Our Daily Bread (16 page)

They pulled into the quiet development. Houses nice and far apart. Two-acre zoning here. Albert parked the car in between two houses.

“You all right?”

Bobby looked at him, a little pale and wide-eyed, but solid. “Yup.”

“Let's do this, then.”

The inside of the house was dim, even though it was morning. Lots of trees around the house. This was good—less visibility from outside. The sliding glass doors had been a cinch to jimmy. People would never learn the power of a few well-drilled holes with screws through them. Not that that would have stopped Albert. Glass broke easily. They walked into the family room. Albert stepped over the threshold with a sense of entering sacred space. There was something about the sweet violation that was not unlike seduction. His breath quickened.

They were in what he was sure the homeowners must call “The TV Room” since a huge flat-screen hung over the fireplace and dominated the space. The air smelled of coffee and air freshener. He ran his finger along the mantel and checked the finger of his glove for dust.

“Tidy people,” he said, in a quiet voice, the voice he always used on a job. It was what he thought of as his Holy Voice. And then, to Bobby, “Stay here.”

While Bobby stayed by the door, Albert poked his head around the corner to get a lay of the land. He had an idea from the outside, but it was often hard to tell until you were inside a place. Kitchen to the left, some room beyond that—dining room probably—office to the right of the family room. A hallway led from the kitchen to what he presumed was the formal living room and the stairs to the second floor. That would be their first stop. Bedroom for camera, jewellery, cash in the back of a drawer, and then work their way out. A scratching noise brought him up short. He laid a hand on Bobby's chest, stopping him from moving forward. The boy's heart thumped under his sharp breastbone.

“What?”

“Shush.” Albert listened, ears straining, skin at the back of his neck crawling.

And then . . .
peep.

Huh?

Peep,
peep.

“Fucking birds,” Albert smiled. The scratch of claws on paper and seed.
Peep.

Albert scanned the room, making an inventory, estimating space in the two canvas lawn-mower bags he'd brought to carry out the take. Ah, that enormous, expensive television. Such a shame since it was too big to grab, although the DVD and game console fit into the bag nicely. Couple of nice silver candlesticks and three picture frames. Leave the photos of Romeo and Juliet on their vacations and their wedding day. He never took photos. Frames were generic, people's faces in them, specific. No evidence, thanks very much.

“They got a lot of CDs,” said Bobby, who had opened a lacquered cabinet.

“Fuck the CDs. No resale. Upstairs.”

Along the hallway, they passed photos of fields and churches and lakes and in each of them the back of the same woman's head. She didn't like her photo being taken, apparently.

“What is that?” Bobby said.

On the wall hung three objects—a small enamel dish; a Celtic cross made out of stone; and, on an iron plaque, a little statue of a man with a raised lance standing over a dragon, with a little bowl attached beneath the dragon's legs. It was at this latter item Bobby stared, his face mere inches from the statue.

“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, shift 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.”