through the crack under the bathroom door. Fucking Jesus. They’d turned on the lights, and darkness was his friend. Brinks guards carried guns, didn’t they? How many could he take out, how fast? Some, for sure: he could do things when that buzz was buzzing in his brain, and it was buzzing. Everything depended on how many there were-if they opened the door at all. He almost wanted them to now, to pay for making him sweat like this.
Footsteps on the stairs, slow, very slow, but coming up. Whitey heard some good news in those footsteps: First, there was only one set of them, only one person, although that didn’t mean there weren’t others waiting downstairs. And second, that one person had a light tread, so probably wasn’t very big, certainly not as big as Whitey. He kept his eyes on the glowing crack under the door.
The footsteps, light, almost soundless, as though the guard was wearing tennis shoes, reached the landing and paused. Whitey could almost feel the guard going over his instructions. The footsteps receded into the bedroom that wasn’t made up, and Whitey remembered the way he’d left it, mattress stuffing all over the floor. Before he had time to figure out what could come of that, there was a faint click-light switch going on-and another pause, longer than the first. Whitey waited for a call downstairs for help, a voice talking into a cell phone, a police whistle, something, but nothing happened. No movement at all, meaning the guard wasn’t hiding the painting. Then the footsteps returned to the landing, paused again, continued into the other bedroom, where Whitey had had the powder accident.
Another click, another pause. Whitey heard a sniffing sound. Then came a few of those light footsteps, followed by another pause, and then a soft grunt, almost too soft to hear. A grunt: the kind you make when you’re reaching for something, or-or bending down, like maybe to slide something under a bed! Whitey had astonished himself. His mind had never been like this, not even close. All right, he thought, job done, split. Then my job: scoop up the painting, out the door, across the river, into a future full of money. Whitey pictured his getaway clearly, at fastforward speed.
But having hidden the painting, the guard didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. Whitey heard the metallic clicking of wire hangers on the closet rail. Then came another one of those sniffing sounds. More footsteps. After that, a faint creaking, the kind bedsprings make. For fuck sake, Whitey thought, don’t take a goddamn nap. But he knew he might do the same thing if he had a job like that. He was toying with the idea of silently slipping into the bedroom while the guard slept and whipping the painting right out from under him, when the bedsprings creaked again; another sniff, like the guy was smelling something-oh, Christ, that goddamn powder-and then more footsteps. Footsteps getting louder, coming closer. Don’t you start with me, Whitey thought. Buzz buzz. Get out of my fucking life.
But that didn’t happen. There was another pause. Whitey saw two black breaks in the lit crack under the bathroom door, breaks that would be made by two feet standing just outside. An armed guard on the other side of the door, and all Whitey had was a stupid little warehouse tool. His hand tightened around it.
Whitey heard another metallic sound: the doorknob turning. He retreated to the back of the shower; from there he couldn’t see the crack under the door, hoped that meant the guard couldn’t see him either. He heard the door open, heard the click of the switch, and the bathroom filled with light, blinding him. Even as it did, even as he blinked furiously and shaded his eyes, he remembered his clothes, all over the floor.
Sniff, sniff. Whitey, his eyes adjusting to the light, heard that sniffing, didn’t move. A footstep, another, and another. Whitey clung to the box cutter: he wasn’t going back to prison, no matter what. One more footstep, and then the guard was right in front of him, but turned toward the sink, his image blurred by the shower curtain. Not a big guard at all, holding something in his hand. A gun? No. More like-dead flowers, the dead flowers from the vase in the made-up bedroom.
No gun at all, as far as Whitey could see. In fact, the guard didn’t seem to be wearing a uniform, but a long coat instead. The guard’s other hand moved, picked up something from the sink-Whitey’s watch. Slowly the guard’s head came up, from the watch to the mirror over the sink. And in that mirror, through the translucent shower curtain but clear enough, Whitey got his first look at the face of the guard: not a guard, certainly not a Whitey-thing, not even a man. A woman. The relief was indescribable. He flung the curtain aside.
The woman spun around, dropping the watch, dropping the flowers, putting her hands to her mouth, making a lovely frightened little noise in her throat.
