A minute later a gang of redhots passes us, brandishing purses and caroling celebrity gossip. When they’re gone, trailing a cloud of warring perfume and hair product, Herk nods at the shovel. “Have at it.”

I shrug and force the face of the shovel under the gate and start prying.

With one woolen-gloved hand Herk slaps his forehead. With the other he grabs the shovel from me, inserts it through the bars of the gate, laying the metal face upon the magnetic strip in the concrete that—it now occurs to me—detects the presence of a car. Servos whine and the gate creaks open.

“Well,” I say defensively, “what do I know about breaking in? I’m not talent.”

“Clearly.”

We hustle through the garage and, courtesy of Herk’s shepherding, away from the elevator, which, I am reminded, will certainly have cameras. Right-o. We take the stairs. When we get to eleven Herk fishes out a mirror from the bag and tells me to use it to look around the door and see if the hallway has any cameras. I don’t see any but Herk isn’t convinced, so we don our ski masks, and then, very suddenly, we are at Schermer’s door. I press my ear to the wood and hear only the AC and the hum of the building itself. Herk extracts something from the bag and starts working the lock.

“Fuck!” he says.

“What?”

“It doesn’t take Diner’s Club.” He holds up an age-cracked credit card.

“That’s your lock pick?”

“I should have known. No one takes fucking Diner’s Club anymore.”

“You’re an idiot. Why did I ever agree to this?”

“Let me try again.” He does, and the brittle card snaps in half.

“Perfect,” I say. “Now what?”

“Don’t be so negative. I brought my master key.” Herk makes a fist the size and shape of a woolly shot put. “Sneeze loud on three, will you?”

I sneeze, the wood around the brass fixture explodes, the door flies open, and then, just like that, we are staring into Schermer’s apartment. The AC washes through the openings of the mask like the cool spray of a waterfall, but it doesn’t comfort me. There is something frightful, rabbit hole-like, about the gaping doorway.It’s a passageway through which I will exit my old life of preventing crime and enter my new life of committing crime.

I find myself reciting in my mind all sorts of words that describe unlawfulness. Infraction, arraign, misdemeanor, felony, penitentiary, shiv, bunk bitch.

To break in, I think. They break in. He breaks in. I broke in.

Oh God. What am I doing?

Herk is already inside. He is singing a tune—AC / DC’s “Big Balls,” I realize—and he turns around, pats me chummily on the genitals, nods me into the room.

And before I know it, I’m in.

Schermer’s apartment has self-important faux-Federal appointments that aspire to create the veneer of aristocracy. The leitmotif is cordovan and dollar green and polished, Endusty surfaces. The bookshelf floating in the middle of the room makes it look like he bought everything ever published by Taschen, just to cover all the bases, and the window treatments look as if they have been lifted from the set of Wall Street. It is a room that wants very badly to have “comma Esquire” after it. Aside from being a reassuring testimony to the axiom that money does not purchase taste, however, it does not immediately offer anything useful.