The Night People (25 page)

I went back to Gramercy Park, back to Martha’s arms, because that’s where I’d always belong. The only difference was that I carried a pistol now, to guard against any future surprises.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Martha said, kissing me softly. “I think those two days were the worst of my life, Jeff. Not knowing where you were, afraid to call the police …”

“They weren’t much fun for me either,” I said, considering for the first time what it might be like to leave Joan and marry Martha. I wondered if men ever married their mistresses.

“What are you thinking about, Jeff?”

“Us, I guess.”

“Do you think they’ll ever catch the kidnappers?”

“Probably not. Unless they try the same sort of thing again.”

She patted my arm. “Come on, dear, come to bed.”

“Gladly.”

I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. I was just setting the glass down by the sink when I noticed the two crudely scratched initials on the bottom of the glass.

T
HEIR MEETING WAS ONE
of those bizarre things that happen only in real life. Carol Rome was home from her assembly-line job at Revco with the beginning of an autumn cold, running just enough of a fever to prefer the quiet warmth of her apartment to the constant chatter of her coworkers. She’d heard the door buzzer sound once but decided to ignore it. What was the point of being sick in bed if you had to get up and answer the door?

She had almost drifted back into sleep when she became aware of some scrapings at the apartment door. Then, with a loud snap that brought her fully awake, the door sprang open. Through the bedroom door she saw a tall, dark-haired young man enter quietly and close the jimmied door behind him. He looked to be in his late twenties, not much older than Carol herself, and he carried a black attaché case in one hand. The iron crowbar in his other hand had no doubt come out of it.

The telephone was next to the bed and Carol considered the possibility of dialing for help before he became aware of her. She was just reaching for the phone when he glanced into the bedroom and saw her.

“Well—what have we here?”

“Get out or I’ll scream,” she said.

He merely smiled, and she was all too aware that he was still holding the crowbar. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” His face relaxed into a grin. “That is, not unless you’d like me to.”

“Get out!” she repeated.

“You should get a stronger lock on that door. In this old building they’re awfully easy to pop open.”

She was becoming really afraid now, perhaps because he wasn’t. “Look, my purse is on the dresser. There’s about twenty dollars in it. That’s all I’ve got.”

He continued grinning at her, making no move toward the purse. “You’re sort of cute-looking, you know. What’re you doing home in bed in the middle of the day? Are you sick?”

“Yes.”

“Too bad. I buzzed first. If you’d answered the door I’d have said I was an insurance claims adjuster looking for somebody else. That’s why I’m dressed up, with the attaché case and all. I wouldn’t have come in if I’d known you were home.” The grin widened. “But I’m glad I did.”

She took a deep breath and lunged for the telephone.

He was faster. He dropped the crowbar and grabbed her, pulling her half out of the bed until they tumbled together to the floor in a tangle of sheets and blankets.

His name was Tony Loder and he’d been ripping off apartments for the past two years. He didn’t need the money for a drug habit, he was quick to inform her. He just liked it better than working for a living.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll call the cops?” she asked, rising to get a cigarette from her purse.

“I guess you’d have done that already if you were going to.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I guess I would have.”

“What about you? How come you’re living alone?”

“My former roommate moved in with a guy from the plant. Besides, I like living alone.” She sneezed and reached for a Kleenex. “I hope you don’t catch my cold.”

“I don’t worry about colds.” He was staring at her with the same intensity as when he’d first discovered her in the bed. “Do you have a man around?”

“Not right now. I was married once, five years ago.”

“What happened?”

“He was dull. He wanted to buy a house in the suburbs and raise kids. I don’t think I could live like that. As soon as I realized it I got out.”

“What do you do at this plant? Anything connected with money? Are you in the bookkeeping department?”

Carol laughed. “Sorry. I’m on an assembly line with twenty-three other girls. We run wire-wrap machines. Do you know what they are?”

“I don’t want to know. It sounds too much like work.”

