Kwik Krimes (13 page)

“Small to who?”

“Please, I know I made a mistake—”

“A
mistake
?” He snagged the chair, slammed it against the floor. “Talk!”

“Marisa and I delivered our suitcases to a house in Zona 18. They said come back the next day. We did, with maybe twenty others, sitting on the floor in an empty room like this but bigger. Eventually they came and gave us back our suitcases, drove us to the airport. A man named Lorenzo met us there.”

“Count yourself lucky you’re not him right now.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“You’re protecting him?”

“No. I—”

“No means yes. He was in on it.”

“There was nothing to be in on, I just…” Her voice trailed off.

“Come on.” He snapped his fingers.

“We boarded our plane. Despite what Marisa said, despite the amounts, I was terrified. The police are so corrupt, there’s no telling—”

“Getting ahead of yourself, no?”

“Once the plane took off, the others relaxed. I couldn’t. Marisa tried to calm me, holding my hand, praying with me—”

“You talked about how you’d get away with it.”

“No! Listen to me, she had nothing…It was my stupidity. Mine alone.”

She glanced toward the window. Sunlight flared through slatted blinds.

“You landed at La Aurora.”

“Lorenzo told us, stay together. But the terminal’s so crowded, like fighting a river swollen from rain.”

“Screw the crowd. You snuck off.”

“I saw a counter, selling blouses. The embroidery, so beautiful. I thought: Rosela would love something like this. My beautiful girl, she’s so brave, I’ve given her so little—”

“I said leave her out of it.”

“I didn’t even realize I’d stopped walking.”

“You thought, Oh, look what I could buy with all this money.”

“No. It was a blouse, a simple blouse!”

She put her hand to her face and quietly wept. He let her go for a moment, then another fingersnap.

“The others—they were where?”

“I looked, but there was just this sea of people.” She wiped her face. “Suddenly, these policemen appeared.”

“Yes, your corrupt police.”

“They said they were with the Policia Nacional and ordered me to give them the suitcase.”

“Naturally, you obeyed.”

“I told you. I fought. They tried to grab it from me. I held on with both hands. I was afraid to call out. What if I just got the others in trouble as well? Try to imagine what I felt. I’ve never done this, never done anything like it. I’m a simple, silly woman from a poor town. I’ve never even been in an airport—”

“Yes, yes. These corrupt cops, phony police, whatever, they went for the suitcase.”

“One of them slapped me across the face.”

He chuckled. “Surely you’ve been struck before.”

She flushed from shame. “I was stunned. I didn’t—”

“And they snatched the money.”

“They vanished into the crowd. I tried to get my bearings, running one direction, then back, looking for Lorenzo, Marisa.”

He turned his head and spat. “You got in a cab.”

“I had only a little money, not enough to get back to Guatemala. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Who did you call?”

“No one. Who could I—”

“You knew the name of the hotel where the others went.”

“I didn’t have my suitcase! I was so scared. I needed time to think.”

He dug something from his pocket. She dared a glance. The hand she’d kissed now held a pistol.

“Perhaps there’s some truth in your story. The river makes noise because it carries stones. But you lost a lot of money.”

“Marisa will tell you—”

“She washes her hands of you. Called you a scared, stupid fool.”

“Lorenzo—”

“He thinks you went running to the first cop you saw.”

“That’s a lie! I was confused, scared, I swear—”

“It doesn’t matter now.” He thumbed back the hammer. “What matters is the money. And the money is gone.”

Feeling the gun barrel nestle in her hair, she shut her eyes tight, praying: Lamb of God, who takes away…

He didn’t fire. Her terror broke, like a fever, dissolving into clarity, and she could feel, however slightly, that now he was the one trembling.

“I’m not a thief,” she said. “You’re not a killer. And yet here we are, two stones in the river.”

“Stop talking.”

“I understand now. Do what you must. I forgive you. Please forgive me.”

“Listen to you.”

“Whatever happens, you’ll go to the airport. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll look for the counter, the one with the blouses. And you’ll find it.”

“That proves nothing.”

“One blouse in particular, with dragonflies and sunflowers and lace. You’ll buy it. Tell them to wrap it. Rosela Melendez, Boca del Monte.”

“Stop saying her name.”

“She’s the reason I’m here. Just as you are here because of me.”

Finally, she looked up into his face.

David Corbett is the author of four novels:
The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime, Blood of Paradise,
and
Do They Know I’m Running,
as well as the story collection
Killing Yourself to Survive.
His textbook on craft,
The Art of Character,
was published in January 2013.

Bill Crider

Y
ardley Gardner hasn’t been out of his house at night since he was abducted by that UFO five or six years back. He claims he was abducted, anyway. He’s never said what the UFO aliens did to him, except that it was so awful that he couldn’t describe it to us and that his body cavities were sore for days afterward. Anyway, he won’t leave his house at all after dark anymore. Has storm shutters on all the windows and cranks them closed at sundown every day. Got three locks on every door.
Hear no aliens, see no aliens.
He comes out in the daytime, though, to talk to folks. He loves to gossip. The latest thing he’s told anybody who’ll listen is that Bertha Nance has killed her husband.

“Buried him in the backyard,” he told me one day.

