Concourse by S J Rozan

Author:S J Rozan [Rozan, S J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312959449
Publisher: SJ Rozan
Published: 2012-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

By the time I got to Norwood it was dark, dark enough to be driving with lights. I checked out the lights as they came and went in my mirror, detoured out of my way once or twice to see what would happen, but nothing happened. The guy had stayed lost, it seemed. Well, fine. For now, fine.

Norwood was an old neighborhood of dark-brick apartment buildings, solid and substantial. Mature trees grew on the verges of wide sidewalks, corner stores sold newspapers and milk, and the lit rectangles of apartment-house windows glowed softly.

I found Henry Howe’s street and I found his building. I parked around the block, strolled back and watched the lobby from a distance until I caught the rhythm of comings and goings. There was no doorman, but this was the hour people came home from work, did the shopping, walked the dog. It was a large building; the lobby wasn’t empty for any long enough stretch to make me confident I could get in unnoticed.

I was considering two fallbacks—coming back later, or finding a service entrance with a lock I could pick in private—when a bicycle with a big aluminum carrier on the front bounced onto the sidewalk. I was across the street before the guy piloting it had gotten it locked to the tree in front of the building.

“Hey, my friend,” I said as I came up next to him, “that going in there?”

He looked at the square white pizza box he was removing from the carrier, back at me, and shrugged.

I took a guess and repeated the question in Spanish.

“Sí,” he nodded. “Anchovies y pimentos verdes. Yecch.” He made a face.

I told him in Spanish I’d take it in for him. He laughed, suggested I come on down to the pizza parlor and get whatever I wanted.

“No, no,” I said. “Esa pisa. ¿Cuanto es?” This pizza. How much?

“Cuesta diez dollares, pero va al apartamento 6D.”

I pulled a ten out of my wallet, added a pair of twenties to it.

“No te apures.” Don’t worry about it. “Yo te lo llevo a 6D.”

The pizza smelled great as I carried it into the building. You’re interested in an anchovy pizza, Smith, I thought, you must be hungry. 6D was happy to hear his pizza had arrived, and I was happy to get buzzed into Henry Howe’s building.

I made ten of my bucks back, plus a dollar-and-a-half tip, and then took the stairs down to the fourth floor, where Howe had lived.

The hallway, gray-blue patterned carpet against gray-blue textured walls, was empty. Howe’s apartment door was close to the stairs, looked as peaceful and domestic as any of its neighbors. Well, I thought, it probably was peaceful. Probably nothing much had happened in there these last few days.

As it turned out, I was wrong.

I took my tension bar and a likely rake from the set I’d brought. Apartment doors tend to be tougher than the type of locks I’d whizzed through at the Bronx Home, so I was prepared.

This one, though, wasn’t tough at all.

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