10
T
hink.
A penny drops from the Empire State Building. Someone in China pushes a button.
Think.
Think
, Roger told himself, sitting in his basement office, of murder most antiseptic. He went over his list, now committed to memory.
Accidents—mechanical, house
hold, while on vacation; poison; contract killer; arson; dis
ease; bombing
. All wrong, for one reason or another.
Think.
All thinking boiled down to two procedures, rearranging the pieces on the board and inventing new ones. What were the pieces? Motive, means, opportunity; evidence, suspects, alibis. A complexity of permutation and combination, orbiting this central problem: if a wife is murdered, the husband is the first suspect and remains so until ruled out with certainty. That was what made murder disguised as something else—accident or disease, for example—so attractive. The murderer would be left with nothing to do but mourn, and he could do so without anxiety, no crime being suspected.
To mourn: Roger knew exactly what suit he would wear to the funeral, a black wool-and-cashmere blend from Brooks Brothers, bought years before. Did it still fit? He went to the closet, tried it on, checked himself in the mirror. Perfect. Still wearing the suit, he returned to the computer. Roger entered none of his thoughts on it, just felt better being near it when there was thinking to do.
A penny. A Chinese penny. Rearrange the pieces: husband, wife, lover, cottage, painting. Was he missing something? Yes: killer. Husband, wife, lover, cottage, painting, killer. Six pieces, four human, two objects. Deep in his brain, Roger felt a slight tectonic shift. These were promising numbers, might be made to work, and this was in all likelihood a fundamentally mathematical problem, as most problems were.
Item six: killer. Almost from the beginning, he had rejected the idea of a contract killer, automatically forcing item six, killer, into congruence with item one, husband. Had he been too hasty? At first he couldn’t see why. A contract killer had power over the contractor. Before-the-fact power: what if the contract killer was also an informer, for example, or decided to become one in order to extricate himself from some past or pending legal difficulty the contractor knew nothing about? The contractor thus sets up himself. And after-the-fact power: supposing everything follows plan but sometime in the future the contract killer decides he wants more money or is arrested on some other charge, say another murder, and starts casting about desperately for a deal? The contractor is thus dealt.
But was this flaw so basic that the contract killer idea must be abandoned? The flaw, thought Roger, start by isolating the flaw. Trust, it was a matter of trust. The contract killer could not be trusted. But trust was a factor only in honest relationships.
Rearrange the pieces
. In a dishonest relationship, dishonest now from the contractor’s point of view as well as the subcontractor’s—yes, that was the proper term, subcontractor; getting the terms right was half the battle—trust was irrelevant. Deep in his brain, he felt a further shift.
What followed from that? His fingers shifted to the keyboard. The urge to make a list was overwhelming. Roger gave in to it, but with great care. No computer, of course, with its memories so hard to erase completely, possessed, like humans, of a kind of subconscious, but pencil and a single sheet of paper, torn from the pad so no impression could be left on the page beneath. Under the heading
Dealing with subcontractor
, he wrote:
A
was out. It merely transferred the flaw of the subcontracting method to someone else.
B
was intriguing. Who could this someone else be? Supposing, as one had to, that the crime was “solved” ; then the subcontractor would be arrested, and would eventually lead the police to the person he thought he was working for. This person, this false contractor, would therefore be required to have a plausible motive of his own, or the police would keep looking.
Rearrange the pieces
. Some artist, perhaps, some disappointed artist, one of those scruffy, half-mad types she so often dealt with, is finally rejected once too often? Why not? Roger foresaw procedural difficulties but couldn’t see a mistake in the theory, so didn’t rule out the artist at once.
Who else would have a motive? The lover’s wife, if indeed he had one. Roger toyed with a wild idea of finding this wife, seducing her. What triumph that would be! But not to the purpose. The wife had a motive—enough. He disciplined his mind, running a line through
A
, circling
B
, and ran his eyes down to
C
.
