Thai Horse by William Diehl

hot mustard.
    The Bird waited until the wat c hman was just that, totally engrossed in his sandwich a n d the CBS News. He left the closet, walked ten feet down the hall to the small room containing the electric terminal boxes, and jumped the trigger switches for the window alarms and electric eyes. He ignored the floor sensor. It was too complex to bother with, and besides, it wouldn’t be a problem. He never went near the floor.
    The Bird’s pulse raced as he m a de his way up to the roof. He loved the challenge. Work i ng the air, he called it, and the tougher the job, the faster his pulse raced. The score didn’t matter nearly as muc h as doing it. He had stashed his kit on the roof two days earlier, presenting his forged fire inspector credentials to the day security man and then casually checking out the whole building without being disturbed. He had hidden his operating kit — a large black nylon bag filled with what he called ‘the necessities’ — inside the air-conditioning vent. This one was a cakewalk, almost too easy. Security was n ot that tough and the watchman would never suspect that the museum would be hit so soon after closing.
    He pulled off the beard and slick e r and stuffed them in the bag, blackened his face, then p icked the lock on the skylight over the French Impressionists room. Attaching a large, aluminium vise to the sill, h e threaded a thousand- pound-test nylon rope through the r i ngs in the vise and the rings in his thick harness, and rappe ll ed down.
    Now he was flying seven feet ab o ve the floor, close to the south wall so the TV monitor could not see him, his lifeline attached to his waist. Using his head as a fulcrum, spinning around, sometimes hanging head down, sometimes feet down, the Bird was a living Peter Pan surrounded by Monets and Manets, C assatts and Signacs, Gauguins, Van Goghs, Sisleys, C e zannes and Renoirs.
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    Beautiful, thought the Bird. Who else works in such an atmosphere of creative splendor?
    But as he swung in a leisurely arc, enjoying the wondrous works that covered the walls, his eyes suddenly fell on a bench in the center of the room. On the bench lay a cat.
    The Bird froze. The ions in the air froze. Everything froze but the cat, who slept peacefully.
    If that cat jumps, the Bird thought, the floor sensors will knock the old watchman into the middle of Canarsie. He swung on the end of his line for several seconds watching the cat, a big gray-striped feline. He had to move slowly and quietly and hope he did not wake it up.
    The Bird slowly moved his head back and forth, swinging himself until he could almost touch the wall. He reached into his kit, took out two pressure clamps, then swung against the wall and quietly fixed the two suction cups to it, using them to stabilize himself.
    He used a small pressure wrench to pry open each of the frames, lifted a Monet, a Cezanne and a Renoir and slid them out, carefully covered each with a sheet of tissue, rolled them tightly, and put them in the tube slung over his shoulder, which he strapped tightly to his back so it would not swing free. He released the suction cups and swung back in the air, free of the wall, his head hanging down toward the floor.
    The cat rolled over on its back, stretched, opened its eyes and stared up at the biggest bird it had ever seen in its life.
    The Bird stared back.
    The cat’s eyes widened. It jumped to its feet. Its back arced and it spat up at him.
    Don’t jump, thought the Bird, please, don’t jump.
    The cat jumped on the floor.
    The floor sensors set off an alarm beside the monitor screen in the office. The watchman, startled by the buzzing noise, stared at the monitor, but the cat was standing directly under it and the watchman could not see it on the screen. The room appeared empty.
    ‘Damn,’ the old man muttered under his breath.
    Loosening his revolver in the holster, he walked down the hail and stood for a moment outside the open archway leading into the large