Doors

by Ed McBain

  Alex then flipped through the directory pages to the NEW YORK–STATE OF listings, and under State Police, he found telephone numbers for substations at Brewster, Croton Falls, Hawthorne, Peekskill, Taconic State Parkway, and Tarrytown. Nine towns were lumped together under the heading Calls For. These were Armonk Village, Katonah, Langston, Lewisboro, Mount Kisco, Post Mills, Pound Ridge, Somers, and South Salem & Vicinity. For state police assistance to any of these nine towns, the number was BE 4–3100. Alex turned to the front of the book again and learned that BE was the dialing prefix for Bedford. Looking at the area code map, he estimated that Bedford was approximately fifteen miles from Post Mills.

  He wrote Duncan’s two telephone numbers on the same slip of paper with the Provident number, and then he made change at the cigar stand and went into the closest phone booth. A young girl answered the phone at Provident, and Alex told her he was interested in having a burglar alarm installed and would like to talk to someone about it. The man who came on the line a moment later said, “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

  “This is Mr. Cunningham,” Alex said. “Who am I talking to, please?”

  “Mr. D’Amato,” the man said.

  “Mr. D’Amato,” Alex said, “I’m purchasing a home in Post Mills, and the real estate agent up there said I should contact you about a burglar alarm system. There’s no police force up there, as you may know, and it seemed to me …”

  “Yes, a security system would be a wise investment.”

  “Now, I didn’t quite understand this, but she said something about a man named Charles Douglas, who runs a taxi service up there …”

  “Duncan,” D’Amato corrected.

  “Yes, Duncan, that was the name. Is he the man I should be contacting?”

  “No, this is the sales office for Provident.”

  “Doesn’t he work for you?”

  “Yes, he does. We have a private arrangement with him, whereby he monitors our system up there.”

  “A taxi driver monitors your system?” Alex said.

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Well, thank you very much, Mr. D’Amato. Actually, I had something a little more …”

  “I know that sounds a bit odd, Mr. Cunningham,” D’Amato said, “but it’s proven quite effective for us. We have fourteen houses wired into our system in Post Mills, and we’ve found …”

  “I thought you were hooked into the police, you see. The real estate agent led me to believe …”

  “Well, there is no police force in Post Mills, as you know. And when we made our initial tests up there, we found that the state trooper response was inadequate—not that they aren’t doing a very good job, it’s just that they have so much territory to cover. Response time is the key factor in any burglar alarm system.”

  “Well, if the alarm goes off, if the bell rings, who …?”

  “It’s a silent alarm, Mr. Cunningham.”

  “I don’t know anything about burglar alarms, I’m sorry. Would you explain what that means?”

  “It’s very simple. If anyone enters any of the houses we’ve wired—this is assuming the alarm is set, you understand—then the telephone rings in Mr. Duncan’s office, and a recorded message announces that there’s an intruder at such and such a subscriber’s house. Mr. Duncan immediately phones the state police and then goes over to the house himself.”

  “What if he’s on the road? If he runs a taxi service …”

  “There’s always someone answering his phone. If he’s out, an answering service in Post Mills picks up.”

  “What good will an answering service do if somebody’s in my house?”

  “Mr. Duncan’s cars are all equipped with two-way radios.”

  “Suppose he’s out at Kennedy Airport or something?”

  “He employs six drivers. One of them is always somewhere in the vicinity of Post Mills.”

  “I see,” Alex said. “Well, let me think about it. It’ll be some time before I take title …”

  “Mr. Cunningham, why don’t we do this?” D’Amato said. “I hate to give such a sketchy picture on the telephone. A telephone conversation just doesn’t suffice, really, when we’re talking about the protection of your family and your personal property. You’ll be making a sizable investment up there in Post Mills, I know the houses up there, Mr. Cunningham. I naturally want to sell you one of our systems, I happen to feel we’re installing the best burglar alarm system in Westchester County. I also want you to understand it completely. I can make an appointment for you here in White Plains or, what would be more fruitful, actually, we could meet at the house you’re buying in Post Mills, go over the terrain and the interior together, and at the same time discuss more fully …”

  “Well, let me talk it over with my wife,” Alex said. “Thank you very much, Mr. D’Amato.”

  He put the receiver onto the hook and smiled. He had learned all he needed to know about the alarm system in Reed the Third’s house. It was a telephone dialer, and it wasn’t worth a shit. However it was rigged—open, closed, or combination circuit—what happened if you tripped it was that it activated the telephone. Instead of an alarm going off, the telephone automatically dialed a number that had been fed into it, usually a police station, but in this case Duncan’s Livery. Whoever picked up on the other end got a recorded message saying there’d been a break-in. Usually, if it was a police station, the message gave the address of the place. With Duncan sitting the system, though, and with only fourteen houses on the wire, there probably was no need for that, the message would just say Break-in at the Jones house, or the Smith house, or the Reed house. Your telephone dialer was silent, the burglar never even knew he’d disturbed the electrical flow that activated the phone. But it was almost worthless because in order for the phone to dial out, there had to be telephone wires. And wherever there were telephone wires, they had to feed into the house some place. In order to knock out the alarm, all you had to do was cut those wires. Burglar trips to alarm, so what? Phone can’t dial for help with the wires cut.