C: does not know whom he is working for
. That would mean the subcontractor never meets, talks to, or has written communication with the contractor; ideally does not even suspect the existence of the contractor. The implication: he believes that the crime originates in his own mind!
Oh, this was wonderful, to work so hard, to drive his mind through all these difficulties like an icebreaker. Ice. Roger thought at once of Brenda’s cottage, and then of cubes floating in a tumbler of Scotch. Perhaps one little snort would help him think even better. He went upstairs to the kitchen, saw through the barred oval window on the landing that it was day.
And there at the table sipping coffee with a faraway look in her eye sat Francie, wearing a robe. Roger composed his face into friendly upturned patterns—that was essential from now on—and said, “Morning, Francie. Not working today? I thought you were feeling better.”
“It’s Saturday, Roger.”
“So it is.” He checked the clock: 9:45, perhaps too early for a drink. He poured himself a cup of coffee instead.
“But you look like you’re going somewhere,” Francie said.
“I do?”
“Somewhere dressy,” she said. “Or a funeral.”
Roger glanced down, saw with dismay that he was still wearing his black Brooks Brothers suit. And just as sloppily, he’d left his list on the desk in the basement office. Suppose she’d been in the laundry room, not the kitchen, and wandered in while he was upstairs? “The fact is,” said Roger, “I was going to ask you out to lunch.”
“With the godfather?”
He made himself laugh, that strange barking sound. But how could it be a normal laugh when he had no desire to take her to lunch at all? And to think how recently he had tried to get into her bed! It suddenly hit him, after the fact, and perhaps harder for that reason, what her state of mind must have been that night. He laughed again, needing some outlet for the hot surge inside him, and said, “That’s a good one, Francie—your reference being to the suit again, I take it.”
Francie gave him an odd look.
Well, it might be odd,
you slut, you whore
. He kept his eyes from veering toward the block of knives on the counter.
“Did you say something?” he said, vaguely aware that she had.
“I said I won’t be able to make lunch today, but thanks.”
“Otherwise engaged?”
“The tournament,” Francie said. “Second round.”
He had forgotten that she had indeed been at the tennis club last night, had not lied about that; he sensed gaps in his knowledge, gaps that might undermine his thinking, thinking being no substitute for research. “You won?”
Francie nodded.
“And celebrated long into the night?”
“If you call one whole beer a celebration,” Francie said.
He could have killed her easily, right then. “Who’s your partner?” he heard himself ask.
“You wouldn’t know her.”
He busied himself with cream and sugar, mastered his emotions. “Don’t be so sure. I’ve traveled widely in tennis circles, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Her name’s Anne Franklin.”
“I knew Bud Franklin—played for Dartmouth. Is she married to Bud?”
“I haven’t met her husband.”
“Is he in real estate? Bud went into real estate.”
“I don’t remember what he does. But it wasn’t real estate.”
C
. Back downstairs, Roger had trouble bringing his mind to bear on the problem. How he regretted that night in her bedroom. How hobbled he was by his breeding, education, background. Any bricklayer or welder would have punched wifey in the mouth and raped her on the spot, restoring order. On the other hand, he suddenly thought, what if she was now the carrier of some disease? Maybe he’d been lucky after all.
C
. He began to focus.
C: does not know whom he is
working for
. Ah, yes. This concerned the subcontractor never communicating with the contractor, ideally not even suspecting his existence. The subcontractor believes the crime originates in his own mind. An elegant concept, but did it have any practical application?
How could there be no communication between contractor and subcontractor? Even a map sent in the mail, or an anonymous call from a phone booth, constituted communication and therefore carried risk. Roger spent an hour on this problem, by the clock, dwelling on hypnosis, confessionals, memory-altering drugs, and other fancies, without finding a viable way of hiding the contractor from the sub. Therefore he must abandon
C
or approach it from a different angle.
