The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 Read online

  Mr. Happer raises a hand suddenly, leans to the side to catch something Ustinov says. He nods, as if he’s approving, then props his elbows on the desk. He looks at Gordon.

  “You sure?” And there it is. The question.

  “I’m sure, Mr. Happer.” Gordon likes the way his voice is deep and smooth.

  “I gotta ask you straight up, you know that, don’t you?” The old coot’s face is expressionless.

  Deny. Deny. Deny. Gordon doesn’t even blink. He feels good.

  Finally, the old man blinks and Gordon says, “Mr. Happer. I’ve always been straight with you. You know that.”

  Mr. Happer waves his hand again as he falls back in his chair.

  “Son of a bitch dumped the money awfully fast.” Mr. Happer looks again at the TV.

  Gordon stops himself from reminding the old bastard that their agreement was simple. Find Smutt, get as much as you can from him, then whack him and leave him where he’ll be found. He did his job. A contract is a contract.

  Gordon waits. He wants to say, “Well, if that’s all —” but knows better. He waits for Mr. Happer to dismiss him.

  The old man turns around and looks at the windows that face the river. He takes another puff of his cigar, lets out a long trail of smoke, and then says, “That’s what I get for dealing with bums like Smutt. At least he got his.”

  Turning to Gordon, the old man smiles, and it sends a chill up Gordon’s back.

  “I was thinking of asking you if you happen to know where Smutt used to hang out. Maybe he had another place. But the money’s long gone.”

  When the old man looks back at his TV, Gordon casually looks at the windows. A gunshot rings out and excited voices, including Ustinov’s, rise on the TV. Gordon waits.

  Finally, after the commotion on the riverboat calms down, Mr. Happer looks at Gordon and says, “I know where to get you.”

  Gordon stands and nods at the old man and leaves, Mr. Happer’s dismissal echoing in his mind. He knows where to get me. Goodbye and hello at the same time.

  Stepping out into the sunlight again, Gordon squints and stretches, then walks down the stairs. He looks at the brown, swirling river water and laughs to himself. Ustinov is still on the river-boat, floating on his own brown water, trying to solve the murder with Mr. Happer watching intently. It strikes Gordon as very, very funny.

  Before pulling away in his Caddy, he slips on his sunglasses and looks around. He spots the tail two minutes later, a black Chevy.

  ~ * ~

  Gordon Urquhart’s bedroom smells of cheap aftershave and faintly of mildew. Waiting in the darkness, Stella Dauphine sits on Gordon’s double bed, her .22 Beretta next to her hand.

  She wears a lightweight tan trench coat and matching tan high heels, a pair of skin-tight gloves on her hands. A young-looking thirty, Stella has curly hair that touches her shoulders. For a thin woman, she’s buxom, which made her popular in high school but proved a hindrance in the mundane office jobs she held throughout her twenties.

  Beneath the trench coat, she wears nothing except a pair of Barely There sheer, thigh-high stockings. She runs a hand over her knee and up to the top of her left thigh-high, pulling it up a little as she waits.

  Closing her eyes, she listens intently.

  She didn’t used to be Stella Dauphine. Born Carla Stellos, she changed her name after a year in New Orleans. After seeing a late-night movie on TV — A Streetcar Named Desire — and after parking her car on Dauphine Street, she decided on the change. She felt more like a Stella Dauphine every day.

  Her eyes snap open a heartbeat after she hears a distinct metallic click at the back door. The door creaks open. Standing at the foot of the bed, Stella picks up her Beretta, unfastens the trench coat, her gun hidden in the folds of the coat as she waits.

  She feels a slight breath of summer air flow into the room and hears a voice sigh and then light footsteps moving toward the bedroom. A figure steps into the doorway.

  The light flashes on.

  Gordon Urquhart’s there, a neat .22 Bersa in his hand.

  Stella opens the trench coat and lets it fall off her shoulders.

  As Gordon looks down at her naked body, Stella squeezes off a round, which strikes Gordon on the right side of his chest. He’s stunned, so stunned he drops his gun. Gordon’s mouth opens as he stumbles into the room, falling against the chest of drawers. Blood seeps through the fingers of his right hand, which he’s pressed against his wound.

  “You shot me!”

  “Kick your gun over here.”

  Gordon’s face is ashen. He blinks at her, looks at his chest, and stammers, “You shot me!”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’ll shoot you again.” Stella’s mouth is set in a grim, determined slit. “Now kick the gun.”

  Gordon swings his foot and the gun slides across the hardwood floor. Stella steps forward and kicks it back under Gordon’s bed.

  The big man is breathing hard now. Blood has saturated his shirt.

  “I think you hit an artery,” he says weakly.

  “Then we don’t have much time, do we?”

  “For what?”

  Stella points her chin at the bed. “Sit, before you collapse.”

  Gordon moves to the bed and sits.

  Stella moves to the doorway between the bedroom and kitchen, the Beretta still trained on Gordon.

  “So,” she says. “Where is it?”

  He looks at her as if he hasn’t the foggiest idea.

