Dirt

come to see
me.
”
    “It would perhaps be more discreet for you to go to him.”
    “Make the appointment; I’ll go for tea tomorrow at four.”
    “
Tea
?”
    “Bill, if he can’t mount a decent tea, why would I want to know him?” Amanda looked up to see a television actor come into the restaurant with a woman who was not his wife. She made a mental note for the column.
     
Chapter 7
     
    The young man stood behind the stone wall that separated Central Park from Fifth Avenue and watched the front door of the apartment building from across the street through a pair of pocket binoculars. It was just before 2:00 A.M., and a couple were being deposited at the curb by a hired limousine.
    The night doorman got the car door, then rushed ahead to open the building door for them. The young man watched him see the couple onto the elevator, then return to the lobby. The doorman picked up a clipboard, made some sort of mark, probably next to the couple’s name, then tossed the clipboard onto a desk, tipped his uniform hat back on his head, stretched and yawned, then sat down at the desk and rested his head on his arms. He had obviously checked in the last people for the night — all present or accounted for — and now there would be no one to disturb his sleep until the early birds went for their jogs.
    The young man waited for another twenty minutes, checking the doorman frequently through the binoculars; finally, the man was clearly deeply asleep. The young man set a paper bag on top of the wall, placed his hands on the wall, and vaulted lightly over it. He picked up the paper bag and crossed Fifth Avenue. Traffic was very light at this hour. He checked his watch: just past 2:30 A.M.
    He approached the door of the building without stealth, as if he were about to enter, then stopped and again checked the doorman, who was still sleeping soundly. He looked at the lobby floor: marble. Then he stepped into the shadows beside the door of the building, shucked off his sneakers, pulled out a pair of soft leather-soled bedroom slippers, put them on, then put the sneakers into the bag. He couldn’t afford squeaking noises from rubber soles on the marble floor. He checked the doorman again, then walked silently across the lobby to the elevator, which he already knew was very quiet, and pressed the button for the fourteenth floor. The young man already knew a lot about the building and the apartment he was about to enter.
    He stepped out of the elevator car and into a private vestibule. Only one apartment to a floor in this building. The door took nearly two minutes — a very good lock — and when he heard the bolt slide back he stopped, put away his lockpicks, took a stopwatch from his pocket, and pressed the start button. He had forty-five seconds, and he didn’t want to use more than thirty, if he could help it.
    He opened the door, closed it behind him, and sprinted down a hall, across a large living room, and into the study. He knew that the occupants were away and that the maid’s room was all the way at the rear of the apartment, behind the kitchen. In the study, he opened a closet door, switched on the light, found the burglar alarm central control box, and fixed the stopwatch to it with a magnet glued to its back. Twelve seconds gone.
    He opened the control box and began the process of disconnecting first the telephone line to the box, then the wire to the siren. This was necessary because he didn’t know the disarming code sequence. He looked at the watch; thirty-two seconds had passed. Not bad. The alarm would go off in thirteen seconds, and since he had done all he could, he would just have to wait and see what happened. At forty-five seconds there was an audible click and the sound of tone dialing from the central computer unit. No siren, and, since the telephone line had been disconnected, no phone call to the central security station of the alarm company. There was the possibility, though, that the disconnecting of the phone line had sent some sort of code to central security, so he would not dally.
    The safe was conveniently located in the same closet as the alarm control box; he had examined it briefly on his previous visit. It was sturdy and electronically operated, requiring a four-digit code and a key to open the door. The key was absent, but the lock would not be a problem. He retrieved a small screwdriver from his tool kit and removed the battery access panel from the front of the safe, then took a