Martin’s desk wasn’t locked. I went through it quickly, mechanically, without finding anything to tell me much about Wesley Brill. I did come upon a mostly-full pint of blended whiskey in the bottom drawer and an unopened half-pint of Old Mr. Boston mint-flavored gin snuggled up next to it. Both of these were infinitely resistible. In the wide center drawer I found an envelope with some cash in it, eighty-five dollars in fives and tens. I took a five and two tens to cover expenses, put the rest back, closed the drawer, then changed my mind and opened it again and scooped up the rest of the money, leaving the empty envelope in the drawer. Now if I left any evidence of my presence, if the clutter I left behind struck him as different from the clutter he’d left there himself, he’d simply think it was the work of some hot-prowl artist who’d made off with his mad money.
(Then why was I disguising my presence in every other respect? Ah, you’ve spotted an inconsistency, haven’t you? All right, I’ll tell you why I took the eighty-five bucks. I’ve never believed in overlooking cash. That’s why.)
But I was careful to overlook what I found in the top left-hand drawer. It was a tiny little revolver with a two-inch barrel and pearlized grips, and tiny or not it looked very menacing. I leaned into the drawer to sniff intelligently at the barrel the way they’re always doing on television. Then they state whether or not the gun’s been fired recently. All I could state was that I smelled metal and mineral oil and what you usually smell in a musty desk drawer, a drawer which I was now very happy to close once I got my nose out of it.
Guns make me nervous, and you’d be surprised how many times a burglar will run across one. I only once had one pointed at me and that was one I’ve mentioned, the gun of good old Carter Sandoval, but I’ve found them in drawers and on night tables and, more than once, tucked beneath a pillow. People buy the hateful things to shoot burglars with, or at least that’s what they tell themselves, and then they wind up shooting themselves or each other accidentally or on purpose.
A lot of burglars steal guns automatically, either because they have a use for them or because it’s a cinch to get fifty or a hundred dollars for a nice un-traceable handgun. And I knew one fellow who specialized in suburban homes who always took guns with him so that the next burglar to hit that place wouldn’t be risking a bullet. He took every gun he encountered and always dropped them down the nearest sewer. “We have to look out for each other,” he told me.
I’ve never stolen a gun and I didn’t even contemplate stealing Martin’s. I don’t even like to touch the damned things and I closed the drawer without touching this one.
At nine fifty-seven I let myself out of the office. The corridor was empty. Faint strains of Mozart wafted my way from the Notions Unlimited office. I wasted a minute relocking the door, though I could have let him figure he’d forgotten to lock up. Anybody with Peter Alan Martin’s taste in booze probably greeted the dawn with a fairly spotty memory of the previous day.
I even walked down to the fourth floor before I rang for the elevator. Nobody was home at Hubbell Corp. I rode the elevator to the lobby, found my name in the ledger-three people had come in since my arrival, and one of them had left already. I penciled in 10 P.M. under Time Out and wished the old man in the wine-colored uniform a pleasant evening.
“They all the same,” he said. “Good nights and bad nights, all one and the same to me.”
I caught Ruth’s eye from Riker’s doorway. The place was fairly deserted, a couple of cabbies at the counter, two off-duty hookers in the back booth. Ruth put some coins on her table next to her coffee cup and hurried to join me. “I was starting to worry,” she said.
“Not to worry.”
“You were gone a long time.”
“Half an hour.”
“Forty minutes. Anyway, it seemed like hours. What happened?”
She took my arm and I told her about it as we walked. I was feeling very good. I hadn’t accomplished anything that remarkable but I felt a great sense of exhilaration. Everything was starting to go right now, I could feel it, and it was a nice feeling.
“He’s in a hotel in the West Fifties,” I told her. “Just off Columbus Circle, near the Coliseum. That’s why he didn’t have a listed phone. I never heard of the hotel and I have a feeling it’s not in the same class with the Sherry-Netherland. In fact I think our Mr. Brill has had hard times lately. He’s got a loser for an agent, that’s for sure. Most of Peter Alan Martin’s clients are ladies who came in third in a county-wide beauty contest a whole lot of years ago. I think he’s the kind of agent you call when you want someone to come out of the cake at a bachelor party. Do they still have that sort of thing?”
“What sort of thing?”
“Girls popping out of cakes.”
“You’re asking me? How would I know?”
“That’s a point.”
“I never popped out of a cake myself. Or attended a bachelor party.”
“Then you wouldn’t want Martin to represent you. I wonder why he’s representing Brill. The guy’s had tons of work over the years. Here, you’ll recognize him.” We moved under a street light and I unfolded the composite sheet for her. “You must have seen him hundreds of times.”
“Oh,” she said. “Of course I have. Movies, TV.”
“Right.”
“I can’t think where offhand but he’s definitely a familiar face. I can even sort of hear his voice. He was in-I can’t think exactly what he was in, but-”
“Man in the Middle,” I suggested. “Jim Garner, Shan Willson, Wes Brill.”
“Right.”
“So how come he’s on the skids? He’s got two last names, his agent’s got three first names, and he’s living in some dump across from the Coliseum and consorting with known criminals. Why?”
“That’s one of the things you’ll want to ask him tomorrow.”
“One, of several things.”
We walked a little farther in silence. Then she said, “It must have been a new experience for you, Bernie. Letting yourself into his office and not stealing anything.”
“Well, when I first started my criminal career all I stole was a sandwich. And I haven’t stolen anything from Rod outside of a little Scotch and a couple cans of soup.”
“Sounds as though you’re turning over a new leaf.”
“Don’t count on it. Because I did steal something from Whatsisname. Martin.”
“The photograph? I don’t think that counts.”
“Plus eighty-five dollars. That must count.” And I went on to tell her about the money in the desk drawer.
“My God,” she said.
“What’s the matter?”
“You really are a burglar.”
“No kidding. What did you think I was?”
She shrugged. “I guess I’m terribly naive. I keep forgetting that you actually steal things. You were in that man’s office and there was some money there so you automatically took it.”
I had a clever answer handy but I left it alone. Instead I said, “Does it bother you?”
“I wouldn’t say that it bothers me. Why should it bother me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess it confuses me.”
“I suppose that’s understandable.”
“But I don’t think it bothers me.”
We didn’t talk much the rest of the way home. When we crossed Fourteenth Street I took her hand and she let me keep it the rest of the way, until we got to the building and she used her key on the downstairs door. The key didn’t fit perfectly and it took her about as long to unlock the door as it had taken me to open it without a key. I said as much to her while we climbed the stairs, and she laughed. After we’d climbed three of the four flights she walked up to 4-F and started to poke a key in the lock.