Burglar on the Prowl

  And the third-floor windows? I couldn't tell from where I stood, and I couldn't see what difference it made. I'm all right with heights, but I'm not crazy enough to climb two stories on a housebreaking expedition. Even if I could find a ladder that would reach that far, and even if I could brace it so that it wouldn't slip out from under me, I wasn't willing to spend that much time that exposed to the gaze of anyone who happened to glance my way. There are any number of illegal things you can do that can appear innocent to a casual glance, but climbing into a third-story window is not one of them.

  Okay, forget the windows. Forget the doors, too. What did that leave?

  The house, like all the others on the block, had been built at least three-quarters of a century ago. It was obviously prewar (which will always mean World War II when you're talking about New York real estate, no matter how many wars have been fought since then, just as antebellum will always refer to the War Between the States, and antediluvian will always indicate Noah's flood, unless you happen to live in Johnstown) and my guess was that it had been built in the 1920s. I could find out for certain, but it didn't matter. What was significant was that it had almost certainly been equipped originally with a coal furnace, and that meant a coal cellar, and that meant a chute down which the delivery vehicle could pour the stuff.

  That in turn meant a wooden cellar door, probably built to lean against the rear of the house at an angle of somewhere between forty-five and sixty degrees. Remember the song "Playmate"? Oh, sure you do, and it's got nothing to do with magazine centerfolds.Playmate, come out and play with me/And with my dollies three/Climb up my apple tree/Shout down my rain barrel/Slide down my cellar door/ And we'll be jolly friends/Forevermore.

  They don't write 'em like that anymore, but then neither do they make cellar doors you can slide down. They did when they built the Mapes house, however. People kept them locked, generally securing them with a padlock, but how the hell did you tie a padlocked wooden cellar door into a burglar alarm system?

  There may be a way, but the whole thing became academic when I went around to the back of the house and tried to find the entrance to the coal cellar. They'd had one, sure enough, but somewhere along the way it had been removed, with brickwork and concrete filling in where the opening had been. I could get in, all right, but not without a jackhammer, and they tend to draw attention.

  Rats.

  There's always a way in, I told myself. It makes a nice mantra, but even as I ran it through my mind I found myself beginning to doubt the universal verity of it. What if there wasn't always a way in?

  But there had to be. It was a big old house, sure to be chock full of crannies and nooks (or, if you insist, nooks and crannies) and window seats and stair cupboards and rooms no one ever went into. That was fine, but they were all on the inside, and on the outside there was nothing but stone, along with two doors and more windows than I troubled to count, all of them wired into an alarm system that I couldn't knock out unless I found a way to create a power failure for the whole neighborhood.

  I was trying to figure out just how I might manage that, which comes more under the heading of idle speculation than the exploration of a real possibility, when I opened my eyes and saw something that had been in front of them all along. How had I missed seeing it? The answer, of course, was that I had indeed seen it, but that it had somehow failed to register. I'd seen it and known what it was, but what I hadn't recognized was what itmeant.

  It meant I was in like Errol, that's what it meant.

  Five

  Turning around and walking down the driveway and away from the Mapes house was one of the most difficult things I'd ever done.

  Here was the house, an unassailable fortress, and here I was with a perfect way to assail the daylights out of it. And I'd come prepared, my picks and probes at hand, and my hands easily enough encased in the pair of Pliofilm gloves I'd tucked into a pocket. And who was to say I hadn't been the beneficiary of unwitting wisdom when I brought along the gloves and the tools? Maybe I'd somehow been given to know that an opportunity would knock. Now that it had done so, how could I fail to answer?

  I hadn't phoned, hadn't established that they were out for the evening, but the house felt empty to me. I read somewhere that a house can actually sound empty, that occupied premises hum inaudibly with the energy of the people within. I don't know about that, but I know I can sometimes sense a human presence. I didn't sense it here, and I had some corroborating evidence from the garage; a peek had shown a fat and happy Lexus SUV parked to one side, with plenty of empty space for a second vehicle alongside it.

  God, I was itching to do it, chomping at the bit, salivating like all of Pavlov's dogs rolled into one. My fingertips tingled, and the blood surged in my veins, and it took a measure of self-discipline I hadn't known I possessed to get me out of there.

  Not that getting away from the Mapes house cut off the siren's song. There were other houses just like Mapes's, an inner voice reminded me, and every single one of them was sure to have the same happy flaw that would lay it wide open to an enterprising burglar. Why not knock off one of them now? Or even two of them, if time permitted. Why the hell not?

  Because a burglary in the neighborhood would put everybody on edge, I told myself, and increase the risk on Friday night. To that the inner voice, resourceful devil that he was, had a persuasive counterargument: a burglary a few doors away, two days before I hit Mapes, would make Friday's burglary look like part of a string, and Mapes an incidental victim rather than a designated burglaree. Thus nobody would think to look for someone with a grudge against the man, turn up Marty, and work backwards from there.

