Heâd spent years dreaming of houses like this. Sprawling hillside mansions and glass-walled penthouses, their shining interiors revealed to him only in magazine spreads or movies. Houses where the rich lived, far-removed from the squalid reality of a trailer park in Virginia; houses that stood empty for half the year with their blinds drawn, their pools covered, waiting patiently while their owners flocked between climates like migrant birds. Houses full of rooms heâd only been able to enter with the lockpick of his imagination. And yet here he was now, in one of those houses, boots sinking into the plush white carpet, hand gliding along the polished banister as he climbed the stairs up to the second floor. Every room was open to him, every door yielding without so much as a creak of protestâ and so, emboldened, Marlowe had begun to give himself his own tour of the place, opening drawers and pawing through their contents with the same efficiency he usually reserved for slicing open Hefty bags inside campus dumpsters. Flicking the light switch of the walk-in closet, he found clothes heâd never wearâ starchy polo shirts in pastel shades, boat shoes and calfskin loafers standing neatly together on wooden shelving. The master bedroom was disappointing too, all cream-toned furniture and nautical bedding, turning up nothing of worth except a pair of platinum cufflinks nesting inside a velvet box. The cufflinks had gone into his pocket. The empty box back inside the drawer. Now, he entered a room that was some sort of study: large window giving a framed view of the backyard, the glossy, distant ocean shimmering past the edge of the property. Sunlight strobed through trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the past few months; beneath his feet, on the pale carpet, patterns shifted like shadows at the bottom of a pool. He was busy testing the drawers of the solid oak desk when the door opened. From downstairs came the sound of voices, laughter, music. The familiar ambiance of a party. Someone had figured out the Bluetooth stereo system and now Lana Del Rey floated dreamily through the intercoms of every room. Marlowe glanced up, puffing on his lit cigarâ the box of Cubans lay open where heâd found itâ and squinted against the harsh smoke to see who it was. âWhat do yâthink?â he asked Will, half-intelligible around the butt. A silver letter opener was balanced across his palm. He took the cigar with his other hand, freeing his mouth, and weighed the letter opener up and down. âItâs got some real heft, a fancy handleââ A smile formed slowly, his twinkly magpieâs eye assessing, âGotta be worth at least a hundred bucks or so, nah? Doubt theyâll miss it. These people are fuckinâ loaded. Like, separate bar in the study loadedââ he reasoned, and gave a nod towards the corner of the room where a bar cart stood, its collection of cut-crystal glasses and dark liquors proving his point.
