“Oh, nonsense. It was hysterical. A couple of bobby pins will make sure that doesn’t happen. It could be embarrassing if your hair fell off on the street.”

Nothing happened last night, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t mentioned that I’d gone out on my own and I felt it would be awkward to bring it up now.

It was around nine when we left the apartment. I had my ring of tools in my pocket along with my rubber gloves and a roll of adhesive tape I’d found in the medicine cabinet; I didn’t think I’d have to break any windows, but adhesive tape is handy if you do and I hadn’t cased Martin’s office and didn’t know what to expect. Ruth had found some bobby pins lurking in the bottom of her bag and she used them to attach the blond wig to my own hair. I could bow clear to the floor now and not worry about dislodging the wig. Of course I’d lose the cap, and she wanted to pin the cap to the wig as well, but I drew the line there.

Outside the door I took Rod’s spare keys from her and locked all three locks, then gave them back to her. She looked at them for a moment before dropping them back into her bag. “You opened all those locks,” she said. “Without keys.”

“I’m a talented lad.”

“You must be.”

We didn’t run into anyone on the way out of the building. Outside the air was fresh and clear and not a touch warmer than it had been the night before. I almost said as much until I remembered I hadn’t been out the night before as far as she was concerned. She said it must feel good to be outside after spending two days cooped up, and I said yeah, it sure did, and she said I must be nervous being on the streets with every cop in the city gunning for me, which was something of an exaggeration, and I said yeah, I sure was, but not too nervous, and she took my arm and we headed north and east.

It was a lot safer with her along. Anybody looking at us saw a guy and a girl walking arm in arm, and when that’s what meets your eye it doesn’t occur to you to wonder if you’re eyeballing a notorious fugitive from justice. I was able to relax a good deal more than I had the past night. I think she was edgy at first, but by the time we’d walked a few blocks she was completely at ease and said she couldn’t wait until we were inside the agent’s office.

I said, “What you mean we, kemosabe?”

“You and me, Tonto. Who else?”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Not a chance. I’m the burglar, remember? You’re the trusted confederate. You stay on the outskirts and guard the horses.”

She pouted. “Not fair. You have all the fun.”

“Rank has its privileges.”

“Two heads are better than one, Bernie. And four hands are better than two, and if we’re both checking Martin’s office things’ll go faster.”

I reminded her about too many cooks. She was still protesting when we reached the corner of Sixteenth and Sixth. I figured out which was Martin’s building and spotted a Riker’s coffee shop diagonally across the street from it. “You’ll wait right there,” I told her, “in one of those cute little booths with a cup of what will probably not turn out to be the best coffee you ever tasted.”

“I don’t want any coffee.”

“Maybe an English muffin along with it if you feel the need.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Or a prune Danish. They’re renowned for their prune Danish.”

“Really?”

“How do I know? You can hold up lanterns in the window. One if by land, two if by sea, and Ruth Hightower’ll be on the opposite shore. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Two If By Sea. That’s the show Rod’s in, did you know that? Anyway, I’ll be on the opposite shore, and I won’t be terribly long. Get in and get out, quick as a bunny. That’s my policy.”

“I see.”

“But only in burglary. It’s not my policy in all areas of human endeavor.”

“Huh? Oh.”

I felt lighthearted, even a little lightheaded. I gave her a comradely kiss and steered her toward the Riker’s, then squared my shoulders and prepared to do battle.

Chapter Ten

The building was only a dozen stories high, but the man who built it had probably thought of it as a skyscraper at the time. It was that old, a once-white structure festooned with ornamental ironwork and layered with decades of grime. They don’t build them like that anymore and you really can’t blame them.

I looked the place over from across the street and didn’t see anything that bothered me. Most of the streetside offices were dark. Only a few had lights on-lawyers and accountants working late, cleaning women tidying desks and emptying trash-baskets and mopping floors. In the narrow marble-floored lobby, a white-haired black man in maroon livery sat at a desk reading a newspaper, which he held at arm’s length. I watched him for a few minutes. No one entered the building, but one man emerged from the elevator and approached the desk. He bent over it for a moment, then straightened up and continued on out of the building, heading uptown on Sixth Avenue.

I slipped into a phone booth on the corner and tried not to pay attention to the way it smelled. I called Peter Alan Martin’s office and hung up when the machine answered. If you do that within seven seconds or so you get your dime back. I must have taken eight seconds because Ma Bell kept my money.

When the traffic light changed I trotted across the street. The attendant looked up without interest as I made my way through the revolving doors. I gave him my Number 3 smile, warm but impersonal, and let my eyes have a quick peek at the building directory on the wall while my feet carried me over to his desk. He moved a hand to indicate the ledger and the yellow pencil stub I was to use to sign my name in it. I wrote T. J. Powell under Name, Hubbell Corp. under Firm, 441 under Room, and 9:25 under Time In. I could have written the Preamble to the Constitution for all the attention the old man gave it, and why not? He was an autograph collector and not a hell of a lot more, a deterrent for people who deterred easily. He’d been posted in the lobby of a fifth-rate office building where the tenants probably had an annual turnover rate of thirty percent. Industrial espionage was hardly likely to occur here, and if the old man kept the junkies from carting off typewriters, then he was earning the pittance they paid him.

The elevator had been inexpertly converted to self-service some years back. It was a rickety old cage and it took its time getting up to the fourth floor, which was where I left it. Martin’s office was on six, and I didn’t really think my friend in the lobby would abandon his tabloid long enough to see if I went to the floor I’d signed in for, but when you’re a professional you tend to do things the right way whether you have to or not. I took the fire stairs up two flights-and they were unusually steep flights at that-and found the agent’s office at the far end of the corridor. There were lights burning in only two of the offices I passed, one belonging to a CPA, the other to a firm called Notions Unlimited. No sound came from the accountant’s office, but a radio in Notions Unlimited was tuned to a classical music station, and over what was probably a Vivaldi chamber work a girl with an Haute Bronx accent was saying, “…told him he had a lot to learn, and do you know what he said to that? You’re not going to believe this…”

The door to Peter Alan Martin’s office was of blond maple with a large pane of frosted glass set into it. The glass had all three of his names on it in black capitals, and Talent Representative underneath them. The lettering had been done some time ago and needed freshening up, but then the whole building needed that sort of touch-up work and you knew it wasn’t ever going to get it. I could tell without opening the door that Martin wasn’t much of an agent and Brill couldn’t have much of a career these days. On the outside the building still retained an air of faded grandeur, but in here all of the grandeur had faded away.