The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

by Michael Connelly

  “Myself, what I don’t like is hotels,” Eisner said. “Strange mattresses, peepholes in the doors, somebody’s always got their hand out. People drool on the pillowcase, it soaks through, even a hundred-dollar hotel.” He dabbed at his nose with the handkerchief and said, “Rich people drool as much as anybody else, maybe more, when you think about it. And the strangers walking up and down the halls? No reflection on you, but the more human beings I see from out of state, the less hope I have for the future.”

  Whittemore had frozen, though, at the mention of hotel pillows. How could he have missed that? It seemed dangerous in some way that the old man had thought of it and he hadn’t. Ahead of them, a Rolling Rock delivery truck dropped into a pothole that must have broken half the bottles inside.

  “You care to know how this happened?” the old man said a little later.

  Whittemore began to say no, that it wasn’t any of his business. The old man was popping his toast every two minutes as it was. Instead, he shrugged. He’d been having queer feelings again, even before he left Seattle, like it was all out of his hands.

  “There wasn’t any reason,” the old man said. “That’s the big joke. I’m seventy-six years old; they don’t have anything I want. Nothing. No reason but the twins themselves. The future-is-ours, dot-com-generation, bastard twins.” He looked at him quickly and said, “Kids, I’m talking about. Nothing personal. You want a cough drop?”

  Whittemore shook his head no and wondered for the next mile why the old man would think he needed a cough drop.

  “Paul and Bonnie, I would cut off my right hand before I took a cent. But then they crashed their car on the Black Horse Pike — going to the shore for a weekend in the middle of winter, for Christ’s sake, just like that, they’re gone — and the twins take over before they’re even in the ground. Forty-two years these people were my friends, they were like my family, but the truth is they didn’t spend enough time at home. The business was too important. That’s all I’ll say about it, end of story. They didn’t spend enough time at home.”

  Whittemore nodded, as if he agreed with that, although he hadn’t met the boys himself. That wasn’t the way it was done. He worked for himself. There were people in the middle, and everything went through them — the money and the jobs. It was cleaner all the way around.

  “Cheating people who’ve been coming into the store forty years, that’s how this happened. Cheating young people come in to buy a wedding ring. Ruining their parents’ good reputation. What’s that worth? What’s the price these days on a good reputation?”

  They’d been in the car half an hour now, and the houses in the distance were bigger and had rolling lawns and iron fences. Then a golf course. “You play golf?” the old man said, and a moment later Whittemore grabbed at his knee and ran the outside wheels off onto the shoulder of the road.

  The sensation wasn’t painful as much as eerie. Like something in there was being unscrewed. It happened on airplanes and in the movies, anywhere Whittemore had to sit still. He took vitamins, rode his bicycle three times a week, did sixty pushups every morning, and never got through the rest of the day without a twinge somewhere, without thinking this might be it.

  “You know I taught these little bastards how to play? Did they tell you that?” The old man was warming to the subject now. “They got to have the best clubs, right from the first day. New leather bags, new shoes. God forbid they should play in tennis shoes. Fourteen years old, and they’re riding around in carts like old men ...”

  Eisner wiped at his eyes again and then stared out the window, watching someone swing, just wanting to see a golf swing, moving a little in his seat as the swell of the fairway began to eclipse the golfer. “Cheat?” he said. “They embarrass you to death.”

  The course disappeared, and Eisner sneezed again. Some of it blew out beneath the handkerchief and spotted his pants. “Did you say you played? I get nervous, I can’t remember what people tell me.”

  “A little. I used to play a little.”

  “Then you know what I’m talking about.”

  They passed into Lancaster County, and a few minutes later turned off the highway onto a road so faded that there was hardly a road left. Weeds were growing in the lane markers. They saw an Amish pulled to the side who had broken an axle on his buggy. He was up front, calming the horse; a woman was nursing a baby in the shadows of the back seat.

  “I hear Titleist is coming out with a new ball, twenty extra yards off the tee,” Eisner said.

  Whittemore saw the dirt road that he’d picked earlier and began slowing for the turn. The old man’s voice was shaking so badly, he could hardly get this out: “Myself,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind trying it. You get up in years like me, you can use the extra distance.”

  And that was as close as he came to asking for anything.

  Whittemore pulled the car to the side of the road and sat still a minute, thinking it over. “What if you had to go away?”

  “Me?” Eisner said. “Where am I going to go?”

  “Someplace else,” Whittemore said. “The other side of the world.”

  The old man took a minute putting it together. “You mean like the Poconos?” he said.

  ~ * ~

  Whittemore went to Seventh Street that same afternoon to return the five thousand in person. That was the only chance he saw, to talk to them in person. Something like this — but not exactly this — had happened once before and been negotiated. That was the word the people in the middle used, negotiated. It meant they waited three or four months, gave you enough time to think maybe they’d forgotten, and then a couple of guys who laughed at everything came around with their softball bats and their twenty-pound biceps and pimples on their shoulders and brought you back into the world of hospitals and medical science. He couldn’t remember now exactly what it had been like. This time, though, unless he could head it off, things would have to be explained, which was a more serious word to the people in the middle.

