“Good.”
“Things are as planned at your end?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, and rang off. No names, no pack drill. I looked at the telephone receiver for a moment, then hung it up, then thought better of it and took it off the hook once again. It whined for a while, but by the time I was done with my tea it was quiet.
I finished dressing. I was wearing a three-piece navy pinstripe suit, a Wedgwood-blue shirt, a tie with narrow green and gold diagonal stripes on a navy field. My shoes combined black calfskin moccasin-toe uppers and thick crepe soles. Wearing them, I made no sound as I scurried around the apartment, gathering up one thing and another, making my final preparations.
While my shoes were silent, my stomach was rumbling a bit. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch some nine hours earlier. But I didn’t want to eat, and I knew better than to drink anything.
Not now.
I checked, made sure I had everything. I went out into the hall, double-locked my own door, then rode the elevator past the lobby to the basement, letting myself out via the service entrance to avoid passing my doorman.
The air had an edge to it. It wasn’t cold enough for mink, but it was certainly topcoat weather. I had mine over my arm, and I took a moment to put it on.
Was there a patron saint of burglars? If so, I didn’t know his name. I murmured a quick prayer, addressed it to whom it might concern, and set off to resume my life of crime.
CHAPTER Three
Halfway across the Queensboro Bridge, I happened to glance at the fuel gauge. The needle was all the way over to the left, way past the big E, and I had what suddenly looked like a mile of bridge stretching out in front of me. I could see myself running out of gas smack in the middle of the East River. Horns would blare all around me, and when horns blare, can cops be far behind? They’d be understanding at first, because motorists do get stranded all the time, but their sympathy would fade when they learned I was driving a stolen car. And why, they might wonder, had I stolen a car without checking the gas?