  It looked nice.

  It looked very nice indeed.

  When they told Daisy they wouldn’t be up there on Thursday, she misunderstood them.

  “Good,” she said. “I was hoping you’d call off the job.”

  “Who said we’re calling it off?” Archie said.

  “You just told me …”

  “We just told you there’s no reason to come up there, we know what kind of alarm Reed’s got.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said.

  “What do you mean you were hoping we’d call it off?” Alex asked.

  “I been worrying about it, that’s all. I don’t want it to get back to me.”

  “How’s it gonna get back to you?”

  “Cause Mr. Reed knows I been inside the house.”

  “So what? Must be dozens of people go in and out of that house all the time.”

  “It’s just he might think I set it up.”

  “Even so, you’re protected. He can’t involve you cause then the wife finds out.”

  “You never can tell,” Daisy said. “He might all at once get religion, decide to tell his wife all about it. You steal a man blind, he can get religious mighty fast.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Archie said. “Just relax, will ya?”

  “I still wish you’d call it off,” Daisy said.

  The kid knew him now. “See?” he said, and held up his stuffed bear.

  “That’s some bear you got there, Peter. That bear’s almost bigger’n you are.”

  “Bear,” the kid said. “Fuzzy bear.”

  He was sitting in the middle of the crib surrounded by the stuffed bear and a half dozen other toys. From the bathroom down the hall, Jessica called, “It’s almost bedtime, Peter.”

  “Fuzzy go seep,” the kid said.

  “You have to go to sleep, too,” Alex said.

  “No, no,” he said, and shook his head.

  “Get a good night’s rest, so you c
an wake up tomorrow and play with the bear.”

  “No,” the kid said, and shook his head again.

  “Alex would you get his things out of the crib and tuck him in?” Jessica said.

  “You hear your mommy?” Alex said.

  “Just leave the bear,” Jessica said. “He likes to sleep with it.”

  “You like to sleep with the bear, Peter?”

  “Fuzzy bear,” the kid said.

  “Okay, let’s just get these other things out of here, okay? Then you can go to sleep with the bear.”

  “Okay.”

  Alex took the other toys out of the crib and put them on one of the shelves in the unpainted bookcase. When he went back to the crib, the kid was already lying down, the bear clutched to his chest, his thumb in his mouth.

  “Don’t suck your thumb, Peter, it’ll make your teeth crooked,” Alex said.

  “Mmm,” the kid said, but he went right on sucking his thumb.

  “I think you’re gonna need a blanket tonight,” Alex said. “Little chilly. Here you go now, let’s just tuck it up right here, right under your chin and Fuzzy’s chin, too. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “G’night now, Peter,” he said, and almost reached over the crib railing to kiss the kid, but he didn’t.

  “Night,” the kid said.

  “G’night.”

  “Night.”

  He went out of the room, and the kid called after him again, “Night,” and he said, “G’night, Peter,” and again the kid called, “Night.”

  “That’s a ritual with him,” Jessica said. She was standing in the hallway wearing a white terry robe, belted at the waist. Her hair was wet. In her hands, she was holding a portable hair dryer. “He’ll keep it up all night if you let him.”

  “Well, he’s a good kid,” Alex said.

  “Can you fix this thing for me?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

  “Search me,” she said, and shrugged. “You’re the electrician.”

  She kissed him on the cheek, handed him the dryer, and then went into the kid’s room. Alex carried the dryer into the living room with him, put it down on the coffee table, and then sat on the couch and stared at it. Has to be a dryer, he thought. Couldn’t have been a lamp, something like that, simple wiring like in an open-circuit system. No. Has to be a fuckin hair dryer. In the hallway, he heard Jessica exchanging three or four goodnights with her son, and then she came into the living room and went directly to the cigarette box on the coffee table, and took one from it, and lit it. Then she looked at the dryer.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “Have you got a screwdriver?” Alex asked. “I’ll have to take it apart.”

  “I’ll get you one,” she said. “Do you want a drink? Fix yourself a drink.”

  “A Phillips, I’ll need.”

  “What’s a Phillips?”

  “With the little cross on the head. I’ll need that to get these screws off.”

  “I’ll see what I have out there,” she said, and left the room. When she came back, she was carrying two screwdrivers. One of them was a Phillips. She put both on the coffee table, and said, “He is a nice kid, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “He likes you a lot,” Jessica said. “This is a very difficult time for him. He keeps asking me where his Daddy is. Where Daddy, he says. But he likes you a lot, Alex.”

  “Mmm,” Alex said, and began unscrewing the four screws that held the dryer together. He didn’t know what he was going to find inside there, it was something like peeling a safe without having any idea of the contents. She was watching him intently, the way people watch an automobile mechanic when he’s fooling around under the hood, no idea what the man is doing with the engine there, but fascinated, anyway. She was watching him that way now.