  “Mr. Happer told me to give you ten seconds to come up with the money you took off Smutt.” Stella narrows her eyes, “One. Two. Three —”

  “I gave him the four hundred.”

  “Four. Five. Six —”

  Gordon raises his head and says, “Go ahead and shoot me. There’s no money.”

  “Seven. Eight. Nine —”

  “If I had it, you think I’d be dumb enough to have it on me? I spotted your Chevy as soon as I left the Governor Nicholls Wharf.”

  Stella squeezes off another round, which knocks the lamp off the end table next to the bed.

  “Dammit!” Gordon groans in pain. “I don’t have any more money. Smutt blew it all. “

  Stella brushes her hair away from her face with her right hand and tells him, “Mr. Happer doesn’t believe you and I don’t believe you. “

  Gordon clears his throat and says, “Mr. Happer and me go back a long way, lady. He knows better. “

  A cold smile crosses Stella’s thin lips. “I’ll just whack you and toss the place. I’ll still get my fee.”

  “This is crazy. I tell you, there’s no more money.”

  Stella aims the Beretta with both hands again, this time at Gordon’s face. She says, “So you and the old man go back a ways, huh? Well, I’m the one he calls when things go badly. And you’re as bad as they come.”

  Gordon nods at her. “I seen you around. I know all about you. And you got me all wrong, lady.”

  Stella watches his eyes closely as she says, “When Smutt left the Fairgrounds, he went straight to his parole officer’s house and paid the man off. Three grand. Stiff payoff, but Smutt figured it was worth it. Then he went to two restaurants, gorged himself. Then dropped some cash at the betting parlor on Rampart. “

  She watches Gordon’s pupils. A pinprick of recognition comes to them as soon as she says the words “Six grand. He had about six grand left. You took it off him.”

  “No way.”

  Stella fires again, into Gordon’s belly, and he howls.

  “That’s it.” Stella’s smile broadens. “Keep denying it.”

  “I don’t have it!” Gordon slumps backward.

  Stella levels her weapon, aiming at Gordon’s forehead. She pauses, giving him one last chance.

  “I don’t!” he screams.

  She squeezes off a round that strikes Gordon in the forehead. Stepping forward, she puts two more in his head before he falls back on his bed. For good measure she empties the Beretta’s magazine, putting
two more in the side of the man’s head.

  She picks up all eight casings and slips them into the pocket of her coat. She leaves his Bersa under the bed. Let the police match it to the Smutt murder. Then, slowly and methodically, she tosses the place.

  An hour later, she finds the six thousand in the flour container on Gordon’s kitchen counter. The giveaway — what man has fresh flour in a container?

  ~ * ~

  Mr. Happer, sitting back in his captain’s chair, bats his eyes at the TV as Peter Ustinov taps out an SOS on his bathroom wall, a large cobra poised and ready to strike the rotund detective. Stella, standing at the desk’s edge in the trench coat outfit from last night, recognizes the scene and waits for David Niven to rush in with his sword to impale the snake.

  When the scene’s tension dies, Mr. Happer turns his deep-set eyes to Stella and says, “Okay. You got the money?”

  Stella shakes her head.

  Mr. Happer’s eyes grow wide. “It wasn’t there?”

  “I tore the place apart. If he had it, he stashed it.”

  “Dammit!” Mr. Happer slaps a skeletonic hand on his desk. He picks up the remote control and pauses his movie. His black eyes leer at Stella’s eyes as if he can get the truth just by staring. She bites her lower lip, reaches down, and unfastens her coat. She opens it slowly as Happer’s gaze moves down her body.

  Stella lets the coat fall to the floor and stands there naked except for the thigh-high stockings, which gives her long legs the silky look. Rolling her hips, Stella sits on the edge of the desk. Mr. Happer stares at her body as if mesmerized. It takes a long minute for his gaze to rise to her eyes.

  “You sure you tossed the place right?”

  Stella nods.

  Mr. Happer picks up the remote and looks back at the TV. The riverboat is moored now, against the bank of the wide Nile River.

  “Well, the word’ll get out. Make it easier later on,” Happer says. “That’s what the big boys do.”

  Stella climbs off the desk and picks up her coat. As she closes it, she looks at the old man. Mr. Happer turns those black eyes to her and says, “You sure you tossed the place right?”

  She’s ready, her face perfectly posed. “I’m sure.”

  “Okay. “ Mr. Happer looks back at the TV and mouths the words as Peter Ustinov speaks. Without looking, he opens his center desk drawer and withdraws an envelope. He slides it over to Stella, who picks it up and puts it in her purse.

  “Good work,” Mr. Happer says.

  “Thanks.” Stella turns and leaves him with his Ustinov and David Niven and riverboat floating down the Nile.

  On her way down the stairs she looks at the dark Mississippi water and whispers a message to the dead Gordon. “So you and Mr. Happer go back a long way. Well, we go back a longer way.”

  And I have tools, plenty of tools to work against this man, against all these men.

