“Why?” I asked again, and there was a moment of confusion with Loren trying to explain that his wife was a Taurus because of when she was born, and me explaining that what I wanted to know was why Ray had asked me my age, and Ray looking sorry he’d brought the whole thing up in the first place. There was something about Loren that seemed to generate confusion.
“Just age making you sloppy,” Ray explained. “Making noises, drawing attention. It’s not like you.”
“I never made a sound.”
“Until tonight.”
“I’m talking about tonight. Anyway, I just got here.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, a few minutes ago. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes at the outside. Ray? You sure you got the right apartment?”
“We got the one’s got a burglar in it, don’t we?”
“There’s that,” I admitted. “But did they specify this apartment? Three-eleven?”
“Not the number, but they said the right front apartment on the third floor. That’s this one.”
“A lot of people mix up left and right.”
He looked at me, and Loren slapped the nightstick against his palm and managed to drop it. There was a leather thong attaching it to his belt but the thong was long enough so that the nightstick hit the floor. It bounced on the Chinese rug and Loren retrieved it while Ray glowered at him.
“That’s more noise than I made all night,” I said.
“Look, Bernie-”
“Maybe they meant the apartment above this one. Maybe the woman was English. They figure floors differently over there. They call the first floor the ground floor, see, so what they call the third floor would be the floor three flights up, which you and I would call the fourth floor, and-”
“Jesus.”
I looked at Loren, then back at Ray again.
“What are you, crazy? You want me to read you your rights and all so you’ll remember you’re a criminal caught in the act? What the hell’s got into you, Bernie?”
“It’s just that I just got here. And I never made a sound.”
“So maybe a cat knocked a plant off a shelf in the apartment next door and we just got lucky and came here by mistake. It’s still you and us, right?”
“Right.” I smiled what certainly ought to have been a rueful smile. “You got lucky, all right. I’m nice and fat tonight.”
“That so?”
“Very fat.”
“Interesting,” Ray said.
“You got the key from the doorman?”
“Uh-huh. He wanted to come up and let us in but we told him he ought to stay at his post.”
“So nobody actually knows I’m here but you two.”
The two of them looked at each other. They were a nice contrast, Ray in his lived-in uniform, Loren all young and neat and freshly laundered. “That’s true,” Ray said. “Far as it goes.”
“Oh?”
“This’d be a very good collar for us. Me’n Loren, we could use a good collar. Might get a commendation out of it.”
“Oh, come on,” I said.
“Always possible.”
“The hell it is. You didn’t nail me on your own initiative. You followed up a radio squawk. Nobody’s going to pin a medal on you.”
“Well, you got a point there,” Ray said. “What do you think, Loren?”
“Well,” Loren said, slapping the stick against his palm and nibbling thoughtfully on his lower lip. The stick was beat up and scratched in contrast to the rest of his outfit. I had the feeling he dropped it often, and on surfaces more abrasive than Chinese carpets.
“How fat are you, Bernie?”
I didn’t see any point in haggling. I generally carry an even thousand dollars in walkaway money, and that was what I had now. Coincidentally enough, the ten hundreds in my left hip pocket were the very ones I’d taken as an advance on the night’s work, so if I gave it all to my coppish friends I’d break even, with nothing lost but my cab fare and a couple of hours of my time. My shifty-eyed friend would be out a thousand dollars but that was his hard luck and he would just have to write it off.
“A thousand dollars,” I said.
I watched Ray Kirschmann’s face. He considered trying for more but must have decided I’d gone straight to the top. And there was no dodging the fact that it was a satisfactory score since it only had to be cut two ways.
“That’s fat,” he admitted. “On your person right now?”
I took out the money and handed it to him. He fanned the bills and gave them a count with his eyes, trying not to be too obvious about it.
“You pick up anything in here, Bernie? Because if we was to report there was nobody here and then the tenant calls in a burglary complaint, we don’t look too good.”
I shrugged. “You could always claim I left before you got here,” I told him, “but you won’t have to. I couldn’t find anything worth stealing, Ray. I just got here and all I touched is the desk.”
“We could frisk him,” Loren suggested. Ray and I both gave him a look and he turned a deeper pink than his usual shade. “It was just a thought,” he said.
I asked him what sign he was.
“Virgo,” he said.
“Should go well with Taurus.”
“Both earth signs,” he said. “Lots of stability.”
“I would think so.”
“You interested in astrology?”
“Not particularly.”
“I think there’s a lot to be said for it. Ray’s a Sagittarius.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ray said. He looked at the bills again, gave a small shrug, then folded them once and found them a home in his pocket. Loren watched this procedure somewhat wistfully. He knew he’d get his share later, but still…
Ray gnawed a fingernail. “How’d you get in, Bernie? Fire escape?”
“Front door.”
“Right past the clown downstairs? They’re terrific, these doormen.”
“Well, it’s a large building.”
“Not that large. Still, you do look the part. That clean-cut East Side look and those clothes” I live on the West Side myself, and usually wear jeans. “And I suppose you carried a briefcase, right?”
“Not exactly.” I pointed to my Bloomie’s bag. “That.”
“Even better. Well, I guess you can pick it up and walk right out again. Wait a minute.” He frowned. “We’ll leave first. I like it better that way. Otherwise, why are we taking so much time here, et cetera, and et cetera. But don’t get light-fingered after we split, huh?”
“There’s nothing here to take,” I said.
“I want your word on it, Bernie.”
I avoided laughing. “You’ve got it,” I said solemnly.
“Give us three minutes and then go straight out. But don’t hang around no more’n that, Bernie.”
“I won’t.”
“Well,” he said. He turned and reached for the door, and then Loren Kramer said he had to go to the bathroom. “Jesus Christ,” Ray said.
Loren said, “Bernie? Where is it, do you know?”
“Search me,” I said. “Not literally.”
“Huh?”
“I never got past this desk,” I said. “I suppose the john must be back there somewhere.”
Loren went looking for it while Ray stood there shaking his head. I asked him how long Loren had been his partner. “Too long,” he said.
“I know what you mean.”
“He ain’t a bad kid, Bernie.”
“Seems nice enough.”
“But he’s so damn stupid. And the astrology drives me straight up the wall. You figure there’s anything in that crap?”
“Probably.”
“But even so, who gives a shit, right? Who cares if his wife’s a Taurus? She’s a good-looking bitch, I’ll give her that much. But Loren, shit, he was ready to search you. Just now when you said ‘Search me.’ The putz woulda done it.”
“I had that feeling.”
“The one good thing, he’s reasonable. They gave me this straight arrow a while back and you couldn’t do nothing with him. I mean he even paid for his coffee. At least Loren, when somebody puts money in his hand he knows to close his fist around it.”