‘What are we doin’ up here?’ Sharky asked.
‘What we’re gonna do, we’re gonna set us up a listening post in here, okay? The mark is only two floors down so we can use wireless mikes.’ He opened the tool chest and took out an object no larger than a button which was attached by a single wire to a rectangular box about the size of a disposable cigarette lighter. A pin protruded from the back of the button. It looked like a drawing pin.
‘This is the mike,’ The Nosh said, ‘and the little box is the amplifier. We pre-set the amplifier to a specific frequency and it can be picked up by this miniature FM tuner.’ The tuner Jay in the flat of his hand. ‘Then I plug this cassette deck into the tuner. It’s voice-activated. When anybody down there talks, the tuner picks it up, the recorder turns on automatically, and it’s all on tape.’ The cassette deck was also miniaturized. ‘I made it myself,’ The Nosh said. ‘Real simple. Only one circuit.’
‘You could put the whole works in your pocket,’ Sharky marvelled.
‘Each mike has its own tuner and recorder. If she walks from room to room talking, one recorder cuts in when the other one cuts off. We’ll plant the mikes in each room.’ He pointed to a button on the tape decks. ‘This is a monitor button. Push it down and you can listen continuously. I also have a set of earphones I’ll leave up here which will help with the monitoring.’
‘Amazing,’ Sharky said. ‘Will it pick up anything else?’
‘Yeah, stereo, radio, like that. Not walking or normal room noises. But don’t worry. Later on, see, we can go in with a dip filter and erase the background noise. What we do, we dip in there and set the filter for the voice frequency, then —‘
‘Nosh?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re telling me more than I want to know.’
‘Right.’
He took out three tuners and recorders and fitted them together and placed them in one corner of the room behind the motors. ‘One more thing,’ he told Sharky. ‘I got you a dozen or so cassettes and they’re clearly marked so you don’t put ‘em in backwards. The tapes’re good for ninety minutes a side. There’s a beeper on each tape which sounds off thirty seconds before the end.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay, let’s go down and see what we got on ten.’
Sharky removed a walkie-talkie from a case attached to his belt. ‘This is Zebra One, we’re leaving topside.’
They found 10-A next to the elevators. Sharky rang the bell. Nothing. He rang it again and they waited. Still nothing. He knocked sharply on the door.
‘Okay,’ The Nosh said, ‘let’s do it.’
He took a case from the tool chest and opened it. It contained a set of stainless steel needles varying in length from one to six inches. He studied the lock carefully, then selected one of the needles and, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, eased it into the keyhole, twisting it slowly as he did. ft caught for an instant and The Nosh gave it a quarter-turn, felt it slip farther until it caught again. Another quarter-turn and the tumblers clicked. He smiled, stood up, and opened the door.
They moved in quickly and quietly, closing the door behind them, waiting, listening. There was not a sound. ‘Okay,’ Sharky said, ‘check it out.’ They went swiftly through, the apartment, peering into each room. Empty. They returned to the small entrance ball by the front door and studied the layout. The living room was directly in front of them. On either side of it was a bedroom and bath. The dining room was immediately to their left and the kitchen was adjacent to it. A balcony connected the living room and the master bedroom to the right.
Sharky curled his tongue against his teeth and whistled softly.
‘I’ll give her one thing,’ he said. ‘She’s got class.’
The living room was done in beige and cream with pale mauve walls. A large Olympus beige-on-cream sofa faced them. It was several feet in front of the french doors, which opened onto the balcony, and half the width of the room. Two brown and beige striped Savoy chairs faced each other on each side of the sofa. A Porto Bello coffee table in antique white sat in front of the sofa and between the chairs. The vicuna rug was grey. There were plants all over the room, beside the french doors, in the corners and hanging from the ceiling, tall nephrolepis ferns, bottle palms, begonias, columnea, and spider plants. The stereo sat in a lowboy against one wall with the speakers in the ceiling.
The dining room had mirrored walls and a large smoked glass table with chromium and silk chairs.
‘Shit, the furniture in here cost more than my house,’ The Nosh said.
‘You take that bedroom and I’ll check out the master,’ Sharky said. ‘We may run out of time.’
The bed was king-sized and covered with a llama blanket. The wall behind it and the ceiling were mirrored. The rest of the furniture was white wicker with pale green cushions. An enormous Norfolk pine filled one corner of the room and several hanging baskets dominated the corner facing it. Sharky checked the drawers in the night tables. One contained s small bottle of pills, a vial of white powder, a silver cigarette case, and three vibrators of various sizes, one of which was shaped like an egg. Sharky tasted the powder, opened the cigarette case, smelled one of the cigarettes, and examined the pills.
‘Hey Shark, c’m’ere,’ The Nosh called from the other room.
He put the pills back in the drawer and closed it. The other room contained a massage table over which was a light bar with four sunlamps aimed at the table. The two windows were stained glass. A pair of lovebirds cooed and kissed each other in a tall wicker cage that hung among the flowering baskets that dominated the room. A small marble-topped table covered with vials of oils and body creams Sat beside the massage table. In one corner there were perhaps a dozen multi-coloured pillows of all sizes arranged on the floor and against the wall. Tropical fish peered bug-eyed from an enormous gurgling aquarium against the other wall. The fish stared at them, then darted soundlessly through dancing seaweed.