A different angle. What was the essence of the idea? Was it the noncommunication of contractor and sub? No. Another tectonic shift, this time a big one. No. The essence of the idea was the subcontractor’s belief that the crime originated in his own mind.
Yes.
Roger gazed into the computer, seeing not what was on its screen, the Puzzle Club, but an image of Francie lying dead, the sub standing over her, the police bursting in. Caught in the act and with a guilty mind: nice.
Nice, but in the next instant, Roger had an idea so brilliant, so glittering that it took his breath away. Indeed, for a few moments he couldn’t breathe, put his hand to his chest, felt his heart racing, thought he was about to die right there and then, at the worst possible moment, as if Columbus’s heart had burst at the first sight of land.
Roger’s heart did not burst. Its beat slowed, not quite to normal, but out of the danger zone, and he recovered his breath. Then, too excited to sit, he rose and paced back and forth in the basement office, contemplating his revelation. Francie lies dead, the sub standing over her, yes, but is it the police who come bursting in? No. It is the husband.
The husband: with no record of violence in his past, no criminal record of any kind. But even if he had such a record, would any prosecutor try him for what would happen next, any jury convict? No. The husband, in his rage, in his grief, in a red blackout, could take his vengeance with impunity. He would be a hero. And therefore, to bring
C
to its conclusion, whatever thoughts the subcontractor had about the arrangement did not matter in the end because he would not live to reveal them.
IQ 181, and possibly that had been an off day. Roger laughed at this joke, not a bark but long, gut-busting hilarity, tears rolling down his face.
The door opened: Francie, folded warm-up suit and other tennis clothes in her hands. He froze.
“Are you all right, Roger?” she said.
“Fine, fine,” he said, animating his body. “Just . . . something funny on the Internet.”
“Like what?” Francie said, turning to the computer. Roger stepped between them—his list lay by the keyboard—but casually, he made sure of that.
“Oh, it’s gone now, gone into space.”
“What was it?”
“A . . . a play on words. About ataxia. The more ataxic the state the higher the taxes. That kind of thing.”
“I don’t get it. What’s ataxia?”
“Just a word, Francie, just a word.” He rocked back and forth, beaming down at her. “Maybe not that funny after all. Maybe I’m simply in a good mood.”
She took another look at the computer, another at him, left the room. Soon after he heard the garage door open and close.
Theoretical phase complete. Now to find the sub. Roger thought right away of the man whose name had come up during the Puzzle Club discussion on capital punishment. He didn’t remember all the details of the crime, and the story, related by Rimsky, the prison guard, had been garbled in the telling, interrupted by on-line idiots, and would now indeed have disappeared into space, but the name came to him at once. Perhaps it had lain deep in his mind the whole time, steadying his thoughts like a keel.
All problems were fundamentally mathematical, their solutions wonderfully satisfying: an incoherent sea of data reduced to a simple equation.
Chinese penny = Whitey Truax.
Roger held a match to his list and dropped the flaming paper in the wastebasket.
11
“G
ot some pornos,” said Rey, Whitey Truax’s roommate at the New Horizons halfway house. He popped one into the VCR. They watched.
“Turn up the sound,” said Whitey.
“The sound? Who gives a fuck about the sound?”
Whitey gave Rey a look. He didn’t like Rey. He didn’t much like Hispanics anyway, not the ones he’d met inside, and on top of that, what was Rey? A nobody: drunk driver, deadbeat dad, some punk thing like that. Inside, he wouldn’t even have dared talk to Whitey. Here he had opinions.
But Rey turned up the sound without another word. They watched some more. “You think those women are real?” Whitey said.
“Real as it gets, Whitey,” Rey said. “They’re amateurs.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Says so right on the box—‘ Amateur Housewives, volume fifty-four. ’” He flipped Whitey the box.
Real housewives having real sex,
Whitey read.
You
might see your neighbor
. He watched two amateur housewives entertaining some men by a swimming pool. “They’ve got tattoos on their tits,” he said.
“So?”
