“Looks like a holy water thing. You know, from a church,” said Albert.
“Cool. Can I have it?”
“What do you think this is, a shopping trip? Mommy, can I have a bag of cookies? Jesus.”
“I’ll take it then.” Bobby moved to take it off the wall.
“Leave it,” said Albert, grabbing his wrist.
“Why?”
“I told you, I don’t take nothing religious.” He held the boy’s wrist.
“Fine. Okay, okay. Let go.”
Upstairs the rooms were as tidy as newly cleaned hotel rooms, and as easy to find things in. Some nice jewellery in a wooden box on the dresser. Diamond studs, gold chains, a few pins and a couple of watches. Camera in the closet. Wad of cash, which Albert didn’t bother to count, in a sock at the back of the bedside table drawer, behind the nasal spray, the condoms, the personal lubricant and old copies of Time magazine.
It was all so sweet and simple. He looked at the perfect queen-sized bed, the cream-coloured comforter, the pale green pillows. So sweet, so clean, so pure. He felt the old urge to defile, to damage, to deface. Knowing the occupants would feel violated by his mere presence wasn’t quite enough, but it would do because he was a professional; he was better now. He could resist certain urges. But once upon a time . . . memory filled him with shame, even now. It was his third job. A big house. Bed like a pale blue cloudless sky. They’d been drunk, high. The Uncles and him. Somebody had pissed in the drawer where the woman kept her panties. He’d pulled his jeans down, squatted in the centre of the bed . . . He’d been a kid. Nothing but a stupid, fucked-up kid. He had an excuse, unlike The Uncles. Besides, they used DNA evidence now. He shook his head.
“Here,” he said to Bobby and handed him the cash, watching the kid’s eyes grow wide at the heft of it. “You hold it. I trust you,” he said. “Okay, that’s enough. Downstairs.”
Bobby followed Albert’s lead. He moved through the house quietly, taking no chances. Moved like a dancer, like a ghost, like a shadow.
He was halfway across the living room, going for a nice little gold dish, when he heard the cough.
Birds did not cough.
His head snapped around to Bobby, frozen, his mouth open, his face white.
Albert became instantly ice-calm, his blood slowed, his stomach clamped, his breath stilled. The world focused precisely, with meticulous accuracy, on the next second. Cough. Phlegmy cough. And a squeak. Coming from the room on the far side of the kitchen. A rattle of china.
Fuck.
He put his finger to his lips. Bobby nodded, but looked as though he might start blubbering. Albert would have to do whatever it was he was going to do quickly. He leaned forward, craned his neck without taking another step. He could just make out something in that room. The edge of a bed. A wheel. Part of a . . . yes, a wheelchair. A slippered foot. A bandage on the ankle. A sore showing above the bandage on a liver-spotted leg with skin so wrinkled it looked as though it needed ironing. Then the chair backed up, repositioned itself, Albert saw an old woman—no, a female relic—in profile. Soft tufts of white hair. Eyes in pouches of skin so slack it was amazing she could see anything. A hearing aid in a big fleshy ear. She clacked her false teeth and looked up at something.
“Who’s a pretty bird? Is that you? Of course it is. That’s a pretty Rudy.”
How had he missed this? Because she lives in the back of the house, asshole, probably never leaves that fucking room except to use the john right next to it, and you didn’t do a full walk-round, did you, jerk-off? Amateur! Why hadn’t she heard them come in? Or had she? Had she already called the police? The hearing aid. Deaf? He prayed she was deaf. There was no way he was killing an old lady. No fucking way.
They couldn’t go out the way they’d come. From where she sat now she’d see them pass through the kitchen. They’d have to risk it. Go out the front door, brazen as brass.
So be it.
He turned to Bobby, put his finger back up against his lips with one hand, and with the other gestured for him to go out the front door. They had the bag of jewellery, the camera, the trinkets from upstairs. Then he remembered the other bag. It was in the family room. He considered leaving it, but no, he couldn’t. His fingerprints were probably on it somewhere. No more fuck-ups.
