The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  “He won’t have to. Look, we got guns. We take down the couriers on the sidewalk, after they get out of their car. We can do this in two minutes, be in our own car, and be gone. We’ll slash their tires so they can’t follow.”

  Potts leaned forward, a look of intense interest on his thin face. “What do you think the odds are, Lewis?”

  “Eight to one, our favor,” Lewis said confidently.

  “Hmmm,” Hoxie said, “that high?”

  “Absolutely.”

  It only took a moment for them to decide.

  “I’m in,” Potts said.

  “Me too,” Hoxie added.

  Lewis smiled.

  Potts telephoned out for pizza and beer, and when it was delivered, the three dying men began planning their second stickup.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  STUART M. KAMINSKY

  Sometimes Something Goes Wrong

  from The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology

  “YOU SURE?”

  Beemer looked at Pryor and said, “I’m sure. One year ago. This day. That jewelry store. It’s in my book.”

  Pryor was short, thin, nervous. Dustin Hoffman on some kind of speed produced by his own body. His face was flat, scarred from too many losses in the ring for too many years. He was stupid. Born that way. Punches to the head hadn’t made his IQ rise. But Pryor did what he was told and Beemer liked telling Pryor what to do. Talking to Pryor was like thinking out loud.

  “One year ago. In your book,” Pryor said, looking at the jewelry store through the car window.

  “In my book,” Beemer said, patting the right pocket of his black zipper jacket.

  “And this is . . . ? I mean, where we are?”

  “Northbrook. It’s a suburb of Chicago,” said Beemer patiently.

  Pryor nodded as if he understood. He didn’t really, but if Beemer said so, it must be so. He looked at Beemer, who sat behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the door of the jewelry store. Beemer was broad shouldered, well built from three years with the weights in Stateville and keeping it up when he was outside. He was nearing fifty, blue eyes, short, razor haircut, gray-black hair. He looked like a linebacker, a short linebacker. Beemer had never played football. He had robbed two Cincinnati Bengals once outside a bar, but that was the closest he got to the real thing. Didn’t watch sports on the tube. In prison he had read, wore glasses. Classics. For over a year. Dickens. Hemingway. Steinbeck. Shakespeare. Freud. Shaw, Irwin, and George Bernard. Then one year to the day he started, Beemer stopped reading. Beemer kept track of time.

  Now, Beemer liked to keep moving. Buy clothes, eat well, stay in classy hotels when he could. Beemer was putting the cash away for the day he’d feel like retiring. He couldn’t imagine that day.

  “Tell me again why we’re hitting it exactly a year after we hit it before,” Pryor said.

  Beemer checked his watch. Dusk. Almost closing time. The couple who owned and ran the place were always the last ones in the mall besides the Chinese restaurant to close. On one side of the jewelry store, Gortman’s Jewelry and Fine Watches, was a storefront insurance office. State Farm. Frederick White the agent. He had locked up and gone home. On the other side, Himmell’s Gifts. Stuff that looked like it would break if you touched it in the window. Glassy-looking birds and horses. Glassy, not classy. Beemer liked touching real class, like really thin glass wineglasses. If he settled down, he’d buy a few, have a drink every night, run his finger around the rim and make that ringing sound. He didn’t know how to do that. He’d learn.

  “What?”

  “Why are we here again?” Pryor asked.

  “Anniversary. Our first big score. Good luck. Maybe. It just feels right. “

  “What did we get last time?”

  The small strip mall was almost empty now. Maybe four cars if you didn’t count the eight parked all the way down at the end by the Chinese restaurant. Beemer could take or leave Chinese food, but he liked the buffet idea. Thai food. That was his choice. Tonight they’d have Thai. Tomorrow they’d take the watches, bracelets, rings to Walter on Polk Street. Walter would look everything over, make an offer. Beemer would take it. Thai food. That was the ticket.

  “We got six thousand last time,” Beemer said. “Five minutes’ work. Six thousand dollars. More than a thousand a minute.”

