The Big Bad City by Ed McBain Page B

was sandwiched between two red-brick walk-ups. He preferred a building with access to structures on either side, rather than a corner one. When there were adjoining buildings, if ever push came to shove you had rooftop escape routes.
    The backyard here was uncommonly still this afternoon.
    He thought at first something might be wrong, everything so still. The way a forest went suddenly still whenever a predator approached. He stood in the tunnel leading from the steps into the yard itself, garbage cans already in for the night at three-thirty in the afternoon, lined up along the walls of the tunnel, faint whiff of garbage here, everything so still. He waited. If the super or anyone else was prowling the backyard, he’d do his city-inspector routine and disappear. What he usually did, a building like this one, he went in through the fire escape and then took the elevator on his way out, if there was one. Otherwise, he walked down the stairs and strolled out through the lobby. He never went in with anything but a small suitcase containing his tools and the box of chocolate chip cookies he’d baked that morning. He was holding that suitcase in his right hand now.
    He kept waiting.
    It was very hot here in the tunnel. He moved to the very end of it where he had a better view of the yard, white sheets hanging limply overhead on a breezeless afternoon. Somewhere a radio was going. He loved the intimacy back here.
    Well, he thought, let’s boldly go, and stepped out into brilliant sunshine. The yard was empty. The radio was playing an opera, he didn’t know which one. He moved swiftly toward the fire escape he had located on his last reconnaissance mission, jumped up for the hanging ladder, pulled it down, and began climbing in almost the same motion. The windows on the first-and second-floor landings were closed. He walked quickly past them, and climbed to the third floor. The tenor was reaching for a high note. It hung on the summer air, liquid and pure, and then fell with a dying grace.
    He crouched outside the window, listening intently.
    The apartment was still.
    He tried the window gently. Like a skilled craftsman, he knew better than to force anything. He always tried it delicately, seeing if it would ease open at a touch. Sometimes, he got lucky. The window slid open under his hands, but an unlocked window didn’t mean an apartment was empty. He waited, listening. He had read someplace that professional burglars always went in through a door. Subverted the alarm, picked the lock, went in that way. Burglars who went in windows were supposed to be junkie burglars, your smash-and-grab types. He was not a junkie, but he was most certainly a burglar. In fact, he was a
professional
burglar going in through a window right this very minute, Beam me down, Scottie, he thought, and stepped through and dropped softly to the floor.
    He was in a dining room.
    The apartment was dim, not a light burning, no sunlight streaming through the east-facing windows at this hour of the day. Still as a tomb. Just what one would expect at three-thirty in the afternoon, occupants off working or shopping, place all to himself. He kept listening. Every minute he was inside, he listened. Never knew when someone might be coming home unexpectedly. He heard an elevator moving up the shaft. Heard a telephone ringing in an apartment somewhere on the floor. Heard the muffled voice of an answering machine picking up. Listened. At last, he took a chamois cloth from the small suitcase, and turned back to the window, and wiped the sill behind him, and the sash inside and out.
    He never started in a dining room because he didn’t know anything about expensive dinnerware, and silverware was heavy to carry and often difficult to fence. He never stole television sets, either, because that was a sure way of getting a hernia, struggling a heavy TV set out of the building. He waited a moment longer, and then, still carrying the suitcase, he moved toward a closed door