The Burglar in the Rye (15 page)

The lock was old, and some of its pins and tumblers were worn, and sometimes the result is a lock that just about falls open if you give it a hard look. In this case, though, my picks kept slipping around inside, and at one point I gave up and tried my room key. There was a chance it would work, albeit a slim one, but long shots do come in every once in a while, and wouldn’t it be nice if this was one of those times?

Dream on….

I put the key back in my pocket, got back to business, and had better luck this time around. I cracked the door and let my flashlight do the walking, and there was a double bed right where it was supposed to be, and no one was in it. I slipped in, drew the door shut, and collapsed into a chair.

I used my flash again, less hurriedly this time, and was able to say with certainty that this was the room I’d been in the other night. I hadn’t been paying attention, and thus couldn’t consciously remember the room and its furnishings, but it turned out I was able to recognize them when I saw them. The litter on top of the highboy dresser was familiar, too. I opened a couple of drawers, and I was in the right place. The second drawer held feminine undergarments, but this time there was no jewelry stashed there.

I could put the rubies back where I’d found them. If the room’s occupant hadn’t yet noticed their absence, I’d have concealed my actions entirely. If she’d realized they were gone, she’d find them and wonder if she was losing her mind.

But was I losing mine? Why on earth would I want to put the jewels back? I wasn’t sure who the rightful owner was, or if the rubies had one. Cynthia Considine? Her husband, John? Isis Gauthier? I didn’t see
that any of the three had anything approaching a moral equivalent of clear title. Ms. 303 had as good a claim as they did, and wasn’t my own claim every bit as good as hers?

I decided it was, and the jewelry case stayed in my pocket.

But another question arose. What exactly was I doing here?

I had to sit down to think about that one. I’d never stopped to question the impulse to come to this room, and then I’d been so caught up in the process of finding the right room and picking my way past its lock that I hadn’t had time to wonder what I’d do once I was inside.

And it was a logical place to be, wasn’t it? Now that I’d located the room, now that I was in it, I could look around until I learned whose room it was. And then I’d very likely know who had taken Isis Gauthier’s rubies, and then I’d know—

What?

I’d probably know the name of some morally bankrupt friend of Isis’s who’d cast a greedy eye on the rubies and seized an opportunity for theft when it presented itself. There wasn’t much I could do with that information, unless I wanted to convey it to Isis, in the hopes of getting back on a first-name basis with her.

Would it bring me any closer to Gulliver Fairborn’s letters? Would it help me learn who killed Anthea Landau? I’d had eight questions on the little list I hadn’t written down, and the only one it might answer was
How did the jewels get into that room on the third floor?

Still, I couldn’t get away from the idea that everything was tied together. Otherwise coincidence played too
large a role. And, if everything was indeed intertwined, then any bit of data I picked up might lead to something else.

I put on my gloves—I’d already left no end of prints in this room, but that didn’t give me a reason to leave still more—and I got busy. There was a lamp on the little desk—brass, with a green glass shade, and now that I saw it I remembered it from my first visit. I switched it on and went around the room, looking at things, trying to find something that would identify the occupant.

It would have been easier if I’d happened to be a cop. I’m sure some of the clothing had labels or laundry marks that could have been traced back to the purchaser. For that matter, all a cop would have had to do was flash his badge at the desk clerk and demand the name of the person registered in Room 303. That wasn’t foolproof, it might lead only to an alias in the Peter Jeffries mode, but it was yet another option that cops have and burglars don’t. (When you look at all their advantages, it’s amazing we ever get away with anything.)

I was in the closet, examining the clothes as if in the hope that her mother might have sewn in name tapes before sending her to camp, and pondering laundry marks and labels as if they were going to tell me something. I popped the catches on a small suitcase, the kind with wheels and a pull-up handle. A few years ago nobody but stewardesses had them, and now it’s the only kind you see. This one was empty, and I closed it up and turned off the closet light, and I was on my way out of there when something flickered in my memory. I’d just seen something. Now what the hell was it?

A luggage tag.

Well, of course. People tie tags on their suitcases, with
their names and addresses and phone numbers, so that the airlines, having lost their luggage for them, can, once in a blue moon, find it again. (It’s also handy if someone steals your bag. If he likes the general quality of your possessions, he knows right where to come to get more. And, if you tucked a set of keys in your bag, all the better.)

