burglary always gets my juices flowing. She gave me Kincaid’s address. I made sure Dorsey understood that I wasn’t promising anything. “I’ll see what I can do.” She gave me her cell phone number, started to kiss me, thought better of it, and left.
I sat wondering how that kiss would have tasted as I listened to her walk through the store. When the front door closed Willie came into the workshop.
“I don’t know what you got, Carmellini, that drives all the chicks wild, but I’d sure like to have some of it. They’re troopin’ in here all the time wantin’ to know where you are, what you’re doin’—makes a man feel inadequate, y’know? Maybe you oughta open a school or somethin’. Sorta a public service deal. Whaddaya think?”
“I got the Cooper opened.”
“How long it take you?”
“I wasn’t timing it. I was—“
“Three minutes for me,” Willie said with a touch of pride in his voice. ” ‘Course I wasn’t looking at a dish like that when I did it. What does she want you to do — steal the silver at the White House?”
“I can beat three minutes blindfolded,” I told Willie, and by God, I did. And I had to listen to a lot of his b.s. while I did it.
I went into Kincaid’s place the following night. There was no one home and he forgot to lock the back door. When I found that the door was unlocked, I sat down at his backyard picnic table while I thought things over. For the life of me, I couldn’t see what Dorsey would gain by setting me up. She was waiting in my car halfway down the block with a cell phone to call me if Kincaid returned while I was in the house.
If she was playing a game, it was too deep for me, I concluded. Even smart people forget to lock their doors.
I opened Kincaid’s back door and went inside.
After thirty minutes I was certain there were no homemade videotapes in the house, although I did find three high-end video-cams and a dozen photographer’s floodlights in the bedroom, which had a huge round bed in the center of the room and electrical outlets every three feet around the walls. This guy was more than kinky — he was set up to make porno flicks.
So where were they? There were boxes of videotape — all unopened, still wrapped in cellophane. Nothing that looked like it had been in a camera.
I was going through his files at his desk in his den — he was reasonably well organized, I must say — when I found a receipt for a safe deposit box at a local bank. From the amount he paid, he must have rented a large box. The receipt was dated a month ago. The box key wasn’t in the desk, and I didn’t expect it to be.
I couldn’t find a receipt or record that hinted that he owned a storage unit. He might have stashed a suitcase full of stuff at a friend’s house, but I doubted it. These days everyone had curious friends. His car was a possibility, though an unlikely one. If some kid took it for a joyride he could be ruined. Of course, he could have delivered the tapes to whatever lab processed them into movies. But if he did that with a tape of Dorsey and some porno kings, why try to blackmail her?
Dorsey was chewing her lip when I got into the car. “No videotapes,” I said. “Has a nice little home movie setup, but no tapes.”
“I could help you look. They must be there.”
“They aren’t. He didn’t even lock the back door.” I started the car and got it rolling down the street. “He’s set up to film some hot porno action. The raw tapes would have to be digitized and edited, and the equipment for that isn’t in the house.”
Her color wasn’t good. She didn’t meet my eyes.
“When did he first approach you demanding money?”
She thought about it. “Three weeks ago, I think. Labor Day weekend. I had some friends over for a small party, and he showed up unannounced.”
The time frame seemed to fit. I decided the safe deposit box was a definite possibility.
I didn’t make a habit of burgling houses for ex-girlfriends, even if they were beautiful and rich and being blackmailed. During the day I worked for the CIA. It wasn’t something agency employees talk about, and I had never mentioned it to Dorsey. I think I did once mention that I worked for the General Services Administration. She probably thought I was some kind of maintenance supervisor. Maybe that was the story I told her — I don’t quite remember.
Usually I worked overseas, breaking and entering for Uncle Sam, planting bugs, stealing documents, that kind of thing. Every now and then I did a few black-bag jobs stateside for the FBI, strictly as a favor, you understand, one federal agency helping another. I sometimes heard rumors that the CIA asked the FBI to ask for my help on domestic matters, but being a loyal employee, I immediately discounted and forgot those ugly whispers. In those days I was just another civil servant beating in time, working toward that happy retirement on the old fifty-fifth birthday, followed by a life of golf and restaurant meals courtesy of future taxpayers.
After my abortive inspection of Dorsey’s ex-flame’s house, I took her back to her car and dropped her. She was in a foul mood, chewing her lip.
I waited until she got inside her vehicle, then drove away to find a bar. As I swilled beer I compared how I felt two years ago when she dumped me and how I felt walking through the porno guy’s digs.
Oh, well.
A few days later I had to leave work after lunch for my annual physical, so after the doc finished with the rubber glove I took the rest of the day off. I went by the neighborhood bank where Kincaid had his box, parked, went in and rented one for myself.
It was a typical suburban branch bank, with a drive-through window and an interior lobby. A security door that had to be opened from the inside prevented people from entering the loan officers’ half of the building, and that was where the small safe deposit vault was. I filled out the form and was admitted to the vault. A bank of boxes formed each wall. The largest boxes were on the bottom row. Beside the door was a cabinet that contained envelopes holding keys for the empty boxes, and on top of the cabinet were two steel boxes containing the cards that each patron had to sign every time he wanted into his box. A single surveillance camera was mounted high on the wall opposite the door to the vault.
My escort in the vault was a young woman named Harriet who was wearing a wedding ring and maternity clothes, although the baby wasn’t showing much. I commented on that, and she told me she had five more months to go. It was her first child. She and her husband were so excited.
“You’re lucky we have a large box available. This is the only one. It became available last week when the lady who had it was transferred to Europe. She’s with the State Department.”
She gave me my key, and we checked that it opened my new box. The locks for the individual boxes were lever tumbler locks, which is the universal standard in American safe deposit vaults. Each box had two keyways. As usual, she had to insert the master key, which she carried, into one keyway and my key into the other and turn them both simultaneously for the box to open. Fortunately Willie had a bank of four safe deposit boxes complete with their lever tumbler locks back at the shop.
I confess, I was a little disappointed, although I tried not to show it. Some banks were getting in the habit of breaking off one of their master keys in the lock of each box in the vault, then admitting box holders to the vault without an escort. Needless to say, these boxes were a breeze for guys like me to pop. I had my hopes up, but it wasn’t to be. This bank was still doing it the safe, old-fashioned way.
I told Harriet I might be back in a few days to put some stuff in my new box, thanked her for her time, and departed.
Back in the shop Willie and I discussed lever tumbler locks and disassembled one from his safe deposit boxes. Lever tumbler locks require an L-shaped pick, the prong of which must be precisely the right length. I used my key to measure the length I needed and made myself three picks, each a slightly different length, just in case.
I spent the weekend practicing on Willie’s locks. My best time was twenty-six seconds, but two minutes was the average, and if I hurried or wasn’t paying strict attention, I couldn’t get the lock to open. Willie spent some time watching me, and even opened one a few times himself.
Willie the Wire was twenty years older than me, a slim, dapper black man who worked Washington hotels in his younger days as a bellboy. Finally he quit carrying bags into the hotel for guests and specialized in picking locks and carrying luggage out — sans tip. The last time he got out of prison he promised himself an honest job, but with
