Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

I even walked down to the fourth floor before I rang for the elevator. Nobody was home at Hubbell Corp. I rode the elevator to the lobby, found my name in the ledger-three people had come in since my arrival, and one of them had left already. I penciled in 10 P.M. under Time Out and wished the old man in the wine-colored uniform a pleasant evening.

“They all the same,” he said. “Good nights and bad nights, all one and the same to me.”

I caught Ruth’s eye from Riker’s doorway. The place was fairly deserted, a couple of cabbies at the counter, two off-duty hookers in the back booth. Ruth put some coins on her table next to her coffee cup and hurried to join me. “I was starting to worry,” she said.

“Not to worry.”

“You were gone a long time.”

“Half an hour.”

“Forty minutes. Anyway, it seemed like hours. What happened?”

She took my arm and I told her about it as we walked. I was feeling very good. I hadn’t accomplished anything that remarkable but I felt a great sense of exhilaration. Everything was starting to go right now, I could feel it, and it was a nice feeling.

“He’s in a hotel in the West Fifties,” I told her. “Just off Columbus Circle, near the Coliseum. That’s why he didn’t have a listed phone. I never heard of the hotel and I have a feeling it’s not in the same class with the Sherry-Netherland. In fact I think our Mr. Brill has had hard times lately. He’s got a loser for an agent, that’s for sure. Most of Peter Alan Martin’s clients are ladies who came in third in a county-wide beauty contest a whole lot of years ago. I think he’s the kind of agent you call when you want someone to come out of the cake at a bachelor party. Do they still have that sort of thing?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Girls popping out of cakes.”

“You’re asking me? How would I know?”

“That’s a point.”

“I never popped out of a cake myself. Or attended a bachelor party.”

“Then you wouldn’t want Martin to represent you. I wonder why he’s representing Brill. The guy’s had tons of work over the years. Here, you’ll recognize him.” We moved under a street light and I unfolded the composite sheet for her. “You must have seen him hundreds of times.”

“Oh,” she said. “Of course I have. Movies, TV.”

“Right.”

“I can’t think where offhand but he’s definitely a familiar face. I can even sort of hear his voice. He was in-I can’t think exactly what he was in, but-”

“Man in the Middle,” I suggested. “Jim Garner, Shan Willson, Wes Brill.”

“Right.”

“So how come he’s on the skids? He’s got two last names, his agent’s got three first names, and he’s living in some dump across from the Coliseum and consorting with known criminals. Why?”

“That’s one of the things you’ll want to ask him tomorrow.”

“One, of several things.”

We walked a little farther in silence. Then she said, “It must have been a new experience for you, Bernie. Letting yourself into his office and not stealing anything.”

“Well, when I first started my criminal career all I stole was a sandwich. And I haven’t stolen anything from Rod outside of a little Scotch and a couple cans of soup.”

“Sounds as though you’re turning over a new leaf.”

“Don’t count on it. Because I did steal something from Whatsisname. Martin.”

“The photograph? I don’t think that counts.”

“Plus eighty-five dollars. That must count.” And I went on to tell her about the money in the desk drawer.

“My God,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“You really are a burglar.”

“No kidding. What did you think I was?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m terribly naive. I keep forgetting that you actually steal things. You were in that man’s office and there was some money there so you automatically took it.”

I had a clever answer handy but I left it alone. Instead I said, “Does it bother you?”

“I wouldn’t say that it bothers me. Why should it bother me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I guess it confuses me.”

“I suppose that’s understandable.”

“But I don’t think it bothers me.”

We didn’t talk much the rest of the way home. When we crossed Fourteenth Street I took her hand and she let me keep it the rest of the way, until we got to the building and she used her key on the downstairs door. The key didn’t fit perfectly and it took her about as long to unlock the door as it had taken me to open it without a key. I said as much to her while we climbed the stairs, and she laughed. After we’d climbed three of the four flights she walked up to 4-F and started to poke a key in the lock.

“It won’t fit,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Wrong apartment. That one’s unfit for military service.”

“What?”

“Four-F. The draft classification. We’re looking for 5-R, remember?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. Her face reddened. “I was thinking I was at my place. On Bank Street.”

“You’re in the fourth floor front?”

“Well, fourth floor at the top of the stairs. There are four apartments to a floor; it’s not as narrow a building as this one.” We walked to the final flight of stairs and began climbing them. “I’m glad no one opened the door while we were there. It would have been embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry about it now.”

In front of Rod’s apartment she fished her keys out again, paused for a moment, then turned and deliberately dropped them back into her bag.

“I seem to have misplaced my keys,” she said.

“Come on, Ruth.”

“Let’s see you open it without them. You can do it, can’t you?”

“Sure, but what’s the point?”

“I guess I’d like to see you do it.”

“It’s silly,” I said. “Suppose someone happens to come along and sees me standing there playing locksmith. It’s an u

“You managed before, didn’t you?”

“Sure, but-”

“I already fed the cats.” I turned and stared at her. “Esther and Mordecai. I already fed them.”

“Oh,” I said.

“This afternoon, on my way back here. I filled their water dish and left them plenty of dried food.”

“I see.”

“I think it would excite me to watch you open the locks. I told you I felt confused about the whole thing. Well, I do. I think watching you unlock the locks, uh, I think it would get me, uh, hot.”

“Oh.”

I took my ring of picks out of my pocket.

“I suppose this is all very perverted of me,” she said. She put an arm around my waist, leaned her hot little body against mine. “Kinky and all.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Does it bother you?”

“I think I can learn to live with it,” I said. And went to work on those locks.

Quite a while later she said, “Well, it looks as though I was right. I’m a kinkier bitch than I realized.” She yawned richly and snuggled up close. I ran a hand lazily over her body, memorizing the contours of hip and thigh, the secret planes and valleys. My heart was beating normally again, more or less. I lay with my eyes closed and listened to the muffled hum of traffic in the streets below.

She said, “Bernie? You have wonderful hands.”

“I should have been a surgeon.”

“Oh, do that some more, it’s divine. No wonder all the locks open for you. I don’t think you really need all those curious implements after all. Just stroke the locks a little and they get all soft and mushy inside and open right up.”

“You’re a wee bit flaky, aren’t you?”

“Just a wee bit. But you have got the most marvelous hands. I wish I had hands like yours.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your hands, baby.”

“Really?”

And her hands began to move.

“Hey,” I said.

“Something the matter?”

“Just what do you think you’re doing, lady?”

“Just what do you think I’m doing?”

“Playing with fire.”

“Oh?”

The first time had been intense and urgent, even a bit desperate. Now we were slow and lazy and gentle with each other. There was no music on the radio, just the sound of the city below us, but in my head I heard smoky jazz full of blue notes and muted brass. At the end I said “Ruth Ruth Ruth” and closed my eyes and died and went to Heaven.