“Actually, you’re dumb, Garcia,” Keever went on. “You were workin’ a hot area. We’ve had more prowlin’ squeals out of that neighborhood in the last three weeks than from the rest of the city combined.”
He paused and then said slyly, “On the other side of the coin, if all of these have been you, you’ve made some pretty good hauls — including the Styversent family jewels.”
Trinkets. Fakes. Showpieces. That’s what the bulk of the glittering hauls from apartments amount to. The real stuff is in a bank deposit box somewhere — for whatever pleasure that gives. But the Styversents weren’t fakers. They wore the real stuff. And they had kept it in their apartment, where it was handy. Not many pieces, only six, but each was genuine.
Keever asked from under lifted eyebrows, “Have you got them, Garcia? No fence in town has had a smell. We know.”
“I never heard of no jewels,” I said.
Keever sat silent for a few moments, apparently finding that hard to digest. Then he stood. “Garcia, you’re not being very cooperative here. I guess it’s all these other guys in the room, so let’s go down the hall to where we can have some privacy.”
“All I want is a defender,” I repeated.
His anger flared. “Down the hall!” he snapped.
He started to come out from behind the desk. And then it was as if he had forgotten something. He turned and stooped, reached for a bottom drawer. He was jackknifed, his head down. I was out of his sight — and the squad room door still was only twenty-five feet away.
I bolted. I heard surprised shouts, the scraping of chairs being thrown back. I wondered how many cops were pawing for.38 Specials.
I tucked my head into my shoulders as I leaped the railing, skidded around the corner and raced to the stairway. I clattered down the stairway and shot outside to the night, the shouting still loud behind me.
I raced to the corner of the police building, careened around it and bolted across the parking lot, running low between the parked vehicles. I found the alley, turned down it, then spotted the dangling ladder of a fire escape.
I looked over my shoulder. Nothing. But I heard the shouts coming. I went up the ladder and froze against it with the first sighting of a running cop turning into the alley.
It seemed as if most of the city’s police force was passing under me, running in a variety of clusters. Some of the clusters went on out of the alley exit and disappeared. Others began to slow.
I went up the ladder to the roof, scrambled across it and jumped down to the next roof. Somebody down below would figure it soon enough. And then the rooftops would be swarming.
I went from building to building, leaping and scrambling, looking over my shoulder. I was running out of room, nearing the end of the block.
I saw the skylight. It opened — squeakingly — from the outside. I crouched, waiting for a startled shout from the well of blackness. There was no sound. I propped the skylight on its braces and remained crouched.
Below me could be an apartment, a studio, an attic. I had no idea what to expect.
I went into the well, hung by my fingertips for a moment. I sucked a breath, closed my eyes and dropped. I landed on something with lumps and a slight spring. I pitched and then lost my balance. A startled yelp filled my ears. I hit a floor, scrambled on hands and knees back toward the shadow that was coming up from the bed.
I leaped on the shadow, putting it down again and pinning it. My hand found a mouth, covered it. The head under my hand whipped in terror, legs flailed and bed coverings fluttered.
The shadow smelled good. My nostrils became filled with the scent of perfume or bubble bath. I didn’t know which, but I did know I was wrestling a scantily clad girl. She was warm.
I curved a hand against her voice box, cutting off all sound and reached out and found a lamp. I turned on the light.
The girl was very well constructed. She also had become frozen in terror. I snapped, “Is this an apartment building?”
She managed to nod.
“Is there a basement?”
She nodded again.
“How many floors in the building?”
I released the pressure against her throat. She pawed and gagged. “T-three.”
I left her. She wouldn’t scream for all of thirty seconds. It would take her that long to get her throat muscles functioning to where she could reach full pitch.
I went down to a basement and found a rear door. I opened it cautiously and looked up six steps to level ground. There seemed to be a small, open lot. I couldn’t spot any moving shadows.
I went across the lot in a low run and crouched in a deep building shadow. There was an alley exit about a hundred feet away. Occasionally a man, a woman, a couple moved across the opening to disappear again.
Where were the cops?
I inched down to the exit and risked a look up and down the street. There was a cluster of cops off to my left, but they were concentrating on moving into a building. They were scrambling. Screams had been heard.
I slid out to the sidewalk and walked off in the opposite direction. I wanted to run, but I could not afford to bolt now.
I crossed an intersection and kept going in a straight line. I increased my pace as the confidence built. At the second intersection, I turned right and went up a desolate street. There was an alley entrance across the street. I curved over there and moved into the black shadows.
And then I ran.
The pad I’d rented a couple of months earlier was two rooms in a basement. Once one of the rooms had housed a furnace, the other had been a large coal bin. The opening for the coal chute remained, although the chute was gone. A heavy iron slab covered the opening, but it was on hinges. It provided my ventilation.
Upstairs, there was a wine shop on the ground level floor and a commune of hippies occupied the second floor. Nobody bothered anybody.
I squatted in the alley behind the building and stared at it. It was quiet and black. No one seemed to be stirring. But Keever could be around somewhere, waiting in a deep shadow.
I eased over to the chute opening, put a couple of fingernails in the edge of the iron door and inched it open. I sniffed. No odor of cigarette smoke.
So maybe Keever, if he was inside, was a nonsmoker.
I eased my fingernails from the crack and remained squatted. Keever’s best point for vigilance, if he was waiting, was from under the basement hallway stairsteps that went up into the wine shop. He’d have command of the front and the back doors and he could see anyone who might come through the shop and down the steps.
So my best entry to the pad was through the chute opening. The floor was clear under that opening. I kept it clean.
I slid in and dropped, bracing a palm against the iron door to eliminate the clang.
I crouched in the darkness. There was no sound. I went to the bed, pulled up the mattress and dug down into the second spring on the right side. There was two hundred dollars there.
A lighter flared. A cigarette was lit. And Keever said, “You scared that girl bananas, Garcia.”
I stood frozen. He turned on a lamplight. He was in my only deep chair. He looked almost comfortable. His hat was shoved to the back of his head. There was only the cigarette caught between two fingers of his right hand. No gun in sight. No weapons.
He drew deep on the cigarette, said, “You’re a little slow on the take, pal. I thought for a while I might have to lead you out to an open street and point.”
“And you stayed down behind your desk so long I thought you might be having a heart attack,” I smirked.
“Knock the smart stuff. You ain’t out of the woods.”
“What’s the pitch, Keever? How come you let me run?”
He eyed me hard. The temptation, I knew, was to knock me down. But he backed off. He said, “Eighteen suspicions and only two busts, that’s not too bad a battin’ average.”