Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Breaking and Exiting by William G. Tapply

William Tapply is a regular contributor to a number of sporting and gardening magazines, including Outdoor Life and Sports Illustrated. In 1984 his first crime novel appeared, featuring lawyer sleuth Brady Coyne, the protagonist of eleven subsequent books. The legal profession plays a key role not only in Mr. Tap-ply’s novels but in this new short story for EQMM...

I was sitting on my usual bench on the Boston Common, the one that faced up the hill to the golden dome of the State House, thumbing through the paper and tossing popcorn at the pigeons and enjoying the warmth of the April afternoon, when a guy in a three-piece suit sat down beside me. “Filthy creatures,” he said, kicking a pigeon away from his leg.

“I like ’em,” I said. I threw a handful of popcorn near the guy’s feet. “Better than people. Pigeons’re honest, at least. You always know where you stand with a pigeon.”

“They just want something for nothing.”

“Who doesn’t?” I said.

“Not me,” he said. “I pay.”

“Who’re you?”

He turned and held out his hand. “Call me John. And you’re Manny, right?”

I ignored his hand and touched the lapel of his suit jacket. “Nice,” I said. “You a lawyer?”

“Actually, I am. Why? Does it matter?”

I shrugged. “A man can always use a good lawyer. Are you good?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’m very good.” He smiled. “And I heard you were too.”

“You heard right. I’m pretty good.”

“Two hundred up front, the rest on delivery, I understand.”

“Two hundred now,” I said. “Nonrefundable. Then we can talk.”

He smiled and reached into his jacket pocket. He was fiftyish, with iron-gray hair worn longish on the sides and thinning on top. A good-looking, trim guy. The suit was expensive and the shoes were shiny. He fished four fifties out of his thin wallet, folded them together, and pressed them into my hand.

I jammed them into my pants pocket. “Okay,” I said. “We can talk.”

“It’s a house in Harlow—”

“Suburbs cost more,” I said.

He waved his hand. “Sure. Anyhow, you’ll find three leather-bound albums in an upstairs bedroom.”

“Stamps?”

He shook his head. “Baseball cards, actually. The place will be empty between seven and eleven in the evening. There’s a backdoor key behind the shutter to the left of the kitchen window.”

“You’re sure of all this?”

He smiled and nodded.

“Between seven and eleven every evening?”

“For the foreseeable future, anyway.”

“What about an alarm?”

“No. It’s just a development house. Nothing fancy.”

“Dogs?”

He shook his head.

“What about delivery?”

“How about here, same time tomorrow?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t make deliveries in my own office.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “There’s a coffee shop on Charles Street. Vincent’s.”

“I’ll find it,” I said. “Bring twenty fifties. Or fifty twenties. Or some combination thereof.”

He pressed a piece of paper into my hand. “We got a deal?” he said.

I glanced at the paper. “James Bascomb, 29 Harrington St., Harlow,” was scrawled on it. I stuck it into the pocket with the fifties. “Okay,” I said. “A deal. I’ll see you tomorrow at Vincent’s.”

I retrieved my blue ’87 Escort from the lot by the Greyhound station around six that evening. I figured it would take about an hour to drive out the Mass Pike to Harlow, which lies just west of Route 495. Harlow is one of those Massachusetts villages that started as farmland a hundred years ago, became a bustling bedroom community for all the high-tech firms that sprang up around Boston in the seventies, then began to deteriorate in the late eighties.

I stopped at a gas station, got directions to Harrington Street, and found it a little before seven, approaching twilight. Kids were riding bicycles on the sidewalks and dribbling basketballs in the driveways. It was a typical middle-class suburban development. Number twenty-nine was a small colonial on a street lined with other small colonials on half-acre lots. A Toyota sedan — three or four years old, I guessed — sat in the driveway. A hoop was mounted on the garage, but no kids played in the Bascombs’ yard.

I continued past without slowing down and drove back to the center of town. I parked at a McDonald’s — 5 miles from the Bascomb house by the Escort’s odometer. I went in, had a fish sandwich, large fries, and a small black coffee, and read the paper while the sun went down.

A little after eight, I headed back to Harrington Street on foot. It took about ten minutes to walk there. The kids had all gone inside and station wagons sat in the driveways and orange lights glowed from the windows of the boxy little houses.

A light shone over the front porch of number twenty-nine, but the rest of the house was dark. I slipped into the backyard. No alarm, John had said. I took out my penlight and examined the door and window frames anyway. He was right.

