The Homeless Millionaire

I painted the kitchen the next day in a sombre mood. It was easy to fall into a sombre mood while painting that kitchen; in spite of all the effort invested to get the ceiling and walls clean, they needed three coats. I suggested using a different colour, for example a light ochre that would work nicely with the wooden cupboards, but Roch was adamant.

"White is best," he'd told me. "It gives a room more light, and makes it appear larger." I looked at him steadily as he said that, and he had the grace to blush and add:

"I'm sorry. I forgot who I'm talking to."

So, white it was. As I painted, I did a lot of reflecting on what Michel had said the previous evening. The conclusions he'd come to made us gloomy. He said:

"We just have to sit and wait it out, guys. There's no other choice. Armand is going to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks at the very least, and I doubt that he'll be ready to jump right back into business when he gets out. I don't know of anyone else who could help us dispose of all that stuff, and it's definitely the wrong time to start looking for a fence. It would be equal to standing on the corner with a megaphone and shouting: hey guys, it's us, we've just robbed a museum and we're looking for someone to handle the loot. Cops are pretty stupid, but they'll catch onto something like that for sure. Peace and quiet, that's the recommended course. I'm going to move everything to a very good hiding place."

"Where?" Roch asked, beating me to it by a fraction of a second.

"It's better that you don't know."

"Don't be fucking silly," I said.

"No, it's true. We shouldn't be meeting that often either. We should—"

"We need to know about this new hiding place of yours," I said. "What if something happens to you? If something does, we're fucked."

"You're suggesting I'm going to drop dead?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm reminding you that life is full of surprises."

"Yeah," Roch said. "There's this saying: life is what happens while you're busy making plans. We have to know where you're putting all the stuff. It's our property too, you know."

In the end, we settled on his writing down detailed instructions that included a plan like some fucking treasure map. Michel said he'd deliver it to us in a sealed envelope. We were to open it up only if something happened to him. Roch was designated the keeper of this sacred envelope.

"You're already sitting on your Rembrandt," Michel told me. "If the cops find it, we're sunk. I hope you've hidden it well."

"Oh yes," I said. "It's under my bed."

We all laughed at that, but without any joy.

Ironically, a tragedy half the world away worked in our favour. A couple of days earlier, Palestinian terrorists had kidnapped Israeli athletes competing at the summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The media jumped at the news with the ferocity of a pack of hungry wolves, and the museum robbery was all but forgotten. The kidnapped Israelis were murdered; for the second time in a row, other people's deaths deflected attention from what we'd done. First the nightclub fire, then this: it felt almost as if the devil himself decided to give us a hand.

It made me feel extra bad about what we'd done. Prior to this, I hardly felt any guilt at all. Sure, what we'd done was wrong. But the museum was insured, and insurance companies were obscenely profitable anyway. The only thing that bothered me about the robbery was giving the museum guards a really bad scare.

But we hadn't hurt them. More: Michel had even taken the trouble to loosen the ties on one of those guys so that they could free themselves after a while, and didn't have to wait till morning in discomfort. However, the fire at the nightclub just prior to the robbery, and then the massacre at the Olympic games—somehow, those two events added a new, evil dimension to what we'd done.

Roch's thoughts must have run along similar lines: we were both remarkably silent when we shared some beers after work that day. The only bit of conversation we had was when Roch asked if I wanted to make some money by painting a few rooms in another house. He was really impressed by the quality of my work, it seemed.

I said yes, of course, sure, at least something I'd painted would be appreciated. Then Roch made a bad joke, a joke that hurt.

"You can call yourself a professional painter now. I mean, you're making money."

"Thanks a lot."

The conversation died after that. We quickly drank ourselves into a state of mild oblivion, and went to bed early.

The next day—Friday—saw me finish painting that goddamn kitchen, and begin working on a room upstairs. In the evening we drank twice as much beer as the night before, talked half as much, and went to bed even earlier. We'd bought newspapers and looked through them while sedating ourselves with beer: the massacre in Munich continued to be front-page news.

Our robbery had been relegated to Page Three. Someone had calculated the total value of the stuff we stole, and concluded that it had been the biggest heist ever in Canadian history. We'd made history, but we were condemned to stay anonymous. It was better than being known by name, and condemned to jail.

"Looks like fame can carry a heavy price," Roch said after we'd smoked the second joint.

I made no comment.