Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 6, June 1992

The Slip by Douglas D. Armstrong

The surgical gloves gave him away. They’re not usually worn with a tailored Armani suit. Unless you’re a pro. Or a Beverly Hills doctor making house calls.

I backed away from the peephole of my apartment door as silently as I had approached it. It was barely ten o’clock in the morning. The stubble on my cheeks chafed my hands as I rubbed my stinging eyes and droopy cheeks. Friends tell me my face has character. It’s just a polite way of saying all the wrinkles don’t seem unpleasant to them.

I never accept visitors at this hour. And this one had not bothered to announce himself at the security door. The knuckles encased in latex knocked lightly again. I knew there would be no third knock. The clock was already ticking.

He was about six foot two, perhaps two hundred ten pounds. Athletic build. Late twenties. Jet black hair combed straight back. Sunglasses. A disturbing bulge to the coat near the left pect. He would not be alone, of course. Nobody who took the precaution of wearing gloves would leave the fire escape uncovered.

I did not touch the curtains to confirm my suspicions. I simply eased my eye slowly past the crack between the two halves of the drapes to catch a glimpse of his confederate in the alley three floors below trying to look nonchalant in a gray suit among the dumpsters in the July heat. There was no doubt in my mind that they had come for me. They had sealed both exits to assure that the visit was successful. They came equipped and determined to bag their kill.

I urged my surging adrenaline back with a deep breath and looked around my apartment. It was tidy, if a bit crowded with my antiques and collectibles. I had chosen this place for its solid, quiet construction and steam heat. Poured concrete floors and masonry walls throughout. None of that flimsy, modern stick construction for me. No sound-bleeding plasterboard or air ducts that burglars can use like highways. My privacy was too valuable, my hours too unconventional, my consciousness of security too personally acute. The place seemed solid and secure when I rented it. It felt like a tomb with no escape when the wolf came calling.

I tried to consider my alternatives quickly. Based on the stuff I’d read, he would offer little or no conversation before he pulled the trigger. “You Jeffrey Rivett?” he’d say. Then he’d read your eyes instead of your lips. Built-in lie detector these pros seem to have.

Reasoning with him was out, given his personality type, as were evasive verbal tricks. The guy was a machine, according to the reports. Once you were locked onto his radar, you were dead meat.

I fought back the panic again. The bag was in the bedroom, I told myself. In the concealed panel of the armoire. Get it. Get dressed. Go to work. Act calmly, but with dispatch. I could hear him already starting to work on the deadbolt. It was the best lock available. It would take a while.

The effort to devise a quick burglary scheme for my own apartment felt peculiar, especially assembling the plan in reverse. But I forced myself to concentrate as I threw on dark jeans and an old black turtleneck. My wiry body was no match for him physically. Plus, I have an aversion to guns or any use of force. The challenge facing me, as a result, was to break out of my own place before the assassin at the door could break in.

My burglar tools stayed silent in their individual velvet compartments as I grabbed the heavy black canvas work bag from its hiding place. I began the tour of my apartment in the bedroom, trying to look it over again with fresh eyes. There were windows here, too, the only other exterior glass in the apartment. But they were no use. They faced the same alley.

I examined one solid wall after another, plus the ceilings and floors. As I did, the tomblike claustrophobia closed in on me again. A tomb has no telephone, of course. I considered mine when I reached the kitchen. But whom to call? I did not want to risk the life of a friend. And this was not something I could explain to the police.

You know, you expect your government to be less corrupt than you are, not more. Which is a mistake. I hadn’t had any intention of irritating the remorseless psycho at my door, of course. And I might have avoided doing it had I been more cynical about the level of corruption in local politics and less naive about the ethical bankruptcy of our big city government. The trap they had set for me two weeks back was a beauty. I walked right in.

“You put down the bag, son, very slowly, and face that wall,” he had said, waving the pistol like it was a traffic baton. Funny, I’d never thought of the local police chief carrying. He always seemed so passive and civilian on TV, even in his uniform. It was an odd sensation, like being arrested by a celebrity. A famous guy. Acting alone. On a rooftop. Outside an air vent I’d just used. It occurred to me I’d been set up, at the highest possible level.

“C’mon, what’s this?” I asked. “Low on your quota of personal busts?” The expression on his jowly bulldog face said he was not in a mood to be trifled with. He cuffed my hands behind my back, put a hood over my head, and drove me in a dizzying circuit to an undisclosed location.

“You can cooperate with us, or you can get misplaced for a couple of years in the city jail system,” a voice with rather too much threat in it told me. “It’s your choice.”

“The police have nothing on me,” I said through the hood, disoriented, overlooking the bag on my head and the trap that had led to my predicament.

“Think again, Mr. Rivett,” the voice answered. “But that is what we like about you. You don’t panic easily, and you are very, very good at your work. We merely wish to employ that expertise. Unofficially, of course. And we don’t want to hear you say no. That pouch of uncut stones the chief took out of your hand marked the end to your perfect crime streak, remember.”

In retrospect, I should have taken my chances in jail.

Burglarizing the safe at the campaign headquarters of the mayor’s election challenger ten nights later was in the arena of political dirty tricks, and I didn’t care for it. I had a case of nerves. I was out of my league, and I knew it.

“You mean that crazy alderman who is screaming about law and order?” I had asked, without enjoying the irony.

“You don’t know the half of it, son,” the chief had said.

The safe was no problem. It opened like a can of soup. But the contents scalded me.

Strategy files, the voice had demanded, not the campaign donor list or the account books. Of course I had to look to see if what I was taking was correct. And what I saw put the target on my back. But I never expected to receive a personal visit myself.

