The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,95

the night, and I hadn’t had time to set anything up. I was, God help me, on the prowl again, and I didn’t see any way to avoid it if I was going to make this work.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to get past the desk, or take the elevator anywhere. On either side of the building’s entrance was a staircase descending a flight to a suite of basement offices, all of them occupied by members of the medical profession. The one I wanted was on the left, and if I got down the stairs I’d be all right. No one at street level could see me while I worked on the lock, and I couldn’t believe there would be a burglar alarm on the door.

What there was, and I could even see the goddam thing, was a security camera. I didn’t care what wound up on the tape, because no one would look at it unless a crime was committed. I planned on committing one—I’d do so the minute I opened the door, and might even fit the definition of criminal trespass when I went down the stairs for no legitimate reason. But if all went well no one would know I’d been there, so why review the night’s tapes?

The danger lay in being caught in the act, which could happen if the concierge was looking at the closed-circuit TV monitor on his desk while I was passing in front of the camera. They don’t sit there and stare at it by the hour, they’d go nuts if they did, but all it takes is a glance at just the wrong time, and they pick up the phone and call 911, and another hapless burglar gets free room and board as a guest of the governor.

I found a pay phone, made a phone call, and came back to where I could watch the building. When the guy brought the pizza, I made my move, and I was down those stairs in a hurry. The lock was a cinch, and it took me hardly any time to find everything I was looking for. I took a sheet of paper from a desk drawer and wrote down what I needed to know, and I folded it up and put it in my pocket, and that was all I took. Unless they counted the letterhead, no one could possibly know they’d had a visitor.

So I was out of there in a hurry. I was tempted to leave the door unlocked, but I’d done everything else right, and I didn’t want to stop now. I picked it shut and walked quickly up the stairs and away from there. This was the dangerous part, because from where I stood there was no way I could see if the concierge was busy, but when I was clear of the place and took a look back, it was clear I’d had nothing to worry about. The pizza guy was still there, talking away on his cell phone, while the concierge stood there with his hands on his hips, and it looked as though it might take them a while to sort it all out.

I caught a cab and went home.

I would have loved to stay there. My humble abode had never felt so welcoming, nor had my bed ever looked so inviting. I decided to stretch out for just a minute, and I told myself not to be an idiot. I put some coffee on and took a quick wake-up shower while it brewed, then threw a couple of ice cubes in it so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to cool.

Was there no way I could avoid another trip to Riverdale?

None I could think of. I spent a few minutes preparing the parcel I would take with me, then bit the bullet and got to it. I walked around until I found the Mercury Sable, opened its door, diddled its ignition, and drove it the nine or ten miles to Riverdale, found Devonshire Close without getting lost, and parked the car not in Mapes’s driveway—the unfamiliar noise of a car in their own driveway might wake Mapes or his wife—but two blocks away. I walked the two blocks, well aware of the impossibility of appearing innocent walking residential streets at that hour. I went up the driveway to the side door, and looked longingly at it. I’d set the alarm to bypass that door, and unless someone had noticed, it was still like that. But