Dirt

palmtop computer from a jacket pocket. A wire attached to tiny alligator clips ran from the computer, and he attached the clips to the safe’s battery terminals. He had written a simple program for the computer that would start at the lowest possible four-digit number, then go to the highest possible four-digit number and back and forth until the safe clicked open. The process would be shortened by the fact that most of these electronic safe keypads would not allow the repetition of a number in the code, so there would be fewer codes to try. He had test-run the program, and he knew that it required nine minutes and eighteen seconds to try all the possible codes. He tapped the instructions into the small keyboard, and the program began to run. He set the computer on top of the alarm control panel and settled in to wait. Four minutes and nine seconds into the program, he heard a click from the safe, and the program stopped.
    Quickly, in case there was a time limit, he picked the safe’s conventional lock, and the door swung open. Inside were two delightful surprises. The first was three thick stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills, with a rubber band around each, and another stack of fifties. The bills looked well used, and a cursory inspection revealed that the serial numbers were not consecutive. He estimated that they totaled approximately thirty-five thousand dollars, but this was no time to start counting; he stuffed them into one of his jacket’s large pockets. The other surprise in the safe was a small, nickel-plated automatic pistol, with, of all things, a silencer! He stuffed that into a pocket, then opened a jewelry box, which was full of a lot of junk that didn’t interest him, except for a Cartier watch with a gold bracelet. That he kept; he loved watches.
    He had just closed the safe door and was putting away his equipment when from a distance he heard a noise like the front door opening, followed by voices. No time to reconnect the alarm system; he closed the cabinet door, switched off the light, and left the closet, closing the door behind him. While he was doing all this he wondered if he had somehow caused this to happen. His heart was racing; he loved it. The voices came closer, and he dove into the kneehole of the desk, pulling his knees up to squeeze in.
    “We got a disconnect signal,” a voice said. The lights came on in the study. “If somebody cuts the phone line or disconnects it, we get a signal. Usually means a burglar has visited.” “Do you really need a gun?” another voice asked, sounding nervous.
    “There might be somebody in the apartment right now,” the other voice replied. “If there is, I’m going to be ready.”
    The voices were muffled slightly, and the young man thought they were probably in the closet by now.
    “See right here?” the first voice asked. “The phone line was disconnected.”
    Time to go, the young man thought. He peered around the corner of the desk and saw the backs of the two men.
    “He’s probably had a shot at the safe,” the first voice said. “Electronic job.”
    The young man crawled quickly, silently toward the door of the study; in doing so, he had to move past the closet. As he made the door, the first voice spoke again.
    “You stay here,” the voice said, and there was the sound of the action of an automatic pistol being worked. “I’m going to have a look around. You might use the phone on the desk over there to call nine-one-one and tell them there’s been a break-in.” “Right,” the other man replied.
    The young man sprinted nearly soundlessly through the living room, his soft slippers making only tiny noises on the carpeting. He made it down the hall to the front door, opened it, and stepped into the hallway. The elevator and the front door seemed like a bad idea; if there was already a cop car on the block when the 911 call went in, he might meet them going out the door. The elevator door stood open. He stepped inside, pushed in the EMERGENCY button to activate the car, pressed the button for the ground floor, and stepped out of the car just as the doors closed. The elevator started down, and he made for the stairs. Holding his paper bag of tools, he bounded down flight after flight, past the lobby floor to the basement. There had to be a back door for service purposes.
    He emerged into a dimly lit hallway that seemed to have a row of doors leading to storage rooms. He raced past them, made a turn at the end of the hallway,