The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

by Edited By Scott Turow

  It was a hard tramp down South Mountain to a road, but she propped me and kept shushing when I tried to say what all I reckoned had transpired. She named birds in the trees and flower bells by the pathway, keeping my mind from drifting back to that blood scene. It wasn’t till I’d had a night sleep and bowls of broth and some dittany tea with hard brandy that she said, let’s tell it now, and the whole swirling tussle came back before me, the blades in failing light, some rutting and laughter, the red tide and apples, my scream through green light, and the hint of honey. Before long the pieces in my heart had commenced to come together like a puzzle, while the rain was drumming again, shaking me back to that day with its whirlwind and bloodshed, and then I knew what I knew.

  ~ * ~

  The Account of a Baffling Spirit Appearance as Reported by Sister Sura Sawyer in the Roanoke Alternative Magazine, April 7, 1965

  As I was about to release my familiar, Prince Akira, at the conclusion of a successful séance, a voice unknown to me interceded and delivered a mysterious report which bore on none of the present circle but which seemed not of negligible import. As follows is my best recollection of the monologue spoken by a beard-faced essence hovering above the table but never fully in focus, as tormented spirits are wont to appear:

  When my sister Sheila passed in childbirth, I swore to help her lawful husband hold the child precious, as the Irish Creek was rife with copperheads of both the crawling and walking kinds. Poor sister, who was smitten hard with Anders Grove and never recovered from lovewit before she met her end. She was fool for a fiddle, and he bowed string music all along the Pedlar at play parties and stump speeches, moving widows, wives, and maids alike to sashay and smile. I took a shine to himself and pleasured at playing reel music to his devil’s box. It’s true enough he doted on her, but he had more eyes than the one, and they traveled, so even before Sheila was spent, I had concerns for her and the baby that he mightn’t stay and provide. When Anders was done in by a broke shaft timber, I knowed the child would get her best raising from me alone. I might be prone to poach and loath to till, but I had my own ways of bringing the specie in.

  Why I come back to speak with the white tongue is to say I done her wrong, swapping care for neglect whilst I milked the worm and horsed barrels of apple pomace about when it was too wet for the wheeling barrow. Good shine kept a roof over us and vittles on the table, but she much growed up her own creature till something ugly in me started taking low notice.

  In close quarters like ours, you can’t miss seeing, and she bloomed like the May apple all creamy and soft. Seems one day she was a doll child herself scolding the rag baby. Next day I was chewing sweetgum sap to cure my breath for her and sprucing my hair, as she was a little woman with fair flesh to taunt the hungry. I was hungry. I partook.

  To even talk moonlight with such close kin is a misdeed, I know, and I would wish for a hard brush to curry myself after we cuddled. I would speak to God to stop me before hard harm grew to habit. I said, Lord, I would not wish to tread her, but I do, and nothing ever smote me.

  There’s another verse to that song. Ina was rambunctious and would always hide where I could find her. We kept up the tease game for a year, never fording the stream, but then Painter commenced skulking and watching. At first, I took him for a still spy and found relief on him ogling the house from out in the rain. I figured him for a half-breed the John Laws kept in corn to scout us, knowing that’d peg him as lazy. He’d be all vine and no taters, and nobody’s idle spy will find where I shift my mash nor cut my faggots on Whetstone. By dark, in case he was peering from some windbreak, I’d have Ina strike the wick of a grease lamp and venture out to the crib or muck house. Anybody taking notice would follow her, and I’d slip over the casement and to my works.

  But then I seen he had other notions. She come back from the slope orchard with an ill smile and said, when I asked after the lurker, that she’d seen nothing but two yanks nesting in a white oak and a checkervest hammering his mattock, after tree beetles. It was yet too airish for the birds to be stirring so, just Easter or thereabouts, and she had that grin like a doll’s face stitched on. Jealousy is as bad to shake you as the preachers say, and if that Injun was to have zip on his stackcakes, it would not come from my ambry.

