Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

Whitey looked around: a pine-smelling cottage, all polished and clean, the kind that belonged to rich people from the city. He picked up the bottle of wine. Chateau something: French. What had he had a shot of at Sue Savard’s? Gin. He pulled the cork with his teeth, took a hit. He’d only drunk wine once or twice, so long ago he didn’t remember the taste, just that he hadn’t liked it. He didn’t like it now. Maybe he’d get used to it. Rich people, the kind who owned million-dollar paintings, drank wine. He moved through the dining room, more quiet and careful than in the old days, around the corner to the living room, found the stairs. They rose up into darkness. Don’t turn on any lights. You’ll need a flash. Whitey unclipped his flashlight, switched it on, started up. Outside the owl hooted. The sound sent a jolt through Whitey, but not a sharp one, not sharp enough to set off the panicky buzz, although he did tighten his grip on the box cutter.

Upstairs are two bedrooms. Whitey shone his light into each, one made up, one not. That was where things got a little complicated. The painting was hidden in one of them, but which? Roger hadn’t made that clear, as usual. Whitey went into the made-up bedroom, facing the side of the river with the jetty and the dinghies, now completely buried under the snow, and the sloping meadow, featureless in the failing light. From this spot, he’d easily see any headlights, Roger’s, for example. He checked his watch, found he couldn’t read it without the flash. Fourfifty-one. Plenty of time.

But which room? Fucking Roger. Whitey went into the one that wasn’t made up because searching it would be easier. He saw a closet, a chest of drawers, a bed. He opened the closet. There was a shelf at the top. He reached up, ran his hand along it, found nothing but dust. Empty wire hangers hung on the rail. On the floor lay a single pair of shoes: women’s shoes. Whitey picked them up, soft leather shoes, deep red in color. He shone his light inside one, read Fratelli Rossetti, Roma. He held it to his nose, sniffed deeply, smelled several smells he couldn’t identify, and knew he wanted a woman, bad. An amateur housewife woman, yes, but of the special kind who would wear shoes like this. Once he had the painting, he could have a woman like that, more than one. A woman with Sue Savard’s body, but-what was the word? — a classier face. To get a blow job from a woman with a classy face: wouldn’t that be something?

Where was he? Right. Looking for the painting, the garden painting with the girl in the miniskirt, sucking on grapes. Not in the closet. He tried the chest of drawers, opening the bottom one first because he’d seen the technique used years before by burglars in an episode of MiamiVice; on the cell block, of course. There was nothing in the drawer but a magazine called Bellissima, with a beautiful woman on the cover. Whitey leafed through it and found nothing interesting; women, all right, but modeling clothes and makeup instead of fucking, sucking, and begging for it up the ass. Besides, the writing was in another language.

Whitey opened the next drawer, leaving the bottom one open as well. That was the point: you could work faster if you didn’t have to take the time to close one drawer to get to the next one. On the other hand, leaving the drawers open meant that the break-in would be discovered by the first person who entered the house. Had Roger said anything about covering his traces? Whitey couldn’t remember. But why not cover them? He closed the next drawer from the bottom, closed the bottom one, reopened the one above. There was nothing inside.

And nothing in any of the others. Whitey paused, drumming his fingers on the wood. Where would he hide the painting? Under the chest? Down on his hands and knees he peered under the chest and, while he was there, turned and swept the beam of his flash under the bed. Nada. He got up, raised the bare mattress, saw nothing but bare springs. Quiet and careful, but not fun, like all those other break-ins long ago, grabbing all those toasters and TVs. This was a drag, and pissed him off. His gaze fell on the mattress. Was it in there? He slashed at the mattress with the box cutter. It sliced through the covering with surprising ease, exposing the stuffing. Whitey tore it out by the fistful until he was sure the painting wasn’t inside. No painting, but a big fucking mess. That answered the question of whether he should cover his tracks. No way was he about to pack all that shit inside by flashlight and do whatever else-he couldn’t begin to even imagine the steps involved-he’d have to do to make everything look normal.

So, no painting, and it was 5:13. What next? He remembered the other bedroom.

Whitey crossed the hall and entered it. His light glinted on the window, a mirror, a vase full of dead flowers. Same kind of room as the other one, but all made up, meaning more work. Work made him thirsty, and maybe that wine hadn’t been as bad as he’d first thought. Whitey went downstairs and downed the bottle.

Back in the made-up bedroom, feeling better, Whitey got busy. By now he had a system-systems were the sign of an administrative assistant, a professional man, an operative like him. He began with the closet. Two life jackets hung on the rail, and a terry-cloth robe. Whitey sniffed the robe and smelled something faint, faint but nice. Then he pointed the beam along the shelf, a high shelf, higher than the one in the other room. Something at the back caught his eye. A box, round and silvery. Jewelry? Whitey stuck the box cutter between his teeth and reached up for it. A slippery box: as he drew it toward the front of the shelf, it slipped from his grasp, started to fall. He grabbed at it, missed, and the box fell to the floor, bouncing off his head on the way down. The next thing Whitey knew there was powder all over the place and he was sneezing-perfumed powder on his jacket, up his nose, sticking to his face. He patted his hair, checked his hand under the light: sticky pink powder, now on his palm and fingers, too.

What the fuck? Whitey thought. He found the silvery box in a corner of the room, examined it under the light: Lancome, he read, and more writing in another language. He threw the box at the wall, hard. On the followthrough, the flash in his other hand shone up in his face and he saw himself in the mirror, the box cutter between his teeth and his hair, pink. He snatched the box cutter from his mouth, said, “What the fuck?” aloud.

Whitey went to the mirror, brushed at his hair, couldn’t get rid of the powder, stinking faggot powder all over himself. He checked his watch-pink powder on it, too: 5:22. He had time. Time for what? Face it. There was no fucking painting. The storm had kept the Brinks truck away, would keep Roger away, too. Nothing left to do but haul his ass out of there, back across the river, back to the pickup. But first a shower. He wasn’t going anywhere covered in pink.

Whitey went into the hall between the bedrooms, left into the bathroom, jabbed his beam here and there: toilet, sink with a toothbrush and toothpaste in a wall cup, towel on a hook, shower. He turned on the hot tap, not expecting hot, since the tank would be switched off for the winter. Whitey didn’t care, since cold didn’t bother him, but it was nice when hot started flowing anyway; if not hot, at least warm. He laid the box cutter and his watch on the rim of the sink, positioned the flashlight on the toilet tank so it pointed at the shower, then stripped off his clothes and stepped under the water.

“Ah.” It felt good. Whitey realized he had a little alcohol hum going in his body, the way you sometimes realize that in showers. He wasn’t drunk or hammered or anything, just humming. Master of puppets I’m pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams.