Peter Abrahams - The Fan

“Cake,” he said, “as long as you can fence ’em.”

“No problem.”

Still thinking: yes, Boucicaut was smart. Bobby Rayburn, Gil thought abruptly, was not. Not as smart as Primo, certainly. Gil pictured Primo’s flashy blade. “You like the number eleven?” he asked.

“Huh?” said Boucicaut, folding the tool belt and laying it on his knee.

“Rayburn’s old number,” Gil replied.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Gilly.”

Gil took the exit, turned onto the shore road. They drove through the darkened village, past the stone church, where a light shone in the tower, stopped in the deserted parking lot of the seafood restaurant, no longer boarded up. They got out, Boucicaut strapping on the tool belt, Gil slinging an empty backpack over one arm.

“I’ll take the keys,” Boucicaut said.

Gil gave them to him.

They walked to the road with the PRIVATE sign posted at the entrance. Not far ahead a TV screen glowed blue through the windows of the guardhouse. Gil and Boucicaut ducked into the scrub beside the road. Moving as one, thought Gil. A team. They passed the guardhouse in silence-through the trees, Gil saw a head in the window, silhouetted in blue light-and cut back onto the road.

“Cake,” Boucicaut said. After that there was silence again, past the golf course, sand traps like patches of leftover snow in the night, past the houses at the base of the bluff, just big shadows spreading back into invisibility from their front-door lights. Silence: except for the creaking of the leather tool belt, the jingling of the keys in Boucicaut’s pocket, and the gurgle of his bottle, once or twice.

On top of the bluff, Mr. Hale’s house stood completely dark. They put on the ski masks, but at the same time Gil had an exciting thought: They’re still in Florida. The house is empty. Relief washed through him like a drug. He glanced at Boucicaut, saw nothing but the brightness in his eyes. Cake. Side by side, they started up the driveway. A light flashed on over the garage before they’d gone ten feet.

Gil froze. He got ready for anything-a dog, gunfire, sirens. There was none of that. Boucicaut, not breaking stride and not even trying to keep his voice down, said, “If you’re afraid of a bullshit sensor, this ain’t for you.” Gil hurried after him, feeling blood rising in his cheeks.

They left the driveway, circled to the back of the house. The light went off. For a few moments, Gil could see nothing. He felt the slick grass under his feet, heard the ocean breaking on the rocks below. Then his eyes adjusted and he could see the gazebo where Mrs. Hale had sat painting, now blocking a gazebo-shaped patch of stars. On the other side, the house remained dark and quiet, and again Gil thought: Florida; again felt a wave of relief, although not so powerful this time.

Boucicaut was already shining his flash on the door that led to the walk-out basement. The narrow beam traced the perimeter of the storm door, screen already clipped in place for the summer. In seconds, it was unclipped and leaning against the stone foundation wall. Boucicaut reached inside, unlocked the storm door, pulled it open. The inner door was more substantial, solid wood except for two small glass panes near the top. Boucicaut took a suction cup from his pocket, pressed it to the glass, then scored along the sides of the pane with his cutter. The sound sent an unpleasant vibration down Gil’s spine.

Boucicaut tugged at the suction cup. The pane came free with a faint cracking sound, like an ice cube splitting in a highball glass. Boucicaut twisted off the suction cup, then spun the windowpane away like a frisbee. It sparkled a few times with reflected starlight, then vanished, far over the sea. A wonderful sight. Boucicaut had had a great arm, had it still.

Gil, turning back toward the door, realized he was a little drunk. Probably a good thing: his reflexes were always sharper when he’d had a few drinks. “Everything all right?” he whispered.

“Shut up,” said Boucicaut, his arm hooked through the opening. Something clicked. Boucicaut grunted. The door opened.

They went in, Boucicaut first, panning the darkness with the beam of his flash. Gil caught glimpses of a wheelbarrow, a bicycle with a straw basket, an easel bearing a partly finished painting of a red-and-white-banded lighthouse. The cone of light found an open inner door and went still. They moved toward it; and in the quiet house the creaking of the tool belt and the jingle of the keys sounded clear and precise in Gil’s ear, as though piped through a high-end digital system. Then the furnace clicked on, and their sounds were muffled by its hum.

They went through the door and into a carpeted corridor. There were several doors off it, all closed but one. Boucicaut poked his beam through the open doorway as they passed. Gil saw lacy black panties, hardly more than a G-string, hanging on a shower-curtain rod. He couldn’t imagine Mrs. Hale in underwear like that; then he remembered the maid.

At the end of the corridor, stairs rose up into gloom. Gil avoided the middle of the treads, thinking they would make less noise if he hugged one side, but he saw that Boucicaut didn’t bother. Gil realized that he was afraid and Boucicaut was not. That was the difference between them. Boucicaut moved as though it were broad daylight, and this his house. Boucicaut was a rock. Following him up the stairs, Gil felt his eyes grow misty. A phrase hit him at that moment: Fear strikes out. He knew its origin-Jimmy Piersall, of course; and all at once, he found himself remembering the first time his father had taken him to a ball game, and how they had all booed some player, how he had stood on his seat so he could see, hands cupped to his mouth, laughing and booing with the rest.

At the top of the stairs, Boucicaut’s light gleamed on the marble floor, and Gil knew where he was. He pointed down the corridor. They walked along it, details from oil paintings glistening and disappearing under the glow of Boucicaut’s light: another lighthouse, this one pure white; a humpback whale spouting red; a harpooner in brass-buckled shoes tumbling overboard. As they came to the library door, the furnace shut off. The next moment the sole of Boucicaut’s sneaker squeaked on the marble, the sound so distinct that Gil wasn’t sure that he had really heard what came right after: a woman’s moan, somewhere in the house, somewhere close by.

He clutched the back of Boucicaut’s jacket, stopping him, then put his face close to Boucicaut’s ear, so close he could smell ear wax, right through the wool of the ski mask, and whispered, “What was that?”

“What was what?” Boucicaut replied, not whispering, not even lowering his voice much. Gil smelled the booze on his breath.

“I thought I heard-” Gil stopped himself, thinking he’d heard it again.

“Don’t think,” Boucicaut said, and pushed open the library door.

The library was warm and smelled of smoke. There was another smell too, that made Gil think of Lenore. Boucicaut’s light skimmed the heavy furniture-the wingback chairs, the floral settees, the couch overlooking the sea view, its back to the room-and settled first on the built-in cabinets, then on the photograph of the young Mrs. Hale in her fencing outfit. He was there in a moment, taking down the photograph, spinning the dial back and forth, without result.

“Let’s do the knives first,” he said.

“Shh,” said Gil.

Boucicaut laughed softly to himself.

They moved to the cabinets, tried the drawers. Locked. Boucicaut handed Gil the flash. Gil shone it on the drawer where he’d seen the old Randall bowies, steadied the beam on the oval brass keyhole. Boucicaut drew the flat bar from his tool belt, swung his arm back, and drove the claw end at the keyhole. There was a sound like a tree falling, and the flat bar sank halfway into the drawer, taking the brass keyhole and jagged oval of splintered wood with it. Steel gleamed through the hole. Yes, Gil thought. Cake. He twisted slightly to remove the backpack, then stopped. He’d seen something. The twitch of a shadow, near the couch that faced the sea. He swung the beam across the room, at first seeing nothing. Then a figure ran through the cone of light and disappeared, a bare foot trailing a momentary glow like a comet’s tail.