gazed around, reeled a little, made his slow way back around the L, through the dining room, living room, then even more slowly up the stairs. He went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, put on clothes, took a breather, put on the rest of them. His watch was frozen at 5:33. He dropped it in the wastebasket.
Whitey went into the made-up bedroom, lowered himself to the floor, hands on the bed to support his weight. He checked under the bed: no painting. Garden, or whatever it was. No painting at all. He knelt there breathing for a while, then got up, went downstairs, back along the L, past the woman, out the door.
Still snowing. Whitey felt cold at once, much colder than he’d ever been. He walked as far as he could, two hundred feet or so, and sat down to rest with his back against one of those big trees.
While he rested, Whitey noticed that he’d left the lights on in the cottage. Was that smart? He tried to think- painting, divorce, Brinks truck, six-fifteen precisely- and got nowhere. Nothing added up. Didn’t matter anyway: maybe he had the strength to get back across the river; he didn’t have the strength to go back inside and close things down first. Where was that box cutter, by the way?
And other things. Whitey was trying so hard to think of other things he might have left behind that he almost didn’t notice a flash of headlights on the east side of the river, where the pickup was. A flash in a snow-filled sky, and then gone: his imagination again? What was this imagination all of a sudden? Then the pain started: no imagining that.
Whitey thought about getting up, almost did once or twice. That woman: he didn’t understand her at all, had never dreamed there could be a woman like that. She’d ruined him. Master of puppets I’m pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams. Whitey didn’t sing the words aloud, just mouthed them. That was a good thing because sometime later a figure came out of the shadows behind the house.
A tall figure, certainly a man this time, almost as tall as Whitey. He carried something in his hand and bent low as he went by the dining-room windows so he wouldn’t be seen from inside. A cunning kind of guy-Whitey could tell right away. The cunning guy crept around to the door. The porch light gleamed on what he had in his hand: an ax. The cunning guy slowly straightened, peeped quickly in through the round window. The next moment he whirled around and scanned the darkness. The porch light shone clear on his face: Roger. He was looking in Whitey’s direction but would never see him, not through all that falling snow, not in that darkness. Darkness was Whitey’s friend.
Raising the ax, Roger pushed the door open and went inside. Whitey forgot about his weakness and pain, stood up at once. He headed for home. High above, the owl hooted, or it might have been something new in the storm.
26
Snow, handled by Roger’s car with ease, but as he drove up the eastern side of the river-despite and because of what he’d told Whitey, Roger had no intention of crossing to the gate side until it was all over and time to call in the local constabulary-he began to think he’d had enough of northern winters, perhaps enough of America itself. Rome: mild in winter, homogeneous in culture, and how long would it take to learn the language? Two or three months? An expensive city, of course, but with the insurance settlement, plus whatever he retained from the sale of the house-and the market was improving at last-supplemented by his pension and Francie’s, there would be enough to meet his modest needs. Roma aeterna, Roma invicta. Latin had been one of his strongest subjects; therefore, he could assume that the vocabulary was already in place. Call it six weeks to moderate fluency, two months at most.
A necessary result of the execution of his plan, of course, would be some sort of contact with Brenda. She would probably attend the funeral; indeed, it would be his obligation to inform her of it. No doubt she would feel some sort of misplaced responsibility, given the involvement of her cottage. A drama easily foreseen: hand- wringing, if onlys, et cetera. He would absolve her. Thus they would have roles to play with each other, right from the start, his infinitely sympathetic. Simpatico.
Roger came to the lookout he had chosen, a treeless ledge on a rise almost opposite Brenda’s island, but on the east side of the river. It wasn’t a question of distrusting Whitey, but more that concepts like trust couldn’t fairly be applied to someone like him. Whitey responded to stimuli, a frog in a laboratory, and although Roger had done all that could be done to predetermine the stimuli Whitey was about to encounter, he could not, because of randomness, unpredictability, chaos theory, account for them all. Better, then, if the frog expects the scientist to approach from the left, to approach from the right.
