listened. A car went by, headlights flashing as they blazed past the window in the dining room. He left the stove where it was and headed for the window, which was about six or eight steps up on a landing where the stairs turned and went up to the bedrooms on the second story. The view out was partially obscured by a thorny bush whose branches wound their way through the wrought-iron metal bars that guarded the window on the outside.
By the time Liquida looked out, the car was gone. But as he looked the other way, to the left, he saw a man walking away, crossing the street. The guy was huge, a black man, bald as a cue ball, with shoulders like a bull. If he was Tico he was on supersteroids.
The man was nearing the walkway on the other side of the street. Liquida was just about to turn from the window when another man stepped from the shadows near the corner. The two of them stopped to talk.
Liquida looked at his watch. Twenty minutes to eleven. It was a strange time for a conversation out on the street, too late to be coming home from work and too early for the bars to have closed. When he looked back the two men were gone.
He thought about it for a moment, then went back to the kitchen and finished sliding the stove back into place. He checked to make sure that everything looked just right. It probably didn’t matter. By the time she arrived in the morning, if everything went as planned, she would never have a chance to make it to the kitchen. He would snag her at the front door with the chloroform. He would then arrange her on the floor in front of the stove for her accident. They would find her bones mixed in with all the ashes, probably under the house where the stove would have burned through the floor. And they would never think anything more about it.
After all, this was not the United States where authorities had gadgets to sniff the air and endless money to sift all the debris through screens looking for the reason the gas had exploded. By then, the little plastic box in the back would be vaporized, its metal parts, like everything else that was once part of the house, now just pieces of charred junk to be shoveled into the back of a truck and hauled away.
Liquida was putting away his wrench and closing the lid on his small plastic tool container when he heard a noise again. He glanced back at the window. This time there was no car out on the street. The noise came from out near the front door. He listened. Then he heard it again.
He slid the small toolbox into his left pocket, pulled the knife from the other pocket, and punched the levered button on the side of the handle. The needle-sharp blade snapped open.
Liquida stepped silently through the dining room, then cut through the corner of the living room into the entry, where he pressed himself against the wall next to the entrance to a small powder room near the front door. He stood inches off to the side of the entrance, the knife drawn up in his left hand, close to his ear, ready to be thrust the instant the door opened.
Whoever it was didn’t have a key. They were scratching at the lock with a pick, working on the wrought-iron gate outside. The gate formed a barrier leading to a small exterior entry area maybe four or five feet square. Once through the gate, whoever was there would be in the shadows of the entry area, free to work on the lock at the front door.
Liquida glanced at the inside of the door. It was solid enough, thick tropical hardwood of some kind, but the lock and handle assembly was cheap and very old. It wouldn’t hold for more than a few seconds. Liquida knew this because it was the same way he had entered.
There was a small rectangular viewing port cut at eye level in the wood of the door. The port was open, uncovered on the inside, and protected only by a small brass grid on the outside.
Liquida took a chance and glanced quickly through the opening. The man outside the gate was bent over, looking down, working on the lock. Liquida couldn’t see his face but he could see the bald head and broad shoulders. It was the man he had seen crossing the street. Liquida was sure of it.
He pressed his head back against the wall and thought for a moment. He considered the razor-sharp blade in his hand, and weighed it against the size of the man outside. Even if he could kill him, how would he dispose of the body? Authorities wouldn’t think twice about a woman who died in her own house in an accidental fire. But an unidentified male who died with her would raise questions. And what about the other man, up at the corner? Was he still there? If he came down to join his big friend in the house after the locks were picked, Liquida would have his hands full.
He listened as the sharp metal worked the lock in the gate outside. If he was going to do anything, he had to do it now. His eyes scoured the entry area for something, anything he could use to drive the man away. But it was the back of Liquida’s right arm and his elbow scratching something on the wall behind him that found the answer. He moved quietly away from the wall, turned, and looked down. There was a plastic cover plate and two light switches mounted on the wall between the front door and the door to the bathroom. He leaned into the bathroom and checked the wall inside with his right hand. There was no switch on the wall. Liquida guessed that the switch on the right, outside the door, was for the light in the bathroom. The other switch had to be an entry light. There was no overhead light in the interior entry itself, just a floor lamp in one corner. It was possible that the switch turned on the lamp.
Liquida eased over and looked through the port in the front door one more time, just as the locked bolt snapped open on the metal gate. There was an overhead light in the ceiling of the entry area outside. Liquida reached over and flipped the switch.
“Oh, shit!”
Liquida heard the tinkle of metal on the concrete walkway out front, and then footsteps as the man retreated from the wrought-iron gate.
Liquida smiled. In his panic the big one had dropped his lock pick. He listened as the loud sound of rubber soles slapping concrete on the street diminished into the distance toward the dark stairs at the dead end of the street.
By the time he turned off the entrance light and opened the front door, the man had disappeared into the darkness. Liquida could still hear the faint sound of the man’s heavy footfalls as he ran. He waited several seconds, until the sounds disappeared in the distance. Then he swung open the gate and stepped out onto the sidewalk, under the streetlight. He looked down, then stooped to the cement and pinched the tiny lock pick between his fingers. He stood up and looked in the other direction, toward the corner where he had seen the two men talking earlier. The other guy was gone. Or else he was hiding around the corner. Liquida figured he couldn’t have gotten far. If they had a car it would be in the other direction, where the big man ran when the light went on. Instinct would drive him toward safety. And there was no way for his friend to have joined him. Liquida had him cut off.
He moved quickly back into the house. This time he didn’t bother to lock or even close the gate behind him. He wouldn’t be there that long.
FORTY
As Herman works the lock, I stand at the corner. It’s taking longer than I thought it would, and my attention begins to wander.
As I look around, I suddenly realize that if things go bad, there are no yards to hide in or fences that can be jumped easily. As far as I can see, in every direction the buildings all butt up against one another. There are a few gated side yards and two high iron fences, but all of them are guarded by large rolls of razor wire coiled and stretched along the top.
