The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,94

perfect picture. It’s just a shame he didn’t puke on himself.” She thought a moment, said, “Well, I can fix that,” and stuck a finger down her throat, anointing him generously with the missing element.

“Adolescent bulimia,” she explained. “I outgrew it years ago, but you never forget how. Like falling off a bicycle.”

“Or drowning.”

“Exactly. I’d better get back to Parsifal’s before Barry gives away the store.” She pinched my cheek. “You’re cute. It’s a shame you’re not twenty years older.”

“I’m aging as fast as I can.”

“You haven’t got an uncle with a roving eye, have you? Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. That noise when we first walked into the alley, sort of something scuttling away? Was that rats?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Good,” she said. “Let’s hope they’re hungry.”

Thirty-Four

The lock on William Johnson’s front door was nothing special, but for some reason it gave me a hard time. Working away at it, I wondered why I hadn’t had the sense to fish his keys out of his pocket while I was rolling him. It certainly would have made things easier.

Once I was inside, my first thought was that I was too late, that someone somehow had beaten me to it. The apartment, a large L-shaped studio, looked as though it had been lately tossed by a team who’d taken the verb literally, picking up everything mobile and flinging it somewhere. It would have been just one more coincidence to add to the string, and it took a few minutes to realize that I was Johnson’s first and only illicit visitor. The place was a mess because that’s the way he kept it. Maybe, I thought, he hadn’t meant any harm when he dumped Barbara’s jewelry drawer on the floor. Maybe he wasn’t vandalizing the place after all. Maybe he was helping her redecorate.

The state of the place made my task harder than it might have been. It’s not easy to look for something when you have to include the floor among the places to be searched. Nor, oddly, is it as easy to leave things as you found them, because how can you tell when they’re back where they belong?

I did the best I could, and didn’t linger. According to Sigrid, he’d wound up with a double dose of Rohypnol, with the capsules intended for both Claire and Audrey somehow winding up in his glass. It had certainly been enough to knock him cold, but who knew how long he’d stay that way? I wanted to be gone before he came back.

On my way out, I took time to pick his lock again, leaving that too as I’d found it. It was quicker the second time, but would have been quicker still with his key. Then again, I consoled myself, if I’d taken his keys he’d have missed them, and might have suspected that whoever had taken them would head straight for his apartment.

I walked for a block or two, buoyant with the heady sensation I get from illegal entry. It was cool enough so that I stuck my hands in my pockets for warmth, and realized I still had his credit cards. I was going to throw them away, but I decided that would be wasteful. Just because I wasn’t inclined to run around charging DVD players and iBooks to Wee Willie Johnson, why should I deprive some other citizen of the pleasure?

I left the cards here and there, out in plain sight, where whoever came along could pick one up and do as he pleased with it. A person with a conscience as overdeveloped as Johnson’s upper body could seek out the card’s owner and return it. One who was merely honest could simply leave it where it lay. And a truly enterprising individual, a passerby with energy and the will to better himself, would max out that card as quickly as possible.

When the cab stopped for me, I would have loved to go straight home and call it a night. Instead I gave the driver an address on Park Avenue that turned out to be between 62nd and 63rd.

The building I wanted was a fully serviced luxury apartment house, with a concierge on the front desk and an attendant in the elevator. The only way to get into a building like that is through subterfuge; ideally, you find a bona fide tenant to invite you in, and make a little detour on your way out. That’s hard to arrange on the spot in the middle of