The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  “I’ll have the papers cleaned out tonight . . . and I’ll sweep it tomorrow, as a freebee, ’cause I’m not working. All these pictures and stuff . . .”

  “We told you to shit-can it.”

  “You mind if I take them? She was a friend of mine.”

  “We don’t care, just get them the fuck out. We’ve got a Realtor coming around to look at the place on Monday, gotta be cleaned by then. Could you wash the windows?”

  “Not for fifty bucks, no. The Realtor can take care of that.”

  She finished with the paper that night. One of the last things she looked at was a crumbling brown file pocket, the kind with a fold-over flap. When she opened it, she found a carefully folded sheath of semitransparent paper. She unfolded the sheets, each about three feet by two, like the paper used by architects for their plans.

  Drawings.

  Men with old-fashioned movie cameras and microphone booms, some wearing old-timey workmen’s hats. A man in what must’ve been an expensive suit, turned away, with a thirties haircut. One of Helen herself, holding what looked like a long dowel rod that extended over her head. Andi recognized it immediately: the star of the Hollywood painting, Helen as a nineteen- or twenty-year-old, wearing nothing but a bra and underpants. Another drawing was perhaps a different view of Helen, she thought, the blond woman shown from an overhead view; she might have been nude.

  She stared at it for a bit, then carefully folded all the papers and put them back in the file pocket and set it aside. The house was still hot, but she crawled around the floor, picking up photographs, glancing at them, setting them aside, until she finally found the one that Helen had shown her, of herself with Thomas Hart Benton. She put the photo in the brown file pocket with the drawings.

  * * *

  By midnight it was done. Andi had five garbage bags of paper but had been unable to throw away the photos and the movie memorabilia.

  Helen had told her about her movie life.

  “You’d look at me on a screen, and you’d hardly see me,” Helen had said one night as they sat in her backyard, sharing a joint. “Some of the girls—​Lauren Bacall—​they’d light it up. You’d look at me, and you wouldn’t even see me,” she said.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Andi said.

  “It was true. You had to figure it out, and that took a while, but it was true. Still, I made a living. I even have a SAG card. Haven’t seen it in years. I’d be a secretary who’d bring in some papers, and I’d say, ‘Here are the papers, Mr. Shipley,’ or whatever. I was in seventy movies like that, because they knew I was reliable. They’d call me in, I’d sit around for a couple of days, I’d get thirty seconds onscreen, and I’d go home. One time this Japanese guy—​Japanese American—​got in an auto accident on the Pasadena Freeway on the way to the studio, and they were shooting a war film and they needed a Jap to fire a machine gun from a bunker, and I was small and they put a lot of makeup on me and a helmet and had me in the bunker firing this machine gun, and then in another shot they had me charging with a gun and bayonet and screaming, ‘Banzai! Banzai!’ That was sort of the peak of my dramatic career.”

  And she laughed, and she blew a little pungent smoke out into the evening air, passed the joint back, and said, “You get the best shit, Andi. Musicians always have the best shit.”

  As Andi was locking up Helen’s house, she noticed an unfamiliar and unhappy odor at the back door and stepped outside: Bob had indeed taken a dump in the backyard, in fact in Helen’s flower bed.

  She locked the door and went home.

  * * *

  Andi mailed the reverse-mortgage papers to the Coopers. She had a spotty series of gigs over the next couple of weeks and picked up three extra shifts at Guitar Center when a salesman quit unexpectedly. A FOR SALE sign went up in Helen’s yard, and one day she saw Bob and Cheryl Cooper talking to an agent. When the agent left, she walked over, and Bob said, with a grim shake of his head, “Bad as we thought—​we’re gonna get a hundred thousand if we’re lucky, and my mom is backing out of the deal. She’s gonna throw us ten grand each and keep seventy, greedy bitch.”

  “Don’t talk about Mom like that,” Cheryl said. She was smoking, dug a second cigarette out of her purse, used the first one to light it, and flicked the used butt, still burning, into the street.

