Lawrence Block - Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

I said, “What you mean we, kemosabe?”

“You and me, Tonto. Who else?”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Not a chance. I’m the burglar, remember? You’re the trusted confederate. You stay on the outskirts and guard the horses.”

She pouted. “Not fair. You have all the fun.”

“Rank has its privileges.”

“Two heads are better than one, Bernie. And four hands are better than two, and if we’re both checking Martin’s office things’ll go faster.”

I reminded her about too many cooks. She was still protesting when we reached the corner of Sixteenth and Sixth. I figured out which was Martin’s building and spotted a Riker’s coffee shop diagonally across the street from it. “You’ll wait right there,” I told her, “in one of those cute little booths with a cup of what will probably not turn out to be the best coffee you ever tasted.”

“I don’t want any coffee.”

“Maybe an English muffin along with it if you feel the need.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Or a prune Danish. They’re renowned for their prune Danish.”

“Really?”

“How do I know? You can hold up lanterns in the window. One if by land, two if by sea, and Ruth Hightower’ll be on the opposite shore. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“ Two If By Sea. That’s the show Rod’s in, did you know that? Anyway, I’ll be on the opposite shore, and I won’t be terribly long. Get in and get out, quick as a bunny. That’s my policy.”

“I see.”

“But only in burglary. It’s not my policy in all areas of human endeavor.”

“Huh? Oh.”

I felt lighthearted, even a little lightheaded. I gave her a comradely kiss and steered her toward the Riker’s, then squared my shoulders and prepared to do battle.

The building was only a dozen stories high, but the man who built it had probably thought of it as a skyscraper at the time. It was that old, a once-white structure festooned with ornamental ironwork and layered with decades of grime. They don’t build them like that anymore and you really can’t blame them.

I looked the place over from across the street and didn’t see anything that bothered me. Most of the streetside offices were dark. Only a few had lights on-lawyers and accountants working late, cleaning women tidying desks and emptying trash-baskets and mopping floors. In the narrow marble-floored lobby, a white-haired black man in maroon livery sat at a desk reading a newspaper, which he held at arm’s length. I watched him for a few minutes. No one entered the building, but one man emerged from the elevator and approached the desk. He bent over it for a moment, then straightened up and continued on out of the building, heading uptown on Sixth Avenue.

I slipped into a phone booth on the corner and tried not to pay attention to the way it smelled. I called Peter Alan Martin’s office and hung up when the machine answered. If you do that within seven seconds or so you get your dime back. I must have taken eight seconds because Ma Bell kept my money.

When the traffic light changed I trotted across the street. The attendant looked up without interest as I made my way through the revolving doors. I gave him my Number 3 smile, warm but impersonal, and let my eyes have a quick peek at the building directory on the wall while my feet carried me over to his desk. He moved a hand to indicate the ledger and the yellow pencil stub I was to use to sign my name in it. I wrote T. J. Powell under Name, Hubbell Corp. under Firm, 441 under Room, and 9:25 under Time In. I could have written the Preamble to the Constitution for all the attention the old man gave it, and why not? He was an autograph collector and not a hell of a lot more, a deterrent for people who deterred easily. He’d been posted in the lobby of a fifth-rate office building where the tenants probably had an annual turnover rate of thirty percent. Industrial espionage was hardly likely to occur here, and if the old man kept the junkies from carting off typewriters, then he was earning the pittance they paid him.

The elevator had been inexpertly converted to self-service some years back. It was a rickety old cage and it took its time getting up to the fourth floor, which was where I left it. Martin’s office was on six, and I didn’t really think my friend in the lobby would abandon his tabloid long enough to see if I went to the floor I’d signed in for, but when you’re a professional you tend to do things the right way whether you have to or not. I took the fire stairs up two flights-and they were unusually steep flights at that-and found the agent’s office at the far end of the corridor. There were lights burning in only two of the offices I passed, one belonging to a CPA, the other to a firm called Notions Unlimited. No sound came from the accountant’s office, but a radio in Notions Unlimited was tuned to a classical music station, and over what was probably a Vivaldi chamber work a girl with an Haute Bronx accent was saying, “…told him he had a lot to learn, and do you know what he said to that? You’re not going to believe this…”

The door to Peter Alan Martin’s office was of blond maple with a large pane of frosted glass set into it. The glass had all three of his names on it in black capitals, and Talent Representative underneath them. The lettering had been done some time ago and needed freshening up, but then the whole building needed that sort of touch-up work and you knew it wasn’t ever going to get it. I could tell without opening the door that Martin wasn’t much of an agent and Brill couldn’t have much of a career these days. On the outside the building still retained an air of faded grandeur, but in here all of the grandeur had faded away.

The door’s single lock had both a snap lock and a deadbolt, and Martin had taken the trouble to turn his key in the lock and put the deadbolt to work. It was hard to figure out why, because locking a door like that is like fencing a cornfield to keep the crows out. Any idiot could simply break the glass and reach inside, and I had adhesive tape that would enable me to break the glass without raising the dead; a few strips crisscrossed on the pane would keep the clatter and tinkle to a minimum.

A broken pane of glass is a calling card, though, especially if they find it with tape on it. Since I didn’t expect to steal anything, I had the opportunity to get in and out without anyone ever knowing I’d existed. So I took the time to pick the lock, and there was precious little time involved. I knocked off the deadbolt easily, and loiding the snap lock was more than easy. There was a good quarter-inch of air between the wooden door and its wooden jamb, and a child with a butter spreader could have let himself in.

“What’s it like, Bernie?”

Well, there was a little excitement in turning the knob and easing the door open, then slipping inside and closing the door and locking up. I had my pencil light with me but I left it in my pocket and switched on the overhead fluorescents right away. A little flashlight winking around in that office might have looked strange from outside, but this way it was just another office with the lights on and I was just another poor bastard working late.

I moved around quickly, taking the most perfunctory sort of inventory. An old wooden desk, a gray steel steno desk with typewriter, a long table, a couple of chairs. I got the feel of the layout while establishing that there were no corpses tucked in odd places, then went over to the window and looked out. I could see Riker’s but couldn’t look inside. I wondered if Ruth was at a front table and if she might be looking up at my very window. But I didn’t wonder about this for very long.