over their windows and doors. The apartment windows were all dark, too. Was there something useful there?
A nearly full trash barrel stood by the curb. Out of it Liss plucked a newspaper. Folded in quarters, he put it under his left arm, and now he was a nightworker on the way home.
Headlights coming. Liss turned and strode purposefully the other way, not too fast, not trying to conceal himself. Two cars went by, civilians, and then one in the other direction. At the corner, Liss crossed the street away from the stadium, and when he walked past the side of the final row house he saw that it had a back yard, all those houses had back yards, separated here from the sidewalk by an eight-foot-high wooden fence, vertical boards tapering to points at the top.
With a door? Yes; a simple narrow door of the same vertical boards, probably nailed to horizontal support pieces on the inside, and with a little round metal Yale-type lock inset in the wood. No knob.
Liss looked left and right, and saw no one. Dropping the newspaper onto the sidewalk, he lifted his right knee high, and slammed his heel flat against that lock. The door popped open with one loud
Liss made his way through the junk across the yard to the other fence, and looked down the row of yards. Some were neater than this, some as messy. A few had been turned into cared-for gardens and some had outdoor furniture in little conversational groups. Almost all the yards were defined or separated by some kind of fence. Every house had the exterior metal staircase giving access to the second floor. Every window down the entire block was dark, and the outside darkness was deeper the farther you went toward the middle of the block.
Liss went over four fences, looking for the yard with the least sign of activity; neither a garden nor an accumulation of junk. He wanted a yard that suggested either a vacant apartment or a stay-at-home tenant, and when he found the right one he went silently up the stairs to that second-floor door, and just as silently through the door with a credit card.
He was in a kitchen, small and old-fashioned, not remodeled for maybe thirty years. There was very little light, just enough to suggest the place was neat, cared for. He opened the small old refrigerator with its rounded corners and found it contained small amounts of just a few things; milk, orange juice, a few eggs, some tiny leftovers in plastic. A solitary; good.
The refrigerator's interior light, in the few seconds he'd had the door open, had spoiled his night vision. He stood patiently in the middle of the room, one hand touching the refrigerator door, until shapes took form in his sight again, and then he moved forward, through the deeper darkness of the doorway on the other side of the room.
Night vision no longer helped. Shuffling forward very slowly, as silent as possible, both hands moving to the sides and out ahead, Liss made his way down a short black hall with a pair of closed doors facing one another partway along. A little farther, his groping right foot touched the saddle of a doorway. He stopped. He felt the wood of the frame, then the closed door itself, and then the old faceted glass knob. He turned the knob as slowly and gently as though it were a safe in the back of a store still open for business, and when it gave a tiny
Light, thin diffuse gray light defining the rectangles of two windows. This was the small living room, facing the street. Liss came on through, still holding the doorknob turned, and reached his other hand around to grasp the knob on the other side. He held that one in the same position as he eased the door shut again, then turned to look the place over.
A living room, underfurnished. Two sagging armchairs, one near each window. A small TV, on a low wooden crate. A couple of end tables and lamps. One side wall was absolutely empty; that's where the sofa would have been.
Liss crossed the room and looked out a front window, just in time to see a car turning in at the parking lot entrance across the way. Brenda? No, it wasn't the station wagon. Liss sat on the arm of the chair behind him, and watched through narrowed eyes. Who was in that car? What did they want?
The car made its hesitant moves around the
parking lot, and Liss tensed up when it stopped over by the construction trailer. People out of the car, fucking around over there at the trailer. He didn't like that, he didn't want anybody else around his money. That's my money, he thought. Keep away.
'Who's there?'
Liss automatically rose to his feet, while his mind registered that voice. Old, male, querulous. Liss moved catlike away from the windows.
'Who's there? /hear you!'
Liss slid along the empty wall, coming the long way around to the door, so he'd wind up behind it when it opened.
'You better speak up! I've got a gun!'
Oh, have you, Liss thought. Good; I need a gun.
The doorknob rattled. 'I'm warning you! I'm coming in!'
Do it and get it over with, Liss thought.
The door opened. Liss leaned close to it, eyes fixed on the gray rectangle of window past the dark vertical line of the edge of the door. A figure moved into that space, and Liss clubbed down with his forearm, hitting the top of a shoulder, the side of a neck. The old voice cried out, and Liss swung around the door, punching hard into the indistinct figure, connecting three times before it could fall.
Light switch. Should be beside the doorway, same side as the knob. Yes; Liss flipped it, and a ceiling light came on, the bulb discreetly behind a round pink glass saucer.
The unmoving old man on the floor bled slightly from nose and mouth. He wore gray pajamas and a thick wool maroon robe and dark blue slippers. Liss rolled him over, frisked him, searched the floor all around him, and there was no gun. The old son of a bitch lied.
