The Bird waited until the watchman was just that, totally engrossed in his sandwich and the CBS News. He left the closet, walked ten feet down the hall to the small room containing the electric terminal boxes, and jumped the trigger switches for the window alarms and electric eyes. He ignored the floor sensor. It was too complex to bother with, and besides, it wouldn’t be a problem. He never went near the floor.
The Bird’s pulse raced as he made his way up to the roof. He loved the challenge. Working the air, he called it, and the tougher the job, the faster his pulse raced. The score didn’t matter nearly as much as doing it. He had stashed his kit on the roof two days earlier, presenting his forged fire inspector credentials to the day security man and then casually checking out the whole building without being disturbed. He had hidden his operating kit — a large black nylon bag filled with what he called ‘the necessities’ — inside the air-conditioning vent. This one was a cakewalk, almost too easy. Security was not that tough and the watchman would never suspect that the museum would be hit so soon after closing.
He pulled off the beard and slicker and stuffed them in the bag, blackened his face, then picked the lock on the skylight over the French Impressionists room. Attaching a large, aluminium vise to the sill, he threaded a thousand- pound-test nylon rope through the rings in the vise and the rings in his thick harness, and rappelled down.
Now he was flying seven feet above the floor, close to the south wall so the TV monitor could not see him, his lifeline attached to his waist. Using his head as a fulcrum, spinning around, sometimes hanging head down, sometimes feet down, the Bird was a living Peter Pan surrounded by Monets and Manets, Cassatts and Signacs, Gauguins, Van Goghs, Sisleys, Cezannes and Renoirs.
51
Beautiful, thought the Bird. Who else works in such an atmosphere of creative splendor?
But as he swung in a leisurely arc, enjoying the wondrous works that covered the walls, his eyes suddenly fell on a bench in the center of the room. On the bench lay a cat.
The Bird froze. The ions in the air froze. Everything froze but the cat, who slept peacefully.
If that cat jumps, the Bird thought, the floor sensors will knock the old watchman into the middle of Canarsie. He swung on the end of his line for several seconds watching the cat, a big gray-striped feline. He had to move slowly and quietly and hope he did not wake it up.
The Bird slowly moved his head back and forth, swinging himself until he could almost touch the wall. He reached into his kit, took out two pressure clamps, then swung against the wall and quietly fixed the two suction cups to it, using them to stabilize himself.
He used a small pressure wrench to pry open each of the frames, lifted a Monet, a Cezanne and a Renoir and slid them out, carefully covered each with a sheet of tissue, rolled them tightly, and put them in the tube slung over his shoulder, which he strapped tightly to his back so it would not swing free. He released the suction cups and swung back in the air, free of the wall, his head hanging down toward the floor.
The cat rolled over on its back, stretched, opened its eyes and stared up at the biggest bird it had ever seen in its life.
The Bird stared back.
The cat’s eyes widened. It jumped to its feet. Its back arced and it spat up at him.
Don’t jump, thought the Bird, please, don’t jump.
The cat jumped on the floor.
The floor sensors set off an alarm beside the monitor screen in the office. The watchman, startled by the buzzing noise, stared at the monitor, but the cat was standing directly under it and the watchman could not see it on the screen. The room appeared empty.
‘Damn,’ the old man muttered under his breath.
Loosening his revolver in the holster, he walked down the hail and stood for a moment outside the open archway leading into the large room, then took out his gun and, holding it in both hands, jumped into the room TV style. The cat streaked past him and ran down the hall.
‘Damn you,’ the watchman yelled.
The watchman holstered his weapon, took a few steps into the room and stood for a moment with his hands on his hips.
The Bird dangled directly over his head, a foot away.
‘You little son of a bitch, gonna give me a heart attack,’ the watchman said aloud. ‘That’s the second time this week you scared the piss outa me.’
The Bird held his breath. If the watchman looked up, they would literally be eye to eye. But he didn’t. He gave the room a cursory once-over and went back down the hail, calling, ‘Kitty, kitty.’
The Bird sighed with relief. He was well named. He hated cats.
SLOAN
It was four-twenty-eight when Stenhauser left the twenty- eighth-floor offices of Everest Insurance on East Fifty- seventh Street, took the elevator to the second floor, walked down one flight and left by the west-side fire door.
Sloan was in a coffee shop on Fifty-seventh between Second and Third avenues. It was a perfect location for him. Through its glass window, he could see three sides of the Everest building. The fourth, the back side, led to a blind alley that emptied on Third Avenue. No matter what route Stenhauser took, Sloan could spot him. Sloan took out his small black book and made a notation, as he had been doing for the last three days. Then he followed the little man.
Stenhauser’s name had been filed discreetly in Sloan’s computer for two years. Until three days ago he had no idea what Fred Stenhauser looked like or anything else about him other than his profession. It wasn’t necessary before now. The names in Sloan’s file were like savings accounts, and Sloan was big on savings accounts, on keeping something for a rainy day. He was also a neurotically patient man. Sloan was never in a rush, he could wait forever. Or at least until he was ready. Now he was ready to cash in one of the accounts, the one with Fred Stenhauser’s name on it.
Stenhauser was an easy mark. He was as precise as Sloan was patient. He always left his office a little before four-thirty. He always stopped for a single martini at Bill’s Safari Bar on Fifty-sixth Street. He was always home by six and by six-ten was back on the street with his yappy little dog.
Life, to Stenhauser, was a ritual. He wore double- breasted glen plaid suits, with a sweater under the jacket, and a paisley tie. Every day. He bad his hair trimmed every Tuesday morning at eight-thirty at the St. Regis Barber Shop, ate the same breakfast at the same coffee shop on Fifty-seventh Street every morning, always read the paper, the Wall Street Journal, from the back forward, always went to Cape Cod on his vacation. Everything Stenhauser did he always did.
Even Stenhauser’s one little eccentricity was predictable, for while he followed this ritual day in and day out, he rarely left his office by the same door or took the same route to Bill’s or took the same route from Bill’s to his brownstone on Seventy-fourth Street. It was as if he were playing a game, as if someone were constantly following him and his gambit was to evade them. Sloan loved the irony of it. Now someone was following Stenhauser and he didn’t even know it.
On this day, Stenhauser, a short, slender man in his mid-thirties with heavy-lidded eyes like a frog’s, went east to Second Avenue, south to Fifty-sixth Street, then turned right and walked two blocks to Bill’s Safari Bar. He walked briskly, always looking at the ground in front of him, as if he were afraid he would step on something. Sloan had decided to brace him in Bill’s. The bar was never too crowded, which was the main reason Stenhauser took his evening-cap there. And while the decor was a little heavy on ferns and stuffed animal heads, it was small and quiet, and the bartender made a perfect martini.