West 47th (29 page)

Mitch surveyed the back of the house. Ground floor left to right: two-car garage, rear entrance, cellar door, window, window, two bay windows, glass-enclosed porch. Second floor right to left: balcony above the porch, window, window, six more windows, balcony over the garage.

He was looking at the house for a way in, as would a swift. He was a swift. A stealer. Out to steal from the stealers. Wasn't this the reason he enjoyed what he did, moments such as now? Wasn't this why he was reluctant to give it up, this more fitting and fulfilling payback for the lady with the automatic up her sable sleeve? His secret heart fed on it, was eating it up now at a hundred and twenty a minute.

He tried the rear door, the windows, the cellar door and the door to the porch. He didn't expect it to be that easy but sometimes people were careless and forgetful.

Not Ralph, though.

How about the second-story windows? People rarely locked their second-story windows. As though that much height was protective. Considering Ralph's profession he probably had his double-bolted and nailed shut, Mitch thought. Then again, maybe not. The only way to find out was to go up and try them. There was a rain gutter that would give him access. He'd be able to sidle along on it once he got up. There was a wisteria vine gone crazy at the corner of the garage. It would be an easy climb for a second-story man. He was a second-story man.

He'd chosen his first grip and made his first foot placement on the vine when the garage door started opening. An elongated rectangle of light struck the concrete turnaround section of the drive. It became wider, brighter as the electric door opener performed its noisy function.

Ralph started the Pontiac. As he backed it out, its headlights raked the foliage of the wisteria at the corner of the garage.

Mitch remained perfectly still. Ralph shifted out of reverse, reached up to the sun visor and pressed the garage door's remote-control switch.

The door commenced its descent.

Ralph took it for granted, didn't wait for the door to be entirely closed before he got under way down the drive.

Mitch realized the chance. He dove for it, rolled in under the descending door, just made it.

He lay there on the garage floor for a moment. The boast he'd heard over the years from so many swifts was true, he thought. There wasn't a house, old or new, that couldn't somehow be gotten into.

The first part of the house Mitch entered was a narrow utility area. Determined to be thorough and systematic, he reached down into the top-load clothes washer and felt around in the clothes dryer. Nothing. Nor in a dirty laundry bag was there anything but offensive socks and underwear and such. Across from the washer and dryer was an upright freezer. It contained numerous wrapped, labeled and frozen veal and pork roasts and an assortment of the cheapest sort of frozen complete dinners. Mitch examined a few of the roasts. They were all about equal size and felt about the same.

Possibly a certain two or three of them were layers of meat around a stuffing of jewels. Was that too much cleverness to expect? Mitch chose at random a couple of the frozen roasts, took them into the adjacent kitchen and placed them in the microwave on high.

He swiftly searched in the kitchen, the obvious places: cabinets, refrigerator, canisters, and the not so obvious, such as down in the belly of the waste disposal unit.

In the adjoining room, which was meant to serve as a dining room, he was made to realize what he was up against.

Ralph's cumulate of swag …

Swag upon swag in front of swag beneath swag. The only way to get from room to room was to stay within the narrow aisles that cut through it.

It would be impossible for Mitch to search the many hiding places it presented. How could he determine which of the fifty or more television sets in sight contained the Kalali jewels in place of electronic guts? Which among the legion of vases and lamps and statues should he suspect?

Considerably disheartened he proceeded up the main stairs to the second floor. There was less of an amassment of swag up there but still far too much. Only what was evidently Ralph's bedroom, the room in which earlier Mitch had seen television reflections, was reasonably furnished. Two cartons of VCR porno tapes at the foot of the bed. Precarious stacks of the same on top of two side-by-side giant-screen television sets. Could Ralph's concentration handle two at a time? Under the bed only a pair of wayward panties, another pair shoved between the mattress and box spring. In the top dresser drawer about twenty wristwatches in a neat row, good gold ones, well-known makes, several with diamond bezels and numerals. On the bare floor of the next room a waist-high pile of fur coats with their labels and monograms cut out.

