“I like you and him together, shugah,” she drawled. “You go by your gut feelin’ with a man, you don’t never be wrong.”
She wore no brassiere; her breasts were magnificent, bared almost to the edge of the areolas, but she frowned down at them, then began rolling her nipples between her fingers and thumbs until they stood up boldly against the thin satin material.
Finally she looked over at Louise. “How do I look?”
“Like a two-dollar quickie on the back seat.”
Grace winked again. “You got it, shugah.”
She opened her door and got out. Louise slid over under the wheel. She had always considered herself quite sophisticated; Grace made her feel young and naive as a virgin.
She called, “Good luck.” Grace turned and gave her a street-urchin’s grin and a thumbs-up signal, then cut at an angle across the carefully barbered and lit lawn toward the front entrance of the condo which did not have Brother Blood’s penthouse perched on top of it.
Picking any lock takes a certain amount of time and a great deal of skill. It is not the simple matter that television would have us believe. Nobody ever picked a lock with one pick; at the outset a tension tool — an L-shaped piece of spring steel — must be inserted into the keyhole and turned slightly so that as each pin is raised to its shear line the tension will keep it from falling back down into the core.
Runyan had spent 2.5 minutes trying to “rake” the lock of the basement rear service entrance of the high-rise — the quick and easy way which sometimes works in a matter of seconds — then had gotten serious: another 7.55 minutes with his tension tool and a curved-tip pick before the lock finally yielded.
He made no move to open the door, instead held it just fractionally ajar; he knew that a closed-circuit TV scanning camera was covering the inside of it. The luminous dial of his watch told him there was less than a minute to go.
Emery Samnic was 47 years old, had been married to the same woman for 26 years and despite this — or because of it — had his sexual fantasies like any other man. For five nights a week he wore the uniform of a security guard and sat behind the security desk in the high-rise lobby.
It was good duty. Tipped back in his swivel chair, he had only to turn his head to examine the bank of TV screen monitors set against the back of the security cubicle. The monitors covered the condo’s entrances, doorways, corridors, and the interiors of the elevators. In one a guard walked a corridor; the others showed nothing at all.
Then a beautiful black woman appeared in the front entrance monitor to push the night buzzer. It sounded behind Emery’s desk. She waited with a hip thrust out provocatively, her big gaudy handbag tucked under one arm, tapping a three-inch spike against the pavement, a thin brown cigar between her lips.
There was no one else with her, but Emery stood up and loosened the Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special in his belt holster before pushing the button to release the door catch.
On the screen, the black woman opened the door and disappeared. The real Grace, in living color, simultaneously came across the lobby toward his desk, her heels clop-clopping on the terrazzo, everything moving the way women’s bodies moved in his fantasies. Her expression was go-to-hell and she obviously wore no bra or panties under the clinging red jumpsuit.
Emery cleared his throat and said, “This isn’t your sort of place, sister.”
Grace put her elbows on his counter, thrusting out her butt and languidly blowing smoke in his face.
“I is invited, honey.” She had a slightly husky voice.
She could see past Emery’s thick waist to the basement monitor. Runyan opened the loading door and entered boldly. She leaned closer yet, giving Emery the news all the way to her navel. As Runyan walked over to the freight elevator and pushed the button, Grace pointed at the house phone with a very long synthetic purple nail.
“Why don’t you phone up the man and find out? Apartment... Two-Three-Seven.”
What sort of business would the Rotzels have with this sort of woman at almost two in the morning? The old man was a deacon of the Baptist church, for Pete sake.
“This time of night...” he began, letting it hang.
Grace moved her cleavage closer; across the lobby, the elevator indicator glowed as the cage descended to Runyan.
“It was a urgent phone call, shugah,” she said. “I swear I think that man was watching a dirty movie and he’s got his motor running, you know what I mean...”
Emery knew what she meant: He could feel his dork pushing out against the heavy twill uniform pants. Jesus, what would it be like to put the old banana into something like that?
He unconsciously blew out a deep breath and picked up the house phone and tapped out two-three-seven. On the monitors, the elevator door opened and Runyan stepped through, disappearing from the basement screen to be instantly picked up by the adjacent elevator camera. Grace could hear an angry squawking voice on the phone. Hurry, Runyan, damn you!
Emery said unhappily into the phone, “This is Emery on the lobby desk downstairs. I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s a young lady here who says...” He broke off to listen to more squawks, finally said, “I know what time it is, sir, I surely do, but she says you wanted...”
Grace, watching Runyan spring up and knock open the elevator ceiling trap, reached across the counter to grab the phone out of Emery’s hand.
“Lemme talk to him,” she said, then said into the phone, “Listen, buster, you phone up an’ say you needs an Around the World, bad, now what’s this shit about—”
“Who is this?” demanded a high scratchy man’s voice. “How dare you use language like that to me? My wife and I are Christian people who—”
“So you got your old lady there, so I takes care of her too,” said Grace, winking at the open-mouthed Emery. “All it’ll cost you is an extra fifty—”
“I’m going to call the police and report you!” shrieked the man on the phone. On the monitor, Runyan was tossing his stuff bag up through the ceiling trap. In front of her, Emery was starting to turn toward the monitors. Grace quickly thrust the phone back into his hands.
“Man wanta talk to you.”
On the monitor, Runyan crouched for his leap.
On the phone, the confused Emery said, “I... I’m real sorry, Mr. Rotzel, I didn’t know she was going to—”
“Rotzel?”
Grace reached over and broke the connection in mid-word. Behind Emery, Runyan leaped up and grabbed the edges of the trap.
“Rotzel ain’t the name of the dude phone up! What’s this here address?”
“Uh... Twelve-Forty-two Boningto—”
“Shee-it, shugah, I got the wrong building!”
Grace winked at Emery and swivelled her way toward the door, her exaggerated hip swing holding his lusting eyes long enough for Runyan to disappear through the trap in the elevator ceiling. As the door closed behind Grace, Emery wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead and whirled belatedly to check the monitors. Everything was serene, nothing moving anywhere.
Chapter 26
Standing on the roof of the elevator cage, Runyan fit the Jumars to the cable. The clock was really running now. He put his feet in the slings and, black nylon stuff bag clipped to his belt, began walking himself up the cable. Could it have been just two days ago that Louise had watched him do this under the overhang on Monday Morning Slab?