The evening was cold and brisk. Connie was wearing jeans and leg warmers and boots and the short black coat she’d had on last night when she’d followed him out of the fortune-cookie factory. Michael was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket he’d bought from a friend of Connie’s named Louis Klein who ran an Army and Navy store on Delancey Street, which he opened for Connie even though this was Christmas and he was leaving for Puerto Rico in the morning. He had also sold to Michael—with money borrowed from Connie— a pair of Levi jeans, a blue wool sweater reduced from sixty-four dollars to twenty-three ninety-five, and a pair of white woolen socks “to keep your feet warm,” he said paternally. It was amazing how Connie brought out the paternal instinct in all these fifty-, sixty-year-old men. When Klein clucked his tongue and asked Connie how her boyfriend had hurt his arm, Connie told him simply and honestly that he’d been shot. Klein said, “This city, I’m not surprised,” and threw in an extra pair of woolen socks free.
She clung to his right arm now as they wandered through the development, following signs that told them which building was which. Somehow there was no sense of urgency here in this cloistered enclave. It was close to five o’clock now. There was a hush on the city. The street lamps, already lighted, cast a warm glow on the snow banked along the paths. Window rectangles glowed with the warmth of rooms beyond, Christmas tree lights blinking red and blue and green and white. Strings of lights outlined windows and balconies. One window was decorated with a huge white star. It was still Christmas.
They found Nichols’s building, located his name in the lobby directory downstairs, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. The corridor smelled of Christmas. Birds and beef that had been roasted, pies that had been baked. There was laughter behind one of the closed doors. Music behind another. They walked to the door for Nichols’s apartment and Michael pressed the bell button set into the jamb. He listened. Nothing. He looked at Connie. She shrugged. He rang the bell again. No answer.
“He’s out,” he said.
“Knock,” she said.
He knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again.
He shook his head.
“Damn it,” he said.
“What do we do now?”
“I’d like to get in there,” he said.
“Do you know how to do something like that?” she asked.
“Something like what?”
“Opening a door with a credit card?”
“No. Anyway, they stole my credit cards.”
He was beginning to get angry all over again.
Just thinking about what had happened to him since seven o’clock last night made him angry. Not knowing why these things were happening to him made him angry. Not knowing who was doing these things to him made him angry. And now Nichols not being here made him even angrier.
“Do you have a credit card?” he asked.
“Yes, but you just said …”
“I can learn.”
She dug in her shoulder bag, found her wallet, and took from it an American Express card. He looked at the card, looked at the place in the jamb where the door fit snugly into it, grabbed the knob in his hand, slid the card between door and jamb, twisted the knob—and the door opened.
He looked at the door.
He looked at the credit card.
“Boy,” Connie said, “you’re some fast learner.”
He eased the door open the rest of the way. There were lights on in the living room. A lighted Christmas wreath in the living room window as well. He motioned Connie in, closed the door behind them. There was a deadbolt lock on the door. In the open position. Which meant he hadn’t worked any magic with the credit card, the door had been unlocked already. He turned the thumb bolt now. The tumblers fell with a small oiled click that sounded like a rifle shot in the silent apartment.
“This is breaking and entry, you know,” Connie said.
They stood just inside the entrance door.
There were two lamps on end tables in the living room, casting warm pools of illumination on a sofa and a pair of easy chairs. The wreath in the window glowed red and green. There was not a sound anywhere in the apartment.
“Let’s see if we can find a desk someplace,” Michael whispered.
“Why a desk?”
“See what’s in it.”
They moved out past the kitchen, and discovered off the hallway just beyond it a room that was furnished as a study. Big window on the wall across from the door. Bookcases on the wall to the right, an easy chair and a reading lamp in front of them. A desk and a chair on the opposite wall.