Resolved by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page B

table before he stepped out from behind the door. He said, “Hi, honey, I’m home.” She whirled around. He had thought a good deal about this moment, about what the expression on her face was going to be, and he was not disappointed. He didn’t even have to grab her or sock her one with the hammer, because she crumpled to the floor in a faint.
    It was a quiet neighborhood and no one disturbed Felix for the three hours the business took. The phone rang a couple of times, but he let the answering machine take it. An unexpected bonus was that her little girl came home and let herself in through the back door. The portrait over the mantel must have been done a while ago, because the girl was about nine, just old enough to be interesting. He had Mary in the chair and the girl, Sharon, taped facedown on the table, so Mary could watch the whole thing. He could have kept it going on for a lot longer if he’d wanted to, but he was worried about hubby coming home. He changed out of the painter’s stuff, jammed it and the tools in the hardware store bag—it was plastic and wouldn’t drip—and went out the back with the ball cap jammed on his head. The tricky part was how long to hold on to the stuff. The farther away he got, the less likely that the cops would find it and associate it with the scene, but the longer he held onto it the more chance there was of some dumb-ass lucky cop spotting him and wondering why a guy in his forties was wandering through a residential neighborhood on a workday, carrying a shopping bag.
    But he got to the subway station all right and here he caught a break. A crew was just emptying the station trashcans. He knotted the top of his bag and thrust it into one that had not been emptied yet. The stuff would be on a barge by the end of the day. He took it as an omen of good fortune. He felt ready for anything now. All he needed was a little notebook. He liked to write stuff down in a notebook, and today would make a terrific entry. People started looking at him in the subway going from Queens to the city because he was grinning. He switched to a scowl and changed cars.
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    A jailbird was her first thought when he came down the line, not a homeless. The overdeveloped arms and neck said prison, as did the new suntan. They were always in a rush to lose the prison pallor so they stayed out in the sun too long, or under the lamp, leaving tell-tale redness along the rims of the ears. Clean clothes that looked new; he might have a place to stay. A halfway house? Probably. A number of guys from St. Dismas took their meals here at Holy Redeemer. She ladled out his stew and he smiled at her. She smiled back, a formal one, because she couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark glasses, and she felt uncomfortable about smiling without meeting the eyes of the person. That’s what the social work ladies did, the professional smile. No one looked these guys in the eye from one week to the next, except her. Guys had told her this, that they felt invisible on the streets.
    She had a real smile for the next man in line, a smelly bundle of rags with no front teeth. “How’s it going, Ramon?”
    â€œDoin’ g’ate, Rucy, g’ate.”
    â€œYour ship come in yet, man?”
    â€œNot ret, but I got a numbu doday. You p’ay for my numbu, huh, Rucy?”
    â€œSure thing, Ramon.”
    Dollop of thick stew, slice of homemade bread. Same smile for the next one and the next, the same kind of chatter. Now one of her favorites, Hey Hey, born Jeffrey Elman. Despite the heat, Hey Hey was wearing a red doorman’s coat with gold braid over a T-shirt with the planet depicted on it and bearing the legend “Love Your Mother.” On his head he wore what must have once been a fedora, but which was now a vast tangle of monofilament line, tinfoil, brown plastic packing tape, fish hooks, and electronic components. Hey Hey said the rig was necessary to keep his