I’d thought of having Carolyn call his number at a predetermined time, then contriving to be out in the hall waiting for the elevator at just that moment. But I’d decided it wouldn’t work. For one thing, trying to synchronize something like that is just about impossible. If the phone call comes a minute too early or late, the whole scheme falls flat. For another, his apartment was all the way down the hall, and you probably couldn’t hear his phone if you were standing by the elevator shaft.
“Is that thing not coming?” he said, after we’d waited for a few minutes.
“It may be a while. Look, there’s no reason for you to stand out here in your robe.”
“I’m not going to abandon you,” he said firmly. “You know, the same damned thing happened last time you were here.” He chuckled. “Maybe you don’t know how to ring that thing,” he said, and reached to do it himself.
I caught hold of his wrist. “I’ll level with you,” I said.
“Oh?”
“This is a genuinely difficult building to get into,” I said, “and now that I’m inside it, I hate to see the opportunity go to waste.”
“What do you mean?” He studied me with those see-through-everything eyes of his. “You can’t be planning another visit to that apartment on the eighth floor.”
I shook my head. “Whatever the guy had down there,” I said, “he doesn’t have it anymore, and I didn’t see anything else terribly exciting in his place. But there’s a couple on Nineteen, he’s a muni bond specialist in a big brokerage house downtown, and I think she’s a Vanderbilt on her mother’s side. And I happen to know they’re in Quogue for the weekend.”
“Ha!” he cried, delighted. “You’re the weasel, all right.”
“Of course, if they’re by any chance particular friends of yours…”
“Not at all, weasel, not at all. I don’t know anyone on the nineteenth floor, certainly not a huckster of municipal bonds. But you’ll be careful, won’t you? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“It’s always dangerous,” I said, flashing a raffish grin. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
“Oh, what a weasel! Can’t keep him out of the chicken yard.”
“But I’ll be careful,” I assured him. “I’ll be in and out in an hour, and this”—I patted the flight bag—“should weigh a little more then than it does now.”
“And then you’ll simply head for home?”
“I’ll take the stairs this far,” I said, “for the elevator operator’s benefit. So if you happen to see me in the hallway an hour or so from now, don’t be alarmed.”
“I hope to be sleeping soundly by then,” he said. “I’ll rest easy, secure in the knowledge that the weasel is hard at work six stories above me.” He thrust his hand at me. “Good hunting, weasel.”
“Thank you, mouse.”
“Animal names,” he said with satisfaction. “They serve a purpose. Until tomorrow, my good little weasel.”
“Until tomorrow,” I said, and we shook hands and went our separate ways. His led back to his apartment, mine to the stairwell and, presumably, the nineteenth floor.
Except that’s not where I went.
I did climb two flights of stairs for starters, then sat at the fifteenth-story landing for a few minutes working things out in my mind. (Yes, I went up two flights and got from Twelve to Fifteen. You read that right. There’s no thirteenth floor at the Boccaccio, which is why the mouse could anticipate my doing the work of a weasel six stories above him.)
He could anticipate it, but that didn’t mean it was going to happen.
After a good long moment of uffish thought on Fifteen, I retraced my steps and kept on going clear down past Twelve, where Charlie Weeks would soon be sleeping peacefully, and past Eight, where Mike Todd would be sleeping or not, with or without the enigmatic Ilona Markova. I went all the way down to the fifth floor, where I satisfied myself that the hallway was clear before traversing most of it en route to apartment 5-D. I rang the bell, remembering how I’d very nearly neglected to do so the last time I’d been to the eighth floor. In the present instance I’d have been astonished if anybody had been home, and nobody was. I set down my flight bag, took out my tools, picked the two locks, and let myself in.
For all I knew there was a bond salesman on Nineteen, married to a Vanderbilt and weekending in Quogue. It was entirely possible. And it was unquestionably the case that there were quite a few apartments in the Boccaccio unoccupied that weekend, their tenants in the Hamptons or Nantucket or Block Island, their valuables left behind, easy pickings for a weasel, or any reasonably resourceful burglar.
