The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,5

inside and drew it shut after me, slipped between a couple of faintly perfumed gowns and adjusted them again in front of me, took a deep breath that didn’t even begin to fill my aching lungs, and listened carefully as the door opened and two people entered.

It was not hard to know that there were two of them because I could hear them talking, even though I could not yet make out their conversation. From the pitch of their voices I could tell that one was female and one was male, and I assumed the female was Crystal Sheldrake, wheat jeans and paisley blouse and all. I had no idea who the man might be. All I knew was that he was a fast worker, having hustled her back here so swiftly. Maybe he was married. That would explain his hurry, and why they’d wound up here rather than at his place.

Sounds of ice clinking, sounds of liquid pouring. I breathed in the closet smells of Arpège and Shalimar and antique perspiration and thought wistfully of the two before-dinner martinis I’d neglected to have. I never drink before I work because it might impair my efficiency, and I thought about that policy, and I thought about my efficiency, and I felt rather stupider than usual.

I hadn’t had the before-dinner drinks and I hadn’t had the dinner either, preferring to postpone that pleasure until I could do it in style and in celebration. I’d been thinking in terms of a latish supper at a little hideaway I know on Cornelia Street in the Village. Those two marts first, of course, and then that cold asparagus soup they do such a good job with, and then the sweetbreads with mushrooms, God, those sweetbreads, and a salad of arugola and spinach with mandarin orange sections, ah yes, and perhaps a half bottle of something nice to go with the sweetbreads. A white wine, of course, but what white wine? It was something to ponder.

Then coffee, lots of coffee, all of it black. And of course a postprandial brandy with the coffee. No dessert, no point in overdoing it, got to watch the old waistline even if one’s not quite obsessive enough to jog around Gramercy Park. No dessert, then, but perhaps a second snifter of that brandy just to take the edge off all that coffee and reward oneself for a job well done.

A job well done indeed.

In the living room, ice continued to clink in glasses. I heard laughter. The radio or the record player was pressed into service. More ice clinking. More laughter, a little more carefree now.

I stood there in the closet and found my thoughts turning inexorably in the direction of alcohol. I thought about the martinis, cold as the Klondike, three hearty ounces of crystal-clear Tanqueray gin with just the most fleeting kiss of Noilly Prat vermouth, a ribbon of twisted lemon peel afloat, the stemmed glass perfectly frosted. Then my mind moved to the wine. Just what white wine would be ideal?

“…beautiful, beautiful evening,” the woman sang out. “Know something, though? I’m a little warmish, sweetie.”

Warmish? I couldn’t imagine why. There were two air conditioners in the apartment, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, and she’d left them both running in her absence. They’d kept the apartment more than comfortable. My hands are always warm and sweaty inside my rubber gloves, but the rest of me had been cool and dry.

Until now, that is. The bedroom air conditioner was having no discernible effect on the air in the closet, which was not what you’d call conditioned. My hands were getting the worst of it and I peeled my gloves off and stuck them in my pocket. At the moment fingerprints were my least pressing concern. Suffocation probably headed the list, or at least it seemed to, and close behind it came apprehension and arrest and prison, following one upon the other in a most unpleasant way.

I breathed in. I breathed out. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I could get away with this one. Maybe Crystal and her gentleman friend would be sufficiently involved in one another so as not to notice the absence of jewelry. Maybe they’d do whatever they’d come to do, and having done it perhaps they’d leave, or lapse into coma, and then maybe I could let myself out of the closet and the apartment. Then, swag in hand, I could return to my own neighborhood and—

Hell!

Swag in hand indeed.