The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (35 page)

I don’t sleep that night or the next, and at work I can’t sit still, waiting for what’s coming. Two days pass, three, four. At the hotel, I see Leon hanging around the lobby and partying in J Bone’s room. We don’t say anything to each other as I pass by, I don’t even look at him, but our souls scrape like ships’ hulls, and I shudder from stem to stern.

When Friday rolls around and still nothing has happened, I start to think I’m wrong. Maybe what I said to Leon was enough to back him off. Maybe he was never serious about robbing the store. My load feels a little lighter. For the first time in a week I can twist my head without the bones in my neck popping.

To celebrate, I take myself to Denny’s for dinner. Chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. A big Mexican family is there celebrating something. Looks like Mom and Dad and Grandma and a bunch of kids, everyone all dressed up. I’m forty-two years old, not young anymore, but I’d still like to have something like that someday. Cancer took my daughter when she was ten, and my son’s stuck in prison. If I ever make it to Mexico, maybe I’ll get a second chance, and this time it would mean something.

They show up at 2:15 on Saturday. We’ve just reopened after lunch, and I haven’t even settled into my chair yet when the three of them crowd into the doorway. Dallas is in front, a hoodie pulled low over his face. He’s the one who pushes the buzzer, the one Leon’s got doing the dirty work.

“Don’t let ’em in,” I shout to Mr. M.

The old man toddles in from the back room, confused.

“What?”

“Don’t touch the buzzer.”

Dallas rings again, then raps on the glass with his knuckles. I’ve been afraid for my life before—on the street, in prison, in rooms crowded with men not much more than animals—but it’s not something you get used to. My legs shake like they have every other time I’ve been sure death is near, and my heart tries to tear itself loose and run away. I crouch, get up, then crouch again, a chicken with its head cut off.

J Bone tugs a ski mask down over his face and pushes Dallas out of the way. He charges the door, slamming into it shoulder-first, which makes a hell of a noise, but that’s about it. He backs up, tries again, then lifts his foot and drives his heel into the thick, bulletproof glass a couple of times. The door doesn’t budge.

“I’m calling the police,” the old man shouts at him. “I’ve already pressed the alarm.”

Leon yells at Bone, and Bone yells at Leon, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Leon has his mask pulled down now too. He draws a gun from his pocket, and I scramble for cover behind a display case as he fires two rounds into the lock. He doesn’t understand the mechanics, the bolts that shoot into steel and concrete above and below when you turn the key.

People on the street are stopping to see what’s going on. Dallas runs off, followed by Bone. Leon grabs the door handle and yanks on it, then gives up too. He peels off his mask and starts to walk one way before turning quickly and jogging in the other.

I get up and go to the door to make sure they’re gone for real. I should be relieved, but I’m not. I’m already worried about what’s going to happen next.

“Those black bastards,” Mr. M says. “Those fucking black bastards.”

Once they find out about my record, the police get in their head that we were all in it together and it’s just that I lost my nerve at the last minute.

“How did you know not to let them in?” they ask me twenty different times in twenty different ways.

“I saw the gun,” I say, simple as that.

Mr. M ends up going to the hospital with chest pains, and his son shows up to square everything away. He keeps thanking me for protecting his father.

“You may have saved his life,” he says, and I wish I could say that’s who I was thinking about.

The police don’t finish investigating until after six. I hang around the store until then because I’m not ready to go back to the hotel. When the cops finally pack up, I walk home slowly, all the way there expecting Leon to come out of nowhere like a lightning bolt. There’ll be a gun in his hand, or a knife. He knows how it goes: if you’re worried about a snitch, take him out before he talks.

I make it back safely, though. Leon’s not waiting out front or in the lobby or on the stairs. The door to J Bone’s room is open, but no music is playing, and nobody’s laughing. I glance in, and see that the room is empty except for a bunch of greasy burger bags and half-finished 40s with cigarettes sunk in them.

I lock my door when I get inside my room, open the window, turn on the fan. My legs stop working, and I collapse on the bed, exhausted. I dig out a bottle of Ten High that I keep for when the demons come dancing and decide that if I make it through tonight, I’ll treat every hour I have left as a gift.

