K. A. Williams

The Burglar

by K. A. Williams

I watched the house until the young man left. The lock was easy, thanks to my ex-con cousin's lock picking lessons. Even though there was no security system sign in the yard, I was nervous as I stepped inside. Seconds ticked, no alarm screamed in my ears. When I reached out to close the door, something hit me in the head.

The next thing I was aware of was a headache and then I discovered that my wrists were tied behind my back.

The young man who must have knocked me out was sitting at the kitchen table across from me. I studied his face. It was possible.

"Why did you break into my house?" His voice, like his gaze, was more curious than angry.

My throat went dry and I swallowed nervously. "Have you called the cops?"

"I'm asking the questions," he stated, leaning forward.

I looked at my scattered stuff. On the table were keys, burglary tools, and my open wallet. My driver's license lay face up in front of him. Everything had gone wrong.

I finally responded. "You don't have a security system."

He shook his head. "Other houses on this street don't have security systems either. I was looking out my bedroom window when your car came down the street, stopped at my mailbox, backed up and then parked two houses away. I watched you while you watched my house. I knew you could only see the front door, so I drove off, parked on the next street, cut through a neighbor's yard, came in the back door and waited."

"Then you haven't called the cops." I relaxed a little.

He frowned. "I will if you don't start telling me the truth."

I did not want the police involved, I was violating my parole by being here. "Take the keys. Go to my car. There's an envelope on the back seat." He waited for me to say more. I didn't. He grabbed up the keys and left.

When he returned, he slapped the envelope on the table and sat across from me again. He didn't open it. Instead he chose to compare the envelope's address with my driver's license. Then he gasped when he recognized the return address which was his own.

He stared at me, his dark eyes wide. "I didn't mail this - who did?"

"Did your aunt have a lawyer and a will?"

"Yes."

"Then her will must have told her lawyer to mail that old newspaper clipping and her obituary to me," I guessed. Her obituary had said she lived here with her only living relative, an unnamed seventeen year old nephew.

He opened the envelope and glanced at the clippings. "Why?"

I'd done some thinking about that since I received the envelope. "Your aunt's death wasn't sudden, she had time to think about her past before she died, right?"

He ran his fingers through his dark hair and nodded.

I didn't say anything else.

"Why did you ask me that? Tell me what's going on or I will call the cops now." He started to rise from his chair.

"Read the old newspaper clipping. See my name and address? I broke in to hunt for the blanket."

"The blanket?" he echoed, reading the old clipping.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and remembered. "We were at the park when our baby was kidnapped. We had just left him alone for one minute. We went to the police and we waited for a ransom call but the only calls were phony. We all knew they were phony because of something that wasn't mentioned in the newspaper only the true kidnapper would know about. The blanket. My late wife had stitched our baby's name into the blanket with red thread. We kept hoping, but the real kidnapper never called."

I stopped and opened my eyes. He wasn't there. Had he decided to summon the cops after all? Desperate, I struggled against my bonds. No luck. Sweat covered me as the minutes slowly passed.

Suddenly something dingy white landed on the table in front of me. I stared in wonder at the faded stitches. Then I couldn't see the letters anymore for some reason. I could feel my wrists being unbound and when they were free, I held the baby blanket with trembling fingers ignoring the tingling feeling in my numb hands.

I looked across the table - he was back in his chair. "I'm Bobby," he said. The kidnapper had kept both his blanket and his name. "So my, uh, 'Aunt', lied to me about my parents dying in a car crash when I was a baby, and you're my father, right?"

I smiled, nodded, and realized that for the first time since that horrible day in the park, I was truly happy. With my cousin's help I had been able to afford to keep the same house, even after my wife's long and expensive illness, in the hope that someday the kidnapper would contact me. We'd had no other children and I was sorry my wife hadn't lived to see this wonderful day.

The End

First published in The Rockford Review in 2007.

The Easy Job

by K. A. Williams

My phone rang. I didn't recognize the number. "Hello?"

