"I'll steal the tape," I said.
I drove into Devonshire Close and spotted Mapes's house right away. While I couldn't have sworn to it, it looked to have the same lights on as it had two nights ago. There was a parking spot open in front of the house, and another across the street, but I did what I'd already decided to do and made the turn into Mapes's driveway. I drove all the way to the back and parked in front of the garage, leaving the motor running.
Carolyn was saying something, but I ignored her and got out of the car. The garage door was down, and didn't budge when I tried to lift it. There was a little door on the side of the garage. It hadn't been locked Wednesday night and it wasn't locked now, though the kind of lock it was likely to have wouldn't have delayed me long. Unlocked, it delayed me not at all, and I went inside and found first a light switch and then the button to raise the garage door. I killed the light once the door was up, got back in the car, drove into the garage, pulled up alongside (and felt insignificant next to) the Lexus SUV, and cut the engine.
I started to get out of the car. Carolyn hadn't moved. She said, " Bern, are you sure about this? We're in the belly of the beast."
"Not the belly. The house, where I'm going, that's the belly."
"So what's this? The jaw, and we're wedged here like a wad of tobacco, with nothing to look forward to but a lot of chewing and spitting. We're parked in the garage of the house you're gonna break into. What if somebody comes?"
"Nobody's going to come."
"What if somebody passes by and sees the car in here, and knows it's not their car?"
"Nobody can see anything once the garage door's closed."
"You're gonna close the garage door? Then if anything does happen, we're trapped."
"No," I said. "We're not trapped. The car is."
"But that's where you're leaving me, the last I heard."
"You wouldn't have to stay in the car. You could stand over by the side of the garage, where you could keep an eye on things. The only thing you have to be concerned about is if someone pulls into the driveway."
"And then what do I do? Start up the engine and let the carbon monoxide solve all my problems?"
"Then you hit the horn," I said. "Three blasts, loud and long."
"That's the signal, huh?"
"That's the signal. You sound the alarm and then you bail out."
"How?"
"Through the backyard. There's a Cyclone fence about five feet high. You can climb a fence, can't you?"
"Probably, if there's an irate homeowner coming after me. Then what? I just run away?"
"Discretion," I said, "is the better part of burglary. Run until you hit the sidewalk on the next street over, then just walk until you get somewhere."
"Where? I don't know my way around here."
"Just sort of drift until you get to Broadway, and then catch the subway. Nobody's going to be chasing you. And this is all academic, anyway, because they're not coming home until we're long gone."
"Whatever you say, Bern. Only I wish I felt as certain as you sound. Now how are you gonna get in? You were about to tell me."
"I'll show you," I said. She got out of the car and I led her out of the garage, pressing the button to lower the garage door on our way out. We started down the driveway, and when we'd covered almost half the length of the house, I stopped and pointed.
"There!" I said.
"There? That's the side door, Bern, and you just said it was hooked into the alarm system."
"To the right of the door."
"To the right of the door? There's nothing to the right of the door."
"Immediately to the right of it," I said, "at eye level. What do you see?"
"Damned if I know. A white wooden rectangle. If it was closer to the ground I'd say it was a pet door, but the only pet who could jump through it at that height would be a kangaroo, and it's too small for kangaroos. What the hell is it, anyway?"
"A milk chute," I said.
"A milk chute? I still don't know what that is."
"It's a sort of a pass-through," I said. "It's about the thickness of the wall it's in, with a door on either side. The milkman opens the outer door and puts the milk in, and the householder opens the inner door and takes it out."
"People still get milk deliveries?"
"Not that I know of," I said, "but they did when these houses were built, and a milk chute was pretty much standard equipment. I suppose the houses that got aluminum siding jobs had their milk chutes covered up, but you're not going to see much aluminum siding in Riverdale, and certainly not on a stone house. Even if you remodel, the way they did when they closed off the chute to the coal cellar, you wouldn't bother to get rid of the milk chute. It's not hurting anything, and what else are you going to do with the space, and how could you fill it without making a mess of the exterior wall? Didn't you have a milk chute when you were a kid?"
"In a twelfth-floor apartment on Eastern Parkway? The milkman would have had to be a human fly."
"Well, I grew up in a house," I said, "and we had a milk chute, and one day I came home from school and my mother wasn't home and the house was locked. And I got in through the milk chute."
"How old were you, Bern?"
"I don't know. Eleven? Twelve?"
"You were smaller then."
"So?"
"So you've grown, and the milk chute hasn't. Look at you. You'll never fit through that thing."
"Sure I will," I said. "I've grown some since I was twelve, but that wasn't the last time I wiggled in through the milk chute. I was still getting in that way when I was seventeen, and I had my full size by then. And even when I was twelve people never believed I could do it, because it looks as though you won't fit, and then you do."
"What's on the other side of the milk chute?"
"I'll be able to tell you later. But what's usually there is a closet."
"Suppose it's locked?" I gave her a look. "Sorry, Bern, I forgot who I was talking to. If it's locked you'll unlock it. Suppose, well, suppose you can't get through the thing after all?"
"Then I'll come back out," I said, "and think of something else, and if there's nothing else to think of then we'll go back home and call it a night."
If you can get your head through an opening, the rest of the body can follow.
That's a basic guideline, and it's obviously not universally applicable. If you weigh four hundred pounds, your head is going to slip through apertures that will balk at accepting your hips. (I considered the fat man who'd overpaid so generously forThe Secret Agent. A camel would fit more easily through the eye of a needle, I thought, than would he through a milk chute.)
It's a good general principle, however, and newborns prove it every day. Raffles seems to know it instinctively; if his whiskers clear an opening he'll follow them through, and if they don't he'll step back and think of another way to go, or decide he didn't really want to go there anyway.
The Mapes milk chute was large enough to accommodate my head, whiskers and all. I put on my gloves and got down to business.
The milk chute had a little catch that you turn prior to pulling the door open. It's not a lock, just a device to keep the thing from swinging open in the wind. The catch didn't want to turn, though, and then the door didn't want to open. Time and paint had made them both stuck in their ways, but a little pressure (and the tip of a knife blade) led them to change their attitude.
The chute's inner door had a catch as well, but it was on the side away from me, to be opened by the person retrieving the milk. I had my tools in hand, and a thin four-inch strip of flexible steel slipped the catch as if it had been designed for that specific purpose. The inner door opened, but when I pushed it I felt resistance before it had swung inward more than a few inches. It was a yielding, spongy sort of resistance; I could force the door farther open, but when I let go it would spring back.