The reason he wanted to get into her apartment — well, there were two reasons, actually. The first reason was that maybe the girl had stashed away a whole pile of dope the cops hadn’t found. He didn’t think that was likely, but it was worth a shot. Cops were as careless as anybody else in the world, and maybe she’d stashed away a couple of kilos someplace, which would be like found money with a key going for something like sixty grand before it was stepped on. The second reason was that if the girl was an ounce dealer, which Judite Quadrado had said she was, then she was sure as hell getting those ounces from somebody else, unless she was in the habit of running down to South America every other weekend, which Brother Anthony doubted. The super of the building had told him she was a dancer in a hit show, right? Well, dancers couldn’t go running off whenever they wanted to. No, the way he figured it, she was being supplied by somebody else.
So...
If she was getting her stuff from somebody else, then wouldn’t there be something in the apartment that might tell him where she was getting it? If he could learn where she was getting it, why then he would just go to the man and tell him he’d bought out Sally, or some such bullshit, and would the man care to do business with him instead? Unless the man turned out to be the one who’d killed her, in which case Brother Anthony would make the sign of the cross, pick up his skirts, and disappear like an Arab in the night. One thing be didn’t want was any heavy action from a guy who lived in Baby Bogotá.
He was carrying in the pouch at the front of his cassock two things that were essential to a successful break-in, again according to Big Jack, and assuming that the lock on the dead girl’s door was a Mickey Mouse lock. If the lock looked like something Brother Anthony couldn’t handle, he’d find some other way of getting in — like maybe climbing up the fire escape and smashing a window, although Big Jack said that was Amateur Night in Dixie, smashing windows, something only junkie burglars did. The two things Brother Anthony had in his pouch were a box of toothpicks and a strip of plastic he had torn from one of those milk bottles with a handle and a screw-top cap.
The toothpicks were his own portable burglar alarm.
The strip of plastic was to open the door.
The way Big Jack explained it, a credit card was the best way to loid a Mickey Mouse lock, but any thin strip of plastic or celluloid would do. That was where the expression loid had come from: before credit cards were even invented, the old-time burglars used to use strips of celluloid to work open a lock. Brother Anthony didn’t have any credit cards, and he wasn’t sure the plastic he’d torn from the milk bottle would work; still, Big Jack had said any strip of plastic, right?
He had checked out the lobby downstairs before entering the building; no security, and the old fart superintendent was nowhere in sight. He had been up to the girl’s apartment yesterday, when he’d knocked and got no answer, so he knew she was in apartment 3A, but he checked the mailboxes in the lobby just to make sure, and then he took the steps up to the third floor, and stepped out into an empty corridor, not a sound anywhere, Big Jack was right about apartment buildings being mostly empty during the daytime. If he played this right, according to Big Jack’s rules, he should be inside the apartment in maybe a minute and a half.
It took him half an hour.
He kept sliding the plastic shim into the crack where the door met the jamb, working it, jiggling it, trying to find purchase on the bolt, turning it this way and that, beginning to sweat, removing it from the crack, inserting it again, worrying it, pushing at it, glancing over his shoulder down the hallway, coaxing it, whispering to it (Come on, baby, come on), positive some lady would come out of her apartment down the hall and start screaming at the top of her lungs, jerking the plastic shim, catching the bolt, losing the bolt, sweating more profusely now, the heavy cassock clinging to his body, his hands working feverishly, a full half hour before he finally felt the latch beginning to yield (Careful, don’t lose it now!), felt it beginning to slide back as the plastic insinuated itself between the steel of the bolt and the wood of the jamb, twisting the shim slowly now, feeling the bolt give and then surrender entirely. He seized the knob and turned it, and the door was open.
He was drenched with sweat.
He stepped quickly into the apartment, closed the door immediately behind him, and leaned against it, breathing hard, listening, pouring sweat. When he had caught his breath, he fished in his pouch for the box of wooden toothpicks, opened the box, took a toothpick from it, and then carefully opened the door just a crack and peered out into the hallway, looking, listening again. Nothing.
He opened the door wider.
He wedged the toothpick into the keyway on the lock, and then broke it off flush with the cylinder. He closed the door again, and turned the thumb-bolt, locking it. The way Big Jack had explained it, if anybody came to the apartment with a key, they’d try to put the key in the lock, not knowing a toothpick was wedged there in the keyway, and they’d keep fumbling with the key, trying to get it in there, and the guy inside the apartment would hear all the clicking noise of metal against metal and would go out the window or whatever he’d chosen for his escape route. Your kitchen was a good escape route, Big Jack had told him. Some kitchens had service doors, and most kitchens had fire escapes. He didn’t know why so many kitchens had fire escapes, they just did. Brother Anthony went into the kitchen now.
He leaned over the kitchen sink and looked through the window. No fire escape. He began roaming through the apartment, looking out over the windowsills for a fire escape. The only fire escape was outside the bedroom window. He turned the latch on the window, opened the window just a trifle so he could throw it all the way open in a second if anybody came in here, and then walked into the living room. This was a nice place. Carpet on the floor, nice furniture, he wished Emma and him could live in a place like this. Posters on all the walls, nice black leather sofa with pillows. There were some framed pictures of a girl wearing tights and one of those little short frilly skirts ballet dancers wore. He figured she was the dead girl. Good-looking broad. Blonde hair, nice figure, but a little on the thin side. He wondered where you could buy those little skirts ballet dancers wore. There were probably places in the city you could buy them. He’d like to buy one of them for Emma, have her run around the apartment naked except for the little skirt.
There was a poster for some ballet company hanging on the wall outside the bathroom. He figured he’d start with the bathroom first because Big Jack had told him lots of people stashed their valuables in the toilet tank, in the water inside the tank. He lowered the toilet seat and lifted the top of the toilet tank and put it down on the seat. He looked inside there. A lot of rusty water. He stuck his hand down into the water, felt around. Nothing. He pulled his hand back, wiped it on a towel hanging on a rod across from the toilet bowl, and then put the top of the tank back on again, trying to remember where else Big Jack said a person should look.