by Ed McBain
“Hello there,” a woman’s voice said.
He looked up. The sun was behind her, he squinted up into it. It was Jessica Knowles, the blonde who lived in his building.
“Hi,” he said.
“Taking the sunshine?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s too nice to waste,” he said.
She was wearing white slacks and a green T-shirt, no bra under it. You couldn’t tell Alex that anybody who walked around without a bra wasn’t asking for something. Her kid was in the same canvas stroller he’d seen her pushing around in September, eating a sticky piece of chocolate. Alex couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy. Jessica sat beside him on the bench.
“How’d it go yesterday?” he asked.
“Who knows?” she said, and shrugged. “Getting a divorce is just like having a tooth pulled. Without anesthesia.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“How’d your day go?”
“Fine,” he said.
“I’ve been wondering,” she said. “Are you an actor?”
“What makes you think I’m an actor?”
“Well, you went to Lincoln Center.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, you could have been going there to buy tickets. But I see you around a lot during the day, so I naturally assumed … well, if you worked in an office … Are you an actor?”
“No,” he said. He knew what she was going to ask next. With squares, the conversation always reached a point where you had to lie about what you did. He had once, with a girl in Miami, just for the hell of it said he was a burglar. The girl had laughed and said, “Sure.”
“What do you do?” Jessica asked.
“You’re pretty close,” he said. “I’m not an actor, but I do theater work.” He had never used this particular lie before, but she had helped him with it, in a way. Besides, it was only a half-lie; up at Sing Sing, he had helped hang the lights for one of the shows.
“I knew you were in the theater,” she said, delighted with her perception, and inadvertently helping him with the lie by providing the proper terminology.
“Yes, I’m in the theater,” he said, immediately picking up on the expression. “I’m an electrician.”
“Do you work at Lincoln Center?”
“No. I was going there to see about a job.”
“What shows have you worked on?” she asked.
“Oh, lots of them,” he said.
“Any I might have seen?”
“Well, what have you seen?”
“My husband and I used to go to the theater at least once a week,” she said. “When we were together.”
“Then you must’ve seen at least one or two I worked on,” he said, and wished to hell they could get off the subject.
“That must be interesting work,” she said.
“Well, it’s like any other job,” he said.
“What I mean is, you get involved with a lot of creative people, I imagine.”
“Oh, yes,” he said.
“When you say you’re an electrician …”
“I just hang the lights, that’s all. And I have to be there, of course. When the show’s on. See everything’s all right, you know.”
“Do you run the switchboard?”
“No. What there is, there’s usually another man running the switchboard,” he said, and thought Let’s get the hell off this, okay? “What do you do?” he asked.
“Right now, nothing. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Taking care of Peter and the house is a full-time job.”
“How old is he?” Alex asked, looking at the boy, whose face and hands were smeared with chocolate.
“He’s two.”
“He looks a lot like you.”
“Actually, he looks more like his father. He has his father’s mouth.”
“But he’s got your eyes,” Alex said.
“Well, his father’s eyes are blue, too.”
“So that’s what you do,” Alex said. “Take care of your son and the house.”
“Yes, and run around trying to get a decent settlement from that cheap bastard I married. I’m a copy-editor, actually. That’s what I used to do, anyway, before I got married. Probably what I’ll go back to as soon as all this legal business is out of the way.”
“What is that, a copyeditor?” Alex asked. “Is that in advertising?”
“No, publishing. I check over an author’s manuscript for errors or contradictions, inconsistencies in spelling or … well, that’s simplifying it a lot. I also help in styling the book, I don’t mean typographically—a stylist does that—though I will indicate where a poem in the text, for example, should be centered on the longest line, and set in italics rather than roman, or where a different typeface should be used, though I won’t pick the actual type, the stylist will do that.”
Alex didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. “Mm,” he said.
“You’d be surprised how often a writer says that someone’s eyes are blue on page four, and then on page six the character will miraculously have green eyes. I’m supposed to flag that for him—call it to his attention.”
“That must be interesting work,” Alex said, thinking it sounded dull as shit.
“Yes, it is. I’ve worked with some very big writers. With their manuscripts, I should say. I rarely got to meet the authors personally.”
“Mm,” Alex said.
“So we’re both sort of on the fringes.” she said. “Of creative work, I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Offstage, so to speak,” she said, and smiled.
“Yeah, offstage,” he said, and returned the smile.
“No, Peter,” she said, “don’t eat that,” and rose immediately from the bench. Taking her son’s fist in her hand, she pried loose the chocolate’s foil wrapper. “He’s at the age where he tries to put everything in his mouth,” she said. As she moved back to the bench, Alex glanced at her breasts. Seeming not to notice his gaze, she sat beside him again, and said, “Now I’m all covered with chocolate,” and reached into her bag for a tissue.
“He must be a handful,” Alex said.
“That he is,” Jessica said. “I used to have a full-time housekeeper, but I had to get rid of her when Michael and I separated. He’s been so damn chintzy about this divorce … Well, I won’t bore you.” she said.