I spun around, leaned over to peer at the luggage tag, and of course the light was too dim to make it out. I straightened up and reached to switch on the closet light, and as soon as it came on I switched it off again.

Because I heard a key in the lock.

Oh, God. Now what?

Stay in the closet? No, I couldn’t, the desk lamp was on. I got to it in a hurry and switched it off, while the key went on jiggling in the lock. The worn pins and tumblers evidently presented the same sort of problem even if you had a key, and what had been a nuisance a few minutes ago was a godsend now. Back to the closet? No, the bathroom was closer—and in less time than it took to have the thought I was in it with the door closed.

And just in time, because I could hear the door open, and a moment later I could hear it close. I didn’t hear the light switch, but when she switched the light on in the room some of it showed under the bathroom door.

Good I’d stayed out of the closet. I’ve been in closets a couple of times in the past when householders turned up unexpectedly, and I always managed to escape detection, but I didn’t like my chances this time around. It was a cool night, and she’d almost certainly have been wearing a jacket or a coat, and the first thing she’d do was take it off, and thus the first place she’d go was the closet.

And where did I think was the
second
place she would go?

The bathroom, of course, and what was I going to do when she burst in and found me there? I couldn’t pretend I was a plumber sent to fix a dripping faucet. I wasn’t dressed for it and I hadn’t brought the right tools for the job.

Should I lock the door?

Hell, she’d hear it if I did. Unless I covered the sound by coughing or flushing the toilet, and then she’d hear
that.
And even if she didn’t, she’d find out that the bathroom door was locked when she tried to open it. And she’d call downstairs, and they’d send somebody up, and the next thing you knew I’d be having my rights read to me. They’re important rights, but there’s a limit to how often I want to hear about them.

There was a window, the glass frosted so that I couldn’t tell if it led to the fire escape. It didn’t look as though it had been opened since the last time it had been painted, and there was no guarantee I could open it, and no chance at all I could do so without making a lot of noise. It was a tiny window, too, and no cinch to climb through, and—

The doorknob turned. The door opened.

B
ut by then I was standing in the bathtub, cowering behind the shower curtain, feeling every bit as secure about the whole enterprise as Janet Leigh in
Psycho.

She turned on the light as she entered. This didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t make me happy, either. The shower curtain was somewhere between opaque and translucent. I could see shapes through it, but only if I worked at it. The more light there was, the more clearly I could see.

If the shower curtain had been designed by the inventor of the one-way mirror, I might have welcomed the extra illumination. But every quid has a pro quo, and the better I could see, the more easily I could be seen in return.

Even with the light on I couldn’t tell much about my visitor. Based on the ordinariness of her silhouette, I could estimate that she was not too tall and not too short, and neither a wraith nor a blimp. But I could
have guessed as much without having seen her at all, and I’d have been right ninety percent of the time. Anyway, I had more to go on than the blurred shape visible through the plastic curtain. I’d seen the clothes in her closet.

Well, I knew one thing more now. I knew she was proper, even prim. Fastidious, at the very least.

Because the first thing she did after turning on the light was close the door.

I don’t know. Maybe everybody does this, or maybe it’s a girl thing. But when I’m alone in my apartment, I’ll tell you right now that I don’t close the bathroom door when I have to take a whiz. I’m sure there are people who do—I was in a room with one of them now—even as I am sure there are people who run water in the sink while they are thus occupied, so that they won’t be able to hear what they’re doing.

She didn’t do that, and I could hear her loud and clear. This might have been provocative, even exciting, if I’d been a little kinkier than God made me, but under the circumstances all it was was disturbing. Not because I was offended, but because I was envious. The gentle tinkling sound made me aware that I, too, had a bladder, and a hitherto unnoticed need to empty it.

I’m not going to dwell on this, but it’s something to profit from if you’ve been contemplating a life of crime. It’s not all glamour and big profits. You’re going to spend a fair amount of time wishing you had the chance to pee.

My guest had the chance, and she was taking it. Then she stood up and flushed, and then she washed her hands, and who could have expected less of someone who’d bothered closing the door?

Then she opened the door and walked through it, and
then my blood froze, because, casually and conversationally, she said, “Your turn.”

