The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (37 page)

I asked the patrolmen to seal both the back and front entrances and start a sign-in log, always a good idea if you don't want your crime scene to spiral into chaos. You'd be surprised how many people will trample through and wreck evidence, many of them cops.

I walked in, past the bar and the tables and the stage, then into a small, poorly lit, grease-darkened kitchen. Another uniform stood near a walk-in freezer, talking with a young man wearing a light blue shirt with a name patch on it.

I saw the autoloader lying on the floor in front of me. Then the cop looked up and I followed his line of sight to the exposed ceiling. Overhead were big commercial blowers and vents and ducting and electrical conduit and hanging fluorescent tube light fixtures. A body hung jackknifed at the hips over a steel crossbeam. His arms dangled over one side and his legs over the other. If he'd landed just one inch higher or lower, he'd have simply slid off the beam to the floor. I walked around the gun and got directly under him and stared up into the face of Joey. It was an urgent shade of purple and his eyes were open.

“The safe in the office,” said the uniform, pointing to the far back side of the kitchen.

The office door was open and I stepped in. There was a desk and a black leather couch and a small fridge and microwave, pictures of near-naked dancers on the walls, along with a Chargers calendar and Padres pennants.

There was also a big floor safe that was open but not empty. I squatted in front of it and saw the stacks of cash and some envelopes.

The officer and janitor stood in the office doorway.

“Why kill a man for his money, then not take it?” asked the uniform. His name plate said
Peabody.

“Maybe he freaked and ran,” said the janitor, whose name patch said
Carlos.

“Okay,” said Peabody. “Then tell me how Joey got ten feet up in the air and hung over a beam. And don't tell me he did it to himself.”

Carlos looked up at the body and shrugged, but I had an opinion about that.

“What time do you start work?” I asked him.

“Two. That's when they close.”

“Is Joey usually here?”

“One of the managers is always here. They count the money every third night. Then they take it to the bank.”

“So tonight was bank night?”

“Was supposed to be.”

 

I drove fast to Vic's hotel room downtown, but he didn't answer the door. Back downstairs the night manager, speaking from behind a mesh-reinforced window, told me that Vic had left around eight-thirty—seven hours ago—and had not returned.

I made Farrel's place eleven minutes later. There were no cars in the driveway but lights inside were on. I rang the bell and knocked, then tried the door, which was unlocked. So I opened it and stepped in.

The living room looked exactly as it had two nights ago, except that the beer cans were gone and the pile of black binders had been reduced to just one. In the small back bedroom the stroller was still in place and the plastic doll was snugged down under the blanket just as it had been. I went into the master bedroom. The mattress was bare and the chest of drawers stood open and nearly empty. It looked like Farrel had stripped the bed and packed her clothes in a hurry. The bathroom was stripped, too: no towels, nothing in the shower or the medicine chest or on the sink counter. The refrigerator had milk and pickles and that was all. The wastebasket under the sink had empty beer cans, an empty pretzel bag, various fast-food remnants swathed in ketchup, a receipt from a supermarket, and a wadded-up agreement from Rent-a-Dream car rentals down by the airport. Black Beamer 750i, of course.

Back in the living room I took the black binder from the coffee table and opened it to the first page:

 

THE SOPRANOS
Season Four/Episode Three

 

I flipped through the pages. Dialogue and brief descriptions. Four episodes in all.

Getting Sal's lines right, I thought.

 

Vic didn't show up for work for three straight nights. I stopped by Skin a couple of times a night, just in case he showed, and I knocked on his hotel room door twice a day or so. The manager hadn't seen him in four days. He told me Vic's rent was due on the first.

Of course Farrel had vanished, too. I cruised her place in La Mesa, but something about it just said she wasn't coming back, and she didn't.

On the fourth afternoon after the murder of Joey Morra, Vic called me on my cell phone. “Can you feed my scorpion? Give him six crickets. They're under the bathroom sink. The manager'll give you the key.”

“Sure. But we need to talk, Vic—face-to-face.”