  “You suck up to her ’cause you’re trying to get more,” Bob said.

  “Fuck you. You’re an asshole.”

  “You want a ride home?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The house sold in August, but Andi never saw the Coopers again. The deal had probably been done electronically, and she never found out exactly how much they’d cleared. She had a very nice ten-day gig at Fox for a TV series that needed some blues guitar and got the transmission replaced on her Cube.

  Then she waited, and waited, and waited.

  * * *

  On October 1, a warm Wednesday evening, the girl with the ax turned down Gower Street at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard, down to Paramount Studios, and then right, to her four-hundred-square-foot bungalow with an air conditioner designed and manufactured by cretins.

  She unloaded her Les Paul and an Asher version of a Strat, went inside, put them in the guitar cabinet, turned on the air conditioner, got Helen’s old guitar out of a closet, and went back outside to the Cube.

  The trip to the Valley, to Van Nuys, took forty minutes because of a fender-bender on the 101. Loren’s Fine and Vintage Guitars was located in a neatly kept strip mall next to a hat store; Loren was an old pal. She carried Helen’s guitar inside, and Dale Loren came out and looked at it, and said, “Holy shit. I think . . . a ’58?”

  “When I first saw it, I was hoping it was a ’59,” Andi said.

  “It’s not. The neck’s too fat. Come on back, Andi, let’s look it up.”

  They went into the back room, where a worktable was covered with a soft rubber sheet. Loren examined the neck from the end, and both sides, ran his finger down the ends of the frets. “Neck is good. Frets are original.”

  “I thought so. I put a ruler on it, and there’s no waves or twist, as far as I can see.”

  “We’ll have to do a little more than put a ruler on it . . . Let’s check the serial number.”

  The serial number was stamped on the back of the headstock. Loren had a paper printout of Gibson Les Paul serial numbers. He ran a finger down the list and said, “Here it is: 1958. So, 1958 cherry-red sunburst, even still shows a little bit of the red. They’re usually pretty faded; they go yellow.”

  “Cherry red, like a cherry-red Camaro, almost.”

  “The same . . . The bridge and tuners will clean right up, the rust, that’s not a problem at all.”

  He turned it over. “Has some buckle-rash”—​he rubbed the rough spots with a thumb—​“but not bad. Where’d you get it?”

  “An old lady left it to me. She said it belonged to her husband—​he was killed in Vietnam. He was in World War II and Korea and then Vietnam, and it finally killed him.”

  “Have any more guitars?”

  “Not as far as I know . . .”

  “Tell you what,” Loren said. “I’ll give you a receipt, and I’ll have Terry clean it up. It’ll take a while . . . I’ll call you in two weeks.”

  “What’s your cut?” Andi asked.

  Loren shrugged. “I’ve got to make a living too, honey, and I have the techs who can restore it. I even got a guy who I think will buy it, like right now. I’ll take thirty percent, and I’ll tell you what, Andi, you won’t do any better anywhere else. If this had been used by some famous rocker, then it’d be more, but . . . you say you don’t know about that.”

  “Take it,” Andi said. “And Loren . . . let’s keep this under our hats, okay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Ten days later she got a text: “I got a buyer for $130,000. Your end will be $85,800. Yes or no?”

  Yes.

  * * *

  Okay, so the late-model Po
rsche Cayenne was a basic version and used, but not very—​thirty thousand miles. The Porsche dude said it would be good for two hundred thousand if she took care of it. He was mildly perplexed when she told him about the trade-in, but he walked out to take a look at the Cube. “Tranny’s real good,” Andi said.

  * * *

  And on a cool, bright day in December she drove over to the Getty and parked the Cayenne in the underground ramp. A curator and her assistant carefully unfolded the drawings on a library table, and the assistant said, “Oh, my God. You got them at a flea market?”

  “I did,” Andi said.

  “If these are real . . . we’ll want to look at them for a while, but that looks like Benton’s signature on this one and his initials on that,” the curator said. “Thomas Hart Benton had a very distinctive way of . . . you know, this might be one of his finest . . . a flea market? Really?”