“I’ll bet you do as much work breaking into places as I do working on the line.”

“It’d be a lot easier if I had a partner, that’s for sure.”

“How come?”

He shrugged. “I could do different things. I wouldn’t have to jimmy doors for a living.”

He left her after an hour or so, promising to phone. And he did, the following evening. She began seeing him almost every night. There was something exciting about having a burglar for a lover, something that kept her emotions charged all during the day. It was a life worlds apart from the dull, plodding existence she’d known during her brief marriage to Roy. Listening to Tony’s exploits, she was like a child hearing fairy tales for the very first time.

“I almost bought it today,” he’d say, rubbing the back of her neck as he sipped the martini she’d prepared for him. “An old lady came home too soon and caught me in her house. I’d phoned to tell her I was from the social-security office and she had to come down about some mix-up. Old ladies living alone always swallow that one. But after she left the house it started to drizzle and she came back for her umbrella.”

“What’d you do? You didn’t hurt her, did you?”

“I had to give her a shove on my way out and she fell down, but she wasn’t hurt bad. I could hear her screaming at me all the way down the block.”

In the morning paper Carol read that the elderly woman had suffered a broken hip in the fall, and for a moment she felt sick. That evening she confronted Tony.

“It wouldn’t have happened if I had a lookout to honk the horn when the old lady came back. I didn’t
want
to hurt her!”

She believed him and calmed down a little. “A lookout?”

“How about it, babe? You could do it.”

“Me?”

“Why not?”

“No, thanks! I’m not going to end up in prison with you! I like my freedom too much.”

She was cool to him the rest of the evening and he said no more about it.

When he phoned the following evening she told him she was sick and refused to see him. She spent a long time thinking about the old woman with the broken hip and even considered sending flowers to the hospital. But in the end she did nothing, and a few days later she saw Tony Loder again. Nothing more was said about the old woman or his need for a lookout, and he no longer told her his detailed stories of the day’s activities. She was almost afraid to hear them now.

Around the end of October, half the girls on her production line were laid off, including Carol. Standing in line at the unemployment office she thought about the bleak Christmas season ahead, and about Tony’s offer. It meant money, and more than that it meant excitement. It meant being with Tony and sharing in a kind of excitement she’d dreamed of but never really experienced.

That night she asked him, “Do you still want a partner?”

The first few times were easy.

She sat in the car across the street from the house he was hitting, waiting to tap the horn if anyone approached.

No one did, and for doing nothing he gave her a quarter of his take. It amounted to $595 the first week—more than she’d earned in a month on the production line.

Once during the second week Carol honked the horn when a homeowner returned unexpectedly from a shopping trip. Then she circled the block and picked Tony up. He was out of breath but smiling. “Got some jewelry that looks good,” he told her. “A good haul.”

“Sometime I want to go in with you, Tony. Into the house with you.”

“Huh?”

“I mean it! I get bored sitting in the car.”

He thought about that. “Maybe we’ll try it sometime.”

His voice lacked conviction but that night she pestered him until he agreed. The following morning they tried an apartment house together, going back to his old crowbar routine. She worked well at his side, but the haul was far less than in private homes.

“Let me try one on my own,” she said that night.

“It’s too dangerous. You’re not ready.”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Were you ready the first time you went into a house alone?”

“That was different.”

“Why? Because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”

He had no answer to that. The next morning they cruised the suburbs until they found a corner house with a woman in the front yard raking leaves. “Pull into the side street and drop me off,” Carol said. “She’ll have the door unlocked and her purse just sitting around somewhere.”

“What if someone’s home?”

She shook her head. “Her husband’s at work and the kids are at school. Wait down the block for me till I signal you.”

“All right, but just take cash. No credit cards. That way if you’re grabbed coming out it’s your word against hers.”

She got out of the car halfway down the block and walked back toward the corner house, feeling the bright November sunshine on her face. She was wearing slacks and a sweater, and her hands were empty. The money, if she found any, would go into her panties.

