Gabe, who was not really a thief, let alone a stupid one, got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the angle of the invisible beam. Because the beam was so narrow, he didn’t have to dog-walk far.
Then he stood up and walked without any sense of panic to the front of the store, plucked the small hand-held camera from its display shelf, and then got down on his hands and knees to crawl back under the beam once more.
Gabe was the only passenger. He sat far in the back. A fat woman with her hat at a cute angle drove the bus. He’d noticed that she’d had a small flower tattoo on the top of her right hand. As he was dropping his tokens in the coinbox, she’d given the camera a long, curious stare.
Now, as Gabe sat in the back of the bus, he felt the powerful bus engine throb beneath him. The whole floor vibrated with its power. The air smelled of diesel fuel. For some reason, it was a smell Gabe actually sort of liked.
The driver let him off on a busy street corner. Two apartment buildings shot straight up into the black night. At their front doors limos and Porsches dropped off people who appeared to be, in equal parts, elegant and impatient. They flung greetings to their respective black doormen — who were all got up in what looked to be light opera military costumes — and then they flung themselves inside the bright fortresses of their apartment buildings. You could see them waiting for an elevator in the brilliant interior light. They looked like beautiful creatures in display windows.
Gabe went in back of the first apartment building to an oak tree that sat next to the long row of dumpsters. On the June air, the smell of garbage was sweet and sour simultaneously.
Clutching his camera, Gabe shot up the tree with the skill of a gymnast. He went all the way to the top. By the time he reached the leafy branch that angled out over the alley, his face and arm pits were sticky with sweat.
He crawled out on the branch and sat there for a few minutes, letting his sweat dry in the breeze, and watching the fifth floor condo window directly across from him.
He had come here every night for the past three nights. To this tree. Out on this branch. Waiting for the night he’d have the camera and could get the videotape he needed.
They did the same thing every night. And in the same way. Gabe considered this kind of weird, actually. Why would a man have a mistress if sex was going to get just as predictable as it presumably was with his wife?
There they were now, in the window.
Same old stuff.
Sleek gray-haired guy stripped down to red bikini briefs, bit of a pot jiggling as he crossed the room.
Voluptuous — maybe too voluptuous — bottle blonde also stripped down to matching red bikini briefs, wonderful sumptuous breasts swaying slightly as she walked over to him.
All this seen through sheer curtains. The same kind of gauzy look skin magazines liked to use with their nude layouts.
The guy and woman came together with porno film urgency.
And then, a few minutes later, it was over.
The guy was hardly a great lover.
Gabe shut off the camera and started down the tree. Getting down was always spookier than getting up. He had this fear of getting entangled and pitching over backward. Broken back. Crippled for life. That kind of thing.
He got down with no problem.
The underground parking garage was next. Going down the tunnel leading to the garage, the temperature felt as if it had dropped ten degrees.
He smelled car oil and dead exhaust fumes and gasoline. All these odors coming from a variety of new cars that ran to Lincolns and BMWs.
He had no trouble finding the silver Mercedes sedan. He got a wide shot first, so you could easily identify the garage itself. Then he got a close-up of the car, including the personalized plate that read: SEXY. That was obviously how the guy saw himself. Sexy.
What a fucking ego.
One last thing to do now. Go around to the front of the building and get a nice shot of the lobby area with the name of the building clear across the top of the frame.
When Gabe whipped out the camera from behind his back, the doorman gave him this funny look and actually started lunging toward him. That’s why Gabe had saved this for last. Because he knew he’d probably have to haul ass.
He got the shot he wanted and started running down the street, the doorman shouting after him.
Gabe caught the last bus of the night. After making its last stop, this bus would go to the city barns where it would be cleaned up and gassed up for the next day.
This time Gabe sat up front. This time the driver was a skinny woman instead of a fat one.
“Nice camera,” she said. “I’ve got a granddaughter now so I’m savin’ up for one of those. A lot less hassle than film.”
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Yeah.”
When he got off the bus, she said to him, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She smiled. “With the camera, I mean.”
Knowing what she wanted, he smiled right back at her.
Gabe finished up near midnight, the manilla envelope neatly addressed, the videotape tucked safely inside. He put three strips of tape around the envelope for extra safety.
He sat and stared at it.
God, was the guy in the silver Mercedes going to be pissed when his wife told him what she’d received in the mail. After Karen died from the cocaine she’d taken, all Gabe could think to do was find the guy who’d sold it to her. That’s how he’d learned about Morrow, the man in the silver Mercedes. That’s how Morrow could afford such a car. Preying on teenagers like Karen.
He tried not to think of how she’d looked there at the last, the eyes glazed, the spittle silver on her small pink mouth, her body jerking almost angrily. In terror, he’d called an ambulance but by the time it arrived, it was too late. Karen lay in his arms jerking and crying and clinging to him even though her eyes seemed not to recognize him at all. Then she was very still and he knew she was dead and then he could not cry at all. He was just cold and empty and the siren came loud and close, and in the bedroom his mother began sobbing. She did not quit sobbing for long days afterward.
Gabe’s first thought had been to kill Morrow. But he knew he’d get caught. Somehow, someway, he’d screw up and get caught. And then what would happen to Mom? She had nobody except Gabe.
So Gabe started asking more questions about Morrow. What kind of guy was he? What did he do for kicks? And eventually he found out what a real shrew of a wife the guy had and the mistress Morrow kept in this condo.
Thanks to the videotape Gabe had taken tonight, the wife was about to find out about the mistress. All about the mistress.
He heard the whimpering, then.
The mewling sounds his mother made in her lonely, desperate sleep.
Gabe got up and went into her room and sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand tenderly and looked down on her sleeping.
He wiped away the sweat from her forehead.
He listened to her dark whispers in the dark room.
Karen. Karen. Karen.
It was true, he thought, and for some reason now he felt very lonely: she wasn’t as much his mother any more as she was his daughter.
He kissed her on the forehead and went back to the living room.
He sat up till dawn drinking coffee and then he took the package to the mailbox.