Death Notes

sure.
    After a moment, I whipped out my picks, made the lock click in three seconds flat, and congratulated myself for being my parents’ daughter. Anybody watching from the street would have thought I’d used a key.
    Since I didn’t have any gloves, I pulled down the sleeve of my jacket to cover my hand, gripped the knob and turned it.
    Inside, I found myself at the foot of a dank and narrow stairway. The only way to go was up, toward the streaming light. So that’s what I did, cautiously, in silence, praying like I always do that nobody had slept through the doorbell.
    At the top, I suddenly found myself in the apartment, its lights blazing. I paused and listened. Above my own breathing, I heard the faint sound of the radio next door.
    Anybody home?’
    If there was an answer, I would just say the downstairs door had been ajar.
    Nobody responded so I stepped into the room. It was one giant open area with vast hardwood floors, brick walls, and a disheveled mattress thrown on the floor in one corner. A doorway against the far wall led to what looked like the kitchen - I could glimpse a table and a stove.
    There was no doubt where Dickie liked to put his dollars. Besides a few basic pieces of second-hand furniture, he had a reel-to-reel, a few CD players and tape decks, speakers, and a lot of complicated-looking components I’d never seen before.
    In the midst of all the electronic gadgetry stood the simple upright piano, stacked two feet high with records and papers, two trumpets on the very top of it all. And beside the piano, leaning up against it with its base resting on a soft blanket, was a gleaming tenor sax.
    My heart leapt to my throat. I crossed the room for a closer look. I didn’t touch it but the first thing that popped out at me was the intricate filigree etched around its bell: M.M. amid flowers and notes.
    So Sharon hadn’t lied when she said the smashed sax in Philly’s office wasn’t Match’s.
    It might be enough. But it wasn’t proof of anything beyond the burglary. Maybe Post could sweat a confession out of Dickie.
    But I wanted more. I wanted a motive.
    I went to the kitchen to check for a second way out. I’d been sloppy at Sharon’s when she’d caught me without a quick escape. I tried the back door. It wouldn’t budge. At first I thought it was jammed, but it turned out to be nailed shut. Great.
    And the only window in the kitchen was too small to crawl through quickly, if at all. The whole set-up probably added up to about sixty violations of the fire code but my guess was that right this minute, I was far more alarmed about the situation than the fire marshall would be if he knew.
    My only exit was the way I’d come in: down the stairs and through the front door. I considered just calling Philly Post in and taking a powder, but I wanted answers and I wanted them now.
    Back in the front room, I didn’t know where to start. The place was a mess, which makes things harder when you’re trying to leave things exactly as you’ve found them.
    I scanned the room, then went for the table by the piano. The papers were a jumble, but I got the impression Dickie knew exactly where everything was. I scooped up a pile of sheet music and paged through it.
    I couldn’t read a note to save my life but the song titles penciled in at the top of each page were in a sprawling, almost feminine hand. I didn’t recognize any of them.
    If I could read music, maybe I’d know if they were original compositions or just arrangements he’d done for somebody else. Whatever they were, there were reams and reams
    of the stuff on the table and stacked on the floor underneath it.
    I looked around, then reached out and pressed the switch on the reel-to-reel. It started the tape while I headed for a chest of drawers at the opposite end of the room.
    A low, sensuous stream of notes filled the room. Saxophone. It was Match playing. I’d recognize his style anywhere. He was playing the song he’d closed his gig with last Saturday night.
    I stopped what I was doing and just listened. He played the number out to the end, then closed it with a slow, lingering moan that pulled at me from the inside out. How did Match do it ? I asked myself, then in the ensuing silence remembered where I was.
    The top dresser drawer slid open easily. My hand was buried in tee shirts when I heard a voice say, ‘Yeah!’
    I wheeled around, heart stopped, holding my breath, tense and ready to bolt as soon as I figured out which way