The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams by Lawrence Block

a third career) could emerge in his (or her) own good time. There was still silver for the taking, and thirty-odd dollars in the windmill canister, and, for all I knew, the legendary Kloppman Diamond.
    I went around the apartment turning off lights. In no time at all the whole place was dark except for the overhead light in the foyer. I turned that off, too, and opened the front door and stuck my head out into the hallway.
    And drew it back inside, and pulled the door shut, and padded noiselessly through the dark apartment, not even using my pen light. Moving slowly and silently, I slipped back into the guest room, where I hovered, barely breathing, and waited for the bathroom door to open.
     
    Ten minutes passed, arguably the longest ten minutes of my life. By the time they’d crept by, it was glaringly obvious that the bathroom was unoccupied.
    So why was it locked?
    And what was inside?
    The usual things, I told myself. A sink, a tub, maybe a stall shower. A commode. A medicine chest. Go home, I urged myself, and whatever’s in there can stay in there, and who cares?
    I did, evidently.
    Because what I did—after I had turned on the light again, so that I could at least see what I was doing even if I couldn’t satisfactorily explain it—what I did was get down on my hands and knees and try to pick the goddam lock. It was a nothing lock, it was a simple bolt of the sort you turn when you’re in the john and you don’t want someone to walk in on you. There were no tumblers, no pins, nothing, really, but a bolt that went back and forth when you turned the little gizmo on the back of the door.
    I couldn’t pick the sonofabitch to save my soul.
    I could have popped it with one good kick, but I didn’t want to do that. I was a man who’d once been called “the Heifetz of the picklock,” and I certainly ought to be able to open a locked bathroom door. It wasn’t Fort Knox, for God’s sake. It was a bathroom, a guest bathroom, on West End Avenue.
    Couldn’t do it.
    I flicked the switch again, the one at the side of the bathroom door, the one that had previously caused nothing to happen. Predictably, nothing happened.
    Suppose I got married, suppose we had kids. Suppose one of them locked himself in the bathroom, the way the little bastards do, and then couldn’t unlock the door and panicked. Suppose Daddy rushed to the rescue, picks in hand, and then suppose Daddy had to tell Mommy to call a locksmith, because he couldn’t open the bloody door?
    Ridiculous.
    If it was my door, and my kid inside, I’d have taken it off its hinges. But that’s a lot of work, and a real messy job. You always get chips of paint off the hinge and onto the carpet, a mute testament to one’s continuing inability to draw back the bolt.
    See, there was no way to work my kind of magic on the thing. All I could do was try to get a purchase on it with my tools and snick it back into the door. The gap between door and jamb was pretty snug, so I didn’t have much room to work with. I could make a little progress, but sooner or later I’d be unable to maintain constant tension on the bolt, and my pick would slip and I’d be right back where I started, and not at all happy about it.
    One of the steel strips on my tool ring is a cut-down hacksaw blade, and it would have gone through the bolt like a knife through butter. Not a hot knife, and not warm butter either, but it would have done the job. I ruled it out, though, for the same reason I wouldn’t take the door off its hinges or kick it into the next county. I felt challenged, dammit.
    I took off my pliofilm gloves. I dragged over a gooseneck lamp and positioned it to best advantage. I gritted my teeth and went to work.
    And, by God, I opened the fucker.
     
    With the bolt drawn and one hand on the doorknob, I paused to note the time. Astonishingly, it was getting on for four in the morning. How long had I taken to open the bathroom door? I didn’t even want to know.
    What I did want to