RainStorm

purpose of delivering
    its contents, so I deposited it at the bottom of a trashcan half full of
    junk mail in the mailroom to the right of the elevators. Then I
    counted off four minutes on my watch. I didn't want to pass the old
    woman again right away--she was a sharp one, and might wonder
    what had happened to the Kim's bag I'd been carrying just seconds
    before. If I overtook her in the lobby now, the four minutes could
    account for a quick delivery to a low floor, if the elevators had
    come right away. As for the longish time it had now been since I
    first passed the girl at the front desk, I deemed this acceptable. The
    main thing was that she should see me leave. She didn't strike me as
    the type who would pay attention to small discrepancies, like a de-liveryman
    taking a little longer inside the building than might ordinarily
    be expected.
    At four minutes, I walked out through the lobby. The old
    woman was gone. Maybe someone had picked her up in front. The
    girl at the desk looked up from her book and said, "Bye-bye." I
    waved and headed out to the carport, then left into the parking lot,
    beyond her field of vision.
    Back at the car, I put the wig, glasses, and baseball cap in the
    glove box, zipped up the windbreaker, and pulled on the deerskin
    gloves. I grabbed the briefcase and headed back to the building, this
    time to the back. I hugged the exterior wall as I walked, wanting to
    get in and out of the camera's ambit as quickly as possible, and
    grabbed one of the mops and garbage cans on the way. As I reached
    the door, I leaned forward, as though there was something heavy in
    the garbage can and I was laboring to push it, and let the mop head
    obscure my face, which was in any event facing down as I pushed.
    I pulled open the door and went straight in, pausing inside,
    waiting. If the girl at the front desk noticed something and came to
    investigate, she'd be here soon, and I wanted the door open if that
    happened for a maximally quick disappearing act.
    I counted off thirty tense seconds, then slowly let my breath
    out. Good to go. She probably never even noticed the movement
    on the monitor. Maybe I was being overcautious.
    As though such a thing were possible.
    I closed and locked the door, parked the mop and garbage can
    next to it, and headed into the stairwell next to the elevators. A
    minute later I emerged on the eighth floor.
    I took the JICC flyers out of the briefcase, walked down to 811,
    and knocked on the door. If someone answered, I would ask in
    Japanese-accented broken English if he or she would be interested
    in some of the exciting cultural activities planned by the JICC for
    the winter and leave one of the flyers to backstop the story. Then I
    would bow and depart and figure out some other way to get to
    Crawley.
    But there was no answer. I tried the bell. Again, no answer.
    I turned and taped one of the flyers to the door across the hallway
    from Crawley's, placing it so that it covered the peephole. It
    was the middle of the day and the complex had a quiet feel to it,
    most of its residents, doubtless, out at work. Still, best to take no
    chances on someone watching through the peephole for the
    minute or so it might take me to get inside.
    The door had two locks--the knob unit and the dead bolt
    above it. The knob unit would be a joke. The dead bolt was a
    Schlage. It looked like an ordinary five-pin, nothing particularly
    high security.
    I put the flyers back in the briefcase and took out my key chain.
    On it, as always, were several slender homemade lengths of metal
    that I knew from experience worked nicely as picks for most
    household and other low-security locks. Next I took out the plastic
    felt-tip pen that I had picked up at the drugstore. I broke the
    metal pocket clip off the pen and inserted it into the knob unit,
    twisting it slightly to take up the slack. Then I worked one of the
    picks in. I had the lock open in less than ten seconds.
    The dead bolt took longer, but not by much. Practice is the key.
    You can buy all the books and videos on lock picking that you
    want--and there are plenty out there--but if you want to get good,
    you buy the hardware, too: warded, disk tumbler, lever tumbler, pin
    tumbler, wafer tumbler, mushroom and spool pin tumbler, tubular
    cylinder, everything. You machine your own tools because the purpose-built
    stuff is illegal to buy if you're not a bonded locksmith.
    You approximate field conditions: gloves; darkness; time