He grabbed Bobby’s trembling upper arm.
“Take the bag,” he whispered. “Meet me at the truck.” He squeezed hard. “Go slow. Like you have every right to be here. Got it?”
Bobby nodded and moved, a little too quickly for Albert’s taste, to the door. Turned the latch with a click that sounded like a hammer blow. Stepped out. Was gone.
Albert took a breath and moved to the kitchen door. From the other room the woman cooed to her bird. “Sing for me, sweetie. Sing for Gracie.” Peep. Peep. Albert peeked around the kitchen wall. The stupid old bitch, who should by all rights be dead by now, was smack dab in his sightline. He smelled, or fancied he smelled, the powdery scent of her. It hid something sharper, urine, perhaps, or something sweeter, like decay. It flashed through his mind that he could go back the way he’d come through the living room, slip around behind her, and snap her brittle old pullet neck before she even knew what was happening. Perhaps it would even be kinder, save her a slow death from whatever it was old ladies in wheelchairs died of. Save her children the burden of her unwashed ass. He imagined the feeling of her jaw beneath his hands. The fragility of it. The loose skin slipping around over the bones. Bones like old ivory. The flutter of heartbeat. He couldn’t help it: birds came to mind.
And so, no. Not if he could avoid it. Not if she’d let him out.
He stepped into the path where anything might happen next, where anything was possible. Their eyes met. The thrill of that. For, no matter what happened, he was powerful and she was nothing but string and flaps of flesh.
Amber.
Time is an ant trapped in amber.
Her eyes are the colour of amber.
Her mouth opened. She might scream, he thought, not that it would matter, for how much air could there be in those withered, dried-out lungs?
And then she shut her mouth.
Her eyes did not blink. Still as translucent stones.
A prickle ran up his arms. She surprised him. Her eyes were fearless. He imagined, in that sharp shard of a second, that her eyes had become dark mirrors, sending back his fear (fear he hadn’t known he had) to him. Bouncing it into him so his cheek paled with ice and his chest burned with fire.
“Who are you?” she said, with the intonation at the end, who are you? as though she might even be pleased to see him, whoever he was, and her voice was disturbingly even.
“Just reading the meter, Ma’am,” he said with a smile he hoped was winning.
“Are you now?”
Another decision. Would she allow the deceit? Her eyes sparkled; jumped for a moment to a corner of the room he couldn’t see. A phone, perhaps. Obviously no time for such a thing. Not even if she’d been lithe and twenty. (Which, if such had been the case, other things might now be happening, things involving tight, hot slippery skin and smells other than old coffee and urine and the acrid whiff of desiccated flesh.) The canary peeped and even that sounded like a question.
Why wasn’t she scared? Why wasn’t she pissing herself? Panic was better. A panicked brain wouldn’t remember much, but this calm, this composure, he didn’t get it. He hated her then. Hated her vulnerability, which made him yearn to hurt her, but no, something else, because in that twitch of time he saw something, something stronger than it should be. Her, sitting there, a bag of sticks in a pale blue housedress, ulcerated sores on her purplish ankles. Her, with something like understanding in her eyes.
Did she have the fucking nerve to forgive him? He’d kill her if she did.
Perhaps she saw something change in him, sh
ift from nerves to nerve ends, because she blinked once, and then, unsmiling, yet still infuriatingly calm, she nodded. Curtly. Just once. Where was fucking Alzheimer’s when you needed it? What was the old sack of skin noticing? Would she see enough to give a description? The question, the decision, was his again.
Albert put his finger up to his lips and let his smile shift into something not winning at all. His smile was canine and sharp with cunning and bloodlust and a promise that he knew she understood. Shall I be faceless then? And you too senile to notice me? Or will I come on back some night, some sweet dark night when your child’s at home? He raised an eyebrow, lobbing the unspoken question back to her side of the kitchen floor’s great divide.
Granny nodded.
“Good girl,” he said.