  “How’d you make out today?” she asked.

  “No luck,” Alex said.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Stage electrician’s union,” he said.

  “Must be awful for you,” she said.

  “Well, I’ve got a little put aside,” he said. “In this business, I know there’ll be stretches when I’m not working, so I plan for those. I’m in good shape, Jess, really. You don’t have to worry about it.” He had taken the dryer apart now, it lay in two halves on the coffee table. He made a show of studying the wiring.

  “It just won’t go on,” Jessica said. “I turn it on and nothing happens.”

  “Mmm,” he said. “This is a foreign dryer, huh?”

  “German,” she said, and nodded. “It’s supposed to be a very good one.”

  “Cause the parts in here look different than ours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ours are different,” he said, and immediately began putting the dryer together again. “You’d better take it back where you bought it. There’s a warranty on it, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, but that means I won’t see the damn thing for another month.”

  “Can’t help you,” he said, and smiled.

  “Some electrician,” she said, and returned the smile. “Meanwhile, my hair’s wet. Let me get a towel, Alex. Fix me a martini, would you? I feel like a martini.”

  He screwed the dryer together while she was gone, and then he went to the bar and mixed a pitcherful of martinis. When she came back into the living room, a white towel was wrapped around her head. He had already poured two drinks from the pitcher. She picked hers up immediately, said “Skoal,” and then drank. “Ahhh,” she said. “Good. You’re better with martinis than you are with hair dryers.”

  “What can I tell you?” he said, and smiled again.

  “Felice’ll be here at eight,” she said.

  “I didn’t know we were going out.”

  “I thought you said …”

  “I thought …”

  “I can call her, tell her to …”

  “No, no.”

  “If you’d prefer staying home.”

  “No, let’s go out,” he said.

  “I thought you said you wanted to go out tonight. When we talked on the phone this morning …”

  “Yeah, that’s all right, don’t worry about it.”

  “If you’re short of cash or anything …”

  “No, I’m fine. Come on, Jess, I’m fine.”

  “It really ought to be my treat, anyway,” Jessica said, and smiled. “I’ve got something to celebrate tonight, Alex.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Well …” she said, drawing out the word, still smiling, “I went to see Samalson again this afternoon. My lawyer, I fold you I was going to see him, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “So guess what?” she said. She was still smiling. She looked like a kid with a secret, sitting there on the couch with her legs tucked under her, bundled in the terry robe, the white towel wrapped around her head. A little kid with a big secret. He knew what the secret was, he could guess what it was, but he didn’t want to spoil it for her.

  “What?” he said.

  “Michael’s agreed to a settlement,” she said in a rush.

  “Great,” he said. “That’s great, Jess.”

  “Now how’s that?” she said, grinning.

  “Great,” he said again.

  “That means once we sign the agreement, I can go down to Haiti or the Dominican Republic and get a divorce in twenty-four hours.”

  “Are they good, those divorces?”

  “Good as gold.”

  “I mean, will they stand up?”

  “They’ll stand up and cheer!” she said, and burst out laughing, and suddenly said, “Let’s get smashed.” She moved swiftly to the pitcher, and poured herself another drink. “I feel like getting smashed tonight. Let’s just sit here and get smashed, the hell with going out. I’ll call Felice and tell her to forget it. Would you like to get smashed?”

  “If you want to, sure.”

  “I’d like to
see you smashed. You’re a very controlled person, Alex, I’d like to see you when you’re really totally and completely smashed out of your mind.”

  “I never get that smashed,” he said.

  “Let’s get you that smashed, okay? Let’s both get smashed out of our minds.”

  “Whatever you say,” he said.

  “I’ll call Felice. All I have to do is change Peter later, I can do that blindfolded. Let’s not worry about anything but getting smashed, okay? I feel terrific, Alex. I feel so goddamn terrific, I can’t tell you. I’m going to be free of that prick at last, do you realize it? Do you know how much that means to me?”

  “I know you’ve been wanting it, Jess.”

  “Yes,” she said, and nodded. “Yes.” She looked into the mouth of her glass for a moment, thoughtfully, and then suddenly grinned. “Jesus,” she said, “I can’t believe it,” and immediately went to the phone and dialed Felice’s number. As she waited for the phone to ring, she gestured for Alex to drink up, and then blew a kiss across the room.

  He had no intention of getting drunk, not with her or any other square. Moreover, he didn’t know how much he liked the idea of her getting drunk. He had seen his mother drunk on far too many occasions, and he knew there was nothing attractive about a drunken broad. So he listened as she made her apologies to Felice, but he was already planning to go easy on the sauce, and maybe to call out for some food later, there was a place up on Broadway that delivered. She finished her second martini shortly after she got off the phone, and then she poured herself another from the pitcher, and filled Alex’s glass at the same time. There was something almost manic in her mood, something that smacked to him of imminent danger, but he told himself he was in complete control of the situation. She could drink herself falling-down drunk for all he cared; he was going to stay sober. There were too many secrets to protect, and drinking with a square was not the same as drinking with somebody who was in it.