The woman was still in the front yard raking leaves, with the corner of the house shielding Carol’s approach. The side door was unlocked as she’d expected, and she entered quietly. It was even easier than she expected—a big black purse sat in plain view on the kitchen table. She crossed quickly to it and removed the wallet inside, sliding out the bills and returning the wallet to the purse. She moved to the living room doorway to check on the woman through the front window, and had an unexpected bit of luck. There was a man’s worn wallet on top of the television set. She pulled the bills from it and added them to the others.

Only then did she realize the wallet meant there was probably a man in the house.

She started back through the kitchen and was just going out the door when an attractive red-haired man appeared, coming up the steps from the basement. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She fought down the urge to panic and run. He could easily overtake her, or get the license number of Tony’s car. “Is this the place that’s giving away the free kittens?” she asked calmly.

“Kittens? We don’t have any kittens here.”

She edged toward the door. “I know it’s one of these houses.”

“There are no new kittens in the neighborhood. How come you opened the door?”

Carol ignored his question. “Is that your wife raking leaves? Maybe she knows about them.” She hurried outside and down the steps, walking purposefully toward the front yard.

The woman was still raking and she didn’t even look in their direction as Tony pulled up and Carol jumped into the car. “My God, there was a man in the house! Let’s get out of here!”

“Is he after you?”

“He will be as soon as he checks his wallet. I told him I was looking for free kittens.”

Tony chuckled and patted her knee. “You’re learning fast.” He turned the car down another side street to make certain they weren’t being followed. “How much did you get?”

She thumbed quickly through the bills. “Forty-five from her purse and fifty-three from his wallet. Not bad for a few minutes’ work.”

“From now on you get half of everything,” he decided. “You’re a full partner.”

His words made her feel good, made her feel that maybe she’d found her place in life at last.

With the coming of winter they moved their operations downtown to the office buildings. “I don’t like leaving footprints in the snow,” Tony said.

Large offices occupying whole floors were the best, because Carol could walk through them during lunch hours virtually unnoticed. Mostly she looked for cash in purses or desk drawers. If anyone questioned her, she always said she was there for a job interview. Once Tony dressed as a repairman and walked off with an IBM typewriter, but both agreed that was too risky to try again. “We’ve got to stick to cash,” he decided. “Typewriters are too clumsy if someone starts chasing you.”

But after a few weeks of it Carol said, “I’m tired of going through desk drawers for dimes and quarters. Let’s go south for the winter, where there isn’t any snow to show footprints.”

They didn’t go far south but they did go to New York. They found an apartment in the West Village and contacted some friends of Tony. “You’ll like Sam and Basil,” he assured Carol. “They’re brothers. I met them in prison.”

Somehow the words stunned Carol. “You never told me you were in prison.”

“You never asked. It’s no big secret.”

“What were you in for?”

“Breaking and entering. I only served seven months.”

“Here in New York?”

“Yeah. Three years ago. And I haven’t been arrested since, in case you’re wondering. That was just bad luck.”

She said no more about it, but after meeting Sam and Basil Briggs in a Second Avenue bar she was filled with further misgivings. Sam was the older of the brothers, a burly blond-haired man of about Tony’s age. Both he and the slim, dark-haired Basil seemed hyped up, full of unnatural energy. “Are they on heroin?” she asked Tony when they were alone for a moment.

“No, of course not! Maybe they took a little speed or something.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Just stay cool.”

Basil went off to make a phone call and Sam Briggs returned to the table alone. He ran his eyes over the turtleneck sweater Carol was wearing and asked Tony, “How about it? Want to make some money?”

“Sure. Doing what?”

“A little work in midtown.”

“Not the park.”

“No, no—what do you take us for? Hell, I’d be afraid to go in the park at night myself! I was thinking of Madison Avenue. The classy area.”