“You’re not boring me.”
“It’s just that he is absolutely a cheap penny-pinching bastard,” she said. “He’s supposed to send me five hundred a month until we iron this out, but he never sends the money when he’s supposed to, I’ve always got to call him and practically beg for it. I’m trying to be decent about this whole thing, you know. I told my lawyers I don’t want alimony, all I want is some kind of support money for my son. I can’t work and take care of a child at the same time, I figured I’d use the support money to hire a sleep-in. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
“Sure it is,” Alex said.
“But he’s resisting every inch of the way. I don’t think he can quite get it through his head that I just don’t love him anymore. That’s very hard for a man to understand. Especially a man like Michael.”
“What kind of man is he?” Alex said.
“To be blunt, he’s a prick,” Jessica said.
Her language startled Alex. He did not expect square girls to talk like whores. Again, he glanced at her breasts, more openly this time. Maybe she wasn’t quite as square as he thought she was. A square is a square, he reminded himself. Be careful.
“There,” she said, crumpling the tissue and putting it back into her bag. “Every time Peter eats anything, I’m the one who has to take a bath afterward. Remarkable,” she said, and smiled again. “Are you married?”
“No,” he said.
“Ever been married?”
“Never.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-five,” he said.
“I’m twenty-nine,” she said.
“I
figured that’s about how old you were.”
“I sometimes feel like a hundred and two,” she said.
“Come on,” he said.
“I mean it. This whole business has been very debilitating. I haven’t even been to a movie in the past three months, would you believe it?”
“Can’t you get a sitter or something?” he asked.
“Oh, sure I can.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I hate to go alone,” she said, and he figured this was it, this was where he was supposed to say Well, how’d you like to go with me sometime?
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s rough for a woman going anyplace alone.”
“Meals are especially difficult,” she said. “Eating alone.”
“Yeah, that can be rough,” he said.
He really did feel some sympathy for her situation, but at the same time he was figuring what might be in it for him. Percentages; it always got down to percentages. The percentages looked attractive here, but he was nonetheless wary of making the move she was seemingly hoping he’d make. On the plus side was the fact that she was a good-looking woman, obviously lonely, and conveniently located. He had no doubt something could be developed here, if he wanted it to develop, but he wasn’t sure it would be the same kind of thing she was looking for. That was the trouble with squares, they always seemed to be looking for things Alex didn’t want or need. Another trouble was that if he got to know her better, got to know her in the only way he really cared to know her, which was in the sack, she would then begin to ask all sorts of questions about him, and the story he’d given her about being a theater electrician wouldn’t hold water for a minute. Still, there were days when he missed having a woman around, not that this one would be around the way Kitty had been when she was living with him. Which was maybe an advantage, her being close enough to drop in on whenever he felt like it, but not so close that she’d get underfoot.
She took a cigarette from her bag and lit it. She was giving him plenty of time, she wasn’t pushing him at all, he kind of liked her and respected her for that. The thing to do, he supposed, if he really wanted to move on the opening she’d given him, was ask her out for tonight. The trouble was that tomorrow was Thursday, and tomorrow was the day he had to make the Rothman apartment. He wanted to get a good night’s sleep and be on his toes when he went into that lobby. There was no sense spending money on her if all it netted was a handshake outside her door. Hell with that noise. That was for high-school kids. Still, she was a damn good-looking woman, and she’d been on the wagon for a long time, hadn’t even been to a movie in three months. This could be very choice goods.
“What are you doing Saturday night?” he asked.
She didn’t hem or haw around, she didn’t say, “Saturday, well let me see”; he respected her for that, too. “Nothing,” she said, and smiled. “As usual.”
“Maybe we could do something together,” he said. He figured he’d have the money from Henry by tomorrow afternoon, Friday morning at the latest. Saturday would be a good night to go partying.
“Sure,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Mm-huh,” she said, and nodded.
“Well, good. You think you’ll be able to get a sitter?”
“Yes, I’m sure I can.”
“Okay then, maybe we can … You like Chinese food?”
“Mm-huh.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s say seven, seven-thirty, we’ll eat and maybe go to a movie afterwards. Or else go back and listen to some records, if that’s what we feel like doing. I’ve got a pretty good record collection. You like jazz?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So we’ll see what we feel like doing,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
She was blushing. The goddamn girl was blushing.
The alarm went off at eight on Thursday morning, but he’d already been up since dawn, had in fact watched the sun coming up over the rooftops. It was going to be a good day. Mrs. Rothman would go down for her walk, and when she came back her precious ring, and maybe a few other things besides, would be gone. Looking forward to the job, he felt the first faint twinges of expectation. By noon today he would be richer by at least nine thousand dollars. The Rothmans would be poorer by a lot more than that, of course, but the Rothmans meant absolutely nothing to him. He conveniently thought of burglary as a victimless crime, thought of the ring and whatever other jewels might be in the box as things to be stolen, but not things to be stolen from people. The jewels themselves were the victims in Alex’s mind, not the Rothmans. He didn’t know the Rothmans and he didn’t care about them. The jewels were probably insured, anyway, and only the insurance company would suffer a loss. Insurance companies were big business, and bigger thieves than Alex could ever hope to become.