“So since when do real housewives have tattoos on their tits?”
“Jesus, Whitey, where have
you
been?”
Of course that pissed Whitey off. He threw the first thing that came to hand—a Pepsi can, full—at Rey. Not playfully, like some frat boy: Whitey didn’t have that gear. The Pepsi hit Rey in the face, bounced on the floor, sprayed all over. The door opened and the social worker looked in.
“Boys, what’s going on?”
“Little spill,” said Rey, dabbing blood on his sleeve. “I’ll clean it up.”
The social worker’s gaze went to the TV. “Adult videos? ’Fraid not, boys—against regulations.”
“Innocent mistake,” said Whitey. “But seeing as you’re here, maybe you could settle something for us.”
“What’s that?” said the social worker, his eyes on the screen.
“Rey claims those women are real. I say they’re not.”
“Real, Whitey?”
“He don’t believe they’re amateurs,” said Rey, “even though it says right on the fucking box.”
“Is it anything to be angry about, Rey? But I agree with you, there’s no reason they couldn’t be amateurs—think of how many home video cameras there are in this country.”
Whitey was impressed. “Hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “Where would you run into one of these amateur housewives?”
“At home, of course,” said the social worker with a laugh. Rey laughed, too, and finally Whitey as well.
But because of the memories the joke stirred up in Whitey, there was nothing funny about it. They kept him awake that night, those memories of cottage country.
Whitey and his ma lived in a trailer close to Little Joe Lake, although not close enough for a water view. Little Joe wasn’t a big lake—Whitey first swam across at the age of nine—but there were about two hundred cottages, most of them owned by city people who didn’t seem to care that it was too small for speedboats and contained no fish worth the trouble. It was a good place to grow up: that’s what the locals said. In summer Ma was busy cleaning the cottages. In winter they had the welfare checks. Ma watched TV and drank; Whitey went to school, played on the hockey team, but mostly skated by himself on the frozen lake, sometimes long into the night.
Despite a personal visit by his coach—Whitey had made third team, all-state as a sophomore—he dropped out of school the next autumn. Algebra, history, biology: he was almost nineteen and he’d had enough. That winter he skated on the lake, shot a few birds, got bored. One day, he broke into a cottage, not to take anything but just to see how the city people lived. He liked the way they lived; even more, he liked being inside their cottage—quiet, secret, powerful. He got the feeling that the cottage somehow knew he was there but of course couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Whitey broke into another cottage the next week. This time he took an electric guitar. He tried to teach himself how to play, but that didn’t work, so he hocked it for forty bucks in a pawnshop across the Massachusetts line, where no one knew him. He bought a jug of wine, borrowed Ma’s heap, took one of the cheerleaders to a spot he knew. But she had signed some nondrinking pledge at her church and wanted to do nothing but talk about the high school kids and the teams and all that shit he’d left behind. Just to snap her out of it, he almost brought her to one of the cottages with the idea of breaking in together, like Bonnie and Clyde. But he didn’t—that would have destroyed the secret part; he tried to feel her up instead. She pushed him away; he pushed back, pushing her right out of the car, and drove off.
Whitey broke into cottages, two, three times a week. He was tidy: used a glass cutter to take out a windowpane, puttied it back in place when he was through. No one passing by—a state trooper patrolled once a month or so—would have suspected a thing. You had to go inside to see what was missing: TVs, microwaves, toasters, fireplace screens, golf clubs, cutlery, sleeping bags, tents, record players, scuba gear, crystal glasses, china figurines, rugs, paintings, barbecue grills, canoes, stone carvings, stuffed animals, chess sets, booze. No one knew. The city people didn’t come to open up until Memorial Day weekend, at the earliest. With the profits, Whitey bought himself a used pickup, a gold chain, a leather jacket.
Long before Memorial Day—he still had plenty of time to make plans for when the city people did return—Whitey broke into a cottage he had previously ignored. A little cabin, old and run-down, alone on a tiny island at the far end of the lake, connected to the shore by a footbridge.