The key hung on a nail behind the shutter, just as he’d said it would. I opened the back door and stepped inside. I entered a small pantry that led to an eat-in kitchen where a stack of dirty dishes filled the sink. He’d said the albums would be in an upstairs bedroom, but I looked around anyway. You never can tell when you’ll find something good — a bonus for the enterprising burglar-for-hire.

Several framed photographs stood on top of a big console television in the living room: a wedding picture of a plain blond woman holding the arm of a pleasant-looking young man wearing steel-rimmed glasses; a toddler cradling a miniature football; the parents, a bit older than in their wedding picture, posing on either side of a boy who looked to be about six, each holding one of his hands, with mountains in the background; the same boy, a few years older, posing in a Little League uniform.

They made an adorable yuppie family, with their mortgages and retirement plans and vacations and in-laws. The only thing missing was a cocker spaniel.

I love to burglarize yuppies.

I found nothing of interest in the living room. A small room beside the staircase looked more promising. One wall was lined with bookshelves, and on top of a big desk were the standard computer and telephone and fax machine. I went through the desk drawers and found nothing of value.

My penlight paused at a framed black-and-white photo on the wall over the desk. It showed two men shaking hands and smiling into the camera. One of them was the same guy I’d seen in the photos atop the television. The other was my employer, the lawyer who called himself John. The photo was inscribed: “For James Bascomb, our newest associate, With best wishes, John Troutman.”

I had to smile. This John Troutman deserved credit.

There were three bedrooms upstairs. The smallest was decorated with posters of Dee Brown and Robert Parish and Michael Jordan. A couple of baseball bats and a hockey stick were propped up in the corner. The bed was made. No Coke cans or pizza boxes or dirty underwear littered the floor. Everything was clean and tidy. I wondered what kind of little nerd would keep his room so neat.

The three leather-bound albums were stacked on a little green desk in the corner. I opened the one on top and shone my penlight on it. Mounted under Plexiglas were cards picturing Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Dizzy Dean. I flipped through the pages. I knew nothing about the value of baseball cards. But it was clear that these were old and in mint condition.

I figured John Troutman had himself a good deal.

I tucked the albums under my arm and let myself out the way I had come in. I locked the back door and hung the key on its nail behind the shutter, then strolled down Harrington Street to my car in the McDonald’s lot. I put the albums in the trunk, got a black coffee to go, and drove home.

He was waiting at a rear table at Vincent’s when I got there at two the following afternoon. I put the shopping bag that held the three albums on the table in front of him, then stood there looking down at him.

“Have a seat,” said Troutman.

“Pay me.”

He smiled and gestured to the seat across from him. “Come on. Relax. Try the coffee. Have a croissant.”

“Just pay me, okay?”

He put the shopping bag on the floor, removed one of the albums, and opened it on his lap under the table. Then he looked up at me and smiled. “Good,” he said. “Have any problems?”

I folded my arms and said nothing.

He shrugged, reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a small manila envelope. He put it on the table.

I picked up the envelope and shoved it inside my jacket. Then I turned to go.

“Wait a minute,” said Troutman. “You got a problem?”

“No problem. I just don’t like you. But don’t take it personally. I don’t like anyone.”

He shrugged. “Hey,” he said. “Business is business, huh? You’re a crook. You ought to understand.”

“Sure I understand,” I said. Then I left.

I waited across the street, and ten minutes later Troutman came out of Vincent’s. He was carrying the shopping bag. He looked up and down the street, then set off at a fast walk toward the Common. I fell in fifty feet behind him and followed him across town to a fancy office building on State Street. I gave him a few minutes, then went in. I found Troutman and Berman, Attorneys at Law, listed on the directory. Seventh floor. Information I might be able to use sometime.

Then I went home.

I was back on my bench the next afternoon, feeding the pigeons and skimming through the paper and wondering if any business would come my way when a small headline caught my eye. “Harlow Boy Still in Coma,” it read.

The facts jumped at me: Billy Bascomb... eleven years old... freak skateboarding accident... Children’s Hospital...

I stood up, dumped the bag of popcorn on the ground, and walked over to the lot by the Greyhound station. I took the manila envelope from the trunk of my Escort, then headed to State Street.

The reception area of Troutman and Berman featured Danish modern furniture and Chagall prints and ficus plants and a brunette with a short skirt and long fingernails. Her smile seemed genuine. “Help you, sir?” she said.

