The Perfect Murder (6 page)

Meanwhile, let us apply some impasto to our canvas. The main outlines of the picture will soon begin to emerge. Another dinner party is in progress; it doesn’t matter where. Once again, you are pontificating to your friends about piscatorial triumphs. The chime of the doorbell interrupts you. Your hostess is called to the front door, where—horror of horrors—she is confronted by an eight-foot shark. Thankfully dead. The deliveryman states that the shark was ordered to be sent to her address, with the message “You should have seen the one that got away.” Everyone, of course, has abandoned the dinner table by now, and the joke is on you, a nicely executed practical joke. Sheepishly, you let them have their fun.

No one will guess that you fixed it yourself, any more than they will guess that you used the name of Boylan when you called the wholesaler from Blazes’ apartment. But the call will be logged on his phone bill. And you will have quoted his credit card number to make the transaction. He won’t notice it when the statement comes in. His ennui is such that he never examines the statements, but simply writes the checks. After all, he is so rich and bored, poor sucker, that he isn’t interested in his outgoings.

You will have deduced, I’m sure, that you must have used the duplicate key to let yourself into Blazes’ apartment to organize this coup. There, you will locate the credit card statements so that you can quote the number. But isn’t it dangerous, you inquire? Mightn’t Blazes return unexpectedly and find me there?

Not if you have the foresight to enter the apartment on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday between 5:30 and 6:30
p.m.,
when he is pleasuring your wife in Room 1507 in another place. Neat, isn’t it? Wear gloves, for obvious reasons, and while you are there, be sure to collect the following items: some hairs from his pillow, his hairbrush, or the inside of his hat; and a pair of sneakers.

Now for a master touch. A few weeks pass, and it is time to lift the enterprise dramatically into the public domain. You are to become the victim of another practical joke, a joke on the grand scale. It will be irresistible to the media.

You drive home from work one day to find an excited, good-humored crowd outside your house. Many of your friends are among them. Emerging from your car, you see the reason for their mirth—a huge, inflated plastic whale resting along your roof. With a sporting grin on your face, you enter the house and discover that your home has been transformed into an aquarium. All the furniture has been removed. Instead, the place is stacked with fish tanks. Exotic tropical fish, zebras, beacons, angels, Siamese fighters, damsels, rainbows, butterflies, puffers, Black Mollys, and Jack Dempseys inhabit your living room, your kitchen, bathroom, everywhere. Your swimming pool is stocked with trout. There are eels in the bathtub and sea horses in the hand basin. The press are taking pictures. Television cameras are pointed at you. Microphones are thrust into your face.

“What do you say about this, sir?”

“Do you agree that it’s one terrific gag?”

“Who could have fixed this thing? Is it ‘Candid Camera’?”

You assure them you have no clue who could have done it, except that any of your friends may have thought it up. You want to know what happened to your furniture. Someone tells you he saw it being loaded into a van and driven away.

You put on a brave show, smiling as well as you can.

In the middle of this, your wife will arrive home from her rendezvous with Blazes and undoubtedly turn hysterical. The press boys will love it. You support her and say it’s beyond a joke. Whoever dreamed it up should have considered your wife’s feelings. It’s not very funny for a woman to find her home violated in this way. You put your arm protectively around her and pose for photographs. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty and affection to your wife. Be sure to make the most of it. I want to see you on the front page of every paper in America, the caring husband and the tearful wife, united, trying valiantly to put a good face on a cruel prank.

Everyone in the land will sympathize.

There will be intense speculation as to which of your friends could have pulled such an elaborate trick. You go through the motions of asking around, phoning everyone, including Blazes, and they all deny any knowledge of the stunt. You mention the earlier gag, with the shark, saying it must be the same practical joker at work. Even when a couple of vans arrive that evening to remove the fish and replace your furniture, you get no clues. The fish tanks were supplied by the main tropical fish dealer in the town. The removal people were given instructions by a firm that specializes in kissograms and hiring out fancy dress. They will say only that they were given telephone instructions by a man who wouldn’t reveal his name. The stunt was paid for in advance in cash, delivered by post.