Not that I wouldn’t welcome a turn, as I’ve already explained. If I hadn’t quite reached the shifting-one’s-weight-from-one-foot-to-the-other stage, I could already see it looming on the horizon. But when had she spotted me, and how had she masked her discovery so well, only to tip it off so offhandedly?
“Your turn”
—and while I was taking my turn she’d be on the phone, telling the number-cruncher downstairs to call 911.

And she left the door open.

I should point out that all of this happened quickly, and that I didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it. Otherwise I’d have figured it out, as you very likely have, but before my drunk/hungover (choose one) mind could run through its gears, a taller silhouette passed through the door, pausing to draw it shut. Then he strode manfully over to the commode, bent over to raise the seat, straightened up, and went at it.

I’d draw the curtain here, but for the fact that I was behind it. He did what he’d come there to do, flushed, washed his hands, dried them on a towel, and switched off the light on his way out the door. He didn’t close the door this time.

So I got to hear them making love.

Some years ago, when I was a teenage kid embarking on a career in burglary, the whole enterprise (I blush to admit) bore a distinct undercurrent of sexual energy. You can blame it on my youth; it seems to me there was a sexual aspect to everything back then.

I suppose a Freudian might have contended that I started breaking into houses in the first place in hopes of sneaking a peek at the primal scene—i.e., my own
parents, doing the dirty deed. God knows what lurks in the unconscious, but I have to tell you that was the last thing in the world I wanted to see, and if I’d wanted to spy on my folks I wouldn’t have gone looking for them in other people’s houses. I’d have stayed home.

But that’s not to say I wouldn’t have welcomed a glimpse of somebody else doing something I wasn’t supposed to see. I didn’t go looking for it, and in fact took great pains to make sure other people’s houses were empty before I came calling. All the same, I was frequently stirred by what I found. An unmade bed would send my mind reeling, just at the thought of what might have taken place in it mere hours before I arrived on the scene. A bra, a pair of panties—I didn’t steal them, I didn’t stand around sniffing them and pawing the ground, but I was damn well aware of them.

Once, then, I’d have found it thrilling to be so close to a coupling couple, intensely aware of them even as they were wholly unaware of me. Maybe, if I’d managed to get in touch with my Inner Adolescent, I could have summoned up some excitement even now, but I’m not so sure. I think those days are gone, and good riddance.

Because, as much as I enjoy the sport as a participant, I’ve long since outgrown any interest in it as a spectator. I’ve seen a few XXX-rated movies over the years, and I don’t think I’m a prude about it, but I’d just as soon get through life without ever seeing another.

So I stood there and listened to their lovemaking, wishing I or they or all of us were elsewhere, engaged in some other pursuit. Watching TV, say, or playing pinochle, or sharing a pizza. I didn’t have to close my eyes—they were in the other room, and I was behind a curtain—but I’d have liked to put my fingers in my ears, to shut out sounds I didn’t much want to listen to.

And I did that at one point, only to take them out a moment later. Because, see, I needed whatever information my ears might bring me. I didn’t know a damn thing about them beyond the fact that one was male and the other female. So far I hadn’t heard a word out of him, and the only words she’d said were “Your turn” as she left the bathroom, and that hadn’t been enough to let me know if it was a voice I recognized.

Maybe they’d talk. Maybe they’d say something that would serve to tell me who they were, or answer some of the questions on my unwritten list. So I listened, and all they did was make the sounds people make when they’re thus engaged. Some grunting, some groaning, some mumbling, some moaning, and the occasional sharp intake of breath and small sigh of appreciation.

And then, at the very end, it got discernibly exciting for her. It may have been every bit as thrilling for him as well, but he was man enough to keep it to himself. She got verbal, and pretty noisy, and I tried to tune it out, and then a phrase caught my attention and I listened more intently than ever, and yes I thought yes it was yes!

I knew who she was.

I don’t know how the dictionary defines “anticlimactic.” I suppose I could look it up, but so could you, if you care. I don’t, because I know what it is. It’s standing in a bathtub, desperate for a pee, after two people in the next room have finished making love.

Now what?

I couldn’t hear a thing, and just what did that mean? Probably just that they were lying there in companionable silence, either gathering their strength for another round of the same or drifting off to sleep. Either way, I was stuck.

I stayed where I was, and I found myself thinking about Redmond O’Hanlon and the candiru. Suppose I was swimming in the Amazon, feeling the same urgency I felt now, and knowing that to pee was to send an engraved invitation to every candiru in the neighborhood. How long could I hold out?