Yardley has sort of a dent in the middle of his forehead where his cousin hit him with a shovel when they were kids. Bertha’s husband, Harve, claims Yardley’s been a total loon ever since. Those two never did get along, always spatting. Most folks think it was the aliens that pushed Yardley over the line, but it could’ve been the knock on the head, too.

“I believe Bertha said Harve was in Texarkana, visiting his cousin,” I told Yard.

Yard had come up to me and started jabbering in the parking lot at Walmart where anybody passing by could hear him. The mayor and police chief and everybody else goes to Walmart, but Yard doesn’t know enough to keep his trap shut in public. That was okay by me.

“That’s what she’d like us to believe,” Yard said. “Truth is, old Harve’s out there in her backyard, right under that new flowerbed.”

“How do you know that?”

“Where else would she put him?”

I could think of a few places, but I didn’t think it would be wise to tell Yardley.

“You never liked Harve,” I said. “You ought to be glad he’s gone off to see his cousin.”

“Son of a bitch killed my dog,” Yardley said.

The Nances were Yardley’s neighbors. The dog had been digging in Harve’s yard and killing his chickens. Harve ran over it one day. He said it was an accident, that the dog had run out to chase his car and got hit. Nothing he could do about it. Yardley didn’t believe it. Nobody did, but nobody could prove any different.

“Didn’t treat Bertha worth a damn, either,” Yardley said.

That was true. Harve was a tight man with a dollar, and he had a mouth on him. He never hit Bertha, far as I know, but he’d cussed her out many a time.

“That’s why she killed him,” Yardley said. “I heard the gunshot one night.”

If he heard it, it would’ve had to be right under one of those sealed-tight windows, but somebody could’ve fired off a gun there.

“You can’t hear anything, the way you’re shut up in that house of yours.”

“I got good reason for that.”

“Maybe it was aliens you heard,” I said, “come to get Harve.”

“Ha ha. You’re a real comedian.” He was trying to show he wasn’t bothered, but I could tell he was. He had to lash out at me to make up for it. “You’re glad Harve’s dead. I know about you two. You probably helped her kill him.”

“You told the police that yet?”

“I will, by God. I’ll tell ’em today.”

“Don’t forget the part about the flowerbed,” I said as he stalked off across the parking lot.

The police dug up Bertha’s new flowerbed the next day. A bunch of us wanted to watch, but they wouldn’t let us get real close. They didn’t find Harve, of course. They apologized to Bertha, and she told them that she was worried about Harve.

“He usually calls me when he goes to visit his cousin,” she said, “but I haven’t heard from him.”

Leo Goolsby’s the police chief. He asked her if she thought something might’ve happened to Harve.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He said he was going to stop by Yardley’s and apologize about that dog of his before he left. I haven’t seen him since.”

Leo said he’d stop by and ask Yardley about Harve. We bystanders trooped along behind him. Yardley said he didn’t know what Leo was talking about. Leo was about to leave when he noticed that there was a freshly dug patch of ground back of Yardley’s house. Maybe somebody called his attention to it. Anyway, they dug it up, and there was old Harve, taking a dirt nap.

Yardley started yelling and said the UFO aliens must’ve killed Harve and planted the body there after they’d experimented on it.

Leo said, “Sure, sure,” and they carried Yardley off to jail. He yelled all the way.

“Yardley’ll get off on an insanity plea,” Bertha told me that night. “They’ll send him to some state hospital or other.”

“He’ll be happy there just as long as they keep him all closed up at night,” I said.

“I thought Leo wasn’t going to notice that pile of dirt,” Bertha said. “Lord knows it was so big I thought a blind man could see it.”

“Luckily somebody called his attention to it.”

Bertha smiled and went over to a window to look outside. “You think we’ll be bothered by any aliens tonight?”

“Watch the skies,” I said.

She turned to me. “We have better things to do.”

“You got that right,” I said.

Bill Crider won the Anthony Award for best first mystery novel in 1987 for
Too Late to Die.
His story “Cranked” was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award. His latest novel is
Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen
(St. Martin’s Press). See his home page at
BillCrider.com
and his peculiar blog at
BillCrider.blogspot.com
.

Bruce DeSilva

“W
hat’ll it be, hon?”

“Just coffee.”

“Just coffee?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You’re takin’ up a whole booth during breakfast rush, and you just want coffee?”

“Yeah.”

She crossed her arms and glared.

“We got banana pancakes today.”

“La de fuckin’ da.”

“Can I tempt you?”

“No.”

“Could you maybe move to the counter, then?”

“Just bring the fuckin’ coffee, Doris. And ask Vito to drop by my table.”

“You’re here to see Vito?”

“I gotta say it again?”

She lurched away, clubfoot dragging behind. Two minutes later she returned and placed a ceramic cup in front of him.

“Sit tight. Vito says he’ll just be a minute.”

As she turned away, he placed his hand on the coffee cup.

“Hey, Doris! This ain’t hot.”

“Sorry. Let me bring you some from a fresh pot.”

So she did.

“Okay now?”

He touched the cup and felt the heat. “Yeah, it is.”

“Ain’t you gonna try it?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Then why do you care if it’s hot?”

“I’m still payin’ for it, ain’t I?”

She smirked and hobbled off.

A couple of minutes later, Vito dropped into the seat across from him.

“Help you with somethin’, Bobo?”

“Yeah. Two pieces of pie.”