aspirin. They interrupt sobriety and seem to undercut a person's commitment to recovery, and people who use them usually wind up drinking again.
I suppose I slept some, although it felt a lot like a white night.
After a while the sun came up and slanted through the living-room window and I went into the kitchen and made a fresh pot of coffee. I toasted an English muffin and ate it and drank two cups of coffee.
I checked the bedroom. She was still sleeping, curled on her side with her face pressed into the pillow. I tiptoed past the bed and went into the bathroom and showered. It didn't wake her. I dried off and went back to the living room and got dressed, and by then it was time to make some telephone calls.
I had to make quite a few of them, and sometimes it took some doing to reach the person I had to speak with. I stayed at it until I found out what I needed to know, and then I looked in on Elaine again. She hadn't changed position, and I had a moment of wholly irrational panic, convinced that she was dead.
He'd let himself in days ago, I decided, and he'd tampered with the Seconal, salting the capsule with cyanide. Or he'd let himself in just hours ago, slipping through walls like a ghost, slipping past me while I tossed on the leather couch, stabbing her in the heart and stealing away.
Of course it was nonsense, as I learned soon enough by dropping to a knee alongside the bed and listening to her steady shallow breathing.
But it gave me a turn, and it showed me the state of my own mind. I went back to the living room, thumbed through the Yellow Pages, and made another couple of phone calls.
The locksmith got there around ten. I'd explained to him just what I wanted, and he brought along several models for me to look at. He went to work in the kitchen first, and he was halfway through in the living room when I heard her stirring. I went into the bedroom.
She said, 'What's that noise? At first I thought you were using the vacuum cleaner.'
'It's a drill. I'm having some locks installed. It's going to come to close to four hundred dollars. Do you want to write a check?'
'I'd rather give him cash.' She went to the dresser and took an envelope from the top drawer. Counting bills, she said, 'Four hundred dollars? What are we getting, a vault?'
'Police locks.'
'Police locks?' She arched an eyebrow. 'To keep the police out?
Or to keep the police in?'
'Whatever you decide.'
'Here's five hundred,' she said. 'Get a receipt, okay?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'I don't know what my accountant does with them, but he's a bear for receipts.'
She showered while I went out and kept the locksmith company.
When he was done I paid him and got a receipt and put it and her change on the coffee table. She came out wearing baggy fatigues from Banana Republic and a short-sleeved red shirt with epaulets and metal buttons. I showed her how the locks worked. There were two of them on the living-room door and one in the kitchen.
'I think this is how he got in twelve years ago,' I said, pointing to the service door in the kitchen. 'I think he came in through the building's service entrance and up the back stairs. That's how he got past the doorman with no trouble. You've got a deadbolt lock on that door, but maybe it wasn't engaged at the time. Or maybe he had a key for it.'
'I never use that door.'
'So you wouldn't have known if it was locked or not.'
'No, not really. It leads to the service elevator and the incinerator.
Once in a blue moon I go out that way to the incinerator, but I don't like having to squeeze past the refrigerator schlepping a bag of garbage, so I usually go out the front door and walk around.'
'The first time he was here,' I said, 'he could have slipped into the kitchen and unlocked the door. Then it would have been open both times he let himself into the apartment. Sometime after that it would have been unlocked when you went to use it, but would you even have noticed it?'
'I don't think so. I would have just thought I forgot to lock it the last time I'd used it.'
'Well, you don't have to use it at all for the time being.' I demonstrated the lock, the steel bar that ran across the face of the door and lodged in a hasp on the doorframe. 'This key locks and unlocks it,' I said, 'but I suggest you just leave it locked all the time. There's no way to unlock it from the outside. I had him install it without mounting a cylinder on the other side of the door. You never come in this way anyway, do you?'
'No, of course not.'
'So it's permanently sealed now, for all practical purposes, but you can let yourself out with the key if you ever have to get out in a hurry.
But if you do, you can't lock it after you. You can lock the deadbolt with the key, but not the police lock.'
'I don't even know if I have a key for that door,' she said. 'Don't worry about it. I'll keep it closed all the time, and I'll keep the deadbolt and the police lock both locked.'
'Good.' We returned to the living room. 'Now here,' I said, 'I had him mount two police locks. One of them's the same arrangement as you've got in the kitchen, a police lock that you can lock or unlock only from inside the apartment, with no cylinder on the outside. That way there's no lock out there for anybody to pick. When you're inside the apartment with both locks engaged there's no way anybody can get in without a battering ram. When you go out, you can lock the second police lock with a key. This is the key for it, with the bumps on it. The cylinder's supposed to be pickproof, and the key itself can't be duplicated with ordinary equipment, so it would be a good idea