Well, you get the idea. I don’t know how far I might have gone with that line of thought, or what action it might eventually have prompted, but sounds from the other room intruded. They were moving about, I realized, and having a conversation, though in voices too low-pitched for me to make out.

Footsteps approached, and the bathroom light came on. Oh, Christ, were they going to shower? It wasn’t exactly unheard-of after a romp of this sort, but—

It was the woman, and I was pleased to discover that she was less fastidious than I’d thought earlier. She wet a towel in the sink and dabbed herself with it, then blotted herself dry with another. She left, and it was his turn, and wouldn’t you know the son of a bitch peed again? And flushed, and washed his hands, and switched off the light and left.

Then there were more sounds of movement, and then the light went out. Not the one in the bathroom, that was already out, but the one in the bedroom. And next I heard an unimaginably sweet sound, that of a door closing and a key turning in a lock.

I waited a moment—to make sure that was really what I’d heard, to give them a chance to come back for whatever they’d forgotten. I’d have waited longer, to give them a chance to walk clear to the elevator and back, but I have to say I’d already waited long enough.

I drew the shower curtain, climbed out of the tub. I
didn’t have to raise the toilet seat. He’d left it up, loutish inconsiderate male that he was.

Not me. I am, after all, a sensitive New Age guy. When I was done, I put the seat down.

I’ll tell you, all I wanted to do was get out of there. But I did remember to check the closet. The suitcase was still in place. I don’t even know that either of them ever bothered going into the closet. It seemed to me they were too busy scuttling in and out of the bathroom.

I took a good look at the tag on the suitcase, and the name on it was Karen Kassenmeier, with an address in Kansas City. I thought about copying it down, but why bother? I recognized the sounds she’d been making toward the end. I’d heard them before, and the woman who’d made them certainly hadn’t introduced herself as Karen Kassenmeier.

And who was he, and why did he get to make those particular sounds come out of her mouth? I probably should have nudged the shower curtain aside just long enough to get a quick look at him. But I’d have just seen the back of him while he was using first the toilet and then the sink. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

They’d made the bed, I noticed. But they hadn’t changed the sheets, so there was a good chance he’d left some DNA behind. And it could damn well stay where it was as far as I was concerned.

Odd that they’d stop to make the bed….

I went back for another look, and my legendary powers of observation determined that they hadn’t made the bed, having never unmade it in the first place. The chenille bedspread bore unmistakable (not to say unmentionable) evidence of the very sort of activity I had so recently overheard. They were what you’d expect, along
with one thing I wouldn’t have expected—a blackish mark, roughly the size and shape of the palm of one’s hand, directly above one of the pillows.

I wondered what it was. I didn’t much want to touch it, but I took a long look at it. Could it have seeped through from beneath? If so, I didn’t much want to see the source of the seepage. But I made myself lift up a corner of the spread for a peek at the pillow beneath it, and what I saw was an ordinary white pillowcase, with no blackish mark on it, and indeed nothing out of the ordinary about it.

And was that what I wanted to be staring at when she—or both of them—came back?

No, emphatically not. I wanted to be in my own room, staring at the undersides of my eyelids. And, in not much time at all, there I was and that’s what I was doing. It was getting on for five o’clock, and I’d draw less attention leaving the hotel at a decent hour than slinking off before dawn. And why chase all the way uptown to my apartment only to hurry back a couple of hours later to open my shop? My rent was paid. I might as well get some use out of the room.

It says right on the aspirin bottle not to take the stuff more often than every four hours, but the person who wrote that didn’t have any way of knowing how I was going to feel right now. I’d gulped a couple more first thing upon returning to the room, and now I lay on the bed in the dark and waited for them to kick in.

Paddington Bear lay beside me. I’d taken off all of my clothes. He’d kept his on, including his boots. I tried to keep my mind on Paddington, but it would have none of it.

It kept insisting on returning to Room 303, and what I’d encountered there. Well, no, there hadn’t been an ac
tual encounter, and thank God for that, but I’d glimpsed her through a plastic shower curtain and heard her through an open door.

The glimpse didn’t tell me much more than that she sat down to pee. The unmistakable cries of passion, cries that had previously resounded within the walls of my own apartment, they told me a good deal more.

The luggage tag swore she was Karen Kassenmeier. But I knew better.

She was Alice Cottrell.