But I didn’t have a clue which apartments they were, or an easy way to find out. What I had managed to learn, by calling a slew of realtors from the Lehrman apartment that afternoon, was that there were at least three Boccaccio apartments currently offered for sale. One of them was occupied at present by its owners. A second was sublet for a handsome monthly fee, and would be available to its purchaser when the sublease expired the end of August.
The third, 5-D, was vacant.
The woman who told me about 5-D was a Ms. Farrante, from the Corcoran Group. As Bill Thompson, I’d made an appointment to see it with her on Wednesday afternoon, but I’d decided I couldn’t wait that long. So here I was now.
Once I’d locked up I took a quick tour of the premises, using my pocket flashlight to supplement what light came in from the windows. The apartment fronted on Park Avenue, and there were no drapes or shades or venetian blinds, nothing to bedim the view of anyone outside who happened to look in my direction. I could have switched the lights on anyway—there’s nothing terribly suspicious about a man pacing around in a completely empty apartment—but you never know what will prompt some busybody to dial 911, or walk across the street and say something to the concierge.
It was as empty as an apartment could be, with nothing on the floors, nothing on the walls, nothing in the closets or the kitchen cupboards. The walls smelled very faintly of paint, and the parquet floors of wax. The apartment, Ms. Farrante had assured me, was in move-in condition, the owners had relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, and the price was negotiable, but not very negotiable. “They’ve turned down offers,” she said.
They wouldn’t get a chance to turn down mine. I didn’t want their apartment. I didn’t even want to burgle it. My entry had been illegal, sure enough, so I had probably crossed the line into felonious territory, but my intentions were pure enough.
I just wanted a place to sack out for the next seven or eight hours.
But what an unwelcoming abode I’d picked! It would have been nice to sit down in a comfortable chair, but there were no chairs, comfortable or otherwise. It would have been nice to stretch out in a canopied four-poster, or a big brass bed, or a sagging couch, but there was nothing of the sort, not even an old mattress on the floor.
It would have been nice to soak in a tub. There were two well-appointed bathrooms, one with a gleaming modern stall shower, the other with a massive old claw-footed tub. I started drawing myself a bath—the water came out rusty for the first twenty seconds, but then ran nice and clear. Then I realized there weren’t any towels. Somehow I couldn’t see myself having a nice hot bath and then standing around waiting to evaporate to dryness. I had some useful things in the flight bag, clean clothes for the morning, a razor and toothbrush and comb, but I sure didn’t have a towel.
I pulled the plug and looked around some more. They’d left toilet paper, thank God, but as far as I could tell that was the only thing that hadn’t made the trip to Scottsdale with them.
I didn’t feel very sleepy. I might have, given more comfortable surroundings, because Lord knows I’d had a tiring day. But the way I felt I’d be awake for hours.
At least I had something to read. I’d tucked a P. G. Wodehouse paperback into my bag when I’d originally packed it, and neither I nor Carolyn had had occasion to remove it, so it was still there. I could take it to the bathroom and perch on the throne, and with the door closed I
’d be safe in turning on the lights.
I did all that, and when I worked the light switch nothing happened. I tried the other john and got the same result. Well, it figured. Why pay the light bill when nobody was living there? Fortunately I had my pocket flash. It wasn’t the world’s best reading light, any more than the toilet seat was an ideal library chair, but it would do.
And it did, too, until I was somewhere in the middle of Chapter Six, at which point the beam of my flashlight gradually faded down to a soft yellow glow, a fit illumination for lovemaking, say, but nowhere near bright enough to read by. If I’d been genuinely well prepared I’d have had a couple of replacement batteries in my bag, but I wasn’t and I didn’t, and that was all the reading I was going to do that night.