"Hi Bret, this is Rob. I got your number from Karl. He said you and him have worked together before."

"I'm listening."

"Easy job. I need a pickpocket. I'm at the bar that Karl suggested I meet you at. He said you'd know the one. Come as soon as you can. I'll be wearing a blue shirt."

I grabbed my coat, left my apartment, and started walking. It was only a block away.

Several men were sitting on bar stools when I got there. Two were wearing black shirts and both had glasses in front of them.

The other two were wearing blue shirts. One shirt was light blue, the other dark blue. Neither man had been served yet.

One of the black shirts got up and left. Now there was a vacant seat next to each of them. Light blue shirt looked like an undercover cop, so I sat beside the other one.

Tad, the bartender, set their drinks down and turned to me. Before I could order, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pants, checked the number said, "Sorry, I have to take this," and turned away from me.

Dark blue shirt picked up the drink with his right hand, took a sip, then looked at both of us.

I started to say something, but he turned to the other guy and said in a low voice, "I'm Rob. You got here pretty quick after I called. You are Bret, right? Karl said you were the best he ever worked with, and I'm getting my crew together."

To my amazement, light blue shirt said, "Yeah, I'm Bret. What's the job?"

"Not here at the bar. Let's get a table. You never know who might be an undercover cop."

Light blue shirt laughed. "That's right, you never know."

I watched helplessly as Rob and the undercover cop got off the bar stools, drinks in hand, and headed for a table.

Tad set a glass of beer (my usual drink) in front of me. I put a fifty down. "Do me a favor. Anyone asks, you don't know me."

"Sure thing, Bret. Trouble?"

"That guy over there at the table is an undercover cop."

"The one in the dark blue shirt?" he asked.

"Dark blue shirt is the one I'm supposed to meet, but he started talking to the cop by mistake about a job."

"Uh, oh, that's bad news for you and everyone else that's violating parole, if their name and number is stored on his phone."

"That's what I was thinking." I laid down another fifty. "Let me know when they get up from the table."

"Sure."

"I'm going out the back when I'm done."

I drank the beer until Tad whispered, "They're getting up."

I turned my head slightly, then picked the right moment to slide off the stool, take a step, and run into Rob.

I almost knocked him down and steadied him with one hand while the other was in his right pants pocket, where I knew his phone would be.

After I quickly stuffed his phone into my jacket pocket, I moved away and said, "Sorry."

I walked toward the back like I was going to the restroom and went further down the hall to the exit. Then I stepped out into the alley behind the bar, scaring some cats who were dining in the garbage bin.

When I peeked around the building, I saw Rob and the cop standing just outside the bar. Rob patted the pockets of his pants and jacket before they both went back inside.

It wouldn't take them long to discover that the phone wasn't in there and then they would know I took it. Rob might realize I was the pickpocket he was supposed to meet but it would be too late for him.

I knew Tad would keep his mouth shut and act surprised that I'd left out the back door. He had no love for the cops. I'd even worked with his brother, Phil, on a few jobs.

I didn't want to be caught on the sidewalk between the bar and my apartment in case the cop decided to look for me, so I headed for the nearby subway entrance and hurried down the stairs.

I called Karl from a stall in the restroom, and he answered after the first ring. "How did the meeting go?"

"It was a disaster. Does Rob have my address?"

"No. What happened?"

I told Karl everything.

"I'll make some calls," he said. "Everyone we know should trash their phone so the cops can't track them."

"Right, especially since Rob might have already given the phone numbers of his potential crew to the cop while they were talking at the table."

"Get a new burner phone and I'll do the same. We'll have everyone give Terry their new numbers. Rob doesn't know about her and neither do the cops." Karl hung up.

I took the SIM cards out of both phones and flushed them. Then I factory reset the phones and left the restroom.

A bunch of people had just gotten off a train and I joined the crowd moving toward the exit. I slipped Rob's phone into the handbag of a woman and mine into a man's coat pocket.

As I walked home, I wondered what the easy job had been.

The End