of tools in my pocket along with my rubber gloves and a roll of adhesive tape I’d found in the medicine cabinet; I didn’t think I’d have to break any windows, but adhesive tape is handy if you do and I hadn’t cased Martin’s office and didn’t know what to expect. Ruth had found some bobby pins lurking in the bottom of her bag and she used them to attach the blond wig to my own hair. I could bow clear to the floor now and not worry about dislodging the wig. Of course I’d lose the cap, and she wanted to pin the cap to the wig as well, but I drew the line there.

Outside the door I took Rod’s spare keys from her and locked all three locks, then gave them back to her. She looked at them for a moment before dropping them back into her bag. “You opened all those locks,” she said. “Without keys.”

“I’m a talented lad.”

“You must be.”

We didn’t run into anyone on the way out of the building. Outside the air was fresh and clear and not a touch warmer than it had been the night before. I almost said as much until I remembered I hadn’t been out the night before as far as she was concerned. She said it must feel good to be outside after spending two days cooped up, and I said yeah, it sure did, and she said I must be nervous being on the streets with every cop in the city gunning for me, which was something of an exaggeration, and I said yeah, I sure was, but not too nervous, and she took my arm and we headed north and east.

It was a lot safer with her along. Anybody looking at us saw a guy and a girl walking arm in arm, and when that’s what meets your eye it doesn’t occur to you to wonder if you’re eyeballing a notorious fugitive from justice. I was able to relax a good deal more than I had the past night. I think she was edgy at first, but by the time we’d walked a few blocks she was completely at ease and said she couldn’t wait until we were inside the agent’s office.

I said, “What you mean
we,
kemosabe?”

“You and me, Tonto. Who else?”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Not a chance. I’m the burglar, remember? You’re the trusted confederate. You stay on the outskirts and guard the horses.”

She pouted. “Not fair. You have all the fun.”

“Rank has its privileges.”

“Two heads are better than one, Bernie. And four hands are better than two, and if we’re both checking Martin’s office things’ll go faster.”

I reminded her about too many cooks. She was still protesting when we reached the corner of Sixteenth and Sixth. I figured out which was Martin’s building and spotted a Riker’s coffee shop diagonally across the street from it. “You’ll wait right there,” I told her, “in one of those cute little booths with a cup of what will probably not turn out to be the best coffee you ever tasted.”

“I don’t want any coffee.”

“Maybe an English muffin along with it if you feel the need.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Or a prune Danish. They’re renowned for their prune Danish.”

“Really?”

“How do I know? You can hold up lanterns in the window. One if by land, two if by sea, and Ruth Hightower’ll be on the opposite shore. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“
Two If By Sea.
That’s the show Rod’s in, did you know that? Anyway, I’ll be on the opposite shore, and I won’t be terribly long. Get in and get out, quick as a bunny. That’s my policy.”

“I see.”

“But only in burglary. It’s not my policy in all areas of human endeavor.”

“Huh? Oh.”

I felt lighthearted, even a little lightheaded. I gave her a comradely kiss and steered her toward the Riker’s, then squared my shoulders and prepared to do battle.

T
he building was only a dozen stories high, but the man who built it had probably thought of it as a skyscraper at the time. It was that old, a once-white structure festooned with ornamental ironwork and layered with decades of grime. They don’t build them like that anymore and you really can’t blame them.

I looked the place over from across the street and didn’t see anything that bothered me. Most of the streetside offices were dark. Only a few had lights on—lawyers and accountants working late, cleaning women tidying desks and emptying trash-baskets and mopping floors. In the narrow marble-floored lobby, a white-haired black man in maroon livery sat at a desk reading a newspaper, which he held at arm’s length. I watched him for a few minutes. No one entered the building, but one man
emerged from the elevator and approached the desk. He bent over it for a moment, then straightened up and continued on out of the building, heading uptown on Sixth Avenue.

I slipped into a phone booth on the corner and tried not to pay attention to the way it smelled. I called Peter Alan Martin’s office and hung up when the machine answered. If you do that within seven seconds or so you get your dime back. I must have taken eight seconds because Ma Bell kept my money.

When the traffic light changed I trotted across the street. The attendant looked up without interest as I made my way through the revolving doors. I gave him my Number 3 smile, warm but impersonal, and let my eyes have a quick peek at the building directory on the wall while my feet carried me over to his desk. He moved a hand to indicate the ledger and the yellow pencil stub I was to use to sign my name in it. I wrote
T. J. Powell
under Name,
Hubbell Corp.
under Firm,
441
under Room, and
9:25
under Time In. I could have written the Preamble to the Constitution for all the attention the old man gave it, and why not? He was an autograph collector and not a hell of a lot more, a deterrent for people who deterred easily. He’d been posted in the lobby of a fifth-rate office building where the tenants probably had an annual turnover rate of thirty percent. Industrial espionage
was hardly likely to occur here, and if the old man kept the junkies from carting off typewriters, then he was earning the pittance they paid him.

