The Homeless Millionaire

I woke up with an invisible hand squeezing my throat and the feeling something was very, very wrong.

I opened my eyes. The window of my room faced west, and the setting sun gave everything a red hue. I listened: a car passed in the street outside, a bird twittered in the huge tree growing in the back yard, another bird cooed, then screeched irritably. But there were also noises coming from downstairs, little noises - a knock, a scr.a.p.e, a couple of soft thumps. I tried to decide how cops would behave if they entered the house: would they be shouting 'police, come out with your hands up', or would they creep around? If they'd been told the criminal they were to apprehend was armed and dangerous, they might very well do a lot of creeping around before shouting anything.

I slid off the bed and did some creeping of my own, swearing under my breath when the floor creaked. I'd left the door to my room ajar: I put an ear to the slit. Total silence. I opened the door and poked my head out - nothing. I was about to persuade myself that I'd been imagining things when I heard a soft, muffled cough downstairs. I relaxed instantly because I knew that cough.

"Roch?" I called out softly.

He didn't answer. I went downstairs, still in the cautious mode, but it was impossible to descend that staircase without making a lot of noise.

"Roch?" I called again. This time he coughed in response, and I also heard a muffled 'merde'.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and looking completely exhausted. He had a freshly opened bottle of brandy on the table but no glasses.

"Roch," I said. He glanced at me - his eyes were sunk in pools of black, as if someone had punched him - and invited me to sit down with a sweep of his arm. The sweep ended with him grabbing the brandy bottle and putting it to his lips. I sat down. He had two long swigs and coughed and put down the bottle in front of me.

"You okay?" I said.

"No."

"What happened? F.u.c.k.i.n.g tell me, I've been going crazy with worry. Why did you set off the alarm? What the f.u.c.k were you thinking?"

"Michel set it off by accident. F.u.c.k! He's poisoned me as well."

"What the f.u.c.k? Start making sense."

"We were holed up in his digs all day. It was afternoon before all his roommates had finally left and he said he'll make us something to eat. I ate a bad egg. At least that's what I think it is. It tasted odd but I was too hungry to care. Oh Jesus." He grabbed the bottle and poured some more brandy into his face.

"I was asking about the alarm. Why the f.u.c.k did you let it happen?"

"Michel went crazy. We had a fight because I'd started cutting the biggest paintings out of the frames. There was this box cutter on the desk in the shipping room and I got going with it while he was fetching the last of the stuff. He was gone for a long time, he also went and loosened the ties on one of the guards so that they would be able to free themselves after a while. When he came back and saw what I was doing he went bananas. I threatened him with the knife and he backed off and then rushed and opened the door before I could stop him. He told he wanted to get the van as quickly as possible to make me stop cutting out the pictures. And of course the f.u.c.k.i.n.g alarm went off and we just grabbed whatever we could and ran away."

"Jesus Christ."

"Yeah. Anyway, there was no one around. It was f.u.c.k.i.n.g crazy. We slowed down after a while and walked to the car, it took nearly half an hour going down the side streets, carrying so much stuff I felt like a f.u.c.k.i.n.g camel. We passed three drunks arguing on one of the corners. They didn't even look at us. Apart from that, no people, no cops, cars, nothing. Just that f.u.c.k.i.n.g alarm ringing in the distance."

"You went to his place?"

"Yeah, I wanted him to drive here but he wouldn't hear of it. He said he had a hiding place all prepared for that stuff, the f.u.c.k.i.n.g liar. You know where everything is? Under his f.u.c.k.i.n.g bed. He's got this big bedspread reaching the floor. That's his top secret hiding place. Stupid asshole. F.u.c.k! My stomach's killing me. Why aren't you drinking?"

"I think I will, now."

We sat together for a while without talking much because Roch was busy making horrible faces and clutching his belly and drinking brandy from the bottle. After a while he left abruptly for a long session in the bathroom. I warmed up the last remaining can of baked beans - Roch seemed unlikely to want to eat those, in his state - and made some coffee. It tasted pretty awful after that jet fuel stuff at the cottage, and I had to put in lots of brandy to make it drinkable. It made me bold and I got my wallet and went to the convenience store. I saw no cops, nothing apart from a single car with a single guy driving. He passed me and pulled into driveway not far behind my back.

