Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

The woman spun around, dropping the watch, dropping the flowers, putting her hands to her mouth, making a lovely frightened little noise in her throat.

Whitey smiled. “Nothing to apologize about,” he said, holding up his hand, the empty one. Totally in control, master of the situation. Master reminded him of masturbate-was there a connection between the two words? — and of what he’d been about to do before the water turned cold. No longer necessary. “Nothing at all,” he said. “I know you’ve got a job to do.”

She backed up as far as she could before the sink stopped her. “Job?” she said. Whitey liked her voice, an educated voice, classy. He saw that the woman was just that: classy. This was no pocket-change whore like that pockmarked hag in Florida. This woman had snow melting in her hair, soft skin, innocent eyes. She was pure, amateur, perfect. She was the one. The buzzing rose and rose inside him.

“The painting, and whatnot,” Whitey explained, not sure his voice was at the right volume, with the buzzing so loud.

Painting — the word got her attention; he could see that in her eyes, and what eyes, unlike any female eyes that had ever looked at him. And she was looking at him, no doubt about it.

Looking right at him, so why pussyfoot? Why beat around the bush? Whitey almost laughed aloud at his own wit. Almost, but he had to be cool. Cool as he could be, he hit her with his best shot: “How about us two we go back into that bedroom and see what we can see?”

The woman’s eyes, still on him, shifted a little, gazed down, came to the glass cutter in his hand. He had forgotten to hide it behind his back, and anyway it was a box cutter. Glass cutter was the last time, not that it And then she was gone, just like that. Whitey had never seen a woman move so fast. He moved, too, out of the shower, out of the bathroom, onto the landing in time to see something he hardly believed, the woman leaping right from the top, taking the entire staircase in the air, hitting the ground floor with a loud squeak of her tennis shoes, her body contracting into a ball to absorb the force of the fall, staying on her feet. By that time, Whitey was halfway down himself, saw her darting off toward the living room, following the L to the dining room, kitchen, the door. He chased her, making storm-like howls of his own as he remembered his mother chasing him around the yard, her belt buckle whistling past his ear, beside himself with the tremendous charge of it all. But the woman-what a body she must have under that coat! — was fast, really fast, almost as fast as he was. He didn’t catch her until she reached the door, forced to slow down to jerk it open. She actually had it halfway open, was on the point of disappearing into the storm on those quick feet, when Whitey sprang right over the kitchen table, flew across the room, and caught her a good one with his shoulder.

A real good one. The woman bounced off the door-jamb, back into the room, sprawled facedown on the floor. Whitey caught his breath, picked himself up, walked over to her. She was already up on her hands and knees. He bent over, got one hand in her hair-beautiful hair, so soft and clean, he’d never felt anything like it-raised her head, held the box cutter to her throat.

“This is going to be something else,” he told her.

But then somehow she was rolling out of his grasp, leaving him with a handful of hair and a sharp pain, high up the inside of his leg: the bitch had tried to kick him in the balls. He tripped her up; she fell again, knocking the table over; he leaped on top of her-leaped right into the path of the wine bottle, already in her hand, arcing at his head. The bottle caught him right in the face, smashing against his nose, broken glass digging deep long tracks down his cheeks. He saw nothing but red, but at least she was under him; he could feel her wriggling. Whitey got hold of her somewhere, he didn’t even know where, but it didn’t last: wriggle, wriggle and she was out from under, rolling again, getting away. He slashed out blindly with the cutter, a last, desperate try, and felt the blade slice home, dig deep in flesh. At the same moment, he heard a loud pop-her Achilles, you lucky bastard-and a cry of pain. Lucky, lucky bastard, because she was down again, crawling toward the door, yes, but her running days were over. Whitey crawled after her, through a red haze, jabbing with the cutter. The woman swung round, still had a piece of the bottle, got him again, got him in the face again! He was fighting a fucking woman for his life. Whitey went crazy. Slash slash slash with the cutter. And some more.

Silence.

Not quite silence, Whitey realized after a while. There was a dripping sound, drip drip. He got to his knees, found the towel he’d been wearing, wiped blood from his eyes, picked shards of glass from his face, wiped more blood. The woman lay still, what was left of her. He wanted to kill her even though she was dead.

Time passed. Drip drip. Whitey gripped some piece of overturned furniture, pulled himself to his feet. He gazed around, reeled a little, made his slow way back around the L, through the dining room, living room, then even more slowly up the stairs. He went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, put on clothes, took a breather, put on the rest of them. His watch was frozen at 5:33. He dropped it in the wastebasket.

Whitey went into the made-up bedroom, lowered himself to the floor, hands on the bed to support his weight. He checked under the bed: no painting. Garden, or whatever it was. No painting at all. He knelt there breathing for a while, then got up, went downstairs, back along the L, past the woman, out the door.

Still snowing. Whitey felt cold at once, much colder than he’d ever been. He walked as far as he could, two hundred feet or so, and sat down to rest with his back against one of those big trees.

While he rested, Whitey noticed that he’d left the lights on in the cottage. Was that smart? He tried to think-painting, divorce, Brinks truck, six-fifteen precisely- and got nowhere. Nothing added up. Didn’t matter anyway: maybe he had the strength to get back across the river; he didn’t have the strength to go back inside and close things down first. Where was that box cutter, by the way?

And other things. Whitey was trying so hard to think of other things he might have left behind that he almost didn’t notice a flash of headlights on the east side of the river, where the pickup was. A flash in a snow-filled sky, and then gone: his imagination again? What was this imagination all of a sudden? Then the pain started: no imagining that.

Whitey thought about getting up, almost did once or twice. That woman: he didn’t understand her at all, had never dreamed there could be a woman like that. She’d ruined him. Master of puppets I’m pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams. Whitey didn’t sing the words aloud, just mouthed them. That was a good thing because sometime later a figure came out of the shadows behind the house.

A tall figure, certainly a man this time, almost as tall as Whitey. He carried something in his hand and bent low as he went by the dining-room windows so he wouldn’t be seen from inside. A cunning kind of guy-Whitey could tell right away. The cunning guy crept around to the door. The porch light gleamed on what he had in his hand: an ax. The cunning guy slowly straightened, peeped quickly in through the round window. The next moment he whirled around and scanned the darkness. The porch light shone clear on his face: Roger. He was looking in Whitey’s direction but would never see him, not through all that falling snow, not in that darkness. Darkness was Whitey’s friend.

Raising the ax, Roger pushed the door open and went inside. Whitey forgot about his weakness and pain, stood up at once. He headed for home. High above, the owl hooted, or it might have been something new in the storm.