Caught Stealing

too.

You pick a house. What you’re looking for is no lights at all or lights in one room only. A house where all the people are sleeping is a charge, but a house where someone is awake is unreal. You test the side garage door and go in there. Once in the garage, you can get a feel for what’s going on in the house. Andno one locks the house door to the garage. You slip into the house and listen for the TV. Thursday night in the eighties and everyone in America is watchingThe Cosby Show,Family Ties,Cheers,Night Court, andHill Street Blues. For those three hours you could do whatever you wanted. Walking past the open door of the family room, you peek in and see Mom, Dad, and the kids grouped around the set. Even if you asked directions to the bathroom no one would look up. Sometimes it was too easy.

I was at it for a few months until I got busted. The cops stopped me and Wade after we did a house. All they were looking to do was hassle us for being out after curfew, but we smarted off and they got us with cash, a bottle of Valium and some lady’s engagement ring. I quit after that. My folks picked me up at the station and I quit. They looked so disappointed. I didn’t see much of Wade and Steve after that, but I stayed close to Rich.

The fire escape for my apartment is at the back of the building. I move down it quick and easy, or as quick and easy as I can with the pain in my side. I stop when I get to the floor above mine. The fire escape extends down at a sharp angle, half ladder/half staircase, and dumps you about a foot to the left of my bedroom window. Unless one of these guys is standing right at the window, I should be able to creep down and press myself against the bricks between my place and Russ’s. From there I can listen and decide if I can afford to take a peek or if I should just get the hell out.

I relax. I am ready to start down the steps. And the dog in the apartment I am outside of starts to bark bloody murder.

I don’t think. I fly down the steps and flatten myself against the bricks. The only way I can be seen now is if someone sticks their head out the window. I wait while I catch my breath and the dog winds down. No one opens my window. I am calm. I settle against the bricks and listen. They are in there. I can hear low voices and what seems to be a great deal of rummaging and low-key destruction. The sound is a bit faint and does not seem to be coming directly from my bedroom just inside the window. I decide to take a peek. I turn so that I face the bricks, inch over to the window and dart my right eye out and back as quickly as possible. And I see nothing. I breathe. Slowly this time, I poke my head out enough to see a wide swath of the bedroom and living area and I see nothing. No people, no signs of search or forced entry. I see only Bud sitting on my bed where he is not allowed and looking at me with an expression that clearly says: “What the fuck are you doing?” Yes, the searching sounds are in fact coming from behind me in Russ’s apartment.

I repeat the process. I edge to Russ’s window and do the quick peek and get an impression of a big mess and some people. I do some more breathing and go back for a better look. There are three guys in there; I’m not sure what they look like because the blood pounding in my temples keeps blurring my vision. One of them is big, one is small, and one is medium.The Three Bears. Russ’s apartment is being broken into by the Three Bears. The thought makes me giggle. I hold it in, and it almost bursts out again. I have to get off this fire escape before I start to laugh. I go back to my bedroom window, which is locked, of course, but my bedroom has two windows and the second one is unlocked. It is, however, a few feet beyond the fire escape. But right now I want to be in my apartment and that’s all I know.

I climb over the rail. I plant my left foot on the escape and grip it with my left hand and stretch. If I hadn’t had a major surgical procedure in the last week, this would be easy. As it is, it hurts like hell. I bite my lip to keep from shouting and it makes my eyes water, which, for some strange reason, makes me want to sneeze. I plant my right foot on the window ledge. The window is not ajar, so I can’t get a grip on the lip. I have to press my palm flat against the glass and push up. I don’t have enough leverage. I’m going to have to get lower. I loosen my grip on the escape just a bit and bend at the right knee while I stretch farther with my left leg. My staples dig in and my left arm is sore and I press my palm against the window and push up with my right arm and leg and tears are now streaming down my face and as the window lurches open I sneeze massively and throw myself into my bedroom as my left foot slips from the escape.

The top half of my body flops into the apartment, my hips caught on the sill, my legs dangling outside the window and more searing pain radiating from my side. There are quick footsteps next door as someone runs to Russ’s window. I drag my legs inside, shut the window and curl into a quiet ball in the space between the bed and the wall. I hear the window next door open. I hear someone climb out onto the fire escape. I sense someone at my window looking in. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.

I stay like that until I hear them leave Russ’s apartment about fifteen minutes later. Then I getup, go to the bathroom, and puke. Big surprise: Throwing up makes my staples hurt. But I don’t appear to have popped any of them during all this. Adrenaline is leaving my body and in its wake it leaves a huge craving for booze. I drink some water. I straighten up my apartment. I remember my laundry on the roof and decide to leave it there until later, tomorrow even. Then I smoke a roach, flush the rest of my high-grade Virginia pot, make a phone call and play with Bud while I wait for the cops.

I tell them about everything except the grass. First, I tell the uniforms who answer the call. I tell them about getting beat up. I tell them about finding the tracksuits outside my apartment. I tell them the idiotic tale of my climb to the roof and descent by the fire escape. They’re pretty nice on the whole and only laugh a little about what an asshole I am. Then Detective Lieutenant Roman of Robbery/Homicide shows up.

If the job description for a great cop said “dark, brooding, efficient as hell, and looks great in a black suit,” then Detective Lieutenant Roman would be your guy. He asks me all kinds of incisive questions as we sit around in my apartment and all he ever looks at are my eyes and his little notebook.

– How many people did you actually see?

– I think five, altogether.

– Why “you think”?

– I didn’t get a very good look through the window, so there might have been more. But I know there were the two guys downstairs and I definitely saw three in Russ’s apartment.

– Russ is Mr. Miner, your neighbor?

– Right.

– Tell me about the guys downstairs.

– Two big guys, they were in the pizza place next door and when I got to the roof they were watching the building from across the street.

– These are the two who beat you up last week?

– Right.

– And when they came into the bar that night, did they ask for Mr. Miner?

– No. They didn’t ask for shit except a couple drinks. Then they went haywire.

– OK. The guys in Mr. Miner’s apartment, what can you tell me about them?

– Uh, one guy big, even bigger than the two Russians.

– Russians?

– The guys who beat me up, the guys in the tracksuits, had accents. I think they were Russian or Ukrainian or Polish.

– You said Russian.

– Or Ukrainian or Serbian forall the fuck I know, justRussianic.

– OK. What about the big guy in the apartment?

– Big. And I think he was Latino or something.

– Hewas, what, dark?

– Yeah, dark skin, butlightish. I mean he might have been black, but not dark black.

– Brown complexioned?

– Yeah.

– Hair?

– Lots of it, I think.Long hair, black. That’s what I think.

– OK, who else?

– A small guy with bright red hair.

– Carrot topped?