“I didn't do it.”

“Who else could throw Joey up there like that?”

Vic didn't answer.

“Dom and his people are looking for you, Vic. You won't get a trial with them. You'll just get your sentence, and it won't be lenient.”

“I only took what she needed.”

“And killed Joey.”

“He pulled a gun, Robbie. I couldn't think a what else to do. I bear-hugged and shook him. Like a reflex. Like when I threw you.”

“I'll see you outside Higher Grounds in ten minutes.”

“She met me at Rainwater's, Robbie. I walked into Rainwater's and there she was—that beautiful young woman, waiting there for me. You should have seen her face light up when I gave her the money. Out in the parking lot, I mean.”

“I'll bet,” I said. “Meet me outside Higher Grounds in ten minutes.”

“Naw. I got a good safe place here. I'm going to just enjoy myself for a couple more days, knowing I did a good thing for a good woman. My scorpion, I named him Rudy. Oh. Oh shit, Robbie.”

Even coming from a satellite orbiting the earth in space, and through the miles of ether it took to travel to my ear, the sound of the shotgun blast was unmistakable. So was the second blast, and the third.

 

A few days later I flew to Little Rock and rented a car, then made the drive north and west to Center Springs. Farrel was right: it wasn't on the rental-car company driving map, but it made the navigation unit that came in the vehicle.

The Ozarks were steep and thickly forested and the Arkansas River looked unhurried. I could see thin wisps of wood-stove fires burning in cabins down in the hollows and there was a smoky cast to the sky.

The gas station clerk said I'd find Farrel White's dad's place down the road a mile, just before Persimmon Holler. He said there was a batch of trailers up on the hillside and I'd see them from the road if I didn't drive too fast. Billy White had the wooden one with all the satellite dishes on top.

The road leading in was dirt and heavily rutted from last season's rain. I drove past travel trailers set up on cinder blocks. They were slouched and sun-dulled and some had decks and others just had more cinder blocks as steps. Dogs eyed me without bothering to sit up. There were cats and litter and a pile of engine blocks outside, looked like they'd been cast there by some huge child.

Billy answered my knock with a sudden yank on the door, then studied me through the screen. He was midfifties and heavy, didn't look at all like his daughter. He wore a green-and-black plaid jacket buttoned all the way to the top.

“I'm a San Diego cop looking for your daughter. I thought she might have come home.”

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Come home to this from San Diego?”

“Well.”

“She okay?”

“I think so.”

“Come in.”

The trailer was small and cramped and packed with old, overstuffed furniture.

“She in trouble?”

“Farrel and her boyfriend hustled a guy out of some money. But he had to take the money from someone else.”

Billy handed me a beer and plopped into a vinyl recliner across from me. He had a round, impish face and a twinkle in his eyes. “That ain't her boyfriend. It's her brother.”

“That never crossed my mind.”

“Don't look nothing alike. But they've always been close. Folks liked to think too close, but it wasn't ever that way. Just close. They understood each other. They're both good kids. Their whole point in life was to get outta Center Springs and they done did it. I'm proud of them.”

“What's his name?”

“Preston.”

“Did they grow up in this trailer?”

“Hell no. We had a home over to Persimmon but it got sold off in the divorce. Hazel went to Little Rock with a tobacco products salesman. The whole story is every bit as dreary as it sounds.”

“When did Farrel and Preston leave?”

“Couple of months ago. The plan was San Diego, then Hollywood. Pretty people with culture and money to spend. They were going to study TV, maybe go start up a show. San Diego was to practice up.”

“The scripts.”

“Got them from the library up at Fayetteville. Made copies of the ones they wanted. Over and over again. Memorizing those scripts and all them words. They went to the Salvation Army stores and bought up lots of old-time kinda clothes. They both did some stage plays at the junior college, but they didn't much care for them. They liked the other kind of stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

“Crime stories. Bad guys. Mafia. That was mainly Preston. Farrel, she can act like anything from the queen of England to a weather girl and you can't tell she's acting.”

