At the opposite end of the hall I found the one-room office of one Leland N. Barish. His name was painted on the frosted glass, along with
'CONSULTANT.' The lock looked to be the building's original equipment, shaped to take a skeleton key. I've carried a couple on my key ring for years, although I'd be hard put to tell you the last time I had occasion to use one of them. I didn't expect them to work now, but I tried the larger of the two and it turned the lock.
I let myself in. There was nothing to show who Barish was or who'd want to consult with him. The desk, its top uncluttered except for a couple of magazines, had a coating of dust that looked a good two weeks old. A stack of glassed-in bookshelves held only a few more magazines and eight or ten paperback science fiction novels. There was a wooden chair on casters that went with the desk, and an overstaffed armchair on which a cat had once sharpened its claws. The gray-beige walls showed rectangles and squares of a lighter shade, indicating where a previous tenant had displayed pictures or diplomas. Barish had neither repainted nor hung up anything of his own, not even a calendar.
I'd have gone through the desk drawers out of the idle curiosity that is an old cop's stock in trade. But the desk was locked, and I left it that way, unable to think of a reason to break in.
I'd switched the light on when I entered, and I left it on. No one could make out more than a silhouette through the frosted glass, but even if they could I had little to worry about, because it was odds-on nobody in the building had seen enough of Barish to remember what he looked like.
My guess was that 'consultant' was what it so often is, a euphemism for 'unemployed.' Leland Barish had lost a job and took this little office while he looked for another one. By now either he'd found something or he'd given up looking.
Maybe he'd found employment that took him to Saudi Arabia or Singapore, and had left without bothering to clear out his office. Maybe he'd stopped paying rent months ago and his landlord hadn't gotten around to evicting him.
Whatever the actual circumstances, I didn't look to be running much of a risk cooping in his office for a couple of hours. I thought of TJ and decided to beep him, figuring it was perfectly safe for him to call me back, perfectly all right for Barish's phone to ring. I lifted the receiver and couldn't get a dial tone, which tended to confirm my guesses about Barish. I picked out the most recent magazine, a ten-week-old issue of The New Yorker, and settled myself in the easy chair. For a few minutes I tried to guess just what had become of Leland Barish, but then I got interested in an article about long-haul truckers and forgot all about him.
* * *
After an hour or so I noticed, a key hanging from a hook on the wall next to the light switch. I guessed that it would unlock the door to the men's room, and it turned out I was right. I used the John, and checked Whitfield's office going and coming. It was still occupied.
I checked again an hour later, and an hour after that. Then I dozed off, and when I opened my eyes it was twenty minutes to twelve. The lights were out in the law office. I walked on past it and used the lavatory again, and the lights were still out when I returned.
The lock was better than the one on Barish's door, and I thought I might have to break the glass to get in. I was prepared to do that—I didn't think anyone was around to hear it, or inclined to pay attention—but first I used my pocketknife to gouge the door jamb enough so that I could get a purchase on the bolt and snick it back. I put on the lights, figuring that a lighted office would look less suspicious to someone across the street than a darkened office with someone moving around inside it.
I found Whitfield's office and got busy.
* * *
It was around one-thirty in the morning when I got out of there. I left the place looking as I'd found it, and wiped whatever surfaces I might have left prints on, more out of habit than because I thought anyone might dust the place for prints. I rubbed a little dirt into the gouges I'd made around the lock, so that the scar didn't look too new, and I drew the door shut and heard the bolt snick behind me.
I was too tired to think straight, and actually considered holing up in Barish's office and napping in his easy chair until dawn, all that in order to avoid having to sneak out past the guard. Instead I decided to bluff my way past him, and when I went downstairs the lobby was empty. A sign I'd missed on my way in announced that the building was locked from ten at night to six in the morning.
This didn't mean I couldn't get out, just that once out I couldn't get back in again. That was fine with me.
I got out of there and had to walk three blocks before I could hail a cruising cab. Stickers on the windows in the passenger compartment warned me against smoking. In front, the Pakistani driver puffed away at one of those foul little Italian cigars. Di Nobili, I think they're called.
Years and years ago I was partnered with a wise old cop named Vince Mahaffey, and he smoked the damn things day in and day out. I suppose they were no less appropriate for a Pakistani cabby than for an Irish cop, but I didn't let myself be transported on wings of nostalgia. I just rolled down the windows and tried to find something to breathe.
Elaine was asleep when I got in. She stirred when I slipped into bed beside her. I gave her a kiss and told her to go back to sleep.
'TJ called again,' she said. 'You didn't beep him.'
'I know. What did he want?'
'He didn't say.'
'I'll call him in the morning. Go to sleep, sweetie.'
'You all right?'
'I'm fine.'
'Find out anything?'
'I don't know. Go to sleep.'
' 'Go to sleep, go to sleep.' Is that all you can say?'