So much for that. I went out into another room—the living room, one of the bedrooms, who knew, who cared—and stretched out on the floor. I understand that some floors are harder than others, and that I was lucky to be on wood rather than, say, concrete. That must be true, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I can’t imagine how I’d have been any less comfortable on a bed of nails.
There were no hangers in the closets—they really did take everything, the bastards—so I hung my slacks and jacket over the rail that would have supported a shower curtain, but for their having taken that along, too. I took off my shoes and slept in the rest of my clothes, using my flight bag as a pillow. It was about as useful in that capacity as the floor was as a bed.
I couldn’t afford to oversleep, and of course I hadn’t brought an alarm clock with me. But somehow I didn’t think that was likely to be a problem.
Did I really have to do this? Couldn’t I pay a visit to some other apartment? It was a holiday weekend, so it stood to reason that a substantial number of Boccaccio residents were out of town until Monday night at the earliest.
Suppose I just picked a likely door and opened it. If nobody was home, I was in business. And even if someone was on the premises, was that necessarily a disaster? I have burgled apartments while the tenants slept, even on occasion creeping around in the very room where they were snoring away. No one would call it relaxing work, but there’s this to be said for it: you know where they are. You don’t have to worry about them coming home and surprising you.
This would be different, but couldn’t I sleep on the living-room couch, say, while they were sleeping in the bedroom? I’d make sure I woke up before they did. And if something went wrong, if they found me dozing in front of the fireplace, wasn’t it the sort of thing I could talk my way out of? Drunk, I’d say, shrugging sheepishly. Got the wrong apartment by mistake, just dumb luck my key fit in the lock. Terribly sorry, never happen again. I’ll go home now.
Was that so utterly out of the question? I could pull that off, couldn’t I?
No, I told myself sternly. I couldn’t.
I squirmed around, trying to find the most comfortable position, until I realized with dismay that I’d found it early on and it wasn’t going to get any better. I heaved a sigh and closed my eyes. I was as snug as a bug on a bare floor, and there’s a reason that metaphor has not become part of the language. It was going to be a long night.
It was a long night.
Every hour or so I would wake up, if you want to call it that, and look at my watch. Then I would close my eyes and go back to sleep, if you want to call it that, until I woke up again.
And so on.
At six-thirty I gave up and got up. I splashed water on my face, dried my hands with toilet paper, and put on the slacks and shoes I’d taken off. I had a clean shirt and socks and underwear in my bag, but I was saving them until I had a clean body to put them on.
It was light out, so I could read again. I went back to Bertie Wooster, and everything he did and said made perfect sense to me. I took this for a Bad Sign.
At seven-thirty I checked the hall, and there were two people in it, waiting for the elevator. I eased the door silently shut. Two minutes later I tried again, and they were gone but someone else had taken their place. It seemed like a lot of traffic for a luxury building early on a holiday morning, but evidently the residents of the Boccaccio were an enterprising lot, not given to lazy mornings in bed. Or maybe they’d spent the night on the floor, too, and were as eager as I to be up and doing.
When I cracked the door a third time there was yet another person in the hall, but she looked to be a cleaning woman who’d just emerged from the elevator and was headed for an apartment at the far end of the hallway. I stepped out and drew the door shut, unwilling to lock up after myself as I usually do, not with so much traffic all around me. The empty apartment would have to spend the next little while guarded only by the spring locks, which meant anybody with a credit card could steal inside and make off with the toilet paper.
So be it. I walked to the stairwell, setting a brisk pace, and its fire door closed behind me without my attracting any attention.
So far so good.
I climbed seven flights of stairs, telling myself that people paid good money to do essentially the same thing on a machine at the gym. I’ll admit I paused a couple of times en route, but I got there.
At the twelfth-floor landing, I waited until I’d caught my breath, which took longer than I’d prefer to admit. Then I opened the door about an inch and a half and looked out. I’d picked the right stairwell, and from where I was I had a good if narrow view of his door.
