I hoisted myself up, whispering compliments to Brutus, who wagged his tail so hard he nearly toppled sideways in the process. “Back in a flash,” I said. I swung my feet through the window and eased myself into the pitch black of the office. I was now sitting on a desk. I could feel an adding machine, the telephone, and miscellaneous office supplies. I replaced the glass louvers in the metal brackets made for them.
I eased down off the desk. I stood there for a few minutes until I got used to the darkness. I usually don’t do these breaking-and-entering gigs unless I have my little tool kit in tow: flashlight and lockpicks, adhesive tape, and jimmies. Here, I was empty-handed and I felt distinctly disadvantaged. All I wanted was to check the file cabinets to see if Raymond kept his papers on the premises. Once I established the whereabouts of the records, I was out of here. I was going to have to risk a light. I kept in mind the sign I’d seen, indicating an alarm system. Would Raymond actually have such a system, or was he the kind who thought he could deter all the burglars and vandals by pretending to have security? Hard to say with him. He was so righteous about the law when it suited his purposes.
I felt along the wall until I found the switch. I hesitated for a moment and then flipped the light on. The forty-watt bulb revealed an inner office maybe ten feet by twelve, wall paneled halfway up with sheets of fake knotty pine. Girlie calendars from the last six years were tacked up above a work bench where some front windshields had been piled. Three extension cords were plugged into a socket in the inner office and looped through the doorway to service the outer office. Every surface in the room was a jumble of cardboard boxes and greasy car parts. Two gray metal file cabinets were tucked into the corner on the far side of the room. As I crossed the open door leading to the outer office, I caught a blink of light out of the corner of my eye. The passive infrared “seeing eye” of Raymond’s alarm picked up my body heat and set off the entire system.
A horn, probably adequate to announce the end of the world, began a great whooping noise that alternated between high notes and low notes and seemed to include some kind of bell clanging in between. We are programmed from birth to react to sudden loud noises. Of course I jumped and my heart kicked up into high gear. At the same time, I could feel my emotions disconnect as they do in certain emergencies. I wondered belatedly if Raymond’s alarm was set up to signal the police. I better count on it, I thought. I glanced at my watch. It was 3:12 A.M. I figured I had about five minutes max before the black-and-whites showed up. Might have been a charitable estimate on my part. Maybe the LAPD didn’t even bother with alarms. Maybe they’d respond in their own sweet time. What did I know about the machinations of big-city police procedure? While the alarm system bleated and shrieked and pointed an auditory finger, I crossed to the file cabinet and opened the first drawer. Invoices, car parts. I shut that one and tried the next. More invoices, financial records, correspondence, blank forms. Drawer three was a repeat. I skipped to the next file cabinet and started with the top, working my way down. The bottom three drawers were packed with manila folders full of claim forms. I glanced at dates in haste, noting that the claims seemed to extend back about three years. Outside, Brutus was offering up an occasional hoarse bark, apparently overjoyed that I had hit the jackpot. I closed the file drawers, checked to see that the louvered window was shut, tidied some papers on the desk, and brushed some dirt off the Month-at-a-Glance that was lying there. I walked into the outer office, moved around the corner to the front door, which I opened, ducked back to the inner office, and flipped out the light there, then felt my way in the dark to the front door again. I stepped out and gave the door a hard pull behind me, effectively locking it again. The alarm clamoring against the night air seemed to have aroused no particular interest among the neighbors. I wondered if Raymond could hear it from across the street and two doors down. I set off at a run, jogging down the dirt path toward the gate, with Brutus bringing up the rear. I could hear him loping along behind me, panting happily as he maneuvered his legs in some dimly remembered sequence. I glanced back. For an old pooch, he was really truckin’, determined to keep up with me in my little nighttime ramble. I reached the gate and pushed it, reversing the procedure by which I angled my way in. I heard a car squeal around the corner and looked back just in time to see the black-and-white appear on the scene. I shoved back hard on the fence post and pivoted my way through the narrow opening.
I heard a sound like the equivalent of a canine rebuke. When I looked over I saw that Brutus had his head stuck in the gap between the gate and the fence post. He was yanking backward, his bony head and the thick muscular neck pinched in a vise of fencing. Car doors slammed and one uniformed cop headed toward the front entrance while the second one walked in my direction.
“Oh, God,” I said. I jerked the gate forward and pushed the dog’s head to free him. Then I plunged into the bushes and crouched down. I was shielded temporarily by a tangle of shrubbery, but the oncoming cop was scanning every inch of the fence with a heavy-duty flashlight. Meanwhile, inside the fence, Brutus had discovered what I was doing. He put his nose against the chain link and made a worried sound, half growl, half celebration of our newly cemented friendship.
The cop down the block near the office gave a whistle and the officer closer to me turned and headed back the way he’d come. I pulled myself to my feet and extracted myself from the bushes, inching away from the squad car as inconspicuously as I could. Brutus began to bark, unwilling to be abandoned just when the game was getting good. There was a line of parked cars at the curb. I reached the first and ducked behind it, using the cars as concealment until I reached the comer. I crossed the street at an angle and doubled back toward Raymond’s, cutting into the heavy shadows between apartment buildings. Above me, the window in his bedroom blazed with light. I took the metal stairs three at a time, pulling myself up by the railing. Out of breath, I eased past the bedroom, found my open window, and plunged into the bedroom again. I whipped my shoes off, pulled my jeans down, and stuck my head out the door, squinting at the lights that were now flipped on in the hall. Bibianna, in a silk robe, was just emerging from the bedroom. I could hear Raymond in the living room on the phone with someone.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Bibianna rolled her eyes. “It’s the body shop. False alarm. Sometimes the damn thing goes off. Chopper’s on his way over, but the cops say it’s nothing. Go back to bed.”
I closed the door. Sleep was a long time coming.
I woke at nine-thirty to the smell of coffee. I showered and dressed. The door to the master bedroom was open and I caught a glimpse of the broad king-size bed, neatly made. No sign of Raymond or Bibianna. I wandered into the living room to find that Luis was the only one on the premises, except the dog, of course. Luis paid no particular attention to me. He placed a clean mug on the counter and I poured myself some coffee.
“Thanks,” I murmured. I sat down at the kitchen table, doing a quick inspection first to make sure it had been wiped clean. “Where’s Bibianna?”
“They went off someplace.”
“What are you, the baby-sitter?”
He made no reply. A carton of eggs sat open on the counter. In the day since I’d cleaned the kitchen, it had fallen into disarray again. Trash bags were lined up against the cabinets, bulging with beer bottles and discarded paper plates. The sink was piled high with dirty pots and pans, ashtrays spilling butts. Who smoked? I never saw anyone with a cigarette. Luis had pulled out the only clean skillet.
He set it on a burner. He began to remove items from the refrigerator: peppers, onions, chorizo. “You want breakfast?”
“Sure, I’d love it. You need any help?”