he said. “Ready to boogaloo?”
There were a few red drops on the mirror. Above them, on Sox Wrap, Bobby Rayburn laid down a bunt that started sweet and rolled just foul.
17
“ Have you done this kind of thing before?” asked Gil.
“For Christ’s sake-you were with me,” said Boucicaut.
They stood side by side at a rest stop just south of the bridge, pissing. No cars went by. There was nothing to hear but the sibilance of their piss in the tall grass, and the tide flowing through the canal, also a liquid sound, but deeper, and infinitely more powerful. It was late, dark, quiet. Above, the stars were bright and beyond count. How could whatever you did down here mean anything at all, one way or the other? The boys who held the whip hand knew that from birth.
“I meant with people inside,” Gil said.
“Lots of times,” Boucicaut told him.
“Lots?”
“Some.”
“And what’s it like?”
“Like?”
“What happens?”
“Nothing happens. They sleep like babies. The whole country’s doped to the eyeballs every night.” Again Gil felt Boucicaut’s heavy hand on his shoulder. It reassured him. “This is going to be cake,” Boucicaut said.
Gil turned onto the Mid-Cape. Boucicaut spread his tool belt across his lap, stuck the tools through the loops: crowbar, flat bar, three different screwdrivers, glass cutter, pencil flash. Gil thought right away of Boucicaut on one knee by the dugout, strapping on his catcher’s gear. “Tools of ignorance” was the phrase sportswriters used for catcher’s equipment when they were trying to be funny, but Gil had never known why: catchers were smart. Boucicaut had been more than a rock; he’d done the thinking for all of them. Boucicaut with dust streaks like war paint on his face, Boucicaut spitting through the bars of his mask, Boucicaut doing the thinking: If you want to put him on, at least hit him in the head. Gil smiled to himself. He felt right, there in the quiet cab of the pickup, with Boucicaut beside him. He opened his mouth to say something that began with the word remember, but Boucicaut spoke first.
“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