While in the store, I discovered that my total capital amounted to twenty three dollars and a few cents; I'd thought I had a little more than that. I spent a very long time shopping, calculating and recalculating what I'd have to pay at the register every time I picked something off the shelf. It was unreal: I had a painting worth a million dollars under my pillow, but there I was, counting pennies and wondering whether I could afford an extra pack of cigarettes. The newspapers on display next to the checkout counter scared me. They were all screaming about the museum robbery and I dropped some coins on purpose to hide my face from the clerk until I had it under control. I was too uptight to buy any of the papers.

Michel hadn't been too scared to buy newspapers. Michel was f.u.c.k.i.n.g Robin Hood and Zorro and Superman and Batman all rolled into one, topped by a black beret worn Che Guevara-style. He showed up at Roch's place around seven with a whole bunch of papers under one arm and a takeaway pizza under the other. The hand belonging to the pizza arm was clutching a big bottle of red wine, while his other hand held a sixpack of Brador.

"We're famous!" he announced, by way of greeting. "We have to celebrate."

Roch had emerged from his bedroom just a short while earlier, looking like a panda: white face and black pools around the eyes. When he smelled the pizza, he turned a little green. He medicated himself with what was left in the brandy bottle while Michel and I ate. The duplicity of human nature! I ate the food Michel had brought with relish even though I felt like punching him in the face.

We then spent maybe half an hour reading the papers and I must admit they improved my mood, as well as Roch's. They called the museum robbers daring and resourceful. I had been called resourceful a few times earlier in my life, when I was caught doing something forbidden; but this was the first time ever that someone called me daring. Michel improved the mood further when he pulled out a bunch of banknotes, saying:

"I talked to my guy before I came here. Took along a couple of trinkets to prove I had the goods. You know what he did when he saw them? He put a hundred dollars on the table without saying a word. I said a few words, and he put down an extra fifty. Some more well-chosen, intelligent words from me and he added another twenty. Fifty for each of you and seventy for me, okay? I did all the negotiating and bought the pizza and the booze."

We didn't protest. Roch took his money and immediately left the kitchen: he had been turning progressively more green while Michel and I ate, and we heard him retching upstairs a short while later. As for me, I came close to smiling for the first time in many, many hours. I took my fifty bucks and said:

"Roch told me you're storing all that stuff under your bed."

"Sure. It's the perfect spot. I got a good lock on my door and anyway the people in my house, they never look under beds. I do. The guy in the room next to mine, you just wouldn't believe what he's got under his bed. It's a f.u.c.k.i.n.g jungle with wild animals and Viet Cong and everything. He's a f.u.c.k.i.n.g moron, walks around with an inhaler and red runny eyes complaining about his allergies. I told him he could try cleaning his room properly once in a while and he felt insulted. He deserves all the suffering he gets. Don't you worry about our stuff, it's safe. Anyway it won't be there much longer. I'm taking a big batch to my guy day after tomorrow."

"Why not tomorrow?"

"He's closed for business tomorrow. He told me he needs a rest."

"That's odd."

"There's nothing odd about it. He's over seventy. When you're that age, you don't feel so good most of the time."

"I hope he'll manage," I said, slightly shocked by the age of Michel's fence.

"He'll manage, don't you worry. He's been in the business for a very long time, maybe forty years. How the hell do you think he's developed all those contacts? Stuff like that takes time, plenty of time."

I didn't have a fence of my own, so there was no use in pressing the point. And anyway, It felt pretty good to have received fifty bucks out of the blue. I had about ten left after the shopping I'd done. I said:

"I should give you that medallion so that you can sell it for me. I could use some more cash."

Michel waved a dismissive hand and looked thoughtful for a while. Then he said:

"You're not selling that Rembrandt?"

"Never." He nodded.

"I understand," he said. "I'm keeping a couple of pieces, too." He grinned from ear to ear after he said that, and added:

"You'll get a fair share of everything that gets sold, don't you worry. Of course we have to sell everything way below the actual value. But it won't be too bad, I promise. How does a hundred thousand bucks sound? Or two hundred? It won't happen over night, but it will happen, mon ami. You can be sure of that."

I couldn't help it. I could feel my mouth splitting into a grin as wide and stupid as Michel's. We sat at the table grinning at each other like twin village idiots reunited after a long separation. Then we drank a little, talked a little, smoked a little, and continued grinning.

It went on like this for a long, long time.