Spectacles

The optometrist’s shop was broad and not deep, with the front glass wall facing the rest of Speedshop, plus white walls at sides and back liberally decorated with mirrors and color photographs of handsome people with bad eyesight. A glass counter and display case full of spectacle frames faced the door, and little fitting tables with mirrors and chairs stood to both sides.

Against each side was a small settee where customers could sit and wait for their prescriptions to be filled, with magazines stacked on a nearby table. The light in here at this time of night was only the long dim bulbs inside the display racks, mostly showing the frames on the glass shelves.

Dortmunder dashed around the end of the counter and found the cash register, which for once he didn’t want. But under it was the credit card swiper, which he did want. He found the blank receipts, swiped one with the credit card he’d used on the door, filled in the receipt with some stuff — $139.98, that seemed like a good number — looked at the name on the credit card and signed it more or less the way it looked on the back: Austin Humboldt.

Customer copy, customer copy — here it is. Glancing at the windows across the way — no cops out there yet — he pocketed the customer copy, found the stack of used receipts under the cash register, and added Austin Humboldt’s near to but not at the top of the pile. Out of his wallet and into his shoes went all the IDs not named Humboldt. Then he started around the counter again.

Wait a minute. If he was buying glasses, he was somebody who’d wear glasses, right? A display on the rear wall was two-thirds full of glasses: he grabbed a pair at random, slapped them on and realized he was looking through nothing. No glass, just frames.

Time time time, there was no time for all this. Down to his left, another display of glasses, and these bounced dim lights at him from a hundred lenses. He lunged down there, praying they wouldn’t be blind-as-a-bat prescription specs, threw on a pair of delicate but manly tortoise-shell frames and looked through glass. Clear glass, clear. OK!

Now he could run around the counter, collapse onto the nearest settee — it wasn’t very comfortable — grab a three-month-old People from the little table, open it facedown on his lap and then flop, eyes closed.

It took them three minutes to find him. He slumped there, unmoving, telling himself to relax, telling himself if worst comes to worst, he could probably eventually escape from prison, and then he heard the rattling of the metal knob on the glass door.

Don’t react, he told himself. Not yet, it’s too soon. You need your sleep.

Banging and knocking on the glass door and the plate glass wall. Indistinct muffled shouting.

Dortmunder started, like a horse hearing a pistol shot, and stared around at the optometrist shop, at the magazine sliding off his lap and at last at the glass wall, which had become an active mural of cops peering in at him, staring, pressing faces to the glass, waving and yelling; a horrible sight.

And now he realized these glasses he’d put on were not exactly clear lenses, not exactly. They were some kind of magnifiers, reading glasses or whatever, that made everything just a little larger than usual, a little closer than usual. He not only had this horrible mural of Your Police in Action in front of him, he had them in his lap.

Too late to change. Just stagger forward and hope for the best. Dortmunder jumped to his feet, then ran to the door, reaching for the nonexistent knob, bruising his knuckles against the chrome frame surrounding the glass because it wasn’t exactly where he saw it, then licked his knuckles. Cops crowded close out there, the other side of the glass, calling, intensely staring.

Dortmunder showed them his most baffled face. He spread his hands, then pointed at the door, then made a knob-turning gesture, then shrugged like Atlas with an itch.

They didn’t get it yet. They kept yelling at him to open up. They kept pointing at the door as though he didn’t know where it was. He did his little repertoire of gestures some more, and then two of them pressed their faces to the glass, so that they now looked like fish in police uniform, and squinted to try to see the inside of the door.

Now they got it. And now Dortmunder, once they understood he was locked in here — it’s a locked room mystery! — began to exhibit signs of panic He’d been feeling panic all along: it was nice to be able to show it, even though under false colors.

He bobbed back and forth along the wall, waving frantically, gesturing that they should release him. He pointed at his watch — do you people realize what time it is? He mimed making rapid phone calls — I got responsibilities at home! He tried to tear his hair, but it was too wispy to get a grip on.