The elevator had been inexpertly converted to self-service some years back. It was a rickety old cage and it took its time getting up to the fourth floor, which was where I left it. Martin’s office was on six, and I didn’t really think my friend in the lobby would abandon his tabloid long enough to see if I went to the floor I’d signed in for, but when you’re a professional you tend to do things the right way whether you have to or not. I took the fire stairs up two flights—and they were unusually steep flights at that—and found the agent’s office at the far end of the corridor. There were lights burning in only two of the offices I passed, one belonging to a CPA, the other to a firm called Notions Unlimited. No sound came from the accountant’s office, but a radio in Notions Unlimited was tuned to a classical music station, and over what was probably a Vivaldi chamber work a girl with an Haute Bronx accent was saying, “…told him he had a lot to learn, and do you know what he said to that? You’re not going to believe this…”

The door to Peter Alan Martin’s office was of blond maple with a large pane of frosted glass set into it. The glass had all three of his names on it in
black capitals, and
Talent Representative
underneath them. The lettering had been done some time ago and needed freshening up, but then the whole building needed that sort of touch-up work and you knew it wasn’t ever going to get it. I could tell without opening the door that Martin wasn’t much of an agent and Brill couldn’t have much of a career these days. On the outside the building still retained an air of faded grandeur, but in here all of the grandeur had faded away.

The door’s single lock had both a snap lock and a deadbolt, and Martin had taken the trouble to turn his key in the lock and put the deadbolt to work. It was hard to figure out why, because locking a door like that is like fencing a cornfield to keep the crows out. Any idiot could simply break the glass and reach inside, and I had adhesive tape that would enable me to break the glass without raising the dead; a few strips crisscrossed on the pane would keep the clatter and tinkle to a minimum.

A broken pane of glass is a calling card, though, especially if they find it with tape on it. Since I didn’t expect to steal anything, I had the opportunity to get in and out without anyone ever knowing I’d existed. So I took the time to pick the lock, and there was precious little time involved. I knocked off the deadbolt easily, and loiding the snap lock was more than easy. There was a good
quarter-inch of air between the wooden door and its wooden jamb, and a child with a butter spreader could have let himself in.

“What’s it like, Bernie?”

Well, there was a little excitement in turning the knob and easing the door open, then slipping inside and closing the door and locking up. I had my pencil light with me but I left it in my pocket and switched on the overhead fluorescents right away. A little flashlight winking around in that office might have looked strange from outside, but this way it was just another office with the lights on and I was just another poor bastard working late.

I moved around quickly, taking the most perfunctory sort of inventory. An old wooden desk, a gray steel steno desk with typewriter, a long table, a couple of chairs. I got the feel of the layout while establishing that there were no corpses tucked in odd places, then went over to the window and looked out. I could see Riker’s but couldn’t look inside. I wondered if Ruth was at a front table and if she might be looking up at my very window. But I didn’t wonder about this for very long.

I checked my watch. Nine thirty-six.

Martin’s office was shabby and cluttered. One entire wall was covered with dark brown cork tiles, which had been inexpertly cemented to it. Thumbtacks and pushpins held glossy photographs in place. The greater portion of these photos
showed women, who in turn showed the greater portion of themselves. Most of them showed their legs, many showed their breasts, and every one of them flashed a savage mechanical smile. I thought of Peter Alan Martin sitting at his cluttered desk and gazing up at all those teeth and I felt a little sorry for him.

There were a few head and shoulders shots in among the sea of tits and legs, a couple of male faces in the crowd. But I didn’t see the face I was looking for.

Next to the white touchtone phone on the desk stood a Rolodex wheel of phone numbers and addresses. I flipped through it and found Wesley Brill’s card. This didn’t really come as a surprise, but all the same I felt a little thrill when I actually located what I was looking for. I tried a couple of Martin’s Flair pens, finally found one that worked, and copied down
Wesley Brill, Hotel Cumberland, 326 West 58th, 541-7255.
(I don’t know why I wrote down his name. I don’t know why I wrote down anything, come to think of it, because all I had to do was remember the name of the hotel and the rest would be in the phone book. Listen, nobody’s perfect.)

I put my rubber gloves on at about this point and wiped the surfaces I remembered touching, not that any of them seemed likely to take a print and not that anyone would be looking for prints in the
first place. I checked the Rolodex for Flaxford, not really expecting to find his name, and was not vastly surprised when it wasn’t there.

There were three old green metal filing cabinets on the opposite side of the window from the cork wall. I gave them a quick look-through and found Brill’s file. All it held was a sheaf of several dozen 8 by 10 glossies. If Martin had any correspondence with or about Brill he either threw it out or kept it elsewhere.

But it was the pictures that interested me. Only when I saw them did I know for certain that Wesley Brill was the man who had set me up for a murder rap. Until then there was still some room for doubt. All those long-distance phone calls had had us operating in something of a vacuum, but here was Brill in living black and white and there was no doubt about it. I flipped through the pictures and picked out a composite shot, half a dozen head-and-shoulders pics arranged to show various facial expressions and attitudes. I knew it wouldn’t be missed—mostly likely the whole file wouldn’t have been missed, and possibly the entire filing cabinet that contained it—and I folded it twice and put it in a pocket.

