Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

“Sandy?”

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

Roger made himself say, “Neither have you.”

“That’s a crock,” said Sandy, sitting down. Roger hated that expression, hated when men patted their paunches and said “What do you call this?” as Sandy was doing now, especially since he didn’t have much of one. The waiter poured coffee; Roger left his alone, afraid that his hand would shake.

“Still playing?” asked Sandy. Sandy had been number two on the tennis team, thrashed by Roger in challenge matches every spring. Now he ran the third-biggest venture capital firm in New England.

“Infrequently,” said Roger. Perhaps he should ask Sandy whether he still played, but that might lead to some sort of loathsome rematch twenty-five years after the fact, so he reached for his coffee cup and said nothing. The cup clattered against the saucer; he put it down.

“Can’t remember the last time I had a racquet in my hand,” Sandy said. “Fact is, we’ve taken up rock climbing, the whole bunch of us.”

“Rock climbing?”

“You should try it, Roger. It’s a great family activity.”

Roger had nothing to say to that. He tore his brioche into little pieces.

“How’s Francie, by the way?”

“You know my wife?”

“Slightly. She gave a talk a few months ago on this new sculpture we’ve got in the lobby. I don’t pretend to understand the sculpture, but your wife had us all eating out of her hand.”

“Did she?”

“That combination of looks and brains, if I can say so without being politically incorrect… but I don’t have to tell you, do I, you lucky devil?”

Roger picked up his butter knife, dipped it into a bowl of raspberry jam, spread some on a scrap of brioche, trailing a glutinous spill on the white tablecloth. Sandy gazed at the red stain for a moment, then said, “I hear there’ve been changes at Thorvald.”

“Yes.” How to explain it to Sandy? Sandy wasn’t very bright; Roger retained a memory of him frowning over some tome in the Widener Library. No doubt best to say something vague and diplomatic, and move on. Roger wiped the edges of his mouth with the napkin and readied something vague and diplomatic. But the words that issued were: “They were very stupid.”

Sandy sat back. “In what way?”

“Isn’t it obvious? They were such idiots, they-” He smothered the end of the sentence: fired me.

“They what, Roger?” Sandy asked.

It occurred to Roger that in the past year Sandy might have begun doing business with Thorvald, have his own sources inside. “It’s not important,” he said. What’s important is giving me a job, if you’re not too dim-witted to see how much I can help you.

Sandy sipped his coffee in silence. Did Sandy resent him for those weekly drubbings, so long ago? Was it possible he didn’t understand that there’d been nothing personal, that it was simply how the game was played? This was a negotiation to be handled with care.

“Sandy?”

“Yes, Roger?”

“I could use a job, goddamn it.” Not what he’d meant to say at all, but Sandy was one of those pluggers-a baseliner, as he recalled, with no imagination-and pluggers exasperated him.

And now Sandy was giving him a long look, as though he were sizing him up, which was ridiculous due to the disparity in their intellects. “I wish I could help, Roger, but we’ve got nothing for someone of your level.”

That was a lie. Roger knew they were looking or he wouldn’t have set this up. But too tactless to say; Roger substituted: “You know how many times I’ve heard that?” His orange juice spilled, perhaps because of a convulsive jerk of his forearm; he wasn’t sure.

After the waiter was done mopping, Sandy said, “None of my business, Roger, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but have you ever considered early retirement? I know that Thorvald gave-that Thorvald usually does the right thing with their packages, and with Francie doing so well, maybe-”

“What’s she got to do with this?”

“I just thought-”

“Do you know how much she grossed last year? Fifty grand. Barely enough to cover her hairdresser. Besides, I’m too young-”

“We’re the same age, Roger. I stopped thinking of myself as young quite some time ago. The promising stage can’t last forever, by definition.”

Roger felt his face go hot, as though reddening, although surely no change was visible. He composed himself and said, “I wasn’t aware that stage had occurred at all, in your case.”

Sandy called for the check soon after. Roger snatched it from the waiter’s hand and paid himself. Sandy met someone he knew on the way down the stairs, stopped to talk. Roger went out alone. On the street, he realized he had forgotten to leave a tip. So what? He had the feeling-strange, since he had been going there since boyhood-that he would never eat at the Ritz again.

Roger bought a bottle of Scotch in a shop where they called him sir, although not today-there was a new clerk who could barely speak English-and took a taxi home. The driver had the radio on.

“What’s on tap, Ned?”

“Thanks, Ron. Male infertility is the topic today on Intimately Yours. In the studio we’ll have one of the foremost-”

“Mind turning that off?” Roger said.

“Pliss?” said the driver.

“Radio,” said Roger. “Off.”

The driver turned it off.

In his basement office, Roger drank Scotch on the rocks and played Jeopardy! on his computer. The first European to reach the site of what is now Montreal. The economic unit of Senegal. The largest moon of Neptune. Who was Cartier, what is the C. F. A. franc, what is Triton? All too easy. He tried to get into his old computer at Thorvald but couldn’t pass the firewall.

He refilled his glass, had another look at his resume. Too bad, he thought, that IQs weren’t standard CV material. Why shouldn’t they be? What better measure? He rose, opened a file drawer, dug through press clippings, photographs, ribbons, trophies, down to a yellowed envelope at the bottom, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Cullingwood. He read the letter inside.

Enclosed please find the results of your son Roger’s Stanford-Binet test, administered last month. Roger’s intelligence quotient, or IQ, as measured by the test, was 181. This places him in the 99th percentile of all those taking the test. It may interest you to know that there are several schools in our area with first-grade programs for gifted children which may be appropriate for Roger. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information.

Roger read the letter again, and once more, before putting it away. He topped off his glass, logged on to the Puzzle Club. The Times of London crossword hadn’t appeared yet, but there were others, including Le Monde. That one took him almost an hour-his French was rusty. When he had finished all the puzzles, he gazed at the on-line discussion that had been scrolling by the whole time.

› MODERATOR: How did we get onto capital punishment????

› BOOBOO: The Sheppard Case. What they based the fugitive on.

› RIMSKY: Yeah, yeah. But how about it when it works the other way = coldblooded killers on parole?

› MODERATOR: I don’t think that happens very often, do you????

› RIMSKY: Let me tell you something I’m a corrections officer down here in Fla.

› BOOBOO: So?

› RIMSKY: So I know what I’m talking about when it comes to coldblooded k’s.

› BOOBOO::)

› RIMSKY::) yourself. Ever heard of Whitey Truax, for example?

› MODERATOR:????

› FAUSTO: What’s this got to do with the $ of apples?

› MODERATOR: Let Rimsky tell his story. Rimsky = what’s w/Whitey Truax?

Roger followed the discussion until footsteps overhead made him take his eyes from the screen. Francie. He was surprised to see night beyond the little window high in the basement wall.