Roger checked the time-5:40. On schedule, despite the snow, everything still according to plan. He used the singular for convenience, but to be accurate there were three plans: the plan as it was understood by Whitey, the plan as it would be executed by the participants, the master plan laid out in Roger’s mind like lines of programming language or a sequence of DNA. DNA, that was it-and Whitey not a frog, but a gene of the most mutable type, capable of warping whole chromosomes, of growing into a monster. A monster under Roger’s command: deployed in the unused bedroom, searching for a painting that wasn’t there-although it existed, would be disposed of in the denouement, when Roger resigned from the tennis club and cleaned out his locker, perfect reason to be there with a plastic garbage bag. Funny-creative, really-this use he’d made of the painting, like Picasso making a bull from bicycle parts. But a minor detail. Major detail: the monster trapped as Francie and her oyster boy came up the stairs. Would it happen right then, Whitey making some little mistake that gave away his presence, leading to panic, his and theirs? Or would they get safely to their little nest, begin doing the things they did, with Francie crying out her petty pleasures, and Whitey listening and listening until he could hear no more, bear no more; he would want some, too, lots and lots.
And all the time, Roger would be waiting in the woodshed at the back, arriving not after Whitey but before; not waiting at the gate, as Whitey expected, but coming inside, to react with horror.
“Whitey, what have you done?”
And Whitey makes his stupid reply.
And Roger, saving the day, commands, “We’ve got to get this cleaned up. Come quick.”
They run together, a team, to the woodshed, where the props stand ready.
“Hand me that mop, Whitey, in there.” Prop one.
Whitey reaches down, baring his neck for the ax. Prop two.
Lines of programming language.
How quiet it would be after that, a tranquil interlude for arranging bodies, adjusting evidence, driving over the river bridge, around to the gate, parking his car beside the others, dialing 911, waiting to tell his story. A story slightly different from the one he’d first outlined, changes necessitated by the addition of the lover-horrible oleaginous word, quite appropriate in this case-to the dramatis personae. A story that now went like this: A Christmas Eve surprise party, Officer, for Ned’s wife-she was so upset over that tennis match. The three of us were meeting here tonight to put up the decorations, with the idea of having everything ready when we brought her here on the twenty-fourth. A surprise, you see, to show how we all care, to cheer her up. But when I arrived, a little late, what with the snow and all, I found… [breaks down, composes self] And he saw me, Officer, and I–I panicked. I ran and ran. He chased me, caught me by the woodshed. We struggled, I remember falling, grabbing the ax; it’s all a jumble after that.
All a jumble, but beautifully organized, planned like a mini-Creation: Roger even had a bag of red decorations in the car. Merry Christmas, Noel, Joy to the World. Prop three.
Roger pulled off the road, parked in the lookout-and saw another car parked nearby. A pickup truck, actually, but so covered by the blown snow, it was hard to tell. Abandoned, perhaps, possibly for the duration of the storm, possibly forever. Putting on his hat and gloves, zipping up his parka, taking the decorations and his twelve-inch, heavy-duty flashlight from L.L. Bean, Roger got out of the car, locked it, started down toward the river, hunched against the wind. In its perfect, triple-helix form, the plan wound so beautifully in his mind that he almost didn’t notice, almost didn’t process an obvious sight in the middle of the river: lights shining on Brenda’s island.
Lights? Lights on the island? Hadn’t he been clear about the flash? Should he have supplied Whitey with one? No. He wanted Whitey to buy it himself, wanted the receipts for everything-taxi, flash, weapon-found on Whitey’s body: the master plan. Roger tore off a glove, read his watch: 5:49. Lights at 5:49? There were to be no lights at any time, and Whitey wasn’t to be inside until 6:15. Six-fifteen precisely, with Francie and lover arriving at 6:30. It
