"A reporter investigating a fender-bender?” I said. “I don't believe it."
"Maybe Lamour put him up to it. Maybe he wasn't even a reporter. What do I know?"
I knew where he was going with this, and I was short of time. “I'm sorry you got dragged into this, but I'm not going to lie,” I said.
* * * *
Eugene called back later. He'd gotten ahold of Lamour and arranged a meeting for that night at Lamour's house. He sounded better than he had earlier, but still a little shaky. The shakiness was the side of Eugene that my wife hadn't seen.
"I want you to come,” Eugene insisted.
Meeting with Lamour seemed like a crazy idea to me. I asked Eugene what he hoped to accomplish by it. Eugene said he thought Lamour could be persuaded to back off.
"You're going to buy him off,” I said.
"Maybe."
I said, “I don't think I can make it."
* * * *
Around eleven that night, the phone rings. It's Eugene. “I'm sitting in your driveway,” he says. “I need to talk to you."
Margie's watching a Julia Child rerun. “Who's calling at this hour?"
I'm lacing my shoes, zipping up my fly. “Don't worry about it, I'll be right back."
The dome light doesn't go on when I climb in Eugene's front seat.
"How'd it go?"
"Terrible."
"How so?"
"Dick, I need your help."
"I'm listening."
"Lamour's dead."
I get a scooped-out, nauseated feeling in my chest.
It takes a couple of minute for the details to come out. “I brought money. He said it wasn't enough."
"Damn,” I say. “Dead.” I couldn't believe it.
"Dead,” Eugene says.
"For two thousand ... three thousand bucks."
"The son of a bitch pushed me."
"And you?"
"Pushed back. We were in the kitchen. He hit his head on the edge of the sink."
Eugene says he did everything he could to save the bastard.
Where was Lamour now?
"Lying on his kitchen floor, wrapped in a tarp."
In my mind it's a blue tarp, who knows why. I ask Eugene if anyone saw him, coming or going.
He hesitates. “I don't think so."
"What about Junior?"
"I don't know. Out of town, I hope. Listen, Dick..."
"I'm listening."
Eugene laughs, a little weirdly. “I've got a plan...."
"Okay."
He gets into it. He's going to sneak back to Lamour's and clean up—luckily, there hadn't been much blood. Then around two, when everybody on Pinecrest was asleep, I'd come over. Together, we'd throw Lamour into the trunk of Eugene's car and take him to the Meewaulin quarry. “What do you say?"
Suddenly there are lights behind us, and a car pulls up practically on Eugene's back bumper, locking us in. Before Eugene can think to lock the doors, the back door opens and somebody gets in. I twist the rearview mirror to see who.
"Yo, neighbors.” It's dark in the backseat, but Junior Lamour's eyes haven't changed. Too big for his face, they have the ability to look sleepy and malevolent at the same time.
I have this ominous feeling that the war between the Lamours and O'Dells has reached its final stage.
Eugene pulls down the door handle, but Junior says, “You don't want to do that."
A phrase like scared shitless takes on new meaning at a time like this.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see something dark and shiny pressing against the back of Eugene's neck. In a pinch, it seems, even a karate expert wants to have firepower on his side.
"He wasn't a bad man, my dad,” Junior says.
I pull on the passenger-side door handle, and immediately feel something cold against the back of my neck.
"Stay where you are, Mailbox Man."
"I had nothing to do with your father's death,” I say.
"Sure, and I never touched your freaking mailboxes."
Eugene looks at me.
I shrug.
"I tried to save your dad,” Eugene says. “Believe me, I did everything possible."
"Yeah, after you killed him."
"It was an accident,” Eugene says.
"When I blow your freaking brains out that will be an accident.” The cold object is no longer pressed against my neck.
"He fell ... he hit his head,” Eugene says.
The gun—again focused on Eugene—makes a clicking noise, loud as a cannon in that small space. Cocked, I guess.
"You gain nothing by killing me,” Eugene says.
"I gain satisfaction,” Junior says. “My dad made mistakes, but you two—all you cared about was your mailbox and snooping and spreading rumors and calling the cops and playing golf.... Call yourself neighbors? Neighbors?" He starts to laugh.