  The jewelers took him upstairs to their office — they seemed to be in a hurry to get him off the showroom floor — and while one of them closed the door, the other one took off his coat, dropped into the chair behind his desk, hung his health-club arms over the sides — the kid wanted him to notice his arms — and stared at him as if he were trying to make up his mind. He was the one who did the talking.

  “So?” the kid said.

  Right away, he saw for himself what the old man meant.

  “We put the five thousand up front, right? I told your people, you’re late, you forfeit the back end. That simple.”

  Whittemore looked from one of them to the other. Identical, but he could already tell who was who.

  “No comprendé?” the kid said.

  He began to tell them that the back end didn’t matter, that he hadn’t done it anyway, but he stopped himself, waiting to see where this would go. “The deal was ten,” he said. “Five in front, five after it’s done. That was the agreement.”

  The kid shook his head, and then he and his brother glanced at each other again. “It’s like I told your people. Time constraints have been violated. The agreement’s changed.”

  Whittemore sat dead still, looking from one of the twins to the other.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” the kid said. “I know everything you’re thinking, and it’s like I told your people, my brother and I have left instructions with our lawyers, sealed instructions to be opened in the event anything unfortunate happens. That occurs, the lawyers open an envelope, which spells out all the details of the whole situation. Names, dates, times, everything. If we so much as slip in the shower.”

  They waited for him a moment, then smiled as the message settled. One of them, then the other.

  “You two shower together?”

  “Just a hypothesis, something to consider,” the kid said.

  Whittemore considered their jewelry: Rolex watches half an inch thick, diamond rings, gold bracelets and neck chains. The one
at the bookcase was wearing cuff links. He wondered if it was part of the jewelry business that you had to look like a Gypsy coming out a hotel window, or if these two just liked to twinkle when they moved, separate themselves from the world at large.

  The kid in the chair looked at his brother, who had walked over to the window. The little glances reminded him of the way lovers reach out to touch hands without even knowing they’re doing it. “I mean, look at yourself,” the one in the chair said, “coming in here like this ...”

  Whittemore nodded at him, but the kid misunderstood. But then, he misunderstood everything. “It’s a Mexican standoff, man,” he said. “Now get your ass out of here before I call the police.”

  He shot the one at the window first and then turned slowly to the one who did the talking, giving him a moment to reflect on his Mexican standoff.

  Afterward, he stayed in the room a little longer than he should have, the cordite stinging his nose, studying the posture of the bodies, down to the exact position of the fingers when everything had stopped moving. He sat down behind the desk in the kid’s chair, taking the weight off his knees.

  The one at the window had been a nail biter.

  He thought of the old man and wondered how long it would be before he got homesick and showed up at the restaurant. His hands had shaken, but that was all. No crying, no regrets. There in the front seat, Whittemore had suddenly remembered how he’d let the guys who laughed at everything position his legs across the kitchen chairs just so and that one of his knees — he wasn’t sure even then which one — hadn’t dislocated the first time they came down on it, or the second, or the third.

  He’d taken Eisner to a bus stop anyway.

  Eisner got out and was around the car at Whittemore’s window in what seemed like the same instant, tapping at the window, brimming tears, and Whittemore rolled it down to see what he wanted, and he came in like death itself, glistening tears and snot, right through the window, his hands, his head, his shoulders, and shit the sheets if Whittemore didn’t just sit there and let the old man hug him.

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  ~ * ~

  TYLER DILTS

  Thug: Signification and the (De) Construction of Self

  from Puerto del Sol

  I THUG.

  That’s not a grammatical error. I fully intended to use the word “thug” as a verb. I realize, of course, that for you, unless you happen to have some knowledge of hip-hop music and culture or hard-boiled noir fiction, you’re probably not familiar with this particular usage. But as I said, I actually meant to use the word “thug” as a verb, rather than in its much more common and familiar usage as a noun. The reasons for this are twofold:

  1) I have, of late, been giving a great deal of thought as to how we define both ourselves and each other by what we do.1 I am fascinated by the subtle yet significant differences between the phrases “I thug” and “I am a thug.” The play in signification here seems never to exhaust its ability to keep my intellect bouncing back and forth, questioning the point at which I cease to be the sum of my actions and become the thing itself (i.e., at what point do I cease thugging and simply become thug?).

  2) I find this type of nontraditional and playful usage of language to be quite stimulating and more than a little amusing. And I have always imagined it to be exactly the type of intellectual exercise with which my friends and I would ceaselessly amuse ourselves, over postmeal cocktails and cappuccinos at, say, Mum’s or Cha Cha Cha, had I, of course, any friends.

