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Are you about ready to bed down for the night, Bern? ” “Sort of. But you go ahead. ” She gave me a look, then turned her attention back to the television set, where Charlie Rose was asking thoughtful, probing questions of an earnest chap who looked terribly knowledgeable and seriously constipated. I paid what attention I could, tearing myself away every five minutes to hit the 36 Lawrence Block redial button, and the fourth or fifth time I did this someone finally answered the phone. ” “Mr. ” “Well, thank God,” I said.

This was an unutterably serene apartment, with its 52 Lawrence Block heavy draperies and its thick carpet topped here and there by oriental area rugs, its graceful French furniture and torchère lamps, its old-fashioned wall molding and ceiling medallions, and even the art on its walls, the hand-tinted steel engravings of faraway places that shared wall space with Mrs. Nugent’s oddly comforting thrift-shop acrylics. Why couldn’t I relish for an hour or so the joy of illegal entry; then, having done so to my heart’s content, why couldn’t I leave everything exactly as I found it?

It sounds wonderful,” I said. ” “It generally does,” she said. “C’mon, Bern. ” At a quarter to twelve I picked up Carolyn’s phone for the umpteenth time—or was it the zillionth? I poked the redial button and listened to half a dozen rings before hanging up. “I can’t believe they don’t have an answering machine,” I said. “Maybe they had one,” she suggested, “until a burglar broke in and stole it. Are you about ready to bed down for the night, Bern? ” “Sort of. But you go ahead. ” She gave me a look, then turned her attention back to the television set, where Charlie Rose was asking thoughtful, probing questions of an earnest chap who looked terribly knowledgeable and seriously constipated.