Bobby had the engine going, smart boy. Albert pointed to the bag of loot sitting on the seat between them.
“Put that on the fucking floor at least. Get it out of sight.”
Bobby, his hands still trembling, did as he was told.
Albert pulled off down the street without a backward glance, going the speed limit, hanging loose. “Give me a cigarette,” he said. When Bobby had lit him a smoke, handed it to him and taken one for himself, Albert said, “You did all right back there, kid. That was unforeseen. You didn’t freak out. You did all right.”
Bobby tapped his thumbnail against his lip nervously. “What happened?”
“My bad. I have to admit it. I didn’t quite do my homework, now did I? You’d think I was a fucking amateur.”
“No, I mean. Back there. With her. What did you do?” His voice was nearly a whisper.
“With her? What the fuck do you think happened?” Bobby looked as if he was about to cry. Perfect. Now the danger was over the kid fell apart. “Answer me,” Albert said, because the adrenaline still buzzed and he was pissed at himself and needed to let it out. But Bobby was silent, his lower lip quivering. Albert reached over and flicked his index finger against the boy’s ear, making him yelp and jump. “I said, answer me. What do you think I did?”
“I don’t know,” said Bobby.
“Shit. I didn’t do fucking anything, you little whiner. You think I’d hurt an old lady? Is that the way professionals behave? Is it? Is that what you think I am, an amateur, some cranked-up gangsta gang-banging little old ladies?”
“No. I don’t think that.”
“Well then, what the fuck do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“You intimated I hurt the old bitch, didn’t you intimate that?”
“No, man. I didn’t intimate anything, whatever that means.”
“It means allude, dummy. It means imply. You should read. I read.”
“It’s just that she saw you, right, and you told me to leave. I don’t know . . . I know you wouldn’t hurt anybody . . .” His voice trailed off.
“You watch too much television.” Albert chuckled, pleased at the way Bobby fidgeted, squirmed, tried even now to win approval. “You got to be like ice, see. You come in, you do what needs to be done, you don’t lose your fucking head. Got that?”
“Sure. Absolutely.” He looked over at Albert, his eyes dry, his lip firmed up. “I’m sorry, Albert. Really. I’m sorry, man. I just . . . you know.”
“You were scared, right?” Albert punched him lightly, affectionately, on the shoulder. “No shame in that.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Listen, young Bobby, it’s not about not being afraid, it’s about keeping cool anyway, you got that? Keeping your head even when you think you might piss your pants, right?”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“’Course you weren’t, course not. You were all right back there. I said that, didn’t I? You handled yourself all right.” A sharp squeeze to the knee, made Bobby jump, but then the kid laughed. “When I fence this shit,” Albert said, “you’ll get your cut. Just like I promised. I keep my promises, right? Right?”
“Right.” Bobby sat back, put his feet up on the dashboard.
“Don’t leave fucking marks on my dash,” said Albert.
That night, when Albert lay in bed trying to sleep, he thought about that old lady. It bothered him, he had to admit, how calm she’d been. He doubted she would say much of anything the cops could use. He’d left no evidence behind and the family was always good for an alibi, if not for much else. No matter what happened, what tensions there were up on the mountain, the clan kept their ranks tight against the law. It would be just another unsolved break-in and everyone would sit around the roast beef at Sunday dinner and give thanks the crazy drug addict hadn’t hurt granny. He wondered if they knew what a tough old turkey granny was.
How did that happen, that absence of fear? Was it an old people’s thing? Was it something you got when you neared your own death? He didn’t think so. He’d seen people die. Two people. An uncle and an aunt. He’d seen more dead than that, of course, but dying was different. The moment of process. He’d seen the terror in their eyes as they struggled like smothering animals, clawing for their last breaths. No, it wasn’t nearness of death that took away fear. It was something else. Like the worst had already happened, maybe, and there was nothing left to worry about.
But that wasn’t the only thing keeping him awake. It was the feeling he couldn’t shake that she’d seen him, not just his face, not in a description-to-the-cops sort of way, but seen him. What had that expression been on her face? That near-forgiveness that had made him want to strangle her?