Snow was falling as Whitey walked across the foot-bridge, cold, hard flakes blown sideways by the wind; they stung his face in a way he didn’t mind at all. Whitey circled the cabin, found a rickety door at the back, took out his glass cutter. But when he pressed it to the pane, the door swung open on its own—not the first unlocked cottage he’d found.
Whitey went inside. He still got that rush, right away, of being inside a living thing that knew but couldn’t do shit about it. Besides, it was nice and warm in the cabin, and even quieter than usual, probably because of all the muffling snow.
Whitey moved into the kitchen. Not much there: toaster oven, coffeemaker, china bowl on the table, unopened bottle of gin on the counter. He checked the fridge, as he always did. Usually they were shut off and empty except for baking soda or moldy lemons, but sitting on the top shelf of this one was a cake. A chocolate cake with pink icing flowers,
Happy Anniversary Sue,
and a big pink
One
. He plucked a pink flower, popped it in his mouth, washed it down with a hit of gin. He liked gin.
Whitey went into the living room. Not much there either: brass fireplace set, framed Sacred Heart of Jesus on the mantel, cases full of books, useless to him. He mounted worn stairs to the floor above, looked in on a bedroom: a bed, unmade, more books. Nothing. Not even a TV. He was about to turn and go back down when a door opened inside the bedroom, a cloud of steam floated out, and then a woman—naked, except for the towel wrapped around her head. Her eyes opened wide, her hands went to her mouth, then her breasts. How satisfying was that? And there he was, in the leather jacket, with the gold chain around his neck and the glass cutter in his hand. Whitey knew right then that this was what the rush was all about; this was what he’d been waiting for.
“Hi, Sue,” Whitey said. Christ, he was quick, putting it all together like that. He heard a sound like buzzing in his head.
“Truax,” called a voice. “Phone.”
Whitey sat up in bed. Sunlight in the room, Rey already gone. Morning, but he hadn’t slept at all, and nothing but a doctor’s note could get him off work—one of the parole conditions. He rose, went to the front hall, picked up the phone.
“Donald?”
“Ma.”
“You’re in the new place?”
“Yeah.”
“How is it?”
“How is it?”
“Nice?”
“Yeah, Ma, nice.”
“Well, it has to be a sight better than that other . . .”
In the pause that followed, Whitey heard a clicking sound that might have been her dentures. “Got to get to work, Ma.”
“You got yourself a job?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of job?”
“For the municipality.”
“My God, Donald. For the municipality?”
“Got to go, Ma.”
“But, Donald—when are you coming home?”
“Home?”
“Course, I’m in a different place now. Had to, ’cause of . . . all the fuss.”
“I know that.”
“But there’s plenty of room, for a visit, I’m talking about. And they say there’s ice on the river already—I’m on the river, did I tell you? Knowing how much you like the skating—and besides, you haven’t met Harry.”
“Who’s he?”
“My cat. He’s the funniest little cat, Donald. Why, the other day—”
“Bye, Ma.”
“Good to talk to—”
Whitey speared trash on the median, speared it angrily when he bothered to spear it at all. He was exhausted, robbed of a night’s sleep by that dickhead Rey and that asshole social worker. And the fucking sun was hotter than ever. He’d been in Florida for three years now—cheaper for New Hampshire to farm him out for the last part of his sentence—but he hadn’t got used to the heat. He saw another bullfrog and didn’t even bother; he might have if it had tried something or even looked up at him, but the frog sat there doing nothing. Then a scrap of newspaper drifted by and came to rest against the steel tip of his pole. Glancing down, Whitey saw a baldness ad and above it a short article headlined
HOTEL CLERK REMAINS IN COMA
. Next to the article was one of those police artist sketches of a man: an ugly son of a bitch who didn’t look like him at all, except for the hair. He stabbed the paper and buried it deep in his bright orange trash bag.