Resolved by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page A

expenses.
    â€œI’m not going to do much fucking operating with a hundred bucks,” said Felix, eyeing the sheaf of old twenties that Rashid extended.
    â€œIt is for subway and meals,” said Rashid. “An occasional taxi. Buy flowers for the young lady. No drugs and no drinking.”
    â€œNever touch the stuff,” said Felix. Except for speed and downers that was entirely true, but speed and downers weren’t really drugs as far as Felix was concerned. They were medication; doctors prescribed them to millions of squares.
    In any case, it felt good to be out of the house. Felix thought he could get to like being a terrorist. He walked over to Broadway in Astoria and entered a large hardware store, where he purchased a set of painter’s gear—white coveralls, cap, and booties—plus some rubber gloves, an Ace Hardware ball cap, a masonry hammer, a roll of duct tape, and an eight-inch butcher knife. At a CVS nearby he bought a package of condoms, and made a phone call. Then he stopped at a coffee shop, where he had coffee and a Danish, and used the men’s room to change into the coveralls and cap. Carrying his clothes and the hardware in the store bag, he walked down to the Steinway Street subway station, a working stiff on his way to a job.
    The house was a solid middle-class dwelling in the lower-priced north end of Forest Hills, a two-story red-brick detached, set back from the street behind a small front yard deeply shaded by a maple. Felix went up the front walk and rang the bell, although he was pretty sure no one was home. That was why he had called. There was a neat label below the doorbell that read C HALFONTE .
    He walked down the side alley to the back door. He found it locked by a solid dead bolt, but this was no problem because the lady of the house had conveniently left a key under a flowerpot at the edge of the back stoop. He let himself into the kitchen after replacing the key under the flowerpot, but then cursed softly, reversed direction, and retrieved the key. He wiped it off, slipped on rubber gloves, and replaced it again. Leave no trace. Felix had once left a good many traces at a murder he’d committed, which was what had nailed him. But he had been young and foolish then, and not dead. Leave no traces. He had learned a lot in prison.
    Felix slipped on the painter’s booties, removed the butcher knife from its cardboard sheath, and slipped it into the thin leg pocket of the coveralls. He ripped a number of strips off the roll of duct tape and stuck them on the edge of the kitchen counter. He would use the kitchen. The one small window faced a hedge, and the door led to the heavy foliage of the backyard. He didn’t figure that there’d be much noise in any case. He strolled through the house while he waited. Mary had done all right for herself, he concluded. There was a picture over the mantelpiece in the living room, an oil portrait made from a photograph. The new husband looked like a banker, a middle manager—a three-piece suit, bald dome, a little moustache, a pleasant sheeplike benignity in his expression. Mary looked like a church lady standing next to him. There was a teenage boy, probably his, and a little girl, four or five, who had Mary’s round face and blue eyes. Theirs. Felix felt a pleasant glow of anticipation.
    A car rumbled down the driveway. Felix grabbed his hammer and took up a position behind the door that led to the basement, leaving the door open just a crack. His ex-wife had gained a little weight since he had last seen her, which was not surprising since the last time he had seen her she had been tied hand and foot to a bed, and had not been eating all that well. She was wearing a sleeveless white top and blue Bermudas and was carrying two grocery bags. She’d let her hair go back to its natural color, which was brown. He’d always insisted that she wear it blonde.
    He let her place the bags on the kitchen