The Eye: A Novel of Suspense by Bill Pronzini, John Lutz Read Free Book Online Page B

himself, despite the fact that if you got busted on a B and E charge, the penalty was stiffer—a possible Burglary Two—for an after-dark hit than it was for a daylight hit. In the long run, he felt it was safer to work at night, although a lot of other professionals thought otherwise.
    He took a cab to West End Avenue and Seventy-second Street and then walked to Central Park West and Sixty-ninth where the woman’s apartment was located. It wasn’t as ritzy as Park Avenue, or even Fifth, but it was classy; women and drugs were lucrative professions, even on a small scale. She’d have plenty of cash around, and he’d know where to look for it. And she could hardly report its disappearance to the law. This was shaping up to be one of his easiest and safest jobs.
    Hiller moved slowly along the sidewalk until he reached the narrow gangway alongside the building he planned to enter. There were plenty of people on the street, so he didn’t bother trying to disguise his actions. He simply turned in as if he knew some sort of shortcut and had every reason in the world to be there.
    But he didn’t cut all the way through; he stopped beneath the window he’d earmarked for his entry. The gangway was deeply shadowed, and someone on the sidewalk would have to pause and look closely to see Hiller in his dark clothing.
    He took his time moving a large metal trash can, so as not to make any noise, and then stood on its lid so he could reach the window. Inside he could see a dark kitchen, white stove and refrigerator like pale tombstones. The window was over a sink; he made a mental note of the cannisters on the counter so he wouldn’t kick them over when he crawled inside. There was an iron lattice over the window, but it was fastened to the frame with small screws. Hiller used the screwdriver on his Swiss army knife to loosen the screws on one side of the latticework, then bent the rusty iron back and out of the way.
    The window was locked. Switching to the large blade of the knife, he worked on the old, brittle putty holding in the glass until he’d loosened the corner of the long center pane near the lock. He slipped the point of the knife blade beneath the glass and pried back. With almost no sound, a neat square of glass popped out into his hand, allowing him easy accesss to the lock. He inserted the handle of the knife through the opening in the pane and flipped the catch.
    He was inside within half a minute, dropping nimbly from the sink, his soft-soled jogging shoes noiseless on the kitchen floor. He knew the layout of the apartment because one of the woman’s dope customers had described it to him: a long living room along the front, the rear section divided between bathroom and small bedroom. The first thing he did was to stand for a moment and let his eyes get accustomed to the dimness; then he flashed the narrow yellow beam of the penlight around briefly, to orient himself; and then he made his way to the bedroom.
    Surprise, surprise. Two people were sleeping in there.
    Even before he reached the open bedroom door, he heard the regular breathing of the two. He tensed, cursed wordlessly—but those were his only reactions. He’d worked before with his victims on the premises, a time or two by choice. He could tell when someone was about to wake up, because he had learned to monitor their breathing; he was an expert on the sounds of sleep. So the woman had dragged somebody home with her tonight. So what? It was too bad, but it didn’t change things much at all.
    A streetlamp outside provided faint illumination in the room, so when Hiller looked in he could see that it was a man the woman had in bed with her. The window air conditioner was on, and the bedroom was cool. The man had the white sheet tucked up under his chin; the woman lay sprawled on her back with one slender, pale leg exposed. The room contained the stale, unmistakable scent of frenzied sexual coupling.
    For a moment Hiller experienced a sensation of