“Chill, Maria, we’re good to go. Barrington has left the house wearing a tuxedo. Now make three right turns and pull over as near to the southwest corner as you can get.” He set the folding cart on the pavement, and she drove away. Curly crossed the street, looking around for cops, and found Irv crouched at the bottom of the little flight of stairs that led to Barrington’s office.

“How’s it going, Irv?”

“It’s going. Keep quiet, I need to concentrate.”

Curly sat down next to him and watched him manipulate his lock picks. Suddenly, the door was open.

“Come on,” Irv said. “We’ve got about thirty seconds before the alarm blows, maybe a minute.”

“I know where the box is,” Curly said. “Follow me.”

—

TEN BLOCKS AWAY, a bored security technician named Sid manned a bank of monitors in the basement of a small office building. He had been at work for half an hour and had ordered a pizza for his dinner and had changed into his Strategic Services coveralls, dumping the contents of his pockets on his desk. He usually worked with a partner, but the man had called in sick.

He sat down and checked the condition of the systems he was monitoring. Suddenly, an alarm began to beep. He switched his monitors to an apartment a few blocks away but saw nothing. He looked up the phone number and called.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

“This is Sid, at Strategic Services. I have an alarm at your place. Is everything all right? Do you need the police?”

“It’s my fault, I entered my old code before I thought about it.”

“What is your cancellation code, please?”

“Black Cat.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll cancel your alarm. Let us know if we can be of service.”

His phone rang. “This is Sid.”

“This is Domino’s. Our guy is at the service door with your pizza.”

“I’ll be right there.” He grabbed some money from his desk and trotted down the hall to the door. He opened it and leaned against it while he paid the pizza guy. It was heavily sprung and took an effort to keep open. Then his foot slipped; he pitched forward, and the heavy door slammed behind him. He went to his pocket for the keys, then remembered that they were on his desk with the contents of his pockets.

“Oh, shit,” he said to himself.

49

THE TWO BURGLARS ran into Barrington’s office and got the door to the security panel open.

“Piece of cake,” Irv said, flipping switches. A piercing alarm siren beat against their eardrums, then Irv found the right switch, and it stopped. “That’s enough to alert the security company,” Irv said. “You’d better get your ass in gear.”

Curly ran up the stairs carrying his handcart.

—