I’d seen enough.
I decided that, before leaving, it would be best for me to try to patch the window somehow, cover it up so they wouldn’t notice anybody had broken in. But how? I remembered the workbench affair over under the hanging bulb; the workbench had a bunch of drawers down below, and I went over there and rummaged through them until I found black masking tape in one and a pile of rags in another, from which I selected a chuck of thick black cloth. I used scissors from another drawer to cut a square hole in the cloth.
I grinned. I was a genius. I would climb back out the window, close it shut, reach my hand up and in through the open pane and flip the lock, then tape the square piece of cloth over the empty space, stretching it taut and taping it tight. It was heavy cloth and, blended with the black of the rest of the window, would do as good a job as I could hope for keeping anybody in there from noticing the break-in for a time.
I tidied the workbench, got things put away and-still grinning, still proud of myself-I turned to go back across the big room to the window to tape the black cloth in place.
That was when I heard the shuffle of feet and voices, one saying, “Damnit! Look at the window over there! Somebody busted in!”
19
So there I stood: Mallory, master cat burglar, caught with my metaphorical pants down. My self-congratulatory thoughts fizzled out like wet firecrackers and were replaced with a rush of emotions, including terror, panic, and the ever-popular despair….
I blinked all that away.
Only for a split second had I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity and fear, but that was one split second too many in a situation as tight as this.
The rest of the second I used more wisely, used it to appraise the situation; the footsteps belonged to two people, it seemed, and they had entered through a doorway in the front of the building, a corner door directly opposite from where I was standing, back by the workbench. They hadn’t seen me (and I hadn’t seen them) because the view was blocked by the green van between us. But I couldn’t think of making a dash for the window, which they had already noticed as being broken, and I wouldn’t have had an ice-cube-in-hell of a chance to make it over there and not get caught, much less seen. Could I circle around the van and sneak out the door behind them?
“Lock that door up,” one of the voices said.
Any other questions, Mallory?
“Already did,” another voice said, with irritation that implied doing so was standard operating procedure. This was a high-pitched voice that belonged, I thought, to my old pal Hulk. He was saying, “Why so uptight about the door?”
“If somebody’s in here, I don’t want ’em getting out.”
“I don’t see nobody,” Hulk observed.
“Probably just some goddamn neighbor kid broke the window to see what was in the big mystery garage. Well, we’ll have a look-see anyway and make sure.”
During that last exchange of dialogue, beginning at “Already did,” I came to the conclusion that my only possible course of action was to duck into the lavatory that took up the corner nearest me next to the workbench. Before I did, I hastily opened up a drawer and traded the piece of black cloth and masking tape for that pair of scissors I’d used, then got shut soundlessly inside the can, all before the guys out there could get past the van to the point where they could see me.
Scissors in hand, I examined my cage. Like the outer, larger room of the garage, the john was not the pigsty you might be led to expect, judging from the exterior of the seedy-looking building. That doesn’t mean you’d eat off the floor, but there were worse toilets in the world to have to make a home in. Seemed to be relatively clean, if not lavish: just bare facilities, standard stool and sink. Cramped it wasn’t, and spaciously empty enough to suggest it had been designed with mechanics in mind, back in whatever era the place was used as a service garage; plenty of room to move around, not that I wouldn’t have liked a dozen closets, two attic entries, and one trapdoor to a basement to hide in. Or at least a shower stall. But no, it was nothing more than a somewhat oversize naked can, with no place to hide unless you were very small and could tread water. No place at all.
Except maybe one.
A large cardboard box, big enough for a small stove, had been stuck in here to serve as an oversize wastebasket. Evidently, enough labor was still done in the garage to make necessary the frequent washing of hands: on the wall was a PULL DOWN, TEAR UP brown-paper towel dispenser, and the soap was strong, mechanic-strength powder in a dispenser over the sink, with the big carton apparently a spare liberated from warehouse duty to catch refuse.
Now I didn’t want to make much noise, but figured the search for the intruder was going to lead here pretty soon, so I waited until I could hear a conversation going on out there, which I hoped would cover any sounds I’d make, and crawled into the box of wadded-up brown paper. Trying not to cause too much of a racket, and imagining every crinkle of paper to be a thunderclap, I squirmed and wriggled and swam in the sea of paper wads, getting a layer of the stuff over me.
It was not comfortable. Like I said before, the box was big enough for a small stove; but I am not shaped like a small stove. Also, most small stoves do not have two cracked ribs. Still, there I was, on my back in the box, my knees touching my chest, my arms around my legs, hugging, and my concentration going toward ignoring the pain, holding onto the scissors, and not breathing heavily.
I was like that for maybe two minutes, a bunched-up, awkward fetus clutching scissors in a box of crumpled towels, and then the john door burst open, like a fat man letting out air, and the light switched on and somebody came clumping in. I felt the box quiver as somebody gripped the side of it to peer in. I gripped the handle of the scissors. Tight.
“Nothing in here,” the voice said. And it didn’t sound like a voice with a wink in it, so I assumed I’d properly fooled the guy.
The door shut, and I was alone in the can again. And thankfully alone in my box. I wouldn’t have liked any company; those used-up towels were obnoxious enough as it was.
Then I did something you will probably think is stupid, but I ask you to remember that everything I’d done for the past hour or so was pretty stupid, so as least I was consistent. What I did was carefully, as soundlessly as possible, get back out of the box so that I could approach the door and lay my ear to the wood and listen to the talk going on out there.
But the thing I heard was not talk. It was the sound of a door slamming. For a moment I wondered if those two guys had left, and then I got my answer. A new voice-an apparent third party who’d just entered-said, “I just talked to Frank, and I don’t like it.”
There was silence for a moment, then: “Me neither.” My buddy Hulk talking. “I think Frank’s going out on a limb on this one.”
“Frank’s going out on a limb? Bull,” the new voice said. “We are the ones going out on the goddamn limb, not him.”
The remaining voice, the authoritative voice belonging to the guy who spotted the broken window, said, “Take it easy. We’ll be out of here by dawn, for Christ’s sake. And Frank’s right; we should cash in on some of our work at least, before we split. We laid the damn groundwork, and it’d be a pity to throw it away without making it pay off a little, anyway. I say go ahead.”
“But in daylight?” This was the new voice again, the whiner.
“Why not? We done it in daylight before.”
“But things weren’t as hot before. That SOB Mallory wasn’t sticking his puss into everything then.”
“That’s right,” Hulk agreed, “and he came around here snooping this afternoon.”