  One morning I claimed to her I’d be off a whole day decanting my usquebaugh but circled back to catch them in the beast act, and sure enough they was raw and blushed when I come in, Eve and Adam, but him dark as the devil. It was rage, all I saw, and after I slapped her a strong one, I pulled the razor, so we went round, thrashing and panting like we was red-tails mating, but he got lucky and cut my breadbasket, which leached much of the fight out of me. Still I had the advantage, as I’d slung Ina about in my temper, and he went to tend her, then started heating up a pot of water, like lie was to care for her, and I had forfeit all his attention on account of my weakness.

  That was when I reached for my boot gun, as I should of done at the outset. I knowed it was closing in, the deep moment, and what I was fighting for might fall to me forever mine or never, so I stuck my hand down toward the pistol butt. Then it closed over me, something floating dark and silky as night wind, and I felt my throat tearing like a lamb’s, the fountain flowing scarlet.

  The spray of my own life toward a sway of darkness was the last thing I could ever see and I am signed to tell it whenever a listener heeds.

  ~ * ~

  The News-Gazette, March 4, 1968 IRISII CREEK PROPERTY SOLD TO O’MALLEY LUMBER

  The property previously known as the Pogue Homestead on Irish Creek has been sold by the County of Rockbridge to the O’Malley Lumber Company of Fairfield. The twenty-four acres of prime hardwoods had been held in trust by the county for three years against unpaid property taxes, and the commission voted last Tuesday night to approve the sale to Michael O’Malley.

  The transaction would have proceeded with little notice but for Felton Newday’s insistence that a brief history of the property be read into the record, as the Pogue place was the site of a vicious murder and rape of a young girl sixty-four years ago. It was also the known haunt of brigands and poachers, and the murdered Leaf Pogue himself was long a recognized trafficker in illegal whiskies. The taxes were for a time paid sub rosa by a Ms. Fell every spring from 1954 until 1966 on the supposed anniversary of the crime, for which one Brodie Painter was convicted and hanged. The felon had put the old Pogue home to the torch after the crimes, but the outbuildings persisted as ramshackle reminders until the late fifties, and excursionists and hunters often used them as shelter. Many local residents will also recollect childhood legends of a spectral hen girl haunting the region.

  Mr. O’Malley plans to harvest the timber and eventually offer parcels of the land as multiple homesites in a division to be called Kissing Ridge. The area harbors some of the most majestic white oaks, locusts, and hickories in proximity to Lexington, and it will be a shame to see them laid waste, but the council decided unanimously that continued suspension of taxes would be a burden upon the community budget, and as Chair Wheeler Sherburne remarked, “The time of outlaws like Painter and Pogue has passed, and it would be a relief to see a commercial venture usher the infamous Irish Creek region into the twentieth century.”

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  ~ * ~

  JEFF SOMERS

  Ringing the Changes

  from Danger City

  Henry used to be a jolly bastard and a lot of fun, but he’d taken the pledge and turned out to be dull as dust when he didn’t have a drink in his hand. All he could talk about was his salvation, his sobriety. It was boring stuff. A million weak bastards before him had had the same revelation, and a million more were lining up to dry out after him. Nothing special about it, really, yet people always went on and on about it as if God had reached down and waggled a finger at them and no one else.

  At least I was still working, and Henry was pretty good cover. Plus, there wasn’t much Henry didn’t know about what was happening in outline; his mom
ent of clarity had apparently made old Hankie a good listener, so I felt it was a good idea to stay on his good side, in case I ever needed information. We used to be tight, and he used to be a grand time, so I gave him a little ear-time. I bought him a steady stream of club sodas, which he drank exactly as he’d drunk booze: never putting the glass down, using it to gesture his points, and killing it with a million little sips. If you weren’t listening to his endless sermon about giving up The Drink, you’d think his glass was a vodka tonic or a gimlet.

  It was slow, and I wasn’t making much, so I hurried Henry along. I waved my hand at the bartender and looked at Henry, the dry old bastard.

  “Want another?”

  “Sure. You shouldn’t go so hard, buddy. Believe me, I know.”

  I nodded, glancing at the bartender. “Another bourbon, kiddo.” He looked down at the pile of money on the bar, a crisp fifty right on top, and took my empty glass away. Keeping an eye on him, I inched my hand over and switched the fifty with one of mine from the bottom.

  This is what I did. I made people see what I wanted them to see. Even Henry, who didn’t notice that my glass was mostly melted ice and watery booze, hardly touched.

  The bartender brought my drink and set it in front of me.

  “You should charge more for nonalcoholic drinks, buddy,” I said, catching his eye. “Discourage the teetotalers, eh?”

  He shrugged, plucking the bill off the top, his eyes on me. “Nah. We don’t get many in here anyway.”

  Without glancing at the money, he carried it to the register and rang up my change, bringing back forty-six real dollars and dumping them on the bar. I left them there for a bit, not even looking at them. After a while I’d collect them and put the fifty back on top. For the time being, I studied Henry as if he was the most interesting guy in the world.

  “How long’d you do in Rahway?”

  Henry nearly lost control of his glass, gesturing. “Three years. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Henry dried out in prison. At first it wasn’t voluntary, of course, but then he hooked up with a substance-anonymous crowd and took the pledge. He was going on four years sober now — four sad, desultory, plodding years, but years he was proud of nevertheless.

  “Nothing to do but think in prison,” he went on. “Not for me, anyway. Some guys found other distractions, but I never had anything except booze.”

  Henry had no idea how true that was, I suspected, considering his gray, lifeless demeanor post-booze.

  “At first all I thought about was booze. You could get some in prison, but I never could do it. I never had anything to pay with, except my ass, and I wasn’t that far gone. So I thought a lot. And I realized that I was in jail because of liquor.”

  I knew this speech pretty well. Henry got pinched because he’d been loaded. It was pure professionalism that drove the man sober. He never wanted to fuck up again and land back in a place as boring as jail. Henry liked his cable TV.

  I stopped listening, letting it wash over me.

  Mine wasn’t a high-rolling life. I made enough to pay the rent and keep things moving. There were no big scores to be had, I knew this, but there were also few chances at getting killed or arrested if I played it straight. Didn’t get fancy. Counterfeit money got traced or sometimes spotted, and a lot of time people remembered me as the guy who spent a lot of fifties. I had to go to different places, work different neighborhoods. If I went to the same place twice, I could get pinched.

  My man the bartender wasn’t the brightest fellow in the bar, but I didn’t think I could pass more than one or two more fifties his way anyway, and Henry was only on chapter one of “How I Won the War,” just getting warmed up. So, I gathered up my cash, left a good tip, and stood up. Henry didn’t care. He didn’t even pause for breath, he just barreled on, giving me the background on his conversion from lush to self-satisfied teetotaler. I knew how it ended — with a lecture from him on why I was a fool to keep drinking.

  Which was annoying, since I didn’t.

  I spoke right over him. “All right, Hankie, I gotta roll.”

  He trailed off and looked away, insulted. “Yeah, okay.”

  Walking out of the place, I felt sad. It was a good bar: dark and smoky, wood everywhere, and not filled with complainers. Good jukebox.

  ~ * ~

  The Wallace Hotel was hovering between worlds — middle-class decay on the one hand, and people like me on the other. Cheap tourists stayed a few days at a time, or stylish tourists who liked the old-fashioned look of furnishings that hadn’t been changed in fifty years.

  And then there were people like me. We didn’t have jobs or paperwork. We had cash, and an aversion to questions. I’ve lived there for two years and some weeks, and I’ve never once spoken with a neighbor. We were all perfect tenants because we didn’t shit where we lived. We picked our messages up at the front desk, kept to ourselves, and paid our rent on time. The Wallace, no doubt, wanted more criminals to move in.

  I had three rooms, a suite. It was cheap and clean, with a strongbox filled with cash hidden under floorboards beneath the bed: thirty-three thousand dollars, socked away a little at a time. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was an insurance policy, a bit of scratch to carry me through a rough patch. I’d earned it all through small, safe grifts. I was careful, slow, and steady.

  There was a coffee can in the cupboard with two grand in it. To look at the place, you’d think two grand’s about the best I could do. I figured if anyone came snooping, they’d find the coffee can in about five minutes and think that was it.

  I worked neighborhoods, using color-copy big bills — twenties and fifties. It wasn’t very sophisticated, and it wouldn’t pass muster with anyone who knew their currency, but it worked with distracted register jockeys untrained in catching counterfeits. I still got caught from time to time, but I found that I could usually bluff my way out by appearing as surprised as they were. Color-copy counterfeits, even on linen paper, didn’t feel like real money, or smell like real money, but since I didn’t get greedy, I pulled it off. I’d only print $5,100 in fifties, which is thirty-four double-sided copies. That’s two bucks each on a self-serve machine unless I could scam free ones. So, for maybe seventy bucks, I had $5,100 in worthless money, which I then cut at home, carefully. Then I went shopping.

  Most shop owners won’t break a fifty for something small, but I wanted as much good money back for each fake as I could manage. I usually began by trying to buy a soda for a dollar, or a buck fifty. If they refused, I explained that I needed change. Sometimes I made forty-eight bucks, sometimes forty. Even at the low end, I made about four grand in a week if I managed to pass all the bills, but finding a hundred places in a week was hard. Each store took time, too. I had to cast the spell and do a little dance, be indecisive, pick up items and put them back, ask a lot of questions, be in a hurry — anything to keep the bastard from looking closely at my money.

  The other half of my game had one simple rule: never pay bills with fakes. First off, my fakes were lame, easily spotted ones — I counted on bored, distracted people to accept them without question. Banks, on the other hand, would trace me.

  ~ * ~

  The dying afternoon sun sifted through my blinds like dust and warmed the stale air in my suite. I stepped up to the bed, a simple twin with a crappy mattress that came with the place. The only thing I’d done was replace the thin gray mattress with a brand new thin gray mattress. I made money by not spending it, but I drew the line at sleeping with a previous tenant’s skin conditions. In fact, news about mattress sales was the only real small talk at the Wallace.

  I began emptying my pockets.

  Sometimes even I was amazed at how much currency I traded in a day. I tossed bills onto the bed, big sweaty wads of them. I pooled the coins separately, for future sorting. Then, I sat down on the bed and sorted the bills, counting as I went. In bills, I managed three hundred and seventy-three dollars, which wasn’t bad for an afternoon that had ende
d with Henry’s lecture of sobriety. I piled the money into neat rubber-banded stacks, pulled out the strongbox, and the place filled with the golden light of upward mobility for a moment, improved the furniture, removed the water stains, and filled the cracks in the walls. I added the cash. A few quick adjustments in the ledger to reflect the new money, and I put everything carefully back where it had been, the strongbox chained to a bolt.

  The apartment was transformed back into the last stop on the way down — nothing to see.

  I went into the middle room to my bar, which was just a bottle of whiskey and a pitcher of dusty water. I poured two fingers of booze and stood by the grimy windows, yellow light illuminating the dust.

  ~ * ~

  I felt tired and heavy. So much effort, just to survive. So I decided on a steak for dinner. I changed into a light suit to go to Andy’s around the corner, where all the waiters had a good-natured competition for my big tips. Down in the lobby, I had messages. One was another grifter seeking a loan, but I had better things to do with my money; it never paid to admit I had enough to lend. The second message was from a police contact, an innocuous note signed “Mr. Blue.” I pocketed them both and went to dinner.