  “Sure. And I want to do the right thing,” Andi said. “You can look at them as long as you want. If you could give me a receipt?”

  “Of course, and we’ll take some photos,” the curator said. “If you’d consider selling them, I’d hope that you’d let us bid.”

  “Yes. I’d like to keep them in Los Angeles,” Andi said. “I read about the painting, so they must’ve been here for eighty years. Los Angeles is their real home. I’d hate to see them go to someplace like . . .”

  “Back to Missouri?”

  “I was thinking, not even San Diego,” Andi said.

  * * *

  That night, out in the backyard, lying in a lounge chair, with the L.A. glow overhead, Andi sparked up a fatboy and looked to where the stars should be.

  “Thank you, babe. Miss you bad.”

  And she cried a little, but not too much.

  DBSCHLOSSER

  Pretzel Logic

  FROM Die Behind the Wheel

  The guys who come back the first time, they always say the biggest difference outside is the silence at night. They can’t sleep because it’s too quiet.

  The guys who come back a second time, they generally ain’t too self-aware. They say the biggest difference outside is the sensations. The food, it tastes so much better. The girls, they so much juicier. The air, it don’t smell like week-old socks all the time.

  Only one guy came back a third time when he was inside. That guy just scored himself a third strike with whatever he could pull off quick and easy that was barely a felony. That guy said the biggest difference is that everyone thinks there’s a big difference between being inside and being outside. But there ain’t.

  I ain’t never going back.

  * * *

  The red-blue strobe in his rearview mirror pulled his insides down. Adrenaline roiled him, and he tasted it at the back of his mouth. In his throat, electric and sour. He hit the blinker, searched for a polite excuse for whatever he might be told was the reason for the stop. DWB, dressed up like a burned-out bulb. Yes, sir. No, sir. An expired tag. Thank you, sir, may I have another.

  He put the Kia in park. Rolled down his window. Spun the volume on WJAZ to zero. Put his wallet and phone on the dashboard. Put his hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, fingers flung wide. Waited.

  “Driver.” A woman’s voice through the speaker. “Step out of the car and place your hands on the hood.”

  His head sagged. He took a deep, slow breath. He complied.

  The cop was young. If not a rookie, close. She’d be scared.

  “Spread your legs,” the cop said as she approached. Her hand rested on her pistol. “And don’t move.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He couldn’t read her name tag.

  The cop started a frisk. “Plates say this car is registered to a Randall Baxter. That’s you?”

  “People call me Bax.” Her frisk wasn’t very thorough. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Randall Baxter.”

  “You prove that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bax nodded toward his wallet. “My license is there. On the dashboard.”

  The cop reached through the open window. “Don’t move,” she repeated. She pulled the license and held it up to compare the photo to Bax’s face. Replaced the license in the wallet, the wallet on the dashboard. “You know why I pulled you over, Mr. Baxter?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I’m going to search your pockets. You got anything sharp in there?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Nothing that’s going to stick me?” The cop groped his back pockets, then started to crowd him, almost embracing him as she reached into his front pockets.

  “Ma’am—”

  “Shut up.” The cop got up close and personal. “You hear me, Mr. Baxter?” Raised her voice to a shout. “I said shut. The fuck. Up.” Spun him, backed him up against the side of the little SUV. Reached inside his jacket to search his inside pockets, then dropped something small and hard in the chest pocket of his shirt.

  “Ma’am, I—”

  The cop silenced him by grabbing bunches of his jacket in her fists, pulling him close. “Your code is Brooklyn,” she whispered into his face before she shouted, “I told you to shut up.”

  “But I din’t do nothin’,” he shouted back. Then he whispered, “Brooklyn.”