“Mr. Troutman, please.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. But he’ll see me.”

She shrugged. “Who shall. I tell him?”

“Tell him it’s Manny.”

“Manny...?”

“Just Manny,” I said.

She picked up the phone and spoke softly into it. When she hung up, she gave me another smile, this one a shade less genuine. “He’ll see you now, sir. This way.”

I followed her down a short corridor. She opened a door that was labeled John A. Troutman and held it for me.

I walked past her. Troutman was behind a desk the size of a banquet table. He was leaning back in his swivel chair with his hands laced behind his head, grinning at me. “Sit,” he said.

I remained standing.

“Okay,” he said, “don’t sit.” He glanced over my shoulder and said, “We’re fine, honey. Shut the door.”

He waited until the door latched, then leaned forward and stuck his chin at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I understand you have a collection of baseball cards for sale.”

“I’ll give you one minute to get out of here. Then I call security.”

“No you won’t. Because if you do that, then I talk.”

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded and smiled. “Good point. So what do you want?”

“The albums.” I put the manila envelope on his desk. “I keep the two hundred. It’s nonrefundable.”

“Why should I do this?”

“Because otherwise the police will receive an anonymous tip, and the Bascombs will verify that their boy’s albums are missing, and the cops’ll get a warrant, and even if you manage to hide the albums, you’ll never be able to sell them, and your name will be pasted on the front page of the Globe. Good enough?”

He squinted at me, as if trying to figure out if I was serious. I guess he decided I was, because he said, “What’s to stop me from making an anonymous phone call?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said after a minute. “You heard about the kid, then, huh?”

“It was in the paper.”

“I was told you were a tough guy,” he said. “I didn’t figure you for a bleeding heart.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t figure you were that much of a bastard, either.”

“Well, live and learn,” he said. “It was a perfect setup, though, wasn’t it?”

“Perfect,” I said. “Those poor parents are so worried about their little boy in the hospital they wouldn’t notice the missing albums until long after you sold the cards.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem anymore,” I said. “So did the Bascombs have the boss over to dinner? That how you knew about it?”

He nodded. “The kid took me to his room, showed me his basketball posters and his Roger Clemens autographed baseball. The albums came from some uncle who died. The kid had no conception of their value. He didn’t even care about them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was a perfect setup. Let’s have the albums.”

He slid open a drawer in his desk and lifted out the three albums one at a time. He piled them in front of him. “It’s an incredible collection,” he said softly. “There’s a Mickey Mantle in there that’s worth—”

“Good,” I said, picking them up. “I know just what to do with them.”

As I turned to the door, he said, “Maybe we can do business again.”

“You never can tell,” I said.

I sipped coffee at McDonald’s until a little after eight, then strolled down Harrington Street with the three albums under my arm. Orange lights glowed from the windows of the little colonials, but number twenty-nine was dark and there was no Toyota sedan in the driveway. I took the key from behind the shutter, unlocked the back door, and went in.

I headed directly upstairs and put the albums back where I found them on Billy Bascomb’s little green desk. I suddenly felt very tired. I sat on Billy’s bed and shone my penlight around his room. It was too neat for a room that a boy actually lived in. I figured Billy’s mother had straightened up everything for the day he came home from the hospital.

I had the urge to leave Billy a note. “I hope you come back to this room,” I wanted to say. “I hope you get to shoot hoops again. I hope these baseball cards fund your college education. I hope you have a long and wonderful life.”

But, of course, I left no note. I switched off my penlight and sat there in the dark for a while, part of me wishing I had a boy of my own, and part of me grateful that I didn’t have to experience what Billy Bascomb’s father was going through. Then I stood up, sighed, and went downstairs.

When I got to the pantry I turned off my penlight. I paused inside the door for a minute, the way I always do, then quietly pulled it open and stepped out onto the back porch.

And that’s when the floodlight suddenly came on and the bullhorn voice said, “Hold it right there. Put your hands behind your head and come down the steps slowly.”

I did as I was told. A pair of cops approached me with their revolvers drawn. One of them cuffed me. “So, Manny,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Have we met?” I said.

“Your reputation precedes you, tough guy.”

“So what’s the squawk here?” I said. “Reverse larceny? Breaking and exiting?”

“A funny man,” he said. “You got the right to remain silent—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I won’t say anything until I call my lawyer.”

“You better have a good one this time, pal.”

“I do,” I said. “The best. He’s a partner with a big State Street firm.”