The Burglar in the Rye (4 page)

T
he Paddington had a single stairwell, and the fire door giving access to it had a sign on it explaining that it was the reverse of a Roach Motel. Guests could get out, but they couldn’t get back in again, not without walking clear down to the lobby.

Yeah, right.

I let myself out and walked up two flights of stairs. At the fifth-floor landing there was a wall-mounted firehose with a massive dull brass nozzle, and I figured they’d picked the right spot for it, because the stairwell reeked of cigarette smoke. Evidently one or more of the hotel employees was in the habit of ducking onto the stairs for a quick smoke, and if there’d been anything flammable on hand, it probably would have long since caught fire. But there was nothing but the metal stairs and the plaster walls, unless you counted the firehose itself, and you never hear of them burning, do you?

At the sixth floor I put my ear to the door, and when
I didn’t hear anything but the beating of my own heart I took out my tools and put them to work. There was really nothing to it. A little strip of spring steel snicked back the spring lock and I stepped out into the sixth-floor hallway, confidence and self-assurance oozing from every other pore, and ran head-on into the appraising gaze of a woman who stood waiting for the elevator.

“Good evening,” she said.

“Good evening.”

Well, it had been, up to then. And in ordinary circumstances the sight of her would have done nothing to detract from it. She was tall and slender, with skin the color of coffee with plenty of cream and sugar. She had a high forehead and a long narrow nose and prominent cheekbones and a pointed chin, and her hair was in cornrows, which often looks hokey to me, but which now looked quite perfect. She was wearing what I think you call a bolero jacket over what I’m pretty sure you call a skirt and blouse. The jacket was scarlet and the blouse was canary yellow and the skirt was royal blue, and that sounds as though it should have been garish, but somehow it wasn’t. In fact there was something reassuringly familiar about the color scheme, although I couldn’t think what it was.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. “My name is Isis Gauthier.”

“I’m Peter Jeffries.”

Shit, I thought. That was the second time I’d got it wrong. I was Jeffrey Peters, not Peter Jeffries. Why couldn’t I remember a simple thing like my own goddam name?

“I could have sworn,” she said, “that you just now came through the door from the stairs.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes,” she said. I’d seen her in the lobby that afternoon, but I hadn’t looked twice at her. I couldn’t remember what she’d been wearing, but I was sure it was less colorful than what she wore now. And I hadn’t even noticed her eyes then. They were cornflower blue, I noted now, which meant either contact lenses or a genetic anomaly. Either way the effect was startling. She was as striking a woman as I’d seen in years, and I wished to God the elevator would come along and take her the hell out of my life.

“And those doors lock automatically,” she went on. “You can open them from the hall, but not from the staircase.”

“Gauthier,” I said, thoughtfully. “That’s French, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“There was a writer, Théophile Gauthier.
Mademoiselle de Maupin.
That was one of his books. I don’t suppose he’s any relation?”

“I’m sure he was,” she said, “to someone. But not to me. How did you manage to get in from the stairs, Mr. Jeffries?”

“I stepped out,” I said, “and before I let the door close I wedged some paper in the lock. That way I could get back in again.”

“And is the paper still wedged in the lock?”

“No, I took it out just now, so that the door would function the way it’s supposed to.”

“That was considerate,” she said, and smiled warmly. Her teeth were gleaming white, her lips full, and did I mention that her voice was pitched low, and a little husky? She was just about perfect, and I couldn’t wait to see the last of her.

“Why,” she had to ask, “did you want to use the stairs, Mr. Jeffries?”

“Let’s not be so formal,” I said. “Call me Peter.”

And you must call me Isis,
she was supposed to say. But all she did was repeat the question. At least by then I had an answer for it.

“I wanted a cigarette,” I said. “My room’s nonsmoking, and I didn’t want to break the rule, so I ducked into the stairwell for a smoke.”

“That’s what I want,” she said. “A cigarette. Do you have one, Peter?”

“I just smoked my last one.”

“Oh, that’s a pity. I suppose you smoke one of those ultra-low-tar brands.”

Where was she going with this?