  At any rate, I thug. And indeed it follows then that I must, to myself at least, pose the following question — since I do thug, am I then a thug?

  Rather than attempting to answer that question presently, though,2 I reach in front of me to the coffee table, pick up both the television remote control and the current issue of the TV Guide on top of which it rests. The Guide has been conveniently left open to the proper day but not the proper time, so I find myself flipping past pages of upcoming television “events” to reach the four p.m. listings.3 Not often having the inclination to watch television in the late afternoon, and curious as to with what I might be able to divert my attention, I find myself pleasantly surprised to see that, in addition to its regular eleven p.m. broadcast, the Charlie Rose show is now shown at four in the afternoon. I turn on the 36-inch Mitsubishi to channel 28, anxious to see whom Mr. Rose will be interviewing.4

  No sooner do I realize that a group of well-known journalists are discussing the ethical ramifications of the recent media coverage of a number of national news events 5 than I hear the unmistakable dull grinding of the garage door opener as it echoes through the kitchen. I turn off the television, slink into the kitchen, and take a position with my back flat against the wall next to the door leading into the garage.6 I hear Bobby’s keys jangling for a moment, and then a click as the door is unlocked. The door opens, concealing me from his peripheral vision as he steps into the room. I slam the door forcefully behind him.

  He jumps and spins toward the sound. When he sees me, the expression of fear on his face is very nearly palpable. The reasons for his fear are quite understandable, in fact, even logical, given three significant factors inherent in the situation: 1) there is someone in his kitchen who, for all intents and purposes, has no legal right to be there; 2) the particular someone standing in his kitchen is indeed quite intimidating, due not only to the aforementioned size and bulk,7 but also to the fact that the particular someone is, save for his eyelashes, completely bald (I suffer from a relatively rare disorder — alopecia areata — that causes, in more extreme cases such as mine, a complete ceasing of hair growth that may or may not be permanent),8 and 3) he knows precisely who the particular someone is and precisely why he is there. “Hello, Bobby,” I say, smiling, friendly, pleasant. It’s important to me to make the effort, whenever and wherever possible, to be as polite and courteous as the situation allows. This, I think, has more than a little to do with my particularly imposing physicality. It is an attempt, on both the conscious and, I suspect, subconscious levels, to allay, insomuch as it is possible, people’s reactions to my appearance.9

  “Jesus Fucking Christ! “ Bobby yells. “I almost pissed myself, you fucking bald-headed freak!” (Italics mine.)

  Of the many deprecatory references he might have uttered, he lit upon the single possibility that would undoubtedly cause me, at least momentarily, to lose my composure.10 I slap him in the face, and as he raises his hands in defense I deliver a forceful uppercut to his solar plexus. The power of the blow lifts him an inch off the floor, and as the wind explodes out of his lungs he collapses like a deboned salmon onto the floor.

  I watch him writhe there awhile, gasping for breath, trying to fill his lungs with air. I know I have a few moments before he’ll be capable of processing any rational thoughts, so I let him go and take a seat at the kitchen table. It’s a nice butcher-block set, very Pottery Barn. The accoutrements of the American bottled-water demographics’ consumerism were rampant — a two-door stainless restaurant refrigerator, an oversized gourmet stove with industrial-grade grates, a triple oven with convection, microwave, and broiler in one brushed chrome unit, all surrounding a granite-topped island over a rust-colored, antiqued tile floor.

  Bobby’s desperate writhing begins to slow, and I look down at him. His belted black leather coat is bunched up under his armpits, tufts of his carefully gelled and expensively trimmed yellow hair now jut from his head at odd angles, and he writhes in a semifetal position on the tile. The short gasps of air he is able to take into his lungs grow longer and he looks up at me. I smile affably.

  “I’m sorry, Bobby,” I say. “That was rather unprofessional of me.”

  Bobby has a puzzled look in his soft-contacted, artificially blue eyes.

  “But, of course, I am more than a little sensitive in regard to my baldness.”11 I pause for emphasis. “So I’ll say this only once — do not ever mention it again.”

  Bobby’s breathing approaches normalcy and he
sits up.

  “Are we clear on that point?”

  He tries to answer, but isn’t quite able yet. He nods instead.

  “Good.” I give him a moment to reflect on his situation, watching as he brushes a stiffened lock of hair off his forehead. I wonder if he will stay seated on the floor, or get up and perhaps attempt to join me at the table.

  “You, of course, know why I’m here,” I say. He stays on the floor and nods again. Good.12 I pause here, to allow him the option of the next move. He stares dumbly at me for a solid ten seconds. “Where’s the money, Bobby?”

  He reaches into his inside breast pocket and pulls out a roll of bills. Without even counting, I know it will be short. I take it from his outstretched hand and thumb through the bundle of twenties and fifties.