  * * *

  Bax’s day had started like most days: coffee, eggs with bacon, and strawberry jelly with sourdough toast at the counter of the diner on the dividing line between the suburbs and his city. Flirting over the newspaper with Venetta, the morning shift manager. Who’d let him take her out a couple of times. Who’d refused a dinner date at his pal Napoleon’s locally famous supper club until he started going to Sunday services with her, her daughter Margaret, and her mom. Who’d squinted up half her face when he’d offered the vaguest possible interpretation of his work.

  He recognized the flash off his kid brother’s blinged-out shoes in the parking lot. Recognized his boss’s Lexus SUV.

  “Ima take that booth over there,” he told Venetta. “Don’t you come wait on me.”

  Venetta started to speak but stopped when he shook his head once.

  Bax slid into the booth before his boss’s enforcer, Owsley, opened the passenger door for Reamer Kline. Bax’s balls unshriveled a tiny bit when Owsley, so big that the SUV listed toward the side he sat on, didn’t follow Mr. Kline toward the diner door. Bax knew Owsley’s kind from his bit. Knew Owsley enjoyed the beat-down he put on Russell to persuade Bax to fix for Mr. Kline.

  Mr. Kline waited at the diner’s door until Russell figured out it was his job to open the door.

  Bax saw some sullen fear in his brother’s eyes and wondered what it was about this time.

  Mr. Kline motioned for Russell to slide into the booth first, opposite Bax, so Mr. Kline could contain Russell. “Your idiot brother said I’d find you here.” Keep the kid from rabbiting.

  Bax narrowed his eyes. Gave his brother a hard stare. “I’m sorry it couldn’t wait until I got to the shop, Mr. Kline.” Waited for the waitress to serve coffee. “What do I need to fix for him now?”

  Russell snorted a protest.

  “Shut up, Russell.” Bax and Mr. Kline said it at the same time.

  Russell stared at the wall. Slouched lower.

  “Your idiot brother went and got all . . . entrepreneurial.” Mr. Kline waved off menus. “Managed to sell some—​property—​that already had a buyer.”

  Bax remained silent. Raced through Mr. Kline’s lines of business to assess what property Mr. Kline might be talking about. “Is it property we can get more of ?”

  “It is not.”

  That ruled out cars and parts, some drugs, and girls. It left knock-off Japanese whiskey and—​

  “All them FNs,” Russell said.

  Mr. Kline’s backhand across Russell’s face flashed so fast Bax might have missed it if not for the split that opened in the middle of his brother’s lower lip.

  “Russell,” Bax said, “you keep your own counsel for the rest of this conversation.” He pushed his napkin across the table. Motioned for Russe
ll to use it to stop the bleeding. “Mr. Kline—”

  “I know you thought you’d work off Russell’s debt in the next two, three years.”

  “Is this fixable?” Or just more debt?

  “I sold that property to the originally interested party.”

  “The gentlemen from San Leon.”

  “Exactly.” Mr. Kline paused while the waitress refilled his coffee. “And your brother somehow managed to secure a commitment to buy from the—​how did you say it? The gentlemen from Tyler.”

  Bax covered his face with his hands. Cursed silently into his palms. Decades more debt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kline.” Lifetimes. “I—​well, I’m just very sorry.”

  “Now, Bax, you don’t need to apologize.” Mr. Kline moved his hands like he was giving a benediction. “I know young Russell here is just a half-brother. So I can assume he acquired his extraordinary stupidity from his father, not yours.”

  Bax kicked Russell under the table to prevent his protest. “Yes, sir, Mr. Kline.”

  “Is this fixable, you ask.” Mr. Kline wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. “All the ways I can think to fix this involve throwing your brother to one or the other of the two motorcycle gangs currently waging war over which will control Texas.”

  Russell’s face melted from sullen fear to absolute terror.

  Bax kicked him again. “Let me think on it for a bit, Mr. Kline, if you will.”

  “You can understand why I’d like to find a more successful resolution.” Mr. Kline twisted the big nugget-looking ring that had opened Russell’s lip. “Can’t you, Bax.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But our time is short. Thanks to young Russell’s commitment, now both parties expect delivery within two days.”

  “Two days, Mr. Kline.”