New York Dead

“Look that over while I change.”
    When he came back down, Teddy was impatient to go. “I’m not going to get a cab in this,” he said.
    “I’ll come along and wait for you in the car,” Stone replied.
    Five minutes later, they were grinding slowly up Park Avenue. Stone turned into the right street and stopped the Jeepster a few doors down from the apartment building. “You’d better hurry,” he said to Teddy. “You don’t want to run into these people in the lobby and let them get a look at you.” Teddy reached inside his coat and produced a nine-millimeter automatic pistol. “Don’t worry,” he said, grinning, “I’m ready for anything.”
    Stone grabbed at the pistol. “Are you crazy, Teddy?” Then he laughed. The thing was a water pistol, albeit an extremely realistic one. “What the hell are you doing with this?”
    Teddy took the water pistol back. “I’ll explain later,” he said, getting out of the car. “Keep the motor running, no matter how long it takes.”
    “Don’t worry, I don’t want to freeze to death.” Stone handed him the key to 9-A.
    Teddy pointed at the car phone. “I’ll call you, if I can, when I have some results.” He closed the door and trudged through the snow toward the building, finally disappearing into the entrance.
    Stone turned the radio to a jazz station and settled down to wait. Five minutes later the car phone rang.
    “Hello?”
    “They were in before me, but I think they’re still awake. I can hear music and voices, if I put a water glass against the wall.”
    “Take your time,” Stone said. “We’ve got all night, if necessary.”
    “It won’t take that long,” Teddy said. “In my experience, people who are fucking illicitly don’t waste much time getting down to it.” He hung up.
    Stone turned the heater up a notch, pushed the seat back, and made himself comfortable.

    A sharp rapping against the window woke him. He was momentarily disoriented, and, by the time he figured out where he was, the rapping came again on the window. The car’s windows were blocked by a blanket of white, and, when he rolled down the driver’s side window, snow fell into the car.
    “Teddy?” Stone said to the figure outside the car.
    “What’s up, here, mister?” a voice said.
    Jesus, a cop. “Oh, Officer, I’m just waiting for a friend,” Stone said, scrambling around in his sleepy mind for a story.
    “You been here half hour, pal,” the cop said. “Let’s see your license and registration.”
    “Well, to tell you the truth,” Stone said, “there’s somebody in there with my wife, and I mean to find out who it is. She thinks I’m in Chicago on business.” This was fairly close to the truth.
    The cop shook his head. “Listen, pal, let me give you some advice. Go to Chicago, and forget about it, then come back and forgive her. You don’t want to know who the guy is.”
    “I’m not breaking any laws, am I — parked outside my own house?” Stone tried to sound annoyed.
    “I guess not,” the cop said. “I won’t wish you luck, though.” He turned and waded away through the snow.
    Stone took a few deep breaths of fresh air before he raised the window. He looked at his watch: ten past midnight. Teddy had been in there less than an hour. He arranged himself again and settled down to wait, switching on the windshield wipers to clear the snow. As he did, Teddy walked out of the apartment building and started toward the car. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
    “Get in, and let’s get out of here,” Stone said, opening the door for him.
    “No hurry,” Teddy said. “Nobody’s going to be following me. Not for a while, anyway.”
    “Tell me what happened,” Stone said, guiding the Jeepster up the block through the deep snow.
    “You can hear pretty good with a glass against the wall, you know.”
    “So what did you hear?”
    “I heard the music for a while, and their voices, and then I heard the voices move away, so I figure they’d gone to the bedroom.” He shifted in his seat to get comfortable. “Now, there are two ways you can do this,” he said. “One, you can wait for them to go to sleep and then wake them up. That’s good enough, really; I mean, you got them in bed together, right? But the best way is to catch them doing the actual horizontal bunny hop. That way, there’s no talking their way out of it.” “So, what happened?”
    “You can hear pretty good with a glass against the wall,” Teddy said