Mitch went up a short flight of lesser stairs to what evidently had once been servants' quarters. Small rooms, low ceilings, one long-abandoned bath. Empty rooms except one, which contained a haphazard heap of luggage. An assortment of overnight bags, suitcases, valises, satchels. No street vendor rip-offs. These were the real expensive things. Vuitton, Hermés, Morabito, Bottega Veneta, Mark Cross and the like. Ralph's swifts had, week after week, brought swag in them and he'd just thrown them in this room.

The many burglaries they represented, Mitch thought, the amount of jewelry and other precious things they had helped carry away. He happened to look down. There, practically at his feet, was a blue Fendi satchel stamped with the initials RK.

Roudabeth Kalali.

Mitch took up the satchel. Its emptiness taunted him. What had been brought in it was most likely still somewhere in this house, hidden among the overwhelming stolen. He hated the house. Ralph and it had beaten him.

A wipe of light, headlights.

Ralph had returned.

Mitch could hear the grind of the garage door, the car pulling in. What should he do? Try for the first floor and a door out? Go down a flight and out one of the windows? Now he heard Ralph in the main part of the house, Ralph and someone, their voices. They came up to the second floor and down the hall and into Ralph's bedroom.

Ralph and a woman.

They were directly below.

Why, Mitch wondered, should he be overhearing them so clearly?

He spotted the register inset in the hardwood floor. Such registers were commonplace in older houses. Made of cast iron with a grille-like arrangement of adjustable louvers, their purpose was to allow heated air to rise from one level to another. An unadvertised convenience was they allowed a person in the upper room to view what might be taking place in the room below.

Mitch kneeled to the register. He saw it was located above Ralph's unmade bed. By getting down closer to it he widened and improved his vantage.

They were undressing.

Ralph quickly, the woman just as much so. She had a face that appeared twice as old as her body, and considerably harder. Not a genuine blonde by any means. Her lower hair was dark and plentiful. Every sound she and Ralph made seemed to rise amplified: the unzipping, the slipping down and out of, the tumbling discard of shoes. It was apparent to Mitch that Ralph was anxious to get to it and the woman was anxious to get it done.

“You didn't happen to find a barrette, did you?” she asked.

“A what?”

“A barrette. You
know, to hold my hair in place. I think I lost it here last time.”

“I ain't seen nothing like that.”

“It was gold.”

“I would have noticed.”

“A nice one.”

An amused grunt from Ralph. “Next you'll be telling me it was eighteen K.”

“Maybe it was,” she arched.

“You want I should put on a couple of helpers?”

“Whatever puffs your panties.”

Ralph inserted a porno film into each of the two VCRs at the foot of the bed.

The audio preceded the picture by several seconds, long enough for some moaning and a few
yeses
. Ralph turned off the sound. He got settled on the bed, adjusted a pillow, laced his fingers and placed his hands behind his head.

Ready to receive.

From Mitch's point of view Ralph's flaccid penis looked like a butchered chicken neck lying in a nest of steel wool. In another moment it was obscured by the woman's head, which immediately started pistoning.

Ralph's eyes began to glaze.

Mitch stopped watching, kneeled up, ignored the register. Now was a good time to leave, he thought. Any incidental noise he might make on his way out, such as a creak on the steps or whatever, wouldn't be heard. No use staying here while some passé suburban hooker serviced a fat fence. He might as well forget tonight, go on home empty-handed.

Another, less pragmatic part of him insisted on having its say. It told him not yet, told him there was still a chance that he might overhear or see something that would aid his cause. This woman wasn't about to stay all night. Ralph would be alone later. Maybe then, inadvertently or otherwise, he'd give away the hiding place. Stay there, Mitch, keep an eye on him.

Mitch returned his attention to the register and what was happening below.

The woman was still at it. And doing a lot of obligatory
humming
along with it to fake enjoyment.

Ralph's eyes were shifting from porno to porno.

The woman stopped abruptly. She got up and lighted a cigarette. As though she had no intention of continuing, had gone on strike.

