The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,25

the elevator’s there, I thought, I’ll just give up. But it wasn’t. The floor indicator showed it on Three, and as I watched it moved to Four. Maybe Eduardo had forgotten about me. Then again, maybe he was on his way back.

I opened the fire door and went out onto the stairs.

Now what? Onderdonk’s line was busy. I’d dialed the number from memory and I could have gotten it wrong, or it could have been busy because someone else had dialed the same number a few seconds before I did. Or he could be home.

I couldn’t chance breaking in if anybody was home. And I couldn’t knock on the door first, either. And I couldn’t spend eternity on the stairs, because while it was possible the concierge and elevator operator and doorman would forget all about me, it was also possible they would not. A call on the intercom would establish that I’d left the Tremaine apartment, at which point they could either assume I’d left via the stairs (or even on the elevator) without anyone’s noting the fact or else they’d figure I was still in the building.

In which case they might start looking for me.

Even if they didn’t, the stairway was no place to be. I had to be able to establish via the telephone that Onderdonk’s apartment was empty before I could enter it. And, once I’d entered it, I had to wait until midnight before I left with the painting in tow. Because the staff that was on duty now would certainly remember me, no matter what I did, and what kind of florist’s delivery boy leaves a building an hour after he brings the flowers? I could perhaps get away with it, merely sullying Ms. Tremaine’s reputation a bit, letting them assume we’d passed the time in amorous dalliance, but if they’d checked with her in the meanwhile and already knew I’d left—

I climbed two flights of stairs. I loided the fire door, checked the hallway, found it empty, and did the only sensible thing I could think of. Without bothering to put on my gloves, without even taking the obvious precaution of ringing the bell, and certainly without wasting a moment on the mock burglar alarm, I whipped out my ring of picks and probes and let myself into John Charles Appling’s apartment.

Chapter Eight

For a moment I thought I’d made a horrible mistake. The apartment was brighter by day than it had been on my last visit. Even with the drapes drawn a certain amount of daylight filtered in, and I thought there were lights on, indicating someone’s presence. My heart stopped or raced or skipped a beat or whatever it does at such times, and then it calmed down and so did I. I put on my rubber gloves and locked the door and took a deep breath.

It felt very odd being back in the Appling place. There was once again the thrill of illicit entry, but it was diminished by the fact that I’d been here before. You can get as much pleasure the second or third or hundredth time you make love to a particular woman—you can get more, actually—but you can’t get that triumphant sense of conquest more than once, and so it is too with the seduction of locks and the breaching of thresholds. On top of that, I hadn’t broken in this time to steal anything. I was just looking for sanctuary.

And that was strange indeed. Less than twenty-four hours earlier I’d been in a state of high tension that didn’t begin to dissipate until I left this apartment. Now I’d had to break into it all over again just to feel safe.

I went to the phone, picked it up. But why call Onderdonk now? I didn’t want to leave the building until midnight, so why break into his place before then? I could go now, of course, if he was out. I could snatch the Mondrian and bring it back downstairs to the Appling apartment, and I could wait there until it was after midnight and safe to leave.

But I didn’t want to. Better to stay where I was and call Onderdonk around midnight, and if he was out I could break and enter and leave in a hurry, and if he was in I could say, “Sorry, wrong number,” and give him three or four or five hours to go to sleep, and then do my breaking and entering while he lay snug in his bed.