That night, the night the Dragnet Burglar arrived, I was sitting on our front porch reading an Uncle Scrooge comic and gulping an Orange Crush. It was nearly dark, and a deep sunset-magenta tint shone on the houses across the street. I heard a car engine start, and a moment later the Beals’ cream-colored ’55 Dodge went past toward Northeast Sixty-fifth. I saw them from above street level, since the houses on our block were built atop grassy embankments held back by concrete walls or rockeries, with concrete stairs leading up to the porches. I saw Kirk Beal driving and Kenny’s sister Katy in the back seat. That would mean Margaret Beal, Kenny’s mother, was riding in front. I wondered if the whole family was going out.
I remember an acute sensation of betrayal as the Beal car drove by, for I assumed that Kenny, who was supposed to be in his room, was in that car. But I couldn’t see. I didn’t know.
The sky turned a deep blue above the city’s roofs while I thought about sneaking around to the back of the Beal house and looking in Kenny’s bedroom window. At the same time Frank Harrison, observing the Beal house from the shadows, was thinking of doing exactly the same thing.
Harrison could see the TV glow in the Beals’ living room from Sixty-third Street. Taking risks during the rerun season had not been a matter of overconfidence. He had been regularly playing seven-card high-low split and, being a man who rarely folded his cards, found himself bankrupt. Nothing is worse than being clever only half the time, and now he silently made his way to the dark side of the Beal house, dropping out of sight into the shrubbery.
I got to the back gate next to the garage and unfastened the latch as quietly as possible. The rear of the house was quiet. Two downstairs bedrooms were along the side, and all I had to do was round the corner, walk a few feet between houses to Kenny’s window, and look in to see if Mr. Beal had gone back on his word. Pausing, I leaned against the clapboard siding and smiled. Man, I thought, if the little bastard is in there, I could scare the crap out of him by banging on his window.
Harrison had already made it into the house by way of the front bedroom.
I checked out the house next door, but there was no sign of anyone. Cockily running my hand along the side of the house, feeling my way in the dim light from a nearby streetlight, I crept up to Kenny’s halfopen window. I raised my head and looked inside.
Just as I’d thought. No Kenny. The room was dark. But then I heard the sound of the television coming from the living room. Devious Kenny had obviously left his room while his parents were gone and was illicitly watching TV. Or had his father given him permission?
Stepping up onto the clapboard skirting, I grabbed the windowsill, forced myself higher, and hung there suspended, leaning awkwardly into the emptiness. A voice on TV said, “He’s got a fast horse, marshal.”
I remember the line exactly because the next moment I lifted myself up and into the room, landing quietly on the floor next to the bed. I was going to scare the crap out of Kenny, I thought, for locking me in the garage.
It didn’t turn out that way.
From the living room there was a short, staccato scream — and it didn’t come from the TV.
“Shut up, kid.”
“Who are you?”
The voices were only a few feet from the open bedroom door, and I could hear them clearly. One was Kenny’s, the other a man’s.
“Just shut up and I won’t hurt you.”
“What do you want? What do you want?”
“Show me where your parents keep their jewelry and money, and I won’t hurt you.”
It was as if my flesh, muscles, and blood had frozen into a block of sculptured ice. Some guy was in there robbing the Beals. It was not the television, it was really happening.
“Hurry it,” the man’s voice said.
“I don’t know where it is,” said Kenny.
There was a click as the television was turned off. I wanted to go home and call the police, but I was afraid the floor would creak, afraid I couldn’t get out the window fast enough.
Then I heard an awful sound as if Kenny’s breath had been knocked out of him, a kind of “uhff.”
“Don’t yell or I’ll kill you,” said the man. “Find it.”
Terrible brutality was unfolding, and I seemed to be floundering on the moon.
“Sure,” said Kenny, “sure, my dad’s got money. I’ve... got a key.”
“Then get it.”
It was Kenny’s “I’ve got a key” that brought me down to earth, that resonated, returned, and finally anchored me in reality. I’d heard that phrase before, that very same phrase. Kenny had said the same thing just before he’d shown me his father’s German revolver in the desk drawer.
The confluence of personalities at that point was far more volatile than the amount of gasoline in the Beal garage. Harrison was about to get a gun pulled on him by a half-clever, pathetically sly, overconfident ten-year-old.
A noise, as if Kenny were now fumbling with the drawer to his father’s desk, came from the living room. I couldn’t run, and I couldn’t stand still for what I imagined would be a suicide play. I knew Kenny’s track record at sleight-of-hand only too well, and he just couldn’t get away with this. A quick calculation registered in my brain, and I realized (was it something I’d read or been told?) that if I interfered with what was happening there was a good chance the robber would panic.
My own panic overcame my paralysis, and I let out a yell in the dark that might have shattered glass.
“DON’T DO IT, KENNY! DON’T DO IT! DON’T DO IT!”
Terrified at the volume of my own voice, I rushed to the open window, jumped out, and hit the ground painfully. Would the burglar emerge from the window behind me?
Looking up, I heard an aftermath of noises. One was Kenny, yelling for help. The other was a crash of furniture. I heard a lamp break. In another moment the sound of the very thing I’d tried to prevent cracked and echoed through the air. A gunshot!
I lay still on the ground, scared to death.
Then the strangest thing.
As if in a dream, a cascade of bright flashing red light coincided with a sound of squealing tires. Light beamed up the narrow passage between houses and reflected off the siding. The night was suffused with amazing phenomena. Apocalyptic visions of Mr. Beal seared through my mind. I didn’t know what was happening, and I could only think of exploding nuclear missiles. In my confusion it seemed that the confrontations in the Beal house just now had turned, into the world’s own. I looked up again. As if in a horror movie, a woman’s silhouette appeared in a darkened, backlit window. She was staring down at me from what I’d thought was an empty house next door.
Wrenched back to reality, I knew what it meant. The woman next door had called the police. She’d seen the burglar enter the house.
I ran to the back yard, hurried to the gate, and hurled it open.
Running along the grassy parking strip was a man caught in the glare of the flashing lights. He was holding his side. Between his fingers was a bloody mass of red-soaked shirt. He turned. His half-lit face seemed to shrink in fear. Then he slowed, stumbled into the street, knelt on the pavement and remained still for several seconds until finally he fell over, sprawled on the concrete.
Two uniformed officers hurried toward him. People were emerging from the houses all along the block. Even my grandparents came out on our front porch across the street. In ten minutes the whole neighborhood was active with police cars, a white ambulance, barricades, and roving investigators in search of evidence and witnesses. I stood like an animal caught in a beam of light, watching all the kids talking and jumping around. It was like a carnival. Then I hid in the shadow of the alley.