After opening the door, Rossini leaves Sylvia on the threshold and starts across the room, his silhouette playing against the bobbing disc of light from his lantern. She watches him open a closet door and is surprised to see a shining metal panel beyond, a panel with a combination dial and a three-pronged handle. Louis’s safe takes up an entire closet. Sylvia’s trepidation turns to excitement as she anticipates the sheer volume of wealth such a vault could hold.
“This is going to take some time,” he tells her. “I helped him pick this model, so I know what I’m up against. You might want to keep an eye on the window.”
Sylvia does. She pulls back the drapes and leans against the wall. The landscape beyond the window is carved of shadows. The only light comes from the far end of the drive, beyond the gate, where an arc lamp hangs over the street. Everything between this illumination and Sylvia is gloom. She looks into it and finds nothing. She looks back at Rossini and considers her choice of accomplice.
She decides he can’t be trusted. The thief is too eager. He hadn’t needed a bit of convincing to agree to this job, and as with all things that come too easy, Sylvia looks for an angle.
She slides her hand down the side of her jacket and is reassured when her fingers trace over the outline of the handgun in her pocket.
——
The shrill cry of Rossini’s drill startles her. Sylvia steps away from the window and crosses the den. Nervous, she lights a cigarette and stands by the door. She leans into the hall and is grateful to see the darkened corridor is empty.
Still, she cannot shake the feeling that she and the thief are not alone in the house. The air continues to move like an invisible beast, sidling past her. Drawing deeply on the cigarette, she holds the smoke in her lungs and then blows a cloud into the hall. Amid the whorls of smoke, she pictures Louis’s face and whispers, “Fuck you,” to the dissipating haze. He had lavished a fortune on his wife, had given her every damn thing she had ever whined about, including this house, and what had Sylvia seen for her time and effort?
Finishing the cigarette, she drops it on the carpet. She grinds the butt into the carved Berber and hopes an ember will smolder deep in the pile, causing a fire that levels the Towne mansion about five minutes after she and the thief have driven away with the contents of Louis’s safe.
She leaves the doorway and walks to where Mickey is kneeling. He wears goggles as he guides the barrel of a complicated drill rig. Sparks fly from the safe’s door, showering the carpet. The air around her shifts again, and Sylvia spins on her heels to check the room. Nothing. She hugs herself nervously and returns to the window.
Staring over the dark landscape, she rubs the back of her neck, trying to dislodge the feeling that something rests against it. She tries to convince herself that she’s being paranoid. If anyone else were in the house, they’d have shown themselves by now, or the drive would be thick with police cars, but logic does nothing to alleviate her fear. By the time the drill’s shriek dies, Sylvia is near panic with the certainty that someone prowls the house.
“That’s it,” Mickey says, throwing open the safe. He sets his drill rig on Louis’s desk and returns to the open closet door.
Sylvia races across the room to see the extent of the fortune Louis has locked away from the world and to begin its collection. She presses up against Rossini’s back and peers around him, only to find herself confused by the vault’s contents. She had expected to find stacks of hundred-dollar bills, stock certificates, a jewelry store’s inventory of gems, and though there is some cash—three small stacks on the third shelf of the safe—the bulk of the space is empty. The money sits on one shelf and another is devoted to a bizarre assortment of baubles.
The collection is comprised of six metallic statues. Each is no larger than Sylvia’s pinkie finger, and they are ugly like randomly shaped wads of iron with points and blobs.
“I don’t understand,” Sylvia whispers.
“Amazing,” Rossini replies.
“What is this shit?” Sylvia asks. She reaches around Rossini to retrieve one of the unattractive statues.
His hand shoots out and grabs her wrist painfully. “Don’t touch those,” he says. “You get the cash and the jewelry. That was the deal.”
“The cash? There’s only about ten grand there, and there isn’t any jewelry.”
Rossini squeezes her wrist until she feels the bones grinding. “That was the deal,” he repeats. “The icons are mine.”
A hot mask of rage falls over Sylvia’s face. The thief has played her, though she has yet to understand the extent or the intent of his game.
“Get away from there,” a rasping voice calls from the doorway.
Sylvia turns to the sound, her heart in her throat. A squat shadow stands at the threshold. The face is very pale, visible but ill defined. Mickey turns and knocks Sylvia aside. His flashlight falls squarely on the intruder, and he says, “Son of a bitch.” Sylvia only gets a glimpse of the man in the doorway, and, to her shock, he resembles Louis Towne. She recognizes chipmunk cheeks and small ears, but the view is momentary, and she is stumbling, so she doesn’t trust what she has seen.
Rossini lowers the flashlight so that the beam falls on the intruder’s feet. He then pulls a gun from his coat pocket and levels his left arm to aim the weapon.
Sylvia remembers the boulevard and the man who killed Louis, remembers his size and his posture and the way he held the gun, and she realizes it was Rossini. All along, she has underestimated the thief. His eagerness for the job, his satisfaction with the contents of the safe—this had been his plan all along. He’d only allowed Sylvia to believe it was hers.
Two muzzle flares light up the room. The reports are deafening. A body falls in the hallway and Rossini hisses, “Shit. Enough of this blackout crap.” He stomps to the door and turns on the light.
Awash in confusion, Sylvia looks around absently as if waking in a strange place with no understanding of how she’s gotten there. Rossini is in the doorway, kneeling beside a body on the floor. Sylvia approaches him and when she sees the face of the intruder, she gasps. It is Louis Towne.
His face is longer and misshapen. Tufts of hair stick out around his ears, but he is otherwise bald. Two ragged wounds show above his ear. He still wears the coffee-grounds stubble, but much of it has been torn away on the right side of his face, revealing a patch of darker skin beneath. His nose is longer, and his mouth is circled with odd ridges. His eyes are the worst. They stare at Sylvia, but they are the wrong color. Louis’s eyes were blue and these eyes are chocolate brown, and, even more unsettling, each eye is framed by two sets of eyelashes.
“What happened to him?” she asks.
“Mumbo jumbo,” Rossini says in a dry, earnest tone.
“His face . . .”
“Yeah,” the thief says.
Louis’s legs begin to kick and thrash on the carpet. Sylvia screams and leaps back, covering her mouth with a palm.
“Settle down,” Rossini says, rising to his feet. “It’s just a death dance. Muscle contractions.”
“How can you be so calm?” Sylvia wants to know.
“I got word that Louis’s body went missing from the funeral home. Considering the weird shit he was into, I kept my mind open. Now I think we need to get what we came for and get the hell out of here.”
“Is he really dead this time?”