blew on my hands to cool them as they were beginning to sweat a bit, not that blowing on them did much good, encased in rubber gloves as they were, and this may well have led me to sigh a third time, and then I heard a key in the lock and froze.
The apartment’s tenant, J. Francis Flaxford, was supposed to be off the premises until midnight at the very least.
By the same token, the blue box was supposed to be in the desk.
I stood facing the door, my hip braced against the desk. I listened as the key turned in the lock, easing back the deadbolt, then turning farther to draw back the spring lock. There was an instant of dead silence. Then the door flew inward and two boys in blue burst through it, guns in their hands, the muzzles trained on me.
“Easy,” I said. “Relax. It’s only me.”
Chapter
Two
The first cop through the door was a stranger, and a very young and fresh-faced one at that. But I recognized his partner, a grizzled, gray chap with jowls and a paunch and a long sharp nose. His name was Ray Kirschmann and he’d been with the NYPD since the days when they carried muskets. He’d collared me a few years earlier and had proved to be a reasonable man at the time.
“Son of a gun,” he said, lowering his own gun and putting a calming hand upon the gun of his young associate. “If it ain’t Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son, Bernard. Put the heat away, Loren. Bernie here is a perfect gentleman.”
Loren bolstered his gun and let out a few cubic feet of air. Burglars are not the only poor souls who tend to tense up when entering doors other than their own. And trust Ray to make sure his young partner cleared the threshold ahead of him.
I said, “Hi, Ray.”
“Nice to see ya, Bernie. Say hello to my new partner, Loren Kramer. Loren, this here is Bernie Rhodenbarr.”
We exchanged hellos and I extended a hand for a shake. This confused Loren, who looked at my hand and then began rumbling with the pair of handcuffs hanging from his gunbelt.
Ray laughed. “For Chrissake,” he said. “Nobody ever puts cuffs on Bernie. This ain’t one of your mad dog punks, Loren. This is a professional burglar you got here.”
“Oh.”
“Close the door, Loren.”
Loren closed the door—he didn’t bother to turn the bolt—and I did a little more relaxing myself. We had thus far attracted no attention. No neighbors milled in the hallways. And so I had every intention of spending what remained of the night beneath my own good roof.
Politely I said, “I wasn’t expecting you, Ray. Do you come here often?”
“You son of a gun, you.” He grinned. “Gettin’ sloppy in your old age, you know that? We’re in the car and we catch a squeal, woman hears suspicious noises. And you was always quiet as a mouse. How old are you, Bernie?”
“Be thirty-five in April. Why?”
“Taurus?” This from Loren.
“The end of May. Gemini.”
“My wife’s a Taurus,” Loren said. He had liberated his nightstick from its clip and was slapping it rhythmically against his palm.
“Why?” I asked again, and there was a moment of confusion with Loren trying to explain that his wife was a Taurus because of when she was born, and me explaining that what I wanted to know was why Ray had asked me my age, and Ray looking sorry he’d brought the whole thing up in the first place. There was something about Loren that seemed to generate confusion.
“Just age making you sloppy,” Ray explained. “Making noises, drawing attention. It’s not like you.”
“I never made a sound.”
“Until tonight.”
“I’m talking about tonight. Anyway, I just got here.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, a few minutes ago. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes at the outside. Ray? You sure you got the right apartment?”
“We got the one’s got a burglar in it, don’t we?”
“There’s that,” I admitted. “But did they specify this apartment? Three-eleven?”
“Not the number, but they said the right front apartment on the third floor. That’s this one.”
“A lot of people mix up left and right.”
He looked at me, and Loren slapped the nightstick against his palm and managed to drop it. There was a leather thong attaching it to his belt but the thong was long enough so that the nightstick hit the floor. It bounced on the Chinese rug and Loren retrieved it while Ray glowered at him.
“That’s more noise than I made all night,” I said.
“Look, Bernie—”
“Maybe they