Geezer Paradise by Robert Gannon Page A

grip and tried again.  This time Willey was able to grab onto the bottom rung of the ladder.  The ladder swung down in a slow, creaking, descent.  Soon the bottom of the ladder was buried in garbage.  We climbed up to the grated platform above.  As soon as we got off the ladder, it slowly started to swing back up.  We stood there studying the single window in front of us. 
                  "I don't see any alarms," I said.  I put the heels of my hands under the top rail of the sash and gently pushed up.  The window slid up easily.
                  "It wasn't even locked," Willey said.  "These guys are just asking for a break-in."  I let Willey climb in first.  After all, he was the criminal genius, I was just the apprentice.  Besides, sometimes these places keep a dog on the premises overnight.  A big, hungry, downright nasty, dog.  No sense taking chances.
                  We stood in the dark office, not much light coming from the alley.  I took a few steps into the darkness and bumped into something that felt like a person.  Like an idiot I said, "Excuse me."  I stood there holding my breath. 
                  "Why should I excuse you?" Willey wanted to know.
                  "Not you, him!"
                  "What?"
                  "I think there's somebody here!" I squeaked.  Willey turned his penlight on.  I had bumped into a coat rack full of raincoats.  The arms of a large raincoat were wrapped around me.
                  "Dammit, Barney.  Will you stop joking around.  This is serious.
                  "Right," I said.  My heart was beating like a bongo drum.  There was a large mahogany desk in the office.  The name plate said, John Flaherty.  We were in the lion's den.  Willey started going through the drawers on one side of the desk.  I pulled out my penlight and started on the other side.  Most of what I was reading made no sense to me.  We found nothing of interest in the desk, so we headed to the computer.  We looked it all over, there was no flash drive attached to it. 
                  "He must take it home with him," Willey said.  Willey put his flash drive into a port on the back of the computer tower.  "We'll copy his files," Willey said. 
                  We turned the computer on and tried to get into the files, but we didn't know the password.  We took the flash drive out and shut off the computer. 
                  "Maybe we'll find something in one of the other offices," I said.  We went out into the dark hallway and, using our penlights, we started reading the room names on the door glass.  When we came to a door marked, Accounting, we tried the door.  It wasn't locked.  Willey was right, they had no security in this place.
                  We went straight to the computer.  There was no flash drive attached to it.  We couldn't get in to the files of that computer either.  Again, we didn't have the password.  We shut the computer off and did a quick search of the desk drawers.   We found nothing of interest.  We went out of that office and did a quick search of the other offices, and came up empty handed.
                  "I guess we're out of luck," I said.  "We might as well get out of here.  Willey grudgingly agreed.  We went back down the hall and into Flaherty's office.  As we were heading for the window a light came on out in the hallway outside.  We ran into a closet and pulled the door shut just as the office door opened and the room was flooded with light.  We stood in the darkness for a minute, sweating in the stuffy closet.  Then a woman started to sing in Spanish, and a vacuum cleaner roared to life.  I cracked the closet door open just enough to see.  A pudgy Spanish woman was cleaning the office. 
                  We were trapped in the broiling hot closet.  I closed