“What're you doing?” Ralph asked, perturbed.

“Nothing.”

“Why'd you stop? I was right there, for Christ's sake. Didn't you know I was right there?”

“Yeah.”

“So why?”

“You don't treat me right,” she complained matter of fact.

“How don't I?”

“You never give me a little something extra.”

“I give you a hundred. I can remember when you were fifty.”

“I'm not talking about money.”

“What are you talking?”

“You gave Maxine a nice bracelet. You haven't given me shit.”

“That was over a year ago with Maxine. I don't even see her anymore.”

“All the more reason.”

“You want a bracelet?”

“Sure.”

“I'll give you a fucking bracelet,” Ralph voiced gruffly. He got up. His erection was half lost. From a drawer of his dresser he got a pair of heavyweight leather work gloves. He put them on and went across the room to a Japanese ceramic planter that contained, of all things, a cactus. A variety generally known as a barrel cactus due to its stumpy, symmetrical shape. It was about fifteen inches in diameter at its girth and had countless needle-sharp prickers protruding from its skin. Not at all a friendly plant.

The leather gloves permitted Ralph to painlessly lift the cactus out. He placed it on the floor while he rummaged around in the bottom of the planter. Finally, he replaced the cactus. It looked none the worse from having been disturbed.

“Here's your bracelet,” he said begrudgingly, tossing it to the woman.

It was a man's ID bracelet.

With
SHORTY
engraved on it.

The woman hardly looked at it before tossing it back to Ralph. “Keep it, Ralph,” she said derogatorily, “it describes you.”

“Don't be such a smart-ass cunt.”

Silence was the extent of her apology. She reached for her panties, determined the back from the front.

“Okay,” Ralph said, “you really don't want a bracelet. What is it you really want?”

“A Rolex. An eighteen K blue face, oyster with diamonds around the dial.”

“I ain't got a Rollie right now, but I will, sooner or later. First one that comes in is yours.”

“Yeah.”

“I'll save it for you.”

“Yeah.”

“You don't believe me what the fuck can I do?”

“I'll settle for a hair,” the woman said.

“How about a mink jacket?”

“How about a full-length chinchilla?”

“Let's take a look.”

They went out of the room, out of Mitch's view. When they returned the woman had on a full-length silver fox coat.

She didn't know furs. While going through the pile she'd passed over a Russian sable and a Russian belly lynx. If she'd latched on to either of those Ralph would have had to throw her out and neither of them would have gotten satisfied. As it was the fox was worth about thirty-five hundred off the rack new, which it was about six years from being, and Ralph figured he'd be lucky to get five hundred for it come cold weather. As swag, it had cost him a hundred.

She didn't take off the coat.

Ralph got back in position on the bed and she went about getting him a second hard-on. When she'd accomplished that she swung a leg up over him, found herself with him and settled on him. “Full length,” she uttered and did some blandishing gasps and exhales.

It wasn't going to be that easy for her. Her extortionate intermission had cost Ralph much of his mental momentum. At about the fifteen-minute mark she was still in a straddle, sliding back and forth and performing her best pelvic ovals.

Both Ralph and the woman were so caught up in trying they were unaware that three guys had entered the room.

Three of Riccio's have-arounds.

They appeared so all at once it was as though they had materialized, Mitch thought, as he observed from overhead. He knew these three from their having been around with Riccio on 47th.

The tall, extremely round-shouldered one was Bechetti. The equally tall heavyweight with boxer's ears was Caselli. The shorter Fratino was slick and nervous. Like all Riccio's minions they came off as old-mob sorts with old-mob ways. They wore wide trousers with overly roomy seats, sleeveless knit shirts and sports jackets too one thing or another: tight, long, loud.

“Get rid of the bimbo,” Bechetti said. Evidently he'd been given charge of this business.

The woman had already dismounted Ralph. She'd instantly taken the temperature of the situation and knew it was too cold for her. She thought about asking Ralph for her hundred. Only thought about it, as she gathered up her things and was hurried off, barefoot in her fur.