I talk to the Chinaman at the desk the next morning, and he tells me J Bone checked out yesterday, ran off in a hurry. Youngblood is listening in, pretending to watch the lobby TV. We haven’t spoken since I lost my temper.

“What do you know about it?” I call to him, not sure if he’ll answer.

“Cost you five dollars to find out,” he says.

I hand over the money, and he jumps up off the couch, eager to share. He says Leon and Bone had words yesterday afternoon, talking about the police being after them and “You stupid,” “No, you stupid.” Next thing they went upstairs, came down with their shit, and split.

“What do you think they did?” Youngblood asks me.

“Fuck if I know,” I say. “Ask your friend Paul.”

“He ain’t my friend,” Youngblood says. “I put the word out on him. I’m gonna get you your money back.”

I’m so happy to have Leon gone that I don’t even care about the money. I ask Youngblood if he wants to go for breakfast. He’s a good kid. A couple of hours from now, after he takes his first shot, he’ll be useless, but right now I can see the little boy he once was in his crooked smile.

He talks about Kobe—Kobe this, Kobe that—as we walk to McDonald’s. We go back and forth from shady patches still cool as night to blocks that even this early are being scorched by the sun. Nobody’s getting crazy yet, and it doesn’t smell too bad except in the alleys. Almost like morning anywhere. I keep looking over my shoulder, but I can feel myself relaxing already. A couple more days, and I’ll be back to normal.

Mr. M’s son told me before I left the store that it’d be closed for at least a week, but not to worry because they’d pay me like I was still working. The next Thursday he calls and asks me to come down. The old man is still in the hospital, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be getting out anytime soon, so the son has decided to shut the store up for good. He hands me an envelope with $2,500 inside, calls it severance.

“Thank you again for taking care of my father,” he says.

“Tell him I said hello and get well soon,” I reply.

The next minute I’m out on the street, unemployed for the first time in years. I have to laugh. I barely gave Leon the time of day, didn’t fall for his mess, didn’t jump when he said to, and he still managed to fuck up the good thing I had going. That’s the way it is. Every time you manage to stack a few bricks, a wave’s bound to come along and knock them down.

They run girls out of vans over on Towne. You pay a little more than you would for a street whore, but they’re generally younger and cleaner, and doing it in the van is better than doing it behind a dumpster or in an Andy Gump. I shower and shave before I head out, get a hundred bucks from my stash behind the light switch, and stick it in my sock.

Mama-san is carrying more groceries up the stairs, both kids hanging on her as I’m going down.

“No cooking,” I say. “No cooking.”

She doesn’t reply, but the kids look scared. I didn’t mean for that to happen.

The freaks come out at night, and the farther east you go, the worse it gets. Sidewalk shitters living in cardboard boxes, ghosts who eat out of garbage cans, a blind man showing his dick on the corner. I keep my gaze forward, my hands balled into fists. Walking hard, we used to call it.

Three vans are parked at the curb tonight. I make a first pass to scope out the setup. The pimps stand together, a trio of cocky little vatos with gold chains and shiny shirts. My second time by, they start in hissing through their teeth and whispering, “Big tits, tight pussy.”

“You looking for a party?” one of them asks me.

“What if I am?” I say.

He walks me to his van and slides open the side door. I smell weed and something coconut. A chubby Mexican girl wearing a red bra and panties is lying on a mattress back there. She’s pretty enough, for a whore, but I’d still like to check out what’s in the other vans. I don’t want to raise a ruckus, though.

“How much?” I say to nobody in particular.

The pimp says forty for head, a hundred for half and half. I get him down to eighty. I crawl inside the van, and he closes the door behind me. There’s cardboard taped to the windshield and windows. The only light is what seeps in around the edges. I’m sweating already, big drops racing down my chest inside my shirt.

“How you doing tonight?” I say to the girl.

“Okay,” she says.

She uses her hand to get me hard, then slips the rubber on with her mouth. I make her stop after just a few seconds and have her lay back on the mattress. I come as soon as I stick it in. It’s been a long time.

“Can I lay here a minute?” I say.