  Knock off that house on the corner, the voice murmured, and they won't look twice at Mapes. They'll see a pattern, and they'll stake out the neighborhood, waiting patiently for the burglar to strike a third time. And he won't, and nobody will ever figure it out.

  You can't argue with a voice like that. What you can do is keep walking, and that's what I did-head lowered, hands in pockets, shoulders drawn protectively inward. The voice babbled on. Thanks for sharing, I told it, and walked all the way to the subway, and climbed the platform and caught a train home.

  The first thing I did was return my windbreaker to the closet. While I was there, I opened up my hidden compartment-easy enough, if you know how-and stowed my burglar's tools and the gloves. I made myself a cup of tea and sat in front of the television set.The West Wing was history, andLaw & Order was already in its second half, with prosecutor Jack McCoy pulling a dirty trick in an overzealous try for a conviction. Once upon a time TV cops and DAs were all good guys, and then there was a stretch where some of them were bad guys, and now the medium and the viewers have matured to the point where a character can be both at once.

  Something unrelated to the story kept me watching even as it made me lose track of the storyline. There was an extra, one of the dozen folks in the jury box, who looked like a woman I'd had a very brief fling with a couple of years ago. I hadn't laid eyes on her since, and had in fact lost track of her entirely.

  And I couldn't tell if it was her or not. She'd done a little acting, although she hadn't gotten very far with it. She'd also done a little writing and a little singing, but what she'd done the most of, and what had kept her in panty hose and eyeliner, was waitressing.Law & Order is filmed in New York, not California, which is one reason the supporting actors and bit players on the show look like actual human beings, so it was by no means unlikely for a New York-based singer/writer/actor/waitress to turn up in the show's jury box.

  If the camera had stayed on her for any length of time I probably could have said one way or another if it was Francine. But it didn't, and consequently I couldn't. They just gave you a glimpse of the jurors every now and then, and it was enough to assure me each time that yes, there was a definite resemblance, but not enough to let me know for sure. And, because I figured maybe the next view would be conclusive, I kept waiting for a shot of the jury and paying next to n
o attention to the rest of the story.

  And it ended with the jury reaching a decision (they acquitted the bastard, so McCoy's ethical lapse was for naught) while I remained not a whit closer to one of my own. I was hoping someone would demand that the jury be polled, but no, instead they cut to a shot of Sam Waterston and Fred Thompson in their office, with Waterston embittered and Thompson philosophical. Then they rolled the credits at the speed of light, but it didn't matter, because she wouldn't be listed there anyway. Bit players with non-speaking parts don't generally make the crawl.

  So I sat around thinking about Francine, not that there was much to think, since we'd only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks, say a month at the outside. If I remembered correctly, the night we finally went to bed together was the last night of the relationship, not because it was a disaster but because we really weren't destined for each other, and we'd both kept it going just long enough to get through the bedchamber door, just to make sure we weren't missing anything. Once our mutual sexual curiosity was quenched, there was really no reason for either of us to hang around.

  I tried to figure out just how many years had passed since Francine and I had our moment together, and I decided it was more than three and less than six, and that was the best I could do to narrow it down. And then I found myself working out just how many women had passed in and out of my life since then. I don't remember what number I came up with, but it really didn't matter, because any number, high or low, was going to be depressing. I mean, suppose I'd had thirty girlfriends since Francine. Suppose I'd had two. See what I mean?

  What made it even more depressing was that lately I didn't even seem to be playing the game. I wasn't even coming up to bat anymore, let alone taking a good healthy cut at the ball. I hadn't been out on a date since sometime the previous fall, when I chatted up a woman who'd dropped into my bookstore late one afternoon, closed up a few minutes early, took her for a drink and to a movie at the multiplex over on Third Avenue, and then put her in a cab and never saw her again. I had her phone number, and of course she knew how to reach me, but neither of us said "I'll call you" and neither of us did. She'd never walked into my store before, and she never did afterward, either.

  And the last time I'd actually been to bed with a woman.well, I don't know when that was. I'd had a genuine girlfriend for several months, and that had come to a bitter end sometime during the winter, not this past winter but the winter before. Then sometime the next spring (which is to say last spring, which would make it approximately a year ago) I'd acted out.

  Acting out.I'm not sure when we first started calling it that, or what we used to call it before that convenient term came into widespread use. Misbehaving, maybe. Whatever you want to call it, I reacted to having my heart broken by doing three things in dogged succession. First I stayed more or less drunk for the better part of a week, but all that did was give me head-banger hangovers and a perfectly suitable case of postalcoholic remorse. Then I started chasing women in a rather frantic fashion, and even managed to catch some, though the ones I landed were the sort any self-respecting sportsman would have thrown back. Finally, I went on a burglary spree, in the course of which I must have averaged a break-in a night for close to two weeks. I was a one-man crime wave, and the risks I took don't bear thinking about, but at least I wasn't suicidal about it. I didn't have a deep unconscious desire to get caught, and nobody caught me, and when I finally came to my senses and settled down again, at least I had a tidy sum tucked away in my rainy day account. I came out of it ahead, which is more than I could say for the drinking and the woman-chasing.

