Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“A thief, then.”

“A thief, yes. More specifically, a burglar. I might have stripped the gloves off when you stuck your key in the lock but I’d been so busy listening to your footsteps and hoping they’d lead to another office that I quite forgot I was wearing these things. Not that it would have made much difference. Another minute and you’d have realized that you’ve never set eyes on me before, and at that point you’d have wondered what I was doing here.”

“What are you doing here?”

“My kid brother needs an operation.”

“I thought that might be it. Surgery for his eczema.”

He nodded. “Without it he’ll never play the trumpet again. May I be permitted an observation?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I observe that you’re afraid of me.”

“And here I thought I was doing such a super job of hiding it.”

“You were, but I’m an incredibly perceptive human being. You’re afraid I’ll do something violent, that he who is capable of theft is equally capable of mayhem.”

“Are you?”

“Not even in fantasy. I’m your basic pacifist. When I was a kid my favorite book was Ferdinand the Bull. ”

“I remember him. He didn’t want to fight. He just wanted to smell the flowers.”

“Can you blame him?” He smiled again, and the adverb that came to her was disarmingly. More like Alan Alda than Cary Grant, she decided. Well, that was all right. There was nothing wrong with Alan Alda.

“ You’re afraid of me, ” she said suddenly.

“How’d you figure that? A slight quiver in the old upper lip?”

“No. It just came to me. But why? What could I do to you?”

“You could call the, uh, cops.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“And I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“Well,” he said, and sighed theatrically. “Aren’t you glad we got all that out of the way?”

She was, rather.It was good to know that neither of them had anything to fear from the other. As if in recognition of this change in their relationship she took off her coat and hung it on the pipe rack, where a checked topcoat was already hanging. His, she assumed. How readily he made himself at home!

She turned to find he was making himself further at home, rummaging deliberately in the drawers of the desk. What cheek, she thought, and felt herself beginning to smile.

She asked him what he was doing.

“Foraging,” he said, then drew himself up sharply. “This isn’t your desk, is it?”

“No.”

“Thank heaven for that.”

“What were you looking for, anyway?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “You’d think I could come up with a decent story but I can’t. I’m looking for something to steal.”

“Nothing specific?”

“I like to keep an open mind. I didn’t come here to cart off the IBM Selectrics. But you’d be surprised how many people leave cash in their desks.”

“And you just take what you find?”

He hung his head. “I know,” he said. “It’s a moral failing. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Do people really leave cash in an unlocked desk drawer?”

“Sometimes. And sometimes they lock the drawers, but that doesn’t make them all that much harder to open.”

“You can pick locks?”

“A limited and eccentric talent,” he allowed, “but it’s all I know.”

“How did you get in here? I suppose you picked the office lock.”

“Hardly a great challenge.”

“But how did you get past Eddie?”

“Eddie? Oh, you must be talking about the chap in the lobby. He’s not quite as formidable as the Berlin Wall, you know. I got here around eight. They tend to be less suspicious at an earlier hour. I scrawled a name on the sheet and walked on by. Then I found an empty office that they’d already finished cleaning and curled up on the couch for a nap.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Have I ever lied to you in the past? The cleaning crew leaves at midnight. At about that time I let myself out of Mr. Higginbotham’s office — that’s where I’ve taken to napping, he’s a patent attorney with the most comfortable old leather couch. And then I make my rounds.”

She looked at him. “You’ve come to this building before.”

“I stop by every little once in a while.”

“You make it sound like a vending machine route.”

“There are similarities, aren’t there? I never looked at it that way.”

“And then you make your rounds. You break into offices—”

“I never break anything. Let’s say I let myself into offices.”

“And you steal money from desks—”

“Also jewelry, when I run across it. Anything valuable and portable. Sometimes there’s a safe. That saves a lot of looking around. You know right away that’s where they keep the good stuff.”

“And you can open safes?”

“Not every safe,” he said modestly, “and not every single time, but—” he switched to a Cockney accent “—I has the touch, mum.”

“And then what do you do? Wait until morning to leave?”

“What for? I’m well-dressed. I look respectable. Besides, security guards are posted to keep unauthorized persons out of a building, not to prevent them from leaving. It might be different if I tried rolling a Xerox machine through the lobby, but I don’t steal anything that won’t fit in my pockets or my attaché case. And I don’t wear my rubber gloves when I saunter past the guard. That wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t suppose it would. What do I call you?”

“ ‘That damned burglar,’ I suppose. That’s what everybody calls me. But you—” he extended a rubber-covered forefinger “—you may call me Bernie.”

“Bernie the Burglar.”

“And what shall I call you?”

“Elaine’ll do.”

“Elaine,” he said. “Elaine, Elaine. Not Elaine Halder, by any chance?”

“How did you—?”

“Elaine Halder,” he said. “And that explains what brings you to these offices in the middle of the night. You look startled. I can’t imagine why. ‘You know my methods, Watson.’ What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be frightened, for God’s sake. Knowing your name doesn’t give me mystical powers over your destiny. I just have a good memory and your name stuck in it.” He crooked a thumb at a closed door on the far side of the room. “I’ve already been in the boss’s office. I saw your note on his desk. I’m afraid I’ll have to admit I read it. I’m a snoop. It’s a serious character defect, I know.”

“Like larceny.”

“Something along those lines. Let’s see now. Elaine Halder leaves the office, having placed on her boss’s desk a letter of resignation. Elaine Halder returns in the small hours of the morning. A subtle pattern begins to emerge, my dear.”

“Oh?”

“Of course. You’ve had second thoughts and you want to retrieve the letter before himself gets a chance to read it. Not a bad idea, given some of the choice things you had to say about him. Just let me open up for you, all right? I’m the tidy type and I locked up after I was through in there.”

“Did you find anything to steal?”

“Eighty-five bucks and a pair of gold cuff links.” He bent over the lock, probing its innards with a splinter of spring steel. “Nothing to write home about, but every little bit helps. I’m sure you have a key that fits this door — you had to in order to leave the resignation in the first place, didn’t you? But how many chances do I get to show off? Not that a lock like this one presents much of a challenge, not to the nimble digits of Bernie the Burglar, and — ah, there we are!”