“I heard a guy say they make the best kind of wife.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You want another beer?”
“No. I... I got some people to see.”
“I’ll sec you around,” said Manny.
“Sure thing,” said Charlie.
He left the bar and walked along, aimlessly, trying to remember names and faces and people. Somebody had to still be around, somebody who could fill him in, tell him who the boss was now, where to find him, how to get back into the old groove.
A prowl car slid to a stop beside him and a cop got out of the right-hand door. He said, “Okay, buddy, hold on a minute.”
Charlie stopped and looked at him. He knew the cop, but he couldn’t remember the name.
The cop said, “Charlie Lambaski!” and he looked pleased.
“Hi,” said Charlie.
“When’d you get out?”
“Just today.”
The cop looked him over. “Jail must have agreed with you,” he said. “You put on some weight.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie.
“You walked across the street against the DON’T WALK sign back there,” said the cop. “That’s why I stopped you.”
“I didn’t notice it. I’m sorry.”
“I understand. You haven’t seen any signs like that for a while.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, Charlie, just a warning. We got an anti-jaywalking campaign on. If I felt like being tough, that walk could cost you two bucks.”
“I’ll watch it from now on,” Charlie told him.
“You do that. You got any plans yet, Charlie?”
“Not yet,” said Charlie. “I’m just getting moved in.”
“You better stay away from the old crowd,” the cop said. “You don’t want to get mixed up with them again.”
“I won’t,” said Charlie.
“Learned your lesson, huh?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, Charlie. Sec you around. I hope you make out good.”
“Thanks.”
The cop got back into the prowl car, and Charlie went on walking. At the next corner he waited till the light turned green, and then crossed. After a while he took a taxi home. For just a second the driver looked like Andy.
Charlie went into his apartment but didn’t turn on any lights. He walked through into the bedroom and lay down on the bed, kicked off his shoes and lit a cigarette. He felt around on the dresser beside the bed until he found an ashtray, then rested the ashtray on his chest and smoked’ and thought. Around him he could hear sounds. Strange sounds, nonprison sounds.
A baby was crying somewhere, and somewhere else a woman was screaming at her husband. The baby and the woman were both pretty far away and he could just hear them. Somebody else, a little closer, had a television set on and he could hear the audience laughing every once in a while.
Upstairs, people moved around and he heard the floor creak and crack under them as they walked. After a while he heard a door slam up there, and then there wasn’t any more moving around.
He put the cigarette out, and returned the ashtray to the dresser. He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the dark ceiling, and thought.
Nothing was the way he’d expected. Nothing was working out right. He felt lost, for some reason. Lost and lonely.
There was a sound at the window beside his bed. Charlie froze and listened, and somebody was moving around out there on the fire escape. He heard the window slide slowly open, and then the shade fluttered as somebody raised it from outside.
Charlie moved swiftly and silently off the bed. In his socks, he moved around the room and stood against the wall beside the window. All of a sudden he felt good. He didn’t know yet what was up, but he didn’t feel lost any more.
A form came through the window, cautiously but not too quietly. Charlie considered letting him have it, but then decided to wait. There might be more than one of them.
There was. A voice from outside whispered, “All clear?”
“All clear,” the guy inside said.
Then the second one came in, and closed the window behind him. Charlie waited until the window was closed all the way, but the shade still up, so he could see them both in the pale light from outside, and then he stepped forward and thumped them both, twice each, cold and efficient the way he used to do it. They both went down, and neither of them tried to get up.
Charlie pulled the shade all the way down to the windowsill and then walked over by the door and turned the light on. He took a look at his catch.
Kids, that’s all. They were both about seventeen, dressed in black jackets and dark blue levis. One of them was out cold and the other one was sitting up with a dazed expression on his face.
Charlie said to the one who was sitting up, “Wake your buddy. Slap his face.”
The sitting-up one slapped the other one’s face a couple of times, and then that one sat up too. They blinked up at Charlie, both scared and both trying not to show it.
Charlie said, “You kids taking a night course in burglary?”
They didn’t say anything.
“If you aren’t,” Charlie told them, “you ought to. You two couldn’t break into Macy’s on bargain day without getting picked up.”
One of the kids finally spoke up, saying, “You gonna call the cops?”
“For what? You two? You didn’t do anything, just gave me a little exercise, that’s all. Just go home and forget this second-story’ dodge, you don’t know the first thing about it.”
The other kid looked defensive. “So what do you know about it?”
“I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever learn.” Charlie pulled over a chair and sat facing them. “Look,” he said. “When the lights are out, that don’t mean there’s nobody home. What you do, you scratch at the window like a cat. You do it two or three times. If nobody shows up, then you take a chance and open the window. Just a little bit. Then you listen. You listen for breathing, meaning somebody’s in the room, asleep. You listen for somebody talking somewhere else in the apartment. You make sure the joint is empty before you go in. You got that?”
They nodded, slowly, wide-eyed.
Suddenly, Charlie had an idea. He got to his feet and pushed the chair back against the wall. He felt good now, he felt fine. The old tingling across his shoulders was there again, like when he and Andy were on their way to a job in the old days. Everything was going to be okay after ail.
“Listen,” he said to the kids. “The people upstairs just went out. Come on, we’ll go up the fire escape, I’ll show you how it’s done. Just a dry run. We don’t want to pull any jobs around here, this is headquarters and we don’t want any cops in the building. Come on.”
He started toward the window, then stopped and looked back at the kids. They were still sitting on the floor, and in their eyes was awe and admiration and respect.
He said, “You with me?”
They scrambled to their feet. “We’re with you,” they said.
The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution
I’m not sure when it was, exactly, that I knew I must murder Janice. Oh, I’d been thinking of it off and on for months, but I don’t remember at what precise moment these idle daydreams hardened into cold and determined resolution.
Perhaps it was the day the mailman brought me the bill for a mink coat of which I had never until that moment heard. When I asked my darling if I might at least see this coat for which I was expected to shell out two thousand dollars, one fifth of a year’s wages, she confessed prettily that she no longer had it. Shortly after its purchase, while coming home from the city after an exhausting shopping spree along Fifth Avenue, she had lost the dear thing on the train.