Right after that the gun goes off, spraying the contents of my friend's head around the interior of the Lexus.
And right after that—although I wasn't aware of it at the time—Junior Lamour, making his escape, hits my mailbox with his back bumper, wiping it out for the last time.
* * * *
I don't mind admitting it, it takes awhile to recover from losing your best friend.
A year later I still get these ringing sounds in my head, which is a problem for someone in my line of work. My wife jumps a mile every time a truck backfires—she's gained a ton, too. I have bad dreams, take medication. (My therapist says I've got some kind of post-traumatic stress condition.) And of course, since my provisional membership ran out, it's goodbye golf at the Lake Meewaulin Club.
And I've got nobody to sue.
The neighborhood's different now, with Meads and Lamours gone. Junior gone, too, as it turned out, having managed for a few days to avoid capture but not, finally, death (ramming his beater into the back end of a semi full of Chinese imported toys). A guy who's in insurance bought Lamour's place, but only after it had been on the market for six months. Eugene's is still for sale—we don't know where Marie's gone.
The insurance couple seems nice enough, but—as Margie points out—with three kids they're not at the stage of life we are. And maybe we've been snake-bit when it comes to friendship. Fact is, I don't know about friendship. You get close to people—you get invested in them. You think you understand them. Spend all that time together—going out to dinner, vacations, et cetera. Trust them entirely. And then after twenty years, they do something crazy. They screw up and they want to involve you in their screw-up. Not that I don't miss Eugene—I do. All the good times we had together. It's just that, well, Margie and I agree, it's going to be a long time before we're able to trust anybody again. I mean, for me—now—the whole concept of having a best friend is, I don't know, tainted.
Anyway, Margie wants to move, she says she's had it with Pinecrest Lane, too many bad memories. Not me, I tell her, now that the war between the Lamours and the O'Dells is finally over.
(c)2007 by John Goulet
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Passport to Crime: PETER IN ST. PAUL'S by Sabina Naber
Sabina Naber began her career in theater, where she worked as an actress and director, and a writer of musicals and song lyrics. In 1996, she began to do some screenwriting as well, and also turned her hand to prose fiction, first with stories for anthologies. Her first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2002 and was followed by 2003's The Circle and 2005's The Debutante. Her story for us received the renowned Friedrich Glauser Prize for best short crime fiction of 2007.
* * * *
Translated from the German by Mary Tannert
* * * *
The tourist bus was coming straight at her. Or was she moving toward it? Think! 280 feet from the ground, dizziness seized Antonia. Think! Don't feel, think! Breath tried desperately to get through her throat. 280 feet down and the few, maybe 150, that were horizontal, that was a2 times b2—the CO2 burned in her chest. Pythagoras. Exactly
how many feet away was that damned bus, anyway? Her sweaty hand slipped off the smooth stone wall next to the door, her arms flailed wildly and at the last second made contact with the railing of the spiral staircase behind her that she had climbed to get to the topmost observation platform. The movement was uncontrolled and her hand struck the iron hard; the pain from the blow made fear loose its death grip on her throat. She sucked in air with a whistling noise.
She was the stupidest person on earth.
A small girl pushed past Antonia, squealing with joy, and ran across the platform, which was only a couple of feet wide. She leaned over, leaned right out over the railing! Just like that! She chattered excitedly in some kind of Spanish at a plump woman who was dragging herself, gasping, up the last stairs of the spiral staircase. Mama was supposed to hurry. But Mama just leaned, smiling benevolently, against the stone wall, fanning herself. Why didn't she do something? Didn't she realize her child was practically looking death in the face? Just then, the little girl bent her head over the balustrade again. Antonia forced herself to the stone doorway and took a step out onto the platform, her hand stretched out to grab the girl's T-shirt and pull her to safety, but as soon as she did, the square in front of St. Paul's Cathedral came rushing at her again. Her mouth formed meaningless signs and the air in her lungs became very scarce. As if acting on its own orders, her other hand closed over the frame of the door opening and pulled the rest of her body away from the waist-high railing back into the protective darkness of the small domed room.