In reality, you made the arrangements from Blazes’ apartment, using his phone. That’s sufficient. Eventually, the police will trace the call to Blazes.

So we are coming to the final brush strokes, the highlights that characterize the masterpiece.

You announce to your wife that she is on your conscience. You bear an onerous responsibility for the ordeal she has been through. If you hadn’t taken up fishing and bored your friends with it, this would never have happened. In compensation, you are going to give her the treat of her life. At the end of the month you are sending her on a Chocolate Binge, an entire weekend devoted to the celebration and consumption of chocolate. This lip-smacking orgy is held annually at a conference center a mere thirty minutes’ drive from your home. She will check in on the Friday evening. You show her the brochure, having considerately first snipped out the information about fees and dates.

She will slaver at the prospect. As a woman of excessive appetites, she will drool at the idea of stuffing herself with chocolate. She can hardly bear to wait. And she will certainly broadcast her good fortune to all your friends. How gratifying—and what a generous, understanding husband you will seem in their eyes!

And now it’s Stingtime!

A Friday. You rise early and set the thermostat on the Jacuzzi to a pleasant 80 degrees. You are taking a day off work to go fishing at the lodge. You have instructed the chauffeur to call for you at 8
a.m. You
pack your gear, remembering to take with you certain items you will require: the sneakers you took from Blaze’s apartment, a pair of latex gloves, a white coat, the duplicate keys you had made, and, in a polyethylene bag, the hairs you took from his pillow. Shortly before leaving, you go up to your wife’s bedroom and tell her about the fishing trip. Inform her that you are spending the day at the lodge and you’ll be back around midnight. You have arranged for the chauffeur to drive you home. Kiss her if you like—it will be the last time you have to do it—and wish her joy in her Chocolate Binge. Tell her you have called a taxi for her for 6:45
P.M.
, because the Binge will begin with a chocolate liqueur reception at 8
P.M.

You go off on your fishing expedition. It’s a three-hour drive to the lodge, almost 150 miles, and you pass the time chatting pleasantly to the chauffeur. He is to spend the day as usual visiting his sister, who lives 5 miles further up the road. By 11
A.M.
, you are at the lodge, having a beer (only one) prior to going along the riverbank to find a spot to fish. Later, you return to the lodge for lunch, establishing your presence there.

About 2:30
P.M.
, you slip away and walk briskly through the woods by the secluded route to the local airport. You are carrying your bag of equipment. There are frequent flights and you take the 3
P.M.
, which gets you back to your hometown by 3:45. Walk to Blazes’ private garage. It will take you about a half-hour. Put on the latex gloves you have with you. Change into the white lab coat and the pair of his sneakers you removed weeks ago from his apartment. Using your duplicate key, open his car. Start up and drive to the Center for Anesthetic Studies. Go calmly down to the basement, take the elevator up to the tank room, pick up one of the buckets stacked to your left, and scoop up your chosen Jellyfish from its tank. Before leaving, take two of Blazes’ hairs from their polyethylene bag and drop them into the empty tank. DNA analysis—“genetic fingerprinting,” as it is known—will enable the forensic scientists to identify the hairs as Blazes’s.

Convey the sea wasp downstairs, remove the lab coat, and cover the bucket with it. Then walk out to the car. Drive to your house, making sure you arrive no earlier than 5:10
P.M.
. By that time the maid will have left, and your wife will be on her way to the inn for her regular tryst with Blazes.

Let yourself in, deposit the Jellyfish in the Jacuzzi, scatter some more of Blazes’ hairs on the water and around the edge, and leave a faint footprint in the white surround. Then drive back to Blazes’ place, leave the car in the garage, and hide the bucket, gloves, sneakers, and white coat out of sight among the bits and pieces that are always to be found in such a place. Don’t worry; the detectives will find them. They are very assiduous.

