Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

I’ll tell you, it gave me a thrill. But then it always does, whenever I let myself into another’s residence or place of business, getting past all the devices aimed at keeping me out. Burglary pays the rent and keeps Raffles in cat food, but it’s always been more than a livelihood to me. It’s a vocation, a sacred calling. The thrill I got in my early teens when I first wriggled through a neighbor’s milk chute has never entirely gone away, and I recapture the rapture every time I break and enter. I’m a born burglar, God help me, and I love it. I always have and I’m afraid I always will.

But this room would have thrilled me if I’d visited it legitimately, with its door opened for me by its tenant herself. Like every other secretive and half-literate American adolescent, I’d been caught up in and utterly transported by Nobody’s Baby, sure that its tortured protagonist, Archer Manwaring, was a lifelong friend I’d somehow never met before, and that he was drawling his story right into my ear.

Right here, in this room, a much younger Anthea Landau had read the opening pages of Nobody’s Baby and at once recognized a new and important voice in American fiction. She read the book at one sitting, pausing halfway through to call a publisher and tell him she had something he had to read.

And the rest was publishing history, and it all started here, in this room.

This smoke-filled room. So many people have quit smoking, and the pastime is off-limits in so many public and private spaces, that I’m not much used to smelling cigarette smoke. Oh, I’ll get a whiff of somebody’s cigarette on the street, and there are always a few people puffing away in the Bum Rap, but this was different. Anthea Landau had lit up a cigarette when she first moved into these rooms, and she’d kept at it ever since. And she never ducked into the stairwell, either. She stayed home and smoked like a chimney.

If I ran into Isis Gauthier again, God forbid, she wouldn’t be able to dilate her nostrils and tell that I wasn’t a smoker. I couldn’t tell how much of the odor my clothes were picking up, not while I was standing there in the midst of it, but I could hardly expect to escape unscathed.

There was another smell, too, along with the cigarette smell. It was distinct from it and yet somehow akin to it, and I recognized it but couldn’t place it.

And why was I standing here drinking in odors, like a dog with his head out a car window? Burglary’s thrilling, all right, but it’s a lot less satisfying if you get caught in the act.

I went straight to the top drawer of the second file cabinet, the one marked F-G. It was unlocked. I held my flashlight in one hand and riffled file folders with the other. There were a couple of overflow E files- Ewing, J. Foster, and Exley, Oliver-and then came Fadiman, Gordon P., and Faffner, Julian. If these were writers, I thought, they weren’t notable success stories, because I hadn’t heard of any of them. Then came Farmer, Robert Crane, and I’d heard of him, and had put a book of his on my bargain table. Unless someone had bought or stolen it, it was still there.

I kept going, on the chance that Fairborn, Gulliver, was present but slightly misplaced, but it was no go, and I was not much surprised. Nothing’s quite that easy, is it?

It was going to take a more intensive search to turn up Gully Fairborn’s file, and first I did what I probably should have done right away, before checking the file cabinet. I found my way to the bedroom to make sure I was alone in the apartment.

The bedroom door was a few inches ajar. I eased it open and went in. The curtains were drawn in here, too, and with my flashlight switched off the place was as dark as the inside of a cow. And, like the rest of the place, it stank of cigarette smoke.

The smell of smoke masked other smells, a base of sleep and face powder and eau de cologne. And there was that other top note to the scent, even more noticeable in here. I wrinkled my nose at it, still unable to say just what it was.

Maybe the Fairborn file was on the bedside table. The wish, I’m sure, was father to the thought-I wanted to scoop it up and get the hell out of there-but it seemed more than remotely possible. Landau could sit up in bed sipping a hot chocolate and poring over the letters from her most remarkable client. She could warm herself with the memories, or with the thought of all the money those letters were going to bring.

I was pretty sure the place was empty-I didn’t hear breathing, didn’t have the sense of another person’s presence-but even so I shaded my flashlight with my free hand before I switched it on.

And switched it off in a hurry when I saw a white-haired head on the pillow.

I stood still and held my breath, alert for any sound to indicate I’d disturbed her sleep. I couldn’t hear a thing, and I backed to and through the bedroom door, taking little steps on tiptoe, careful not to make a sound. If that file was on her nightstand-and I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t even noticed if she had a nightstand-if it was there, then it could stay there. I wasn’t going to risk waking the woman. If she opened her eyes and saw me, it might scare her to death. If she let out a scream, it might scare me to death.

Back in the other room, I went to the desk and went to work on the drawers. There were seven of them, three on each side and one center drawer. I opened and closed them one after the other until I found the locked one. The drawer that’s worth locking generally turns out to be the one worth unlocking.

The locks on desk drawers are never much of a challenge. It’s a little trickier when the light’s not good and you’re wearing gloves and trying not to make any noise, but it’s still easy work.

I hoped there wouldn’t be a gun in there. The locked desk drawer is where you generally find a handgun, if there’s one to be found. That way, if the householder needs to protect himself, he can start by trying to remember where he put the key.

I’ve never liked guns, and I especially dislike the guns you find in desk drawers. They’re there so that people can shoot burglars, and I’m opposed to that. I hate the very idea of it.

I opened the drawer, and I didn’t find a gun in it, but neither did I find the Fairborn file. I closed the drawer, and if I had all the time in the world I’d have locked up after myself, but I didn’t. I opened and closed the other drawers, just taking time for a quick glance within, and I didn’t find Gully Fairborn’s letters, and I didn’t find any guns, either, and-

Gunpowder.

That’s what I’d smelled. Gunpowder, cordite, call it what you will. I’d smelled what you smell in a room where a gun’s been fired. And I could smell it now, and that’s definitely what it was, and it had been stronger in the bedroom, and I hadn’t heard any breathing, and the way she smoked you’d think her breathing would be a pretty audible affair, and-

I went back to the bedroom. I was more concerned with speed and less with stealth this time around, and I walked right up to the side of the bed. I still couldn’t hear any breathing, and at this range that meant there wasn’t any to hear.

I reached out a hand and touched her forehead.

She was dead. She wasn’t up there at 98.6, but she wasn’t all the way down to room temperature, either. She hadn’t been dead long, but then I’d guessed that much before I laid a hand on her. If she’d been dead any length of time, I’d have smelled more than cordite and cigarette smoke in that little room.

Didn’t I tell you? nagged an inner voice. Didn’t I say to abort the mission? Didn’t I tell you to pull the plug? But did you listen? Do you ever listen?

I was listening now, but not to inner voices. I was listening to sounds outside the apartment, sounds in the hallway. I could hear footsteps, and it took a lot of feet to make that sort of sound, and flat feet at that. I heard voices, too, and I heard men knocking on doors and calling out. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I didn’t think it was anything I wanted to hear.