“Have they called lately?”

“Been over a week.”

“Where do you think they are?”

“Well, Center Springs is the only place I know they ain't. I don't expect to ever see them out this way.”

I did the simple math and the not-so-simple math. Eight grand for two months of work. Farrel dancing for tips. Preston delivering pizza and working his end of the Vic hustle. Vic caught between Farrel's good acting and his own eager heart. And of course betrayed, finally and fatally, by his own bad temper.

I finished the beer and stood. “Two men died because of them. Eight thousand bucks is what they died for. So the next time you talk to Farrel and Preston, you tell them there's real blood on their hands. It's not make-believe blood. You tell her Vic was murdered for taking that eight thousand.”

“I'll do that.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“I can come up with a couple a hundred. It's not much, but . . .”

I saw the orange triangles bouncing in the air between us. I thought about those triangles as I drove away. Orange triangles denote pity and sometimes even empathy. All this for Vic Primeval, as offered by a man he'd never met, from his vinyl chair in his slouching home in the Ozarks. Sometimes you find a little speck of good where you least expect it. A rough diamond down deep. And you realize that the blackness can't own you for more than one night at a time.

FROM
The New Orphic Review

 

T
HE TELEGRAM CAME
in the late afternoon on a rainy Tuesday in late April 1958.

Jimmy Dunphy had been delivering mail to this remote farmhouse in the Wicklow mountain range for over thirty years, but he still felt a tingle of excitement each time that distinctive little green envelope showed up in his bundle. Hogan's of Rathdargan was the last stop on his route, and he always looked forward to a relaxed chat with Kitty Hogan, full-figured woman of the house. Sometimes—if she was in a good mood—she'd invite him in for a cup of tea and a scone to fuel the long, uphill bike ride home to his cottage on the other side of Sugarloaf Mountain.

Telegram presentation was one of Jimmy's specialties, one he'd polished to a performance art. Unlike regular mail, telegrams meant something was up—and Jimmy loved to watch the faces of people in the grip of suspense. Today he was bitterly disappointed to see that only young Myles, not his mother, was there to share the moment. Was he going to have to waste a performance on this fourteen-year-old upstart? This younger generation had no appreciation of true dramatic talent; most had never even heard of O'Casey, Behan, or Bernie (aka George Bernard) Shaw, born just over the mountain in Carlow. Too busy traipsing to American cowboy pictures and dance halls. Then again, how were they ever going to learn if their elders didn't show them?

Peering through the rain under his shiny postman's cap and black parka, Jimmy grinned and stepped boldly onto the stage—his own Abbey Theatre. First he held the prized envelope high for inspection—like a trophy ready for presentation. Rolling it over several times in his arthritic hands, puffing vainly on his unlit pipe, he held the telegram aloft one last time before the final moment of exchange.

Myles Hogan didn't hear the postman's whistle right away; he had his hands full dosing an ailing calf from a plastic bottle in the cowshed. But the brace of border collies sounded the alarm, nearly flattening him in their raucous scramble for the cowshed door. Myles liked Jimmy Dunphy and usually welcomed his theatrics, but not today. There was too much work to do; he was soaking wet and in no mood to humor the old man.

Finally, with great reluctance, Jimmy surrendered the telegram into Myles's impatient hand. Stung by the rude reception, he turned wearily to face the hilly, wet meadow he'd cut though to reach the farmhouse. No tea. No scones. Not even a glimpse of Kitty Hogan's brunette curls.

Turning abruptly to leave, noticing Jimmy's hangdog expression, Myles felt a pang of regret and tossed off a quick apology: “Thanks, Mr. Dunphy. Sorry to be in such hurry. Hungry calves, ya know . . .”

Jimmy seized the opening like a lifeline.

“Maybe I should wait till yer mammie has a chance to read it. Ya never know . . . She might want to send word back . . .”

It was a clumsy attempt at ferreting out what was in the telegram; Myles knew how the gossip mill worked and had no intention of feeding it.