The girl shrugs and cleans herself with a baby wipe. She has nice hair, long and black, and big brown eyes. I ask her where she’s from. She says Mexico.

“I’m moving down there someday,” I say.

My mouth gets away from me. I tell her I was in Germany once, when I was in the army, and that I came back and had two kids. I tell her about leaving them just like my mom and dad left me, and how you say you’re never going to do certain things, but then you do. I tell her that’s why God’s turned away from us and Jesus is a joke. When I run out of words, I’m crying. The tears get mixed up with the sweat on my face.

“It’s okay,” the girl says. “It’s okay.”

Her pimp bangs on the side of the van and opens the door.

Time’s up.

I’ve seen enough that I could write my own Bible. For example, here’s the parable of the brother who hung on and the one who fell: Two months later I’m walking home from my new job guarding a Mexican dollar store on Los Angeles. A bum steps out in front of me, shoves his dirty hand in my face, and asks for a buck. I don’t like when they’re pushy, and I’m about to tell him to step off, but then I realize it’s Leon.

He’s still wearing his suit, only now it’s filthy rags. His eyes are dull and overcast, his lips burnt black from the pipe. All his charm is gone, all his kiss-my-ass cockiness. Nobody is following this boy anymore but the Reaper.

“Leon?” I say. I’m not scared of him. One punch now would turn him back to dust.

“Who you?” he asks warily.

“You don’t remember?”

He opens his eyes wide, then squints. A quiet laugh rattles his bones.

“Old McGruff,” he says. “Gimme a dollar, crime dog.”

I give him two.

“Be good to yourself,” I say as I walk away.

“You’re a lucky man,” he calls after me.

No, I’m not, but I am careful. Got a couple bricks stacked, a couple bucks put away, and one eye watching for the next wave. Forever and ever, amen.

THERESA E. LEHR

FROM
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

I
WORE LEATHERS
to her funeral, along with the pearls. The newspaper said the necklace was worth $70,000 Australian. That’s big bikkies in Broome. A small fortune. At least to me. I thought my sister had hocked the necklace. She’d sold her BMW and lost her apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour last year. Just goes to prove what I always told her: you can’t be addicted to heaven dust and the material world at the same time.

Our mum had eyed that string of South Sea pearls longer than I care to remember, so I was caught off guard when my twin sister left them to me. I figured her motive was to twist the knife in Mum one last time. It had nothing to do with me. Making amends was not Shinju’s style.

The day after the funeral, photos of me wearing her famous pearls and straddling my Ducati at the front of the motorcade plastered the
Herald
and later the Australian gossip magazines. I didn’t wear my helmet and Mum said I had an ax to grind. I denied it, but we both knew I’d never forgiven Shinju for the ink-vine scar that runs down the right side of my face. Did I want everyone to know that? Maybe so.

But murder has a way of either bringing families together or driving them apart. In our case, Shinju’s homicide squashed us into a world we’d never shared. Mum, Pop, and I leaned on each other, licked one another’s wounds. Unfamiliar, sticky emotions drove us to hound the Broome police until they stopped returning our calls and refused to see us at the station.

You may wonder why a screwed-up family with very little tenderness for one another would join together. Was it out of love for Shinju? Or guilt over getting whatever was left in her bank accounts? Was there even enough love left between us to miss her? I’m not sure. But I have a feeling the way she died had a lot to do with it.

Shinju and I began our lives sharing the same primordial sea. Mum said we wrestled in her belly like Jacob and Esau, and we would’ve been named after the brotherly-love-gone-awry twins if we’d been boys. Instead, Pop had his way, naming us with the family business in mind. Even though I was born first, and in my opinion should’ve been named Shinju, meaning “pearl,” I was dubbed Kashiko—child of the seashore. Turns out Pop was prophetic. I became the pearl hunter. Shinju wore them.

Unfortunately, as the years went by, Pop’s heavy drinking wrecked our small pearl-diving business. Fewer trips out to sea meant fewer opportunities to search for oysters, resulting in smaller profits. By the time we were fifteen, he had to sell our lugger. Without the boat, the business went belly-up.