CHAPTER 9

THE IDEA FOR THE perfect crime didn’t come full-blown out of, say, a beery conversation in some low-down, mean-streets bar, nor from the meanderings of an idle mind situated behind a pair of vacant eyes staring up at a two p.m. ceiling.

No, it was like that horse-by-committee--the camel. A product--and that’s what it was--a product--of a lifetime. A development, as it were, of a mind formed and transformed by the abuses, excesses, and even banalities of a traditional run-of-the-mill lower-class family and social environment to which a son of genius was born. In other words, a dysfunctional background, common to more people than is supposed.

The burst, that is the birth of the perfect crime
idea--that came from the blank canvas of a ceiling, but there was more involved than merely the technical perfection of a criminal act. The crime that Reader Kincaid dreamed up was a felony only he could have invented. For the inspiration to come full circle and experience the miracle of birth, it required the particular genius of a certain species of man, not an immoral man, but more accurately an amoral individual.

It began a germ of an idea while Reader was lying in a cell in Angola State Prison. It began with his asking himself a series of questions and answering them. Sometimes the answer didn’t come for a long time. He spent more than ten years in the planning of this one job.

What’s the easiest way to pull a robbery and not get caught? That was the first question he asked himself at the beginning.

Answer. Get the mark to pull his own robbery.

How do you do that?

His first idea was to kidnap a family member--of say a bank official--and hold that person, child or spouse, for ransom. The ransom being the bank’s money. He soon discarded that idea for all the reasons kidnappings usually go wrong. One day the answer came to him. He was talking to Bobby out in the yard at Angola State Prison and Bobby was saying he wished he could get the material to build a remote-controlled model plane. He’d build one big enough to carry a man and fly that over the wall. With him in it, of course.

What else can you do with a remote-control transmitter, Reader wanted to know. An idea was forming itself.

Why, anything that requires energy you want to control from a distance, was Bobby’s reply.

A bomb? Reader asked, grabbing Bobby by the front of his blue denim prison issue shirt.

Well, yeah, sure. You could set off a bomb by remote control. Terrorists do shit like that all the time.

That’s when the plan got legs. Little by little, Reader worked through the rest of it, always looking for a flaw, until he’d eliminated all the weak spots he could think of. Then, just when he had it all figured out, a thought came to him. An even better plan. A plan within a plan. And now it was time. He was ready to attach a bomb to a man who had access to a large sum of money and force the man to bring it to him. That was the first plan. The visible one. The plan within that one was even better. It was so good it was all he could do to keep from grinning all the time. Now, Reader Kincaid truly had the perfect crime.

And he had the perfect situation in which to use it. A situation in which he could settle an old score. That was the best part.