Whitey smiled. “Nothing to apologize about,” he said, holding up his hand, the empty one. Totally in control, master of the situation. Master reminded him of masturbate-was there a connection between the two words? — and of what he’d been about to do before the water turned cold. No longer necessary. “Nothing at all,” he said. “I know you’ve got a job to do.”
She backed up as far as she could before the sink stopped her. “Job?” she said. Whitey liked her voice, an educated voice, classy. He saw that the woman was just that: classy. This was no pocket-change whore like that pockmarked hag in Florida. This woman had snow melting in her hair, soft skin, innocent eyes. She was pure, amateur, perfect. She was the one. The buzzing rose and rose inside him.
“The painting, and whatnot,” Whitey explained, not sure his voice was at the right volume, with the buzzing so loud.
Painting — the word got her attention; he could see that in her eyes, and what eyes, unlike any female eyes that had ever looked at him. And she was looking at him, no doubt about it.
Looking right at him, so why pussyfoot? Why beat around the bush? Whitey almost laughed aloud at his own wit. Almost, but he had to be cool. Cool as he could be, he hit her with his best shot: “How about us two we go back into that bedroom and see what we can see?”
The woman’s eyes, still on him, shifted a little, gazed down, came to the glass cutter in his hand. He had forgotten to hide it behind his back, and anyway it was a box cutter. Glass cutter was the last time, not that it And then she was gone, just like that. Whitey had never seen a woman move so fast. He moved, too, out of the shower, out of the bathroom, onto the landing in time to see something he hardly believed, the woman leaping right from the top, taking the entire staircase in the air, hitting the ground floor with a loud squeak of her tennis shoes, her body contracting into a ball to absorb the force of the fall, staying on her feet. By that time, Whitey was halfway down himself, saw her darting off toward the living room, following the L to the dining room, kitchen, the door. He chased her, making storm-like howls of his own as he remembered his mother chasing him around the yard, her belt buckle whistling past his ear, beside himself with the tremendous charge of it all. But the woman-what a body she must have under that coat! — was fast, really fast, almost as fast as he was. He didn’t catch her until she reached the door, forced to slow down to jerk it open. She actually had it halfway open, was on the point of disappearing into the storm on those quick feet, when Whitey sprang right over the kitchen table, flew across the room, and caught her a good one with his shoulder.
A real good one. The woman bounced off the door-jamb, back into the room, sprawled facedown on the floor. Whitey caught his breath, picked himself up, walked over to her. She was already up on her hands and knees. He bent over, got one hand in her hair-beautiful hair, so soft and clean, he’d never felt anything like it-raised her head, held the box cutter to her throat.
“This is going to be something else,” he told her.
But then somehow she was rolling out of his grasp, leaving him with a handful of hair and a sharp pain, high up the inside of his leg: the bitch had tried to kick him in the balls. He tripped her up; she fell again, knocking the table over; he leaped on top of her-leaped right into the path of the wine bottle, already in her hand, arcing at his head. The bottle caught him right in the face, smashing against his nose, broken glass digging deep long tracks down his cheeks. He saw nothing but red, but at least she was under him; he could feel her wriggling. Whitey got hold of her somewhere, he didn’t even know where, but it didn’t last: wriggle, wriggle and she was out from under, rolling again, getting away. He slashed out blindly with the cutter, a last, desperate try, and felt the blade slice home, dig deep in flesh. At the same moment, he heard a loud pop-her Achilles, you lucky bastard-and a cry of pain. Lucky, lucky bastard, because she was down again, crawling toward the door, yes, but her running days were over. Whitey crawled after her, through a red haze, jabbing with the cutter. The woman swung round, still had a piece of the bottle, got him again, got him in the face again! He was fighting a fucking woman for his life. Whitey went crazy. Slash slash slash with the cutter. And some more.
Silence.
Not quite silence, Whitey realized after a while. There was a dripping sound, drip drip. He got to his knees, found the towel he’d been wearing, wiped blood from his eyes, picked shards of glass from his face, wiped more blood. The woman lay still, what was left of her. He wanted to kill her even though she was dead.
Time passed. Drip drip. Whitey gripped some piece of overturned furniture, pulled himself to his feet. He
