Naturally I went over to the desk first. It was a nineteenth-century rolltop, oaken and massive, and I’d probably have been drawn to it simply because I like desks like that, but in this case my whole reason for being in this apartment was tucked away in one of its drawers or cubbyholes. That’s what the shifty-eyed and pear-shaped man had told me, and who was I to doubt his word?
“There’s this big old desk,” he had said, aiming his chocolate eyes over my left shoulder. “What you call a rolltop. The top rolls up.”
“Clever name for it,” I’d said.
He had ignored this. “You’ll see it the minute you walk in the room. Big old mother. He keeps the box in the desk.” He moved his little hands about, to indicate the dimensions of the box we were discussing. “About like so. About the size of a box of cigars. Maybe a little bigger, maybe a little smaller. Basically I’d call it cigar-box size. Box is blue.”
“Blue.”
“Blue leather. Covered in leather. I suppose it’s wood under the leather. Rather than being leather straight through. What’s under the leather don’t matter. What matters is what’s inside the box.”
“What’s inside the box?”
“That don’t matter.” I stared at him, ready to ask him which of us was to be Abbott and which Costello. He frowned. “What’s in the box for you,” he said, “is five thousand dollars. Five kay for a few minutes’ work. As to what’s actually inside the box we’re talking about, see, the box is locked.”
“I see.”
His eyes moved from the air above my left shoulder to the air above my right shoulder, pausing en route to flick contemptuously at my own eyes. “Locks,” he said, “prolly don’t mean too much to you.”
“Locks mean a great deal to me.”
“This lock, the lock on the box, you prolly shouldn’t open it.”
“I see.”
“Be a very bad idea for you to open it. You bring me the box, you get the rest of your money, and everybody’s happy.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see what you’re doing.”
“Huh?”
“You’re threatening me,” I said. “How curious.”
The eyes widened but only for a moment. “Threats? Not for the world, kid. Advice and threats, there’s a world of difference. I wouldn’t dream of threatening you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t dream of opening your blue leather box.”
“Leather-covered.”
“Right.”
“Not that it makes a difference.”
“Hardly. What color blue?”
“Huh?”
“Dark blue, light blue, robin’s egg blue, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, powder blue. What color?”
“What’s the difference?”
“I wouldn’t want to bring the wrong blue box.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid.”
“If you say so.”
“Just so it’s a blue leather box. Unopened.”
“Gotcha.”
Since that conversation I’d been whiling away the hours trying to decide whether I’d open the box or not. I knew myself well enough to recognize that any lock constitutes an immediate temptation for me, and when I’ve been cautioned against opening a particular lock that only increases the attraction of it.
On the other hand, I’m not a kid anymore. When you’ve been inside a couple of times your judgment is supposed to improve, and if it seemed likely that there was more danger than profit in opening the elusive blue box…
But before I came to terms with the question I had to find the box, and before I did that I had to open the desk, and I wasn’t even ready to tackle that project yet. First I wanted to get the feel of the room.
Some burglars, like some lovers, just want to get in and get out. Others try to psych out the people they’re thieving from, building up a whole mental profile of them out of what their houses reveal. I do something a little different. I have this habit of creating a life for myself to suit the surroundings I find myself in.
So I now took this apartment and transformed it from the residence of one J. Francis Flaxford to the sanctum sanctorum of yours truly, Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr. I settled myself in an oversized wing chair upholstered in dark green leather, swung my feet up on the matching ottoman, and took a leisurely look at my new life.
Pictures on the walls, old oils in elaborate gilded frames. A little landscape that clearly owed a lot to Turner, although a lesser hand had just as clearly held the brush. A pair of old portraits in matching oval frames, a man and a woman eyeing each other thoughtfully over a small fireplace in which not a trace of ash reposed. Were they Flaxford’s ancestors? Probably not, but did he attempt to pass them off as such?
No matter. I’d call them my ancestors, and make up outrageous stories about them. And there’d be a fire in the fireplace, casting a warm glow over the room. And I’d sit in this chair with a book and a glass, and perhaps a dog at my feet. A large dog, a large old dog, one not given to yaps or abrupt movements. Perhaps a stuffed dog might be best all around…
Books. There was a floor lamp beside my chair, its bulb at reading height. The wall behind the chair was lined with bookshelves and another small case of books, one of those revolving stands, stood on the floor alongside the chair. On the other side of the chair was a lower table holding a silver cigarette dish and a massive cut-glass ashtray.
All right. I’d do a lot of reading here, and quality stuff, not modern junk. Perhaps those leather-bound sets were just there for show, their pages still uncut. Well, it would be a different story if I were living here. And I’d keep a decanter of good brandy on the table beside me. No, two decanters, a pair of those wide-bottomed ship’s decanters, one filled with brandy, one with a vintage port. There’d be room for them when I got rid of the cigarette dish. The ashtray could stay. I liked the size and style of it, and I might want to take up smoking a pipe. Pipes had always burned my tongue in the past, but perhaps as I worked my way through the wisdom of the ages, feet up on the hassock, book in hand, port and brandy within easy reach, a fire glowing on the hearth…
I spent a few minutes on the fantasy, figuring out a little more about the life I’d lead in Mr. Flaxford’s apartment. I suppose it’s silly and childish to do this and I know it wastes time. But I think it serves a purpose. It gets rid of some tension. I get wired very tight when I’m in someone else’s place. The fantasy makes the place my own home in a certain way, at least for the short time I’m inside it, and that seems to help. I’m not convinced that’s why I started doing it in the first place, or why I’ve continued.
The time I wasted couldn’t have amounted to very much, anyway, because I looked at my watch just before I put my gloves on to go to work and it was only seventeen minutes after nine. I use sheer skintight rubber gloves, the kind doctors wear, and I cut out circles on the palms and backs so my hands won’t perspire as much. As with other skintight rubber things, you don’t really lose all that much in the way of sensitivity and you make up for it in peace of mind.
The desk had two locks. One opened the rolltop and the other, in the top right-hand drawer, unlocked that drawer and all the others at once. I probably could have found the keys-most people stow desk keys very close to the desk itself-but it was faster and easier to open both locks with my own tools. I’ve never yet run into a desk lock that didn’t turn out to be candy.
These two were no exception. I rolled up the rolltop and studied the usual infinite array of pigeonholes, tiny drawer upon tiny drawer, cubicle after cubicle. For some reason our ancestors found this an efficient system for the organization of one’s business affairs. It’s always seemed to me that it would have to be more trouble keeping track of what bit of trivia you stowed in what arcane hiding place than it would be to keep everything in a single steamer trunk and just rummage through it when there was something you needed. But I suppose there are plenty of people who get enormously turned on by the notion of a place for everything and everything in its place. They’re the people who line up their shoes in the closet according to height. And they remember to rotate their tires every three months, and they set aside one day a week for clipping their fingernails.