A drop of sweat tickled Antonia's nose. The mother joined her little girl and together they practiced spitting over the balustrade into thin air. Antonia leaned against the banister at the top of the spiral staircase and waited for the blackness in her head to stop whirling.
She was the stupidest person on earth.
The man down in the church wasn't Peter. And he couldn't have been; Peter was dead. She had followed a doppelganger up to the Golden Gallery. And because of him, because of this chimera, she was risking her life.
She was truly the stupidest person on earth.
* * * *
The woman in the security guard's uniform had begun to scrutinize her more and more closely. Antonia forced herself to smile vacuously and assume a friendly but slightly bored expression at all the people arriving, panting painfully, at this highest point in St. Paul's. Only a few stayed next to the stone wall of the tower, the rest went and looked curiously over the railing downward. But that wasn't what had begun to make Antonia nervous. Of all those people who'd forced their way past her through the narrow doorway onto the platform, none had come back her way! First it was just a vague feeling that came over her while she was still fighting her panic and just looking down the spiral staircase made her sweat twice as much. But then she confirmed her suspicion by monitoring the movements of a fat man in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, and the realization fought its way into her consciousness, though it came with such potential for panic that Antonia involuntarily refused to entertain it. The man had been on the platform for twenty minutes already, and that alone wasn't normal. And to top it off, meanwhile at least fifty people had come up after him and gone out onto the Golden Gallery. They couldn't possibly all have fit out there. The only logical explanation was that there was an exit you only reached by going out onto the platform.
Not on your life!
Antonia's glance flickered around the domed room in the illogical hope of finding a hidden inside exit. She saw nothing but a window with opalescent glass in it; she could see shadows moving past it on the other side. And no one passed the next window. That made things pretty clear. And just exactly what was it, this audacity of an exit? An unprotected exterior staircase, perhaps? A man who'd been blocking about a third of the opalescent window for some time now also seemed to regard the descent as a challenge. Or maybe he was waiting for someone? He wiped his face and lifted a hat or cap that Antonia couldn't see clearly through the window until he turned and stood in silhouette. It was a beret—just like the one a few minutes ago, worn by that man who looked like Peter ... Was that this man? Was it Peter after all? Was he waiting for her? Without thinking, Antonia took one step toward the platform. The act pulled her out of her visions. Yes, that's what they were, visions, because just at that moment, the man on the other side of the window turned toward the exit and his silhouette disappeared. Antonia forced herself to breathe out. This beret wearer was just a Fata Morgana, a déja-vu. His old-fashioned beret, unusual for a man these days, had confused her so much that she'd lost her grip on the facts. Because she'd seen Peter's body. Yes. So that man out there could not be her one true love.
Not on your life.
The security guard was mistress of the spiral staircase, a Cerberus between Antonia and the road back to life. Her eyes caught and held Antonia's restless glance. Antonia smiled conspiratorially and, as unconcernedly as she possibly could, whispered, “Exit,” and pointed toward the platform. The guard nodded severely. Antonia nodded. Slowly and more often than was necessary. Don't lose your poise now. Cerberus began to swell. She seemed to crowd Antonia, to push her away from the stairs that would rescue her by taking her down, but were only meant for coming up.
So Antonia got up from the cold stone ledge she'd been sitting on and took a small step outside. Two teenagers stormed past her, taking her with them a few inches. Her heart stopped, and then began to race. There! Wasn't that bit of stone giving way under her feet? The floor tilted forward, she could feel it; it tipped toward the edge with an almost lustful speed! Why didn't anyone else notice? But the railing stayed where it was—how could that be?—and came closer and closer. Antonia gripped it and pushed back. But the magnet on the other side of the railing was much stronger, and it sucked at her head. The square in front of the cathedral tilted and began to pump like a huge heart. At the same time, its surface became soft, tempting her to jump. It looked like one of those rescue air-cushions used by the fire department. How long would a free fall last? Ten seconds? Twenty? Or just five? Suddenly the picture shook and someone behind her bellowed, “Sorry!” at her neck. Antonia turned around reflexively—the instinctive British “Sorry!” had become such a habit over the last two weeks. The stone wall was solid and the siren call of the railing behind her grew weaker. She grabbed the man, and, using him as a pivot, took one giant leap back into the darkness of the dome.
Not on your life!
* * * *
Why did her sister have to be sick today of all days? Hypochondriac! Lying around in their hotel room. A sniffle was really no reason to miss all the exciting new things on this trip. And Valentina would have seen that man for what he was—a figment of Antonia's imagination, not in the least like the original. They would have listened in peace to the choir rehearsal, and right now they would probably be sitting somewhere, enjoying a hamburger with those wonderful homemade French fries. Instead, Antonia crouched in a trap set for her at dizzying heights.
But why? Why?
Cerberus looked at Antonia like a predator studies its prey, and then motioned outside. Twilight was dissolving the skyline; the black of the railing softened and blended into the dusky air. Antonia looked at her watch. The cathedral would close in twenty minutes. Shouldn't her life, threatened by such a steep fall, be passing before her eyes? Or would this much-vaunted phenomenon only occur during the final five seconds, when she was eye to eye, so to speak, with the asphalt rushing up to meet her? And what would her unconscious show her then?
Suddenly, Antonia felt a terrible desire for a cigarette. It was a feeling she thought she'd gotten over three years ago. She began to laugh. If she'd only known then that she'd die in a fall from St. Paul's Cathedral, she'd have gone on puffing. She'd have dismissed Peter's health mania with a languid wave of her hand. She'd probably also have gone on smoking if she'd known they only had eighteen more months together. What were a couple of black spots in your lungs compared with a gunshot in the head? None of it had helped, not his obsessive workout
s, his abstinence, his vegetarianism, his vitamin candies. Nothing. Coincidence had decided to send him across the path of those hoodlums in the parking garage. And they weren't the least impressed by his flawless face, they'd just shot it all to a bloody clump of flesh. They'd done the job so well that Peter could only be identified by his just as flawless body and the W-shaped scar above his right hip. In just a second or two, those thugs had rendered everything senseless, all their work and dreams, hers and Peter's.
But why? Why?
It was all part of a giant clown's act. Why, after all, had she insisted on this trip to London, a trip that now spelled her own end? What had she hoped to find here in Peter's hometown? Words of comfort? That was the farthest thing from Scott's mind; she'd seen that in his dulled eyes once he'd finally realized who she was. A loser in the suburbs, come down in the world and with a bad case of acne he would doubtless carry to his retirement. Presuming anyone ever gave him a pension. It hadn't been easy to find him. But she'd finally hunted him down in the eighth pub named “Bloody Mary.” It was astonishing how different best friends could be. And it was a little clearer to her now why Peter hadn't invited Scott to their wedding. He must have been ashamed of him. Which threw a shadow across her hero, admittedly: A truly noble man is not ashamed of his friends. Or maybe it was true, what Peter said, that Scott had a fear of strangers so bad that it would cause his acne to swell and smother him if he ever had to leave England. That he really was the living proof of the saying “My home is my castle.” At any rate, all her efforts had been for nothing. Scott was one of the tight-lipped of this world—and, to conclude from his darting eyes, he had a big problem with women. Which was neither surprising nor particularly noteworthy.
And why hadn't she listened to Valentina and banished all thought of a visit to Peter's parents? If she'd gone to Cambridge with Valentina instead, she'd have spared herself one of the most painful experiences of her life. Oh yes, it was really helpful, this if-onlying of hers. Because if she hadn't been so frustrated by Scott and her own stupid ideas, she wouldn't have gotten into a drinking match the night before with that pro golfer, and then she wouldn't have been hung over when she met the Clarks. And if she hadn't been hung over, she would have been more quick-witted, would have told the two of them exactly where they could stuff their accusations. Because if she had gone to the parking garage with Peter—against his express wishes, let it be noted—then she'd be dead too. Yes indeed. And if she'd never been born, she wouldn't now be maneuvering herself into a situation with no way out.
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