  Three minutes later she spots the tail, a dark blue Olds.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  PETE DEXTER

  The Jeweler

  from Esquire

  The old man ordered the soup of the day again, homemade noodles and chicken served with bread and a glass of house wine, and wiped at his nose with his napkin the whole time he ate. It was February, and everybody on the East Coast had the flu. The old man looked like he should have been home in bed, but his habits were set deep. At ten to six every morning, for instance, he stepped out of his front door in his bathrobe and slippers to retrieve the Inquirer. Two hours later he came out again, dressed in an overcoat, and walked to the end of his block and caught the SEPTA bus to work. Twice this week he’d given his seat to young women. Exactly at one o’clock he left the store, walked the four blocks to the restaurant, and had his soup of the day and wine, always sitting at the same table near the kitchen. The tab always came to six dollars, and he always left a dollar for the waitress. She had a snake tattooed around the fleshy part of her arm, and beneath it the name Jerry was written in script.

  The man who had been keeping track of the old man’s habits was named Whittemore, and he noticed the hair in his plate as soon as the waitress set it on the table. The hair lay across his fish and was anchored at one end in a little white paper cup of tartar sauce, moving slightly in the air from the overhead fan, like something dying in bed but not quite dead. He moved closer and saw that most of the hair was black, but out toward the end, away from the tartar sauce, there was a bulb of root where it was brown.

  The waitress was a blonde, so the hair had come from the kitchen, which was worse in a way than if it had just belonged to the waitress herself. She had the tattoo, of course, and a stud in her nose — a small pearl — and a stained blouse, but this was the human being, after all, that they’d sent out to greet the public. Christ knew what they looked like back in the kitchen.

  “Is everything all right, hon?” She came back to his table empty-handed from the other side on the way to the kitchen. Whittemore looked up and saw the back of the stud glistening inside her nose. A week ago, when he first walked in and saw the pearl, he thought it was some kind of growth.

  “It’s fine,” he said.

  She put a hand on her hip and he noticed her fingers. Cloudy, yellow nails, the skin itself stained dark. He wondered if she was also a photographer, had her hands in chemicals in her off-hours. Or maybe just a Camel smoker. The point was, who could eat the food after they saw her hands? He shuddered suddenly, remembering that he’d been having ideas about this same girl earlier in the week. He remembered the exact words that came into his head: She looks up for anything.

  “You don’t eat much,” she said.

  “Too much stress.”

  She nodded, as if that made perfect sense, and then gave him a little wink “I’m the same way,” she said. “I just come in to calm my nerves.”

  ~ * ~

  The old man knew he was caught and was no trouble in the parking lot or in the car on the way out of town.

  His name was Eisner, and whatever he was stealing, he hadn’t been spending any of it on his clothes. He sat in the passenger seat in a suit that must have been fifty years old, wearing a bow tie and a starched white shirt, chewing Smith Brothers cough drops. They passed city hall and he cleared his throat.

  “It used to be there were no skyscrapers in the whole city,” he said. “It was a local ordinance, nothing taller than the Billy Penn. That was the law.” A moment passed, and he shifted in his seat. “The place wasn’t as dark then,” he said.

  A little snot teardrop glistened beneath one of the old man’s nostrils, moving up and down as he breathed, and Whittemore felt himself edging away. He tried to remember if he’d touched him in the parking lot. He wasn’t worried about the door. He’d followed him out, but he knew he’d covered his hand with his sleeve. He did that without thinking now, and he hadn’t shaken hands with anybody since his mother’s funeral. Not that it came up much anymore, but when it did, he would cough into his fist and tell whoever it was that he might be coming down with the flu. Nobody got past that, and nothing human had touched him in a long time.

  They were on the parkway now, headed toward the river. Whittemore looked up and saw the art museum half a mile ahead, ancient and dead even in the sunlight; it could have been waiting for them both. The old man moved again, the air stirring with germs.

  “A tan like that, you must travel a lot,” Eisner said. They passed the museum and headed west, along the Schuylkill and past the boathouses. Then he said, “Myself, I’m a creature of habit. I stay put.” And then he sneezed into his hands.

  Whittemore gave him his handkerchief, which Eisner used to dry his fingers and then his eyes. And when he could see again, he looked out his window, away from the river into Fairmount Park. “During the war,” he said, “there were supposed to be Japs that lived back in there in cardboard boxes and ate people’s dogs ...” It was quiet for a little while, and then he said, “I guess they decided they’d rather take their chan
ces in the park.”

  Against his will, Whittemore began thinking about his visit to the doctor before he left Seattle. The doctor was Japanese — which is what brought it to mind — and said he didn’t think the memory lapses were anything to worry about, that they were related to stress. The doctors in Seattle saw a lot of stress, of course, all those fucking owls to worry about, domestic partners who couldn’t get on the major medical at Boeing. Whittemore had noticed that it was about twelve years ago when the doctors quit saying You’re fine. Now it was always I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Which smelled of insurance. Every day, he saw the world dividing itself into a billion insurance policies, everybody trying to set things up in some way that made them safe.