“Because you don’t smell of tobacco smoke at all, you see.”

Oh.

“So I don’t think you ducked into the stairwell for a cigarette.” She sniffed the air. “In fact,” she said, “I doubt you’ve had a cigarette in years.”

“You’ve caught me,” I said, smiling disarmingly.

She was about as easily disarmed as the Michigan Militia. “Indeed,” she said, “but in what? What were you doing on the stairs, Mr. Jeffries?”

Damn, I thought. We were back to Mr. Jeffries again, after having so recently reached a first-name basis.

“I was visiting someone,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Someone who lives on another floor. I wanted to be discreet, because my friend wouldn’t want it known that I’d paid a visit.”

“And that’s why you used the stairs.”

“Yes.”

“Because if you were to take the elevator…”

“Carl downstairs might see me on the closed-circuit monitor.”

“Unlikely,” she said. “And so what if he did?”

“Or I might run into someone in the elevator,” I said.

“Instead you ran into me.”

“So I did.”

“In the hallway.”

“Yes.” Waiting for the bloody elevator, I thought, which had evidently stopped running altogether, because where the hell was it?

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said. “You’re a gentleman, and they’re rare these days. Male or female?”

“I should think that’s fairly obvious,” I said. “You just called me a gentleman, and I told you my name, so of course I’m a man…Oh, you mean my friend.”

“Good thinking.”

“My friend’s a woman,” I said, “and I’m afraid that’s all I’m prepared to tell you about her. Oh, look. Your elevator’s come.”

“And about time,” she said, making no move to get on it. “Sometimes it takes forever. Is she a permanent resident? Or a transient?”

“What possible difference can it make to you?”

“She’d have to be a resident,” she said, “or you’d probably be sharing a room. And she probably lives alone, or the two of you would be meeting in your room, not in hers.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I said.

“Actually, you already did. You asked me what possible difference it could make to me whether your
friend was a resident or a transient. No difference, I suppose.”

“Here’s another question,” I said. “What do you do for a living? Because you’d probably make a pretty good private detective if you put your mind to it.”

“I never thought of that,” she said. “It’s an interesting idea. Good night, Peter.” And she stepped onto the elevator and the doors closed.

So she never did answer my question, and I still didn’t know what she did for a living, or anything else about her. But at least we were back on a first-name basis.

No light showed beneath the door of 602.

All that told me for sure was that the light was out, and I made doubly sure by stooping for a squint through the keyhole. The light was out and the phone had rung unanswered, and what did that mean? Either she was out or she was deep in sleep. Or she’d been in the tub when I phoned earlier, and now she was sitting in the dark, alone with her memories of writers she’d discovered and editors she’d outsmarted.

Abort the mission,
urged an inner voice.
Cut your losses and pull the plug. Hoist anchor, haul ass, and escape while there’s still time.

I listened hard to that still small voice, and what it said made good sense to me. Why not heed what it had to say?

Why not? Anthea Landau would keep. She wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was her collected correspondence. Why not take the night off?

Why not?
another voice countered.
I’ll tell you why not. Because that’s how it starts, with the postponement of a simple act of burglary. The next thing you know, you’ll leave the store unopened on a sunny morning, not
wanting to waste the day in a bookstore. Or it’ll rain, and you won’t want to leave the house. Procrastination is the thief of time, and what’s more it’s a dangerous habit, and so is self-indulgence, and if you give either one of them an inch they’ll take an ell, whatever that is, and the next thing you know you’ll be drinking on work nights, and breaking into apartments on an impulse, and looking at five-to-fifteen in a hotel with no room service, and no teddy bears, either.

Does that sound overstated? Well, that’s a conscience for you. Mine has never maintained a sense of proportion, or learned the art of wearing the world as a loose garment. It’s an uptight conscience, a shrill small voice within, and I’m scared to tell it to shut up.

I knocked, not too loud, on Anthea Landau’s door. When it drew no response I knocked again, and when my second knock went unanswered I took a quick look around. No Isis, thank God, and nobody else, either.