Martin’s desk wasn’t locked. I went through it quickly, mechanically, without finding anything to tell me much about Wesley Brill. I did come upon a mostly-full pint of blended whiskey in the bottom
drawer and an unopened half-pint of Old Mr. Boston mint-flavored gin snuggled up next to it. Both of these were infinitely resistible. In the wide center drawer I found an envelope with some cash in it, eighty-five dollars in fives and tens. I took a five and two tens to cover expenses, put the rest back, closed the drawer, then changed my mind and opened it again and scooped up the rest of the money, leaving the empty envelope in the drawer. Now if I left any evidence of my presence, if the clutter I left behind struck him as different from the clutter he’d left there himself, he’d simply think it was the work of some hot-prowl artist who’d made off with his mad money.

(Then why was I disguising my presence in every other respect? Ah, you’ve spotted an inconsistency, haven’t you? All right, I’ll tell you why I took the eighty-five bucks. I’ve never believed in overlooking cash. That’s why.)

But I
was
careful to overlook what I found in the top left-hand drawer. It was a tiny little revolver with a two-inch barrel and pearlized grips, and tiny or not it looked very menacing. I leaned into the drawer to sniff intelligently at the barrel the way they’re always doing on television. Then they state whether or not the gun’s been fired recently. All I could state was that I smelled metal and mineral oil and what you usually smell in a musty desk drawer, a drawer
which I was now very happy to close once I got my nose out of it.

Guns make me nervous, and you’d be surprised how many times a burglar will run across one. I only once had one pointed at me and that was one I’ve mentioned, the gun of good old Carter Sandoval, but I’ve found them in drawers and on night tables and, more than once, tucked beneath a pillow. People buy the hateful things to shoot burglars with, or at least that’s what they tell themselves, and then they wind up shooting themselves or each other accidentally or on purpose.

A lot of burglars steal guns automatically, either because they have a use for them or because it’s a cinch to get fifty or a hundred dollars for a nice un-traceable handgun. And I knew one fellow who specialized in suburban homes who always took guns with him so that the next burglar to hit that place wouldn’t be risking a bullet. He took every gun he encountered and always dropped them down the nearest sewer. “We have to look out for each other,” he told me.

I’ve never stolen a gun and I didn’t even contemplate stealing Martin’s. I don’t even like to touch the damned things and I closed the drawer without touching this one.

At nine fifty-seven I let myself out of the office. The corridor was empty. Faint strains of Mozart wafted my way from the Notions Unlimited office.
I wasted a minute relocking the door, though I could have let him figure he’d forgotten to lock up. Anybody with Peter Alan Martin’s taste in booze probably greeted the dawn with a fairly spotty memory of the previous day.

I even walked down to the fourth floor before I rang for the elevator. Nobody was home at Hubbell Corp. I rode the elevator to the lobby, found my name in the ledger—three people had come in since my arrival, and one of them had left already. I penciled in
10
P.M
.
under Time Out and wished the old man in the wine-colored uniform a pleasant evening.

“They all the same,” he said. “Good nights and bad nights, all one and the same to me.”

I caught Ruth’s eye from Riker’s doorway. The place was fairly deserted, a couple of cabbies at the counter, two off-duty hookers in the back booth. Ruth put some coins on her table next to her coffee cup and hurried to join me. “I was starting to worry,” she said.

“Not to worry.”

“You were gone a long time.”

“Half an hour.”

“Forty minutes. Anyway, it seemed like hours. What happened?”

She took my arm and I told her about it as we walked. I was feeling very good. I hadn’t accomplished
anything that remarkable but I felt a great sense of exhilaration. Everything was starting to go right now, I could feel it, and it was a nice feeling.

“He’s in a hotel in the West Fifties,” I told her. “Just off Columbus Circle, near the Coliseum. That’s why he didn’t have a listed phone. I never heard of the hotel and I have a feeling it’s not in the same class with the Sherry-Netherland. In fact I think our Mr. Brill has had hard times lately. He’s got a loser for an agent, that’s for sure. Most of Peter Alan Martin’s clients are ladies who came in third in a county-wide beauty contest a whole lot of years ago. I think he’s the kind of agent you call when you want someone to come out of the cake at a bachelor party. Do they still have that sort of thing?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Girls popping out of cakes.”

“You’re asking me? How would I know?”

“That’s a point.”

“I never popped out of a cake myself. Or attended a bachelor party.”

“Then you wouldn’t want Martin to represent you. I wonder why he’s representing Brill. The guy’s had tons of work over the years. Here, you’ll recognize him.” We moved under a street light and I unfolded the composite sheet for her. “You must have seen him hundreds of times.”

“Oh,” she said. “Of course I have. Movies, TV.”

“Right.”

“I can’t think where offhand but he’s definitely a familiar face. I can even sort of hear his voice. He was in—I can’t think exactly what he was in, but—”

“Man in the Middle,”
I suggested. “Jim Garner, Shan Willson, Wes Brill.”