NIGHT WORK IN THE detective business carries its own set of rules.
The first covers wardrobe.
The idea is not to look like one of the Beagle Boys. You can take your inspiration from the movies, put on the black watch cap, matching turtleneck, and skintight trousers, and pose for the cover of Sneak Thief Quarterly, but if you do it out in the real world you’re going to be arrested as a suspicious person. Especially when everyone else in your zip code is wearing a sport shirt and cotton twill.
I chose a blue short-sleeved sweatshirt, a dark gray nylon jacket to cover my arms, and a new pair of blue jeans, prewashed so I could walk without making as much noise as a sheet of tin. I don’t own a ski mask and wasn’t about to go shopping for one in June. Leave the burnt cork on the face to Cary Grant. If you’re not alert enough to turn your back when headlamps rake around the corner you’ve got no business breaking the law in the first place. Not to mention the inconvenience of coming up with a good story if the police stop you, minstrel shows being rare these days.
Finally I laced on black high-tops with thick waffled soles, threw a pair of stiff rubber gloves and bolt-cutters with insulated handles into the trunk, and was off to risk my license for about the thousandth time since Easter. I had a good night for it. The sky was heavily overcast and I couldn’t see my feet. I was in great shape as long as I didn’t trip over any other burglars.
The street rod next door was parked in the driveway, protected only by a canvas car cover. I hesitated as I pulled out of the garage—it seemed a shame, dressed as I was, not to creep over and cut the starter cable, assuring myself a full night’s sleep—but I had a living to earn and put my foot on the gas.
When I got to Imminent Visions I didn’t slow down. Much of the metropolitan drug trade takes place in office parking lots after hours, and the places attract police stakeouts. I circled the block for a better look. Lights were on in some of the offices, but there are always some, and in the entrance to the underground garage reserved for employees, the greenish glow of the security lights inside made a pool on the pavement, but the attendant’s booth was empty. No marked units were crouched in the likely places. No vehicles, marked or otherwise, were parked in any of the neighboring driveways facing out. It was coming up on nine o’clock by the dial on my dashboard; lunch hour for most cops on the four to midnight.
In and out fast, fingers crossed.
I found a legal space on the street, in the dark middle ground between the lamps on the corners and across from an eight-foot board fence where construction was going on, but not at that hour. The snick when I opened my door sounded like a rifle shot in the still air. I got out and leaned on it until it shut. I kept listening, I wasn’t sure for what. The score from The Pink Panther, maybe.
After that I moved quickly. I popped up the trunk, pulled on the gloves and a pair of rubbers I kept there in case of sudden weather—the power level would be much lower than Detroit Edison’s, but taking chances is for bungie-jumpers and matadors—and reached for the bolt-cutters just as a car turned into the street. I pivoted away from its lamps, blocking the Cutlass’s license plate with my body while I pretended to struggle with the spare tire. The car ticked on past without slowing.
I stepped up the pace another notch. The prospect of a cellular 911 call knocked ten minutes off my schedule. I took out the cutters, lowered the trunk lid without closing it, and loped toward the visitors’ parking lot. There didn’t seem to be much use in walking at an unsuspicious pace while in possession of a tool that could get me ninety days at County.
Allen Park is quiet after dark by city standards. Crickets sang, the measured surf of canned laughter coming from someone’s television set reached me, perhaps from as far away as Canada across the river. Detroit throbbed in the distance, never entirely silent as long as trucks prowled the interstates at night to avoid scales and factories ran around the clock. A fire siren climbed and fell, an ambulance whooped on the downstroke. Someone else’s tragedy, as remote as an earthquake in Peru. Call it the night of a thousand apathies.
I’d brought along a pencil flashlight. It stayed in my pocket. There was enough illumination from the security lights to guide me to the area where I’d parked that morning. The telephone crew had erected a nylon tent to protect its excavation from weather and left up its barricades to protect itself from a lawsuit when someone fell in. I stepped between them, found the flap, and ducked inside, letting it fall shut behind me. Now I could use my light.
I found the cable quickly. It was bright orange, and the crew had inserted a couple of wooden dowels underneath it to lift it free of the earth. I stepped down into the hole, put the penlight between my teeth, and groped for the conduit. The hard rubber gave a little when I squeezed.
That was a break. I was afraid it would turn out to be cased in steel, and I hadn’t bothered to bring a hacksaw because the time it would have taken me to saw through it fell outside the margin of safety I had arranged for myself. I had both hands on the bolt-cutters when another pair of headlamps swept across the tent.
I froze.
I was afraid to dive for cover in case the movement was silhouetted against the nylon. The lights stayed on me for a long second. I could feel their heat. My own shadow loomed in front of me like my own guilty conscience. Then it moved. The lights slid the length of the tent and beyond. I heard tires swishing on asphalt, the sound of an engine slowing, idling, and then picking up speed, fading away as it moved off down the street. A driver had chosen the entrance of the lot to turn around in.
No more hesitation now. Whoever it was might have seen something and gone off to report.
The thick conduit was a healthy bite for the cables. I spread the handles all the way, worked the parrot’s-beak blades back and forth against the rubber until they bit, planted my feet solidly in the soft earth, and brought the handles together in one clean scissoring jerk.
Conduit and cable parted with a dry cough, blue and white sparks splashed. I stamped out the ones that were still glowing on the ground. I was a vandal, not an arsonist.