I could have tried my own room key. There’s always some duplication—a hotel with a thousand rooms doesn’t have a thousand different keys—but I didn’t waste seconds trying it. My picks worked, and almost as quickly.

The door eased open on silent hinges. Within, the room was dark and still. I slipped in, shut the door behind me, and stood for a moment, letting my eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. And I suppose they did just that, but it was hard to tell, because I still couldn’t see a damn thing. Evidently the place had blackout curtains, and evidently she’d drawn them, and evidently the moths hadn’t gotten into them, because the only light I could spot was the narrow line at the bottom of the door.

I got out my pocket flashlight and played its narrow
beam around the room, starting with the door I’d just breached. There was a chain lock, I was pleased to see, and its presence, unfastened, was further suggestion that I was alone. She’d probably have engaged it before turning in, and that would have sent me back to Room 415 for the night. (Not that a chain lock’s much of a barrier. A forceful burglar snaps it with a good shove, or goes through it with a bolt cutter; an artful burglar slips the catch free of its moorings, doing no damage, leaving no trace.)

I had a pair of Pliofilm gloves in my back pocket, and I put them on now, before I touched a thing. Then I turned the bolt, fastened the chain lock, and took a good look around, or as good a look as I could with a pocket flash. I was in a combined office and living room, with two walls lined with bookcases and a third with filing cabinets. The bookcases ran clear to the ceiling, while over the filing cabinets I saw a few dozen photos and letters in plain black frames.

So this was where Anthea Landau conducted business. I could see her at the desk, smoking cigarettes (the ashtray was piled high with butts), drinking coffee (Give Me a Break, it said on her twelve-ounce mug), and burning up the telephone lines. And I could picture her in the Queen Anne wing chair, with her feet up on the matching ottoman and the good reading light switched on behind her, turning the pages of manuscripts. Including, I supposed, the early works of Gulliver Fairborn, from his astonishing debut,
Nobody’s Baby,
to the last of his books she’d represented,
A Talent for Sacrifice.

I’ll tell you, it gave me a thrill. But then it always does, whenever I let myself into another’s residence or place of business, getting past all the devices aimed at keeping me out. Burglary pays the rent and keeps Raf
fles in cat food, but it’s always been more than a livelihood to me. It’s a vocation, a sacred calling. The thrill I got in my early teens when I first wriggled through a neighbor’s milk chute has never entirely gone away, and I recapture the rapture every time I break and enter. I’m a born burglar, God help me, and I love it. I always have and I’m afraid I always will.

But this room would have thrilled me if I’d visited it legitimately, with its door opened for me by its tenant herself. Like every other secretive and half-literate American adolescent, I’d been caught up in and utterly transported by
Nobody’s Baby,
sure that its tortured protagonist, Archer Manwaring, was a lifelong friend I’d somehow never met before, and that he was drawling his story right into my ear.

Right here, in this room, a much younger Anthea Landau had read the opening pages of
Nobody’s Baby
and at once recognized a new and important voice in American fiction. She read the book at one sitting, pausing halfway through to call a publisher and tell him she had something he had to read.

And the rest was publishing history, and it all started here, in this room.

This smoke-filled room. So many people have quit smoking, and the pastime is off-limits in so many public and private spaces, that I’m not much used to smelling cigarette smoke. Oh, I’ll get a whiff of somebody’s cigarette on the street, and there are always a few people puffing away in the Bum Rap, but this was different. Anthea Landau had lit up a cigarette when she first moved into these rooms, and she’d kept at it ever since. And she never ducked into the stairwell, either. She stayed home and smoked like a chimney.

If I ran into Isis Gauthier again, God forbid, she
wouldn’t be able to dilate her nostrils and tell that I wasn’t a smoker. I couldn’t tell how much of the odor my clothes were picking up, not while I was standing there in the midst of it, but I could hardly expect to escape unscathed.

There was another smell, too, along with the cigarette smell. It was distinct from it and yet somehow akin to it, and I recognized it but couldn’t place it.

And why was I standing here drinking in odors, like a dog with his head out a car window? Burglary’s thrilling, all right, but it’s a lot less satisfying if you get caught in the act.