As he showered and shaved, he didn’t think about the job at all. That was a trick he’d learned when he was in high school and a test was coming up. He’d study for the test all afternoon, and then go to a movie that night, putting the test completely out of his mind. He thought of Jessica instead of the job, and wondered if he’d been smart asking her out for Saturday night. Kitty would be here tomorrow asking for the two grand he’d promised her, and then she’d probably run over to pay the man, and come back later full of gratitude—if he knew Kitty at all. Her gratitude might be so overwhelming, in fact, that she’d maybe decide to spend the entire weekend with him, expressing it all over the place. So why had he asked Jessica out, when Kitty was a sure thing and Jessica was a question mark and a square besides? He had not played the percentages properly, he had bet against the goddamn odds. A party with Kitty was something to remember, especially when she was feeling grateful about something. Once, when she was still living with him, he had ripped off an apartment and come back with a very good haul, including a pair of ruby earrings which he’d decided not to fence but had given to Kitty instead. She later sold them to get dope money, of course, but her gratitude that night had reached spectacular heights; there was nothing like a grateful whore.
Still, being balled by Kitty was something close to pulling off a job that had been set up. No surprises. She was a pro, she had her bag of tricks all put together, and the tricks were guaranteed to satisfy. But there never was any hope of accidentally stumbling upon that once-in-a-lifetime score, not with Kitty there wasn’t. Well, maybe in the beginning there had been. Maybe, when he’d found himself liking this girl a lot … well … loving her, he supposed, yes, he’d loved her, he supposed he’d loved her, well then it had been a different story. And then the surprises hadn’t been in the sexual exploration, but in something much deeper—he had cried one time, he had actually, for Christ’s sake, cried. And that had been afterward, they’d been lying side by side on the pillow and he’d suddenly clutched Kitty to him fiercely, and he’d begun crying, and she’d cradled his head on her breasts, and stroked his hair, and said Hey, baby, come on, baby, hey, baby, and he’d nodded against her breasts wet with his own tears, and wondered why he was crying, and could not understand why. Yes, he supposed he had loved her once. He supposed that was why he was lending her the two grand. Because once he had loved her so much he had cried.
He dressed in a lightweight gabardine; the radio had said the temperature would be in the high seventies today, and he didn’t want to be sweating while he worked. He still didn’t know what he’d do if he came up against a really tough box. Maybe give it the old college try, and then say the hell with it. He didn’t want to think about that now. He put on a nice blue and gold silk rep his mother had given him last Christmas, when he went down to see her in Miami. His mother was living with a square john who worked as a tennis pro at one of the chintzier hotels. The guy was sixty-three years old, but still in pretty good shape, told Alex he was ranked twelfth in the United States, which Alex didn’t believe. Alex had hit a few balls with him, feeling like a goddamn fool with everybody watching him. The guy had told Alex he could become a very good tennis pla
yer with a little practice, and Alex had wondered why anyone in his right mind would want to get good at hitting a fuckin ball over a net. His mother had seemed happy enough, though he’d noticed lots of bruise marks on her arms. The ones on her legs he knew came from banging into furniture when she was drunk, but the ones on her arms he suspected came from Mr. Tennis Pro.
“Are you happy, Alex?” she asked him just before he left for New York again.
“Yes, Mom, I’m happy,” he said.
“I am, too,” she replied, but there was something in her eyes, something he could not fathom. She had told Mr. Tennis Pro that her son was a salesman for the Gillette Company. Alex’s father had been a salesman for the Gillette Company, but he hadn’t seen his father since he was eight, when the old man went off on one of his road trips and never came back. His mother had cried for a month, alternately proclaiming her love and her hatred for the old man. Finally, she told Alex his father had never been anything but a no-good son of a bitch. Still, when he’d gone down to see her at Christmas, she’d told Mr. Tennis Pro that Alex worked for the Gillette Company. “Are you happy, Alex?” and something in her eyes. He’d been glad to get the hell out of Miami.
He took his leather dispatch case from the top shelf of his bedroom closet and unclasped it. The case was a foot wide, eighteen inches long, and four inches deep—big enough for the tools he needed to carry, but not so big that it would attract attention. The jimmy and the power drill were the bulkiest tools he’d be carrying, anyway, and the jimmy was a sectional that unscrewed into three parts, and the power drill just cleared the space inside the case when the lid was closed. He put those in first because he’d be using them last, when he attacked the box. He also put in an extension cord, a flashlight, a set of punches and driftpins, a small sledgehammer, and a cold chisel. He would either punch the box or peel it, and those were all the tools he would need for either of the jobs. If the box looked like one that could neither be punched or peeled, he would leave it alone, take whatever stuff was around, and get the hell out.