  And since then.well, since then I'd been as sexually active as a priest who took his vows seriously. I'd helped Carolyn compose her listing for Date-a-Dyke ("LOOKING FOR A SPRING FLING? Five-foot-two, eyes for you. Bright and cute and funny, you can think of me as the long-lost bastard daughter of L. L. Bean and Laura Ashley. Love scotch, love New York, hate softball, and limit myself to two cats. My meaningful relationships always lead to heartbreak or LBD, so how about a meaningless relationship?") but wouldn't hear of cobbling up an equivalent listing for myself. It was, I told myself, a phase I was going through. I was evidently not yet ready to have a woman in my life, and when I was I would automatically change the vibe I put out, and women who now had the good sense to steer clear of me would suddenly think I was catnip. Just a question of time, I told myself. Time. That's all.

  So whenLaw & Order packed it in I watched the first five minutes of the local news, then surfed my way around the channels, watching thirty seconds here and two minutes there, not getting caught up in any of it, perhaps because I didn't stay with anything long enough to give it a chance to catch me. I thought about calling Francine ("Hi, I saw you onLaw & Order tonight, and I swear I couldn't take my eyes off the jury box. You absolutely lit up the screen!") and looked for her number, but I'd recopied my address book since we stopped seeing each other, and she hadn't made the cut. I reached for the phone book and put it back when I realized I couldn't remember her last name. Then I channel-surfed some more, and then I turned off the TV and stood up.

  All of the foregoing is by way of explanation for what I did next, and maybe it explains it, but it doesn't justify it. The whole thing's embarrassing, so I won't dwell on it. I'll just report it in plain English.

  I went to my closet, opened up the hidden compartment, gathered up my tools and gloves, put on my windbreaker, changed my mind and swapped it for a blue blazer, and went down the stairs and out of the building.

  And on the prowl.

  Six

  On the prowl.

  The phrase has a wonderful ring to it, doesn't it? It sounds at once menacing and exciting, deliciously attractive in an unwholesome way. Byron, someone observed, was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"-which evidently made the son of a bitch irresistible. Can't you picture him going on the prowl?

  When a burglar goes on the prowl, he's improvising. Now improvisation is vastly useful in the arts, and in jazz it's fundamental; when a jazz musician gives himself free rein to improvise, he finds himself playing notes and creating phrases he hadn't thought of, unearthing the music from some inner chamber of his private self. When I play a record and listen to some solo piano by, say, Lennie Tristano or Randy Weston or Billy Taylor, I can get lost in the intricacies and subtleties the pianist is working out on the spot, creating this beauty as he threads his way through the notes.

  That's great if you're a musician, and what I really should have done was stay home and play some of my old LPs, admiring the way those fellows could prowl the keyboard. Because improvisation in burglary is different. It's a foolproof method for minimizing rewards while maximizing risk, and what kind of a way is that to run a business?

  It is, I should point out, not a career I would recommend for anyone. It's morally reprehensible, for starters, and the fact that I evidently can't give it up doesn't mean I'm not well aware of the disagreeably sordid nature of what I do. Such considerations aside, it's still a poor vocational choice.

  Oh, there are attractive elements, and let's acknowledge them right in front. You're your own boss, and you never have to sit through a job interview, never have to convince anyone that you have the requisite experience for the task at hand, or, conversely, that you're not overqualified. No one has to hire you and no one can fire you.

  Nor, like the ordinary tradesman, are you dependent upon the good will of your customers. That's just as well, as ill will is what they'd bear you, and it's all to the good if they never know more about you than that you've paid them a visit. But you don't have to drum up business, and you don't have to deal with suppliers, and no avaricious landlord can raise the rent on your business premises, because you don't have any.

  Your business is essentially unaffected by booms and busts in the national or world economy. There's a built-in hedge against inflation-the value of what you steal keeps pace with your higher costs-and depression won't throw you out of work. (The competition's a lit
tle keener in bad times, as otherwise solid citizens decide to find out what's behind Door Number Three, but that's all right. There's always enough to go around.)

  You don't need a license from the city or state, either, and there's no union to join, no dues to pay, and no paperwork to fill out. On the other hand, there's no pension plan, and since you don't pay taxes neither do you qualify for Social Security and Medicare and all the other benefits that sparkle like diamonds in the setting of the golden years. No sick days, either, and no paid vacation. No health care. Bottom line, you're pretty much on your own.

  You set your own hours, of course, and you'll never find yourself putting in a forty-hour week. Even allowing for study and research, you're not likely to work forty hours in the course of an entire month. Once you get down to cases, time is of the essence, and burglary, unlike some other pursuits, does not reward the chap who makes the whole thing last as long as possible. The idea is to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

  All of this sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Even the drawbacks-no pension, no security, no guaranteed annual wage-are part of the image of the romantic self-sufficient loner, making his rugged-individualist way in the world. You can almost hear country music playing in the background, and Merle Haggard urging you to chuck the effete urban rat race and move to Montana like a man.