meant the apartment above this one. Maybe the woman was English. They figure floors differently over there. They call the first floor the ground floor, see, so what they call the third floor would be the floor three flights up, which you and I would call the fourth floor, and—”
“Jesus.”
I looked at Loren, then back at Ray again.
“What are you, crazy? You want me to read you your rights and all so you’ll remember you’re a criminal caught in the act? What the hell’s got into you, Bernie?”
“It’s just that I just got here. And I never made a sound.”
“So maybe a cat knocked a plant off a shelf in the apartment next door and we just got lucky and came here by mistake. It’s still you and us, right?”
“Right.” I smiled what certainly ought to have been a rueful smile. “You got lucky, all right. I’m nice and fat tonight.”
“That so?”
“Very fat.”
“Interesting,” Ray said.
“You got the key from the doorman?”
“Uh-huh. He wanted to come up and let us in but we told him he ought to stay at his post.”
“So nobody actually knows I’m here but you two.”
The two of them looked at each other. They were a nice contrast, Ray in his lived-in uniform, Loren all young and neat and freshly laundered. “That’s true,” Ray said. “Far as it goes.”
“Oh?”
“This’d be a very good collar for us. Me’n Loren, we could use a good collar. Might get a commendation out of it.”
“Oh, come on,” I said.
“Always possible.”
“The hell it is. You didn’t nail me on your own initiative. You followed up a radio squawk. Nobody’s going to pin a medal on you.”
“Well, you got a point there,” Ray said. “What do you think, Loren?”
“Well,” Loren said, slapping the stick against his palm and nibbling thoughtfully on his lower lip. The stick was beat up and scratched in contrast to the rest of his outfit. I had the feeling he dropped it often, and on surfaces more abrasive than Chinese carpets.
“How fat are you, Bernie?”
I didn’t see any point in haggling. I generally carry an even thousand dollars in walkaway money, and that was what I had now. Coincidentally enough, the ten hundreds in my left hip pocket were the very ones I’d taken as an advance on the night’s work, so if I gave it all to my coppish friends I’d break even, with nothing lost but my cab fare and a couple of hours of my time. My shifty-eyed friend would be out a thousand dollars but that was his hard luck and he would just have to write it off.
“A thousand dollars,” I said.
I watched Ray Kirschmann’s face. He considered trying for more but must have decided I’d gone straight to the top. And there was no dodging the fact that it was a satisfactory score since it only had to be cut two ways.
“That’s fat,” he admitted. “On your person right now?”
I took out the money and handed it to him. He fanned the bills and gave them a count with his eyes, trying not to be too obvious about it.
“You pick up anything in here, Bernie? Because if we was to report there was nobody here and then the tenant calls in a burglary complaint, we don’t look too good.”
I shrugged. “You could always claim I left before you got here,” I told him, “but you won’t have to. I couldn’t find anything worth stealing, Ray. I just got here and all I touched is the desk.”
“We could frisk him,” Loren suggested. Ray and I both gave him a look and he turned a deeper pink than his usual shade. “It was just a thought,” he said.
I asked him what sign he was.
“Virgo,” he said.
“Should go well with Taurus.”
“Both earth signs,” he said. “Lots of stability.”
“I would think so.”
“You interested in astrology?”
“Not particularly.”
“I think there’s a lot to be said for it. Ray’s a Sagittarius.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ray said. He looked at the bills again, gave a small shrug, then folded them once and found them a home in his pocket. Loren watched this procedure somewhat wistfully. He knew he’d get his share later, but still…
Ray gnawed a fingernail. “How’d you get in, Bernie? Fire escape?”
“Front door.”
“Right past the clown downstairs? They’re terrific, these doormen.”
“Well, it’s a large building.”
“Not that large. Still, you do look the part. That clean-cut East Side look and those clothes” I live on the West Side myself, and usually wear jeans. “And I suppose you carried a briefcase, right?”
“Not exactly.”