The Burglar on the Prowl

Thirty-Four

The lock on William Johnson's front door was nothing special, but for some reason it gave me a hard time. Working away at it, I wondered why I hadn't had the sense to fish his keys out of his pocket while I was rolling him. It certainly would have made things easier.

Once I was inside, my first thought was that I was too late, that someone somehow had beaten me to it. The apartment, a large L-shaped studio, looked as though it had been lately tossed by a team who'd taken the verb literally, picking up everything mobile and flinging it somewhere. It would have been just one more coincidence to add to the string, and it took a few minutes to realize that I was Johnson's first and only illicit visitor. The place was a mess because that's the way he kept it. Maybe, I thought, he hadn't meant any harm when he dumped Barbara's jewelry drawer on the floor. Maybe he wasn't vandalizing the place after all. Maybe he was helping her redecorate.

The state of the place made my task harder than it might have been. It's not easy to look for something when you have to include the floor among the places to be searched. Nor, oddly, is it as easy to leave things as you found them, because how can you tell when they're back where they belong?

I did the best I could, and didn't linger. According to Sigrid, he'd wound up with a double dose of Rohypnol, with the capsules intended for both Claire and Audrey somehow winding up in his glass. It had certainly been enough to knock him cold, but who knew how long he'd stay that way? I wanted to be gone before he came back.

On my way out, I took time to pick his lock again, leaving that too as I'd found it. It was quicker the second time, but would have been quicker still with his key. Then again, I consoled myself, if I'd taken his keys he'd have missed them, and might have suspected that whoever had taken them would head straight for his apartment.

I walked for a block or two, buoyant with the heady sensation I get from illegal entry. It was cool enough so that I stuck my hands in my pockets for warmth, and realized I still had his credit cards. I was going to throw them away, but I decided that would be wasteful. Just because I wasn't inclined to run around charging DVD players and iBooks to Wee Willie Johnson, why should I deprive some other citizen of the pleasure?

I left the cards here and there, out in plain sight, where whoever came along could pick one up and do as he pleased with it. A person with a conscience as overdeveloped as Johnson's upper body could seek out the card's owner and return it. One who was merely honest could simply leave it where it lay. And a truly enterprising individual, a passerby with energy and the will to better himself, would max out that card as quickly as possible.

When the cab stopped for me, I would have loved to go straight home and call it a night. Instead I gave the driver an address on Park Avenue that turned out to be between 62nd and 63rd.

The building I wanted was a fully serviced luxury apartment house, with a concierge on the front desk and an attendant in the elevator. The only way to get into a building like that is through subterfuge; ideally, you find a bona fide tenant to invite you in, and make a little detour on your way out. That's hard to arrange on the spot in the middle of the night, and I hadn't had time to set anything up. I was, God help me, on the prowl again, and I didn't see any way to avoid it if I was going to make this work.

Fortunately, I didn't have to get past the desk, or take the elevator anywhere. On either side of the building's entrance was a staircase descending a flight to a suite of basement offices, all of them occupied by members of the medical profession. The one I wanted was on the left, and if I got down the stairs I'd be all right. No one at street level could see me while I worked on the lock, and I couldn't believe there would be a burglar alarm on the door.

What there was, and I could even see the goddam thing, was a security camera. I didn't care what wound up on the tape, because no one would look at it unless a crime was committed. I planned on committing one-I'd do so the minute I opened the door, and might even fit the definition of criminal trespass when I went down the stairs for no legitimate reason. But if all went well no one would know I'd been there, so why review the night's tapes?

The danger lay in being caught in the act, which could happen if the concierge was looking at the closed-circuit TV monitor on his desk while I was passing in front of the camera. They don't sit there and stare at it by the hour, they'd go nuts if they did, but all it takes is a glance at just the wrong time, and they pick up the phone and call 911, and another hapless burglar gets free room and board as a guest of the governor.

I found a pay phone, made a phone call, and came back to where I could watch the building. When the guy brought the pizza, I made my move, and I was down those stairs in a hurry. The lock was a cinch, and it took me hardly any time to find everything I was looking for. I took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer and wrote down what I needed to know, and I folded it up and put it in my pocket, and that was all I took. Unless they counted the letterhead, no one could possibly know they'd had a visitor.

So I was out of there in a hurry. I was tempted to leave the door unlocked, but I'd done everything else right, and I didn't want to stop now. I picked it shut and walked quickly up the stairs and away from there. This was the dangerous part, because from where I stood there was no way I could see if the concierge was busy, but when I was clear of the place and took a look back, it was clear I'd had nothing to worry about. The pizza guy was still there, talking away on his cell phone, while the concierge stood there with his hands on his hips, and it looked as though it might take them a while to sort it all out.

I caught a cab and went home.

I would have loved to stay there. My humble abode had never felt so welcoming, nor had my bed ever looked so inviting. I decided to stretch out for just a minute, and I told myself not to be an idiot. I put some coffee on and took a quick wake-up shower while it brewed, then threw a couple of ice cubes in it so I wouldn't have to wait for it to cool.

Was there no way I could avoid another trip to Riverdale?

None I could think of. I spent a few minutes preparing the parcel I would take with me, then bit the bullet and got to it. I walked around until I found the Mercury Sable, opened its door, diddled its ignition, and drove it the nine or ten miles to Riverdale, found Devonshire Close without getting lost, and parked the car not in Mapes's driveway-the unfamiliar noise of a car in their own driveway might wake Mapes or his wife-but two blocks away. I walked the two blocks, well aware of the impossibility of appearing innocent walking residential streets at that hour. I went up the driveway to the side door, and looked longingly at it. I'd set the alarm to bypass that door, and unless someone had noticed, it was still like that. But I couldn't find out without opening the door, and if they'd changed the setting-well, that was a sentence I didn't want to finish.

That left the milk chute. Let's just say I didn't get stuck this time. Not on the way in, and not on the way out, either.

I drove home, parked the car right where I'd found it-who'd grab a parking space away from me at that hour? I got myself home, exchanged a friendly word with Edgar, and went straight to bed.