Albert got up and pulled a bottle of whiskey from the trunk. He didn’t bother with a glass. Just down, down, down and down, until he drowned the old bitch and finally fell asleep.
Chapter Eighteen
As tom drove down quaker road on his way home from his new job at Kroeler’s Paint, he noticed Carl Whitford, the sheriff, and Rita Kruppman standing on the sidewalk in front of the library. Carl waved and Tom did the same but then realized he was being asked to pull over.
He thanked God he hadn’t been drinking.
Rita waved and ducked into the library, pointing at the books she carried. Tom pulled over and rolled down the passenger window. “Hey, Carl. What’s up?”
Carl tilted his hat back, took off his sunglasses and checked for smudges before putting them back on. Although Carl Whitford was still in pretty good shape—firm, if a bit tightly packed around the middle—his face was developing jowls. In a few years they’d be puffing up over his collar, giving him the look of a huge strangling chipmunk.
“I’ve been meaning to call,” said Carl. “How are you?”
“I’m all right. You?”
“Oh, good. I’m good.” Carl leaned into the window. “I thought maybe you’d drop by the station.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well, sometimes people do if a family member goes missing.”
“I guess they do, sometimes.”
“Been what, a few weeks now. Technically, I should have had a talk with you before this.”
“But you didn’t want to intrude.”
“Not if I didn’t have to.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Still, I have to ask.”
“So ask.”
“Is Patty missing?”
“That depends on what you mean by missing.”
“Look, Tom. I know you’re going through one hell of a time. You know this town.”
“Yup, I do.”
“Well, I just want to make sure there’s nothing I need to know. You tell me you have reason to believe she’s all right, that’s good enough for me.”
Tom hung his head. He had known Carl his whole life. They’d gone to school together. Their fathers played poker together and now they played poker together, although Tom hadn’t been part of the game for a while. The truth p
robably was Carl knew everything there was to know, including who Patty was with right this minute.
Tom lifted his gaze to meet Carl’s. “Anybody else filed a missing person’s?”
“Can’t say as they have.”
“So, I guess that’s the kind of missing they are.”
“Interesting way of putting it.” Carl looked down the street and seemed to be considering what else to say. Then he looked back at Tom. “Kids all right?”
“We’re working things out.”
The sheriff knocked the door of the truck with his knuckle. “You should come out for a poker game some night. Not good to sit around, Tom.”
“Yup.”
“And, by the way, Rita said you should call her if you need anything.”
“She did, huh?”
Carl shrugged. “People care about you. That’s all I’m saying.”
The next day, by mid-afternoon, Tom’s arms ached. The muscles in his neck bunched and his shoulders cramped. He had thought tossing pallets of bread around took strength, but here, loading five-gallon buckets of paint into boxes and then hefting the boxes onto pallets waiting for the forklift to take them to the loading dock, he understood the insidious power of ceaseless, repetitive motion. It was hot on the assembly line. The machines clacked and rattled and pounded and even the earplugs didn’t help much. The plant and attached warehouse were cavernous and the aluminum and steel walls amplified and echoed the cacophony of forklifts and assembly belts and the endless thwack and whack of rubber mallets on paint lids. Tom had a headache halfway through each shift and was nauseous by quitting time.
Since he was new man in, the foreman moved him around the plant, using him where he was needed, sizing him up for some final destination. Loading the boxes was better than some of the other duties he was called upon to perform. The one he hated most was when they asked him to climb into the huge vats and scrape paint from the inside. If it was ninety degrees on the factory floor, it was a hundred and ten in the vats, and not even the industrial masks stopped the fumes from getting through. The stench permeated every corner and crevice of the place, and the inside of his nose felt singed. At night, at home in bed, he fancied the vapours had pickled his skin, tainted his clothes, his furniture, his bed sheets—making him dream of death by chemical burn, death by incineration, death by nerve gas. The old-timers said you got used to it; he remained unconvinced.
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