I could hear how much progress was being made on the deadbolt, so I knew I had to hurry. I ended the tour of my apartment in the bathroom.

The next time I heard a knock at the door, I answered. Walter had arrived wearing baggy shorts, a loud floral shirt, and a very puzzled expression.

“Okay, Jeffrey, what’s up?” he said. “You look like you forgot to undress last night after work.”

I stuck my head out into the corridor, saw it was empty, and yanked him into the apartment.

“What are we meeting in 4J for?” he asked. “Are you ripping off the neighbors in broad daylight and calling in your old pal to take the fall?”

I started to reply, but he brushed past me to scope it out.

“Place’s is a lot like yours,” he reported. “Except it smells of sauerkraut. Yours smells more like pipe tobacco and brandy, you snob.”

He checked out the furnishings.

“Oooh. Don’t tell anyone, but I think the artwork was already stolen once. Pried off a motel wall, most likely...”

“Walter.”

“Hey, did you notice this is exactly the same layout as your place, only in reverse. Whatzit... a mirror image?”

“Walter.”

“So let’s see, that means your apartment is just on the other side of the bedroom wall through here...”

“I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing his arm again and speaking in low, hushed tones. “It’s great you could race over here so fast on short notice for me, Walter, but we don’t have time for explanations just now. Did you see anybody in the lobby?”

“No.”

“On the stairs?”

“Nobody. What’s going on, man? You look spooked.”

I picked up my bag and led Walter by the elbow to the door. I looked both ways before pulling the door shut behind us. Then I walked him rapidly back to the stairs.

In the H-shaped layout of the building, mine is one of the two apartments on the connecting branch. But the design puts my place and the one behind it on opposite corridors. There was little chance of being seen. And I assumed the guy in the Armani threads was now exploring the inside of my apartment and wondering when I’d return.

Walter started his two-seated sports car and inserted it into traffic. “Where to?” he asked. I appreciated his matter-of-factness more than I could say, and the clear, unthreatening view of the world out of his windshield looked absolutely terrific.

“Airport.”

He smiled. “You’ll never get that bag of yours through security.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “I’ll rent a car.”

“Maybe you ought to tell me about this.”

So I did. I didn’t particularly expect him to believe it. I underestimated him.

“My God. And if that lunatic’s law and order campaign was ever connected to those headline-screaming, prominent deaths? What an outrage! I can’t believe it. A murder campaign to bolster your soft-on-crime smear campaign against the mayor and the police department! Why, it’s... it’s... absolutely depraved!”

We stopped for a light. The car muffler was sputtering, too.

“My bet,” I said, “is that he will call a press conference today or tomorrow and quietly withdraw. If the mayor or the police were going to go public with this, they would have already. They seem to prefer the blackmail route.”

Walter drove a while.

“Who do you think it was that set you up?” he asked eventually, “With the cops, I mean.”

I had given that one some thought myself. “Most likely it was a fence. They must have put the squeeze on one, like they did me. Told him to cough up a name or do some time. Informal-like.”

“And the live torpedo in your apartment?”

“Recruited from out of town.”

“No, I mean what are you going to do about him?”

I frowned. “He won’t give up easily. I could never match his persistence if I stayed. You know, I don’t even know which side sent him. I suppose they’d both want to seal the only potential leak. It doesn’t matter, ultimately. I’m a marked man in this town. Time to move on.”

“What about your stuff? You want me to see to it?”

“Once you drop me off, I want you to stay as far away from anything connected to me as you can. Right now, I’m the only one that goon thinks he needs to find and erase. And, believe me, you’ll discover a very different view of your possessions when your life is in the balance.”

Walter let that sink in.

“Well, before you go vanish on me,” he said, “could you possibly tell me one more thing?”

“Sure, unless you expect to learn the location of my safe deposit box.”

“No. I got more stashed than you do. What I want to know is how you got past the torpedo to that apartment you called me from.”

I laughed with the relief I was still feeling.

“You half guessed it. My apartment and the one directly behind it are exact duplicates in reverse, as it turns out. Right down to the last architectural detail. Everything in precisely the same spot. That’s what saved me.

“I became so preoccupied with windows and other large openings that I practically overlooked the bathroom. There wasn’t even a humidity vent in there. But then I remembered one of the few things about my place that annoyed me. Every time the guy in the next apartment rummaged around in his medicine cabinet, I could hear it in my bathroom.”

Walter didn’t get it. “So?”

“So I gambled with what little time I had, and explored my best hunch. I removed the screws holding my medicine cabinet in the wall. Sure enough, when I pulled it out, I found a dusty tuft of insulation stuffed behind it and then there was the back of the neighbor’s cabinet.”

“Voila,” Walter said. He turned onto the freeway ramp and showed me some horsepower.

“Years ago when they remodeled the building, they must have cut a hole in the masonry so they could install recessed medicine cabinets that would be flush with the existing wall. A little two-by-four framing in the hold, and they had it.”

“How did you get the neighbor’s cabinet out?”

“Closed my bathroom door and sawed the screws off between the sheet metal and the studs. I put my own cabinet back in after I crawled through. I used the suction cup grip and a little duct tape. I didn’t want him showing up at the neighbor’s apartment after he discovered my little exit door.”

We drove along the final mile or two in silence.

“You’ll be okay?” my loyal friend asked me.

“Yep,” I grinned, feeling optimistic about the unplanned future I’d just slipped into. “I even packed all the toiletries I’ll be needing for my trip.”