Then, of course, you must return to the airport and take the next available flight. There is one at 6
P.M.
. At the riverbank, pick up your fishing tackle and return to the fishing lodge for dinner at 7:30. The chauffeur will call for you at 9 and you will be home at midnight.

Meanwhile…

It’s a crying shame you can't be there to see her drive off to the Binge, but it wouldn’t do. You need your alibi. It’s a pity you can’t see her at the conference center—with eyes like silver-wrapped truffles—demanding to know which floor for the chockies. It’s frustrating that you can’t see her face when they tell her she’s a whole week early, it is scheduled for the next weekend. No doubt she’ll whip the brochure from her bag and brandish it at the receptionist until he points out that the details of the date and price of the Binge are missing. How she will curse you!

I dare say you can picture her coming home, flinging off her things, kicking the cat, going for the gin bottle, calling down the wrath of the gods on her wretched spouse. She may immerse herself in the Jacuzzi right away, or she may leave it till later. The timing is immaterial. As a creature of habit, she’ll meet her destiny some time that evening.

And you will find the body and call the police and let them see how distressed you are.

The rest follows as surely as winter after the fall. The discovery of the sea wasp, the footprint, and the telltale hairs. The unraveling of the story of those increasingly sadistic practical jokes. The tracing of the phone calls and the credit card transaction. When the police come knocking at Blazes’ door, he’ll deny everything, of course. But the evidence will contradict him. The lab coat, sneakers, gloves, and bucket will be found hidden in his garage. They will learn that his car was used to transport the Jellyfish to your house. Someone will have seen it.

It will soon be apparent to the police that the sting wasn’t intended for your wife, but for
you.
Blazes couldn’t have known that your wife would get the date of the Binge wrong and return home that night. He had been led to believe that she’d gone away for the weekend.

The reason he wanted you out of the way is transparently clear. He was infatuated with your wife. He wanted her to live with him. Their regular philanderings are sure to come to light as the police investigate.

As for you, emulate the cigar-store Indian. And since you favor the writings of James Joyce, mark well what he wrote in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

My scenario is complete. “A crime so beautiful in construction and so ingenious in practice that it aspires to the condition of art.”

How could you resist it?

DEAR FRIEND,

I accept your assignment. In the following pages you will find my formula for solving your problem. It will leave you secure from any criminal penalties, happy in the knowledge that you have punished your faithless friend, and confident of posthumous fame as the fellow who committed a truly notorious, flamboyant, and heinous crime and got away with it. If you follow my instructions your only inconvenience will be a night spent in jail, perhaps two nights if your city is served by a slow-moving or slow-witted coroner.

But before we get to that, I will address your philosophical point.

I agree with your complaint. Crime in our republic has indeed suffered a serious decline. If you have noticed it in the effete East, consider how much more galling this condition must be to us Rocky Mountain Westerners. Lacking ballet, literacy, major league baseball, and the other daintier pastimes, we had built our culture principally on larceny and homicide, stealing all the states west of the eighty-third meridian from their previous owners, shooting the inhabitants thereof, and then, when that supply was exhausted, shooting one another. Our banditos—from Black Jack Ketchum to Butch Cassidy—were giants in the land. Even our lawmen, I point to Wyatt Earp and the infamous Sheriff Brady of the Lincoln County War as notable examples, were often criminal enough to warrant hanging.

Alas, that was yesterday. Today, as your complaint notes, we can boast only of quantity. My own smallish city, Albuquerque, tallied fifty-two bank robberies last year—so many that the gunmen were reduced to robbing the same places two or three times. Not one of these felonies showed the slightest sign of originality or imagination. Nor were any of those elements applied by the police. The only arrests made recently were of a robber who used a bicycle as his escape vehicle and wasn’t very good at it and another who parked at the drive-up window, handed the teller his note demanding money, and waited patiently until the police came to lead him away. The once proud Federal Bureau of Investigation, formed in large part to protect our banks back in the halcyon days of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, was finally stirred from its lethargy. To what end? It issued a press statement criticizing bank security systems, then went back to investigating librarians whom it suspects of checking out subversive books to Democrats.