I hunkered down, which for years I thought was something people only did in westerns. It turns out you can do it anywhere, even in a ritzy building on Park Avenue. It was less tiring than holding a fixed upright position for a long period of time, and I was less likely to be seen; people do most of their looking at eye level, and my own eyes, lurking behind a slightly ajar door all the way at the end of the hall, wouldn’t be as noticeable if I kept them half their usual distance from the floor.
I checked my watch. It was seventeen minutes to eight. It seemed to me that should give me plenty of leeway, but I hadn’t been there five minutes before I started to worry that I’d missed him.
According to him, he was a creature of habit, leaving the house at the same time and taking the same walk every morning. The previous morning I’d been loitering in a doorway across the street, drinking bad coffee from a Styrofoam cup and waiting for him to make his appearance. He’d done so at ten minutes after eight, and if he stayed on schedule today he’d leave his apartment sometime between a quarter to eight and eight-thirty.
Unless he didn’t.
If he was later today than yesterday, I could just wait him out. It’s not as though I had a train to catch, or a longstanding appointment at the periodontist. But if he was earlier, more than twenty-seven minutes earlier, say, then I’d get to see him return while I was still waiting for him to leave.
Not good.
If you ever start thinking you’re a long ways from being neurotic, just spend a little time squinting at a closed door waiting for it to open. I couldn’t get my mind to shut up. I’d made a big mistake, I told myself, staying as long as I had in the empty apartment. Suppose I’d missed him. Suppose the apartment was magnificently empty right now, while I squatted there like a constipated savage. I should have been in place by seven-thirty at the latest. Seven o’clock would have been better, and six-thirty would have been better still.
On the other hand, how long could I perch at the stair landing without someone turning up to ask me what the hell I thought I was doing there? It did not seem unlikely that the stairs would see a certain amount of casual traffic, whether of tenants or building staff. I didn’t expect a whole lot of coming and going, but all it would take was one mildly curious individual and the best I could hope for was a summary exit from the premises.
The time crawled. I asked myself what Bogart would do, and right away I knew one thing he’d have done. He’d have smoked. By ten minutes after eight (his departure time yesterday, so where the hell was he?) the floor would have been littered with butts and cigarette ash. He??
?d have tapped cigarettes out philosophically, ground them out savagely, flicked them unthinkingly down the stairs. He’d have smoked like crazy, the son of a gun, but when it came time to take action, by God he’d have taken it.
What if I just went over there and rang his goddam bell? Now, without waiting for any more time to pass. If he’d left early, I’d be able to get in there now instead of wasting the whole day. And if he was still home, if he hadn’t left yet, and he answered the bell, well, I would just think of something.
Like what?
I was trying to think of it when his door opened, and I’d been staring at it so hard for so long that it barely registered. Then he emerged, looking quite dapper in flannel trousers and a houndstooth jacket, and wearing the hat he’d been wearing that first night, when he opened the door for Captain Hoberman and blinked in surprise to see me there as well.
He had what seemed like a long wait for the elevator, but he waited patiently, and I tried to follow his example. A young couple emerged from the E or F apartment just as the elevator door opened, and the man called for them to hold the door while the woman locked up. Then they joined Weeks in the elevator and away they all went.
I let out my breath, looked at my watch. It was fourteen minutes after eight.
Three minutes later I was inside his apartment.
CHAPTER
Twenty
I figured I had an hour before he was likely to return. If I wanted to play it safe, all I had to do was be out of there by nine o’clock.
As it turned out, it didn’t take me anywhere near that long to do what I wanted to do. I was out of his apartment by twenty to nine, out of the building shortly thereafter.
I probably would have had time for a shower.
You know, I thought about it. I could have shucked my clothes, treated myself to a minute and a half under a spray of hot water, then rubbed myself speedily dry with one of his fluffy mint-green towels. I could have stuffed the towel in my flight bag, carrying the evidence away with me. He’d never have missed it.