Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

And the bottle almost empty, although he was sober, completely. Sandy’s worst moment had been his salivating over Francie. There had been lust in his eyes, beyond a doubt. What a complete-what did the Jews say? Putz. That was it. He didn’t even want to work for-with-a putz like Sandy.

But something about that lustful look, Francie, Jews, and the word putz itself-a lubricious mix-gave Roger a sudden urge to sleep upstairs tonight, something he hadn’t done since… he couldn’t remember. Donning his crimson robe, he poured what remained of the Scotch into his glass and a second one, and carried them upstairs. “

Francie?” he called. “Is that you, dear?”

His first day in the halfway house, Whitey Truax went looking for whores. This was nothing he had planned: no one planning would have considered it, since the job they’d found Whitey-spearing trash on the I-95 median-ended at five, and he had to sign back in at six.

Just before dawn, the DPW pickup began dropping off the crew one at a time, stringing them out a few miles apart. Whitey was last. Riding alone in the back, he saw the sun coming up between two high-rises, and started trembling. He’d been facing west for seventeen years, or maybe it was just the morning chill.

The pickup pulled over on the north side of exit 42, Delray Beach, and Whitey climbed down. Then it drove away, and there he was on dewy green grass, a free and unsupervised man. He shrugged on his reflective vest, stuffed the tightly folded orange trash bags in his pocket, stabbed a Mars bar wrapper with his steel-tipped pole.

Stab, stab, stab: Whitey was full of energy. By four, he had filled a dozen bags, all they’d given him, and worked his way almost down to exit 41. With nothing more to do, he stood leaning on his pole, sweat slowly drying, and watched the cars go by, most of the models unfamiliar. Was this a bad way to make a living? Too hot-he’d never liked the heat-but otherwise not bad at all. No watching your back, no taking shit: cake.

Rush hour now, and traffic was stop-and-go. A woman in a convertible looked at him, not twenty feet away. She had a ponytail, damp at the end, and wore a bikini top-must be coming from the beach, thought Whitey; but he wasn’t really thinking, just staring at her tits, heavy, round, mesmerizing. The combination of visual overload and complete tactile deprivation made him start trembling again, just a little. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but the only word he could think of was fuck, and he knew that wouldn’t work. Traffic lurched ahead and she was gone, leaving him with the memory of those big tits. Her shoulders had been heavy, too; in retrospect, it was possible she was fat, even grossly so, but this realization barely surfaced in Whitey’s mind. Retrospection wasn’t one of his strengths.

Instead his mind wandered, not very far, to those sounds women made when they got excited. He’d heard them in movies. No X-rated stuff allowed inside, of course, but even in normal movies women made those sounds. Melanie Griffith, and who was that other one he liked? Whitey could see her face clearly, mouth open, but he was still fishing for the name when he felt something stir against his ankle. He jumped back-he was very quick-thought snake, thrust the steel tip at the reptilian head, right through, pinning it wriggling to the ground. Hadn’t lost his quick, not one little bit.

As it turned out, the creature was not a snake, not a reptile at all, but a bullfrog. Too late to do anything about that. Whitey watched it die, blood trickling into a crown pattern over its eyes, wriggling becoming sporadic, those pop eyes growing dim. Whitey felt bad, but not too bad: the frog’s own damn fault, after all, for making him panic. Whitey panicked sometimes, especially if he was surprised. That was simply the way he was-didn’t make him weak or anything. But the syndrome-word he remembered from the testimony, so long ago-combined with his quickness, could lead to trouble, as he knew well.

Which was why he had to stay calm. He took a few deep breaths to settle down, placed his foot on the bullfrog’s back, withdrew the steel tip. The bullfrog hopped up on its hind legs.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Whitey said, and let him have it again. The frog lay still after that, facedown, legs spread flat on the ground. That was when the possibility of whores arose in Whitey’s mind, whores that very day.

A DPW truck picked him up a few minutes later, left him outside the depot at five.

“Hey, you.”

Whitey, walking off, stopped and turned.

“Where you think you’re goin’with that?”

Whitey thought fast. “No place.”

“No place is right. Equipment stays here.”

Whitey came forward, tossed the steel-tipped pole onto the truck bed. “No harm intended.”

The guy just looked at him.

A bus drove up, number 62. He checked the social worker’s handwritten instructions: his bus; it stopped a block from the halfway house. But Whitey didn’t get on. Instead he set off toward a neon-lit intersection he could see in the distance, the kind of intersection where there might be liquor stores, bars, women. Whitey felt in his pocket. He had thirty bucks, plus four hundred and some in the bank account the social worker had helped him open the night before.

What would thirty bucks buy? A Pepsi, for starters. They hadn’t had Pepsi inside, just Coke, and Pepsi was Whitey’s drink. He went into the first convenience store he saw. “Wow,” he said to himself, or maybe out loud. There was so much stuff. He went to the cooler at the back and found the Pepsi. They’d changed the design on the can. He liked the old one better. Had they fooled around with the taste as well? He remembered hearing something about that.

Whitey took a six-pack, went to the front of the store, laid it on the counter next to a cigar display. “With you in a sec,” said a voice a few aisles away.

Whitey eyed the cigars. Weren’t cigars in these days? He’d never smoked a cigar, not once in his whole goddamned life. Whitey glanced around. There was a video camera, but it hung loose from the ceiling, all askew. Whitey boosted the biggest cigar in the box, slipping it up his sleeve in the familiar motion of a man patting his hair in place.

The clerk appeared. “Anything else?” he said.

“Matches,” said Whitey.

“Matches are free.”

Whitey took two packs. “Thanks a bunch.”

He walked another block toward the neon intersection, stopped, cracked open a Pepsi, tilted it up to his mouth. Christ, it was good, even better than he remembered. He swallowed half of it, then lit the cigar, filling his mouth with a thick ball of hot, wonderful smoke, slowly letting it out, curling through his lips. He was alive. Standing outside an electronics store-a banner on the window read: ARE YOU READY FOR HIGH DEFINATION? — Whitey sipped his Pepsi and puffed his cigar. A gorgeous weatherwoman on a big-screen TV was pointing at flashing thunderclaps on a map of some European country, France, maybe, or Germany. European weather: this was the big time. Whitey watched transfixed until he happened to notice the price sticker on the TV. And that was the sale price. He walked away.

Cigar in his mouth, the remaining five cans of Pepsi dangling from the empty plastic ring, Whitey reached the intersection. Liquor stores, yes. Bars, yes. Women, no. He went into Angie’s Alligator Lounge and sat at the empty bar.

“What can I get you?” said the bartender.

Alcohol was out: halfway house rules. “What’ve you got?” said Whitey.

“What have I got?”

“Beer,” said Whitey, first word that came to mind. “Narragansett.” That had been his beer.

“Narragansett?”

“Bud, then.”