  “More than a thousand a minute,” Pryor echoed.

  “Celebration,” said Beemer. “This is a celebration. Back where our good luck started.”

  “Back light went out,” Pryor said, looking at the jewelry store.

  “We’re moving,” Beemer answered, getting quickly out of the car.

  They moved right toward the door. Beemer had a Glock. His treasure. Read about it in a spy story in a magazine. Had to have it. Pryor had a piece-of-crap street gun with tape on the handle. Revolver. Six or eight shots. Piece of crap, but a bullet from it would hurt going in and might never come out. People didn’t care. You put a gun in their face they didn’t care if it was precision or zip. They knew it could blow out their lights.

  Beemer glanced at Pryor, keeping pace at his side. Pryor had dressed up for the job. He had gone through his bag at the motel, asked Beemer what he should wear. Always asked Beemer. Asked him if he should brush his teeth. Well, maybe not quite, but asked him almost everything. The distance to the moon. Could eating Equal really give you cancer. Beemer always had an answer. Quick, ready. Right or wrong. He had an answer.

  Pryor was wearing blue slacks and a Tommy Hilfiger blue pullover short-sleeved shirt. He had brushed his hair, polished his shoes. He was ready. Ugly and ready.

  Just as the couple inside turned off their light Beemer opened the door and pulled out his gun. Pryor did the same. They didn’t wear masks. Artist’s sketches were for shit. Ski masks itched. Sometimes Beemer wore dark glasses. That’s if they were working the day. Sometimes he had a Band-Aid on his cheek. Let them remember that or the fake mole he got from Gibson’s Magic Shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina. That was a bad hit. No more magic shops. He had scooped up a shopping bag of tricks and practical jokes. Fake dog shit. Fake snot you could hang from your nose. He threw it all away. Kept the mole though. Didn’t have it on now.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  The couple didn’t move. The man was younger than Beemer by a decade. Average height. He had grown a beard in the last year. Looked older. Wearing a zipper jacket. Blue. Beemer’s was black. Beemer’s favorite colors were black and white. That was the way he liked things. The woman was blond, somewhere in her thirties, sort of pretty, too thin for Beemer’s tastes. Pryor remembered the women. He never touched them, but he remembered and talked about them at night in the hotels or motels. Stealing from good-looking women was a high for Pryor. That and good kosher hot dogs. Chicago was always good for hot dogs if you knew where to go. Beemer knew. On the way back, they’d stop at a place he knew on Dempster. Make Pryor happy. Sit and eat a big kosher or two, lots of fries, ketchup, onions, hot peppers. Let Pryor talk about the woman.

  She looked different. She was wearing a green dress. She was pregnant. That was it.

  “No,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Beemer. “You know what to do. Stand quiet. No alarms. No crying. Nothing stupid. Boy or a girl?”

  Pryor was behind the glass counters, opening them quickly, shoveling, clinking, into the Barnes & Noble bag he had taken from his back pocket. There was a picture of Sigmund Freud on the bag. Sigmund Freud was watching Beemer. Beemer wondered what Freud was thinking.

  “Boy or girl?” Beemer repeated. “You know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl?”

  “Girl,” said the man.

  “You got a name picked out?”

  “Melissa,” said the woman.

  Beemer shook his head and said, “Too ... I don’t know . . . too what everybody else is doing. Something simple. Joan. Molly. Agnes. The simple is different. Hurry it up,” he called to Pryor.

  “Hurry it up, right,” Pryor ans
wered, moving faster, the B&N bag bulging, Freud looking a little plump and not so serious now. “We’ll think about it,” the man said.

  Beemer didn’t think so.

  “Why us?” the woman said. Anger. Tears were coming. “Why do you keep coming back to us?”

  “Only the second time,” said Beemer. “Anniversary. One year ago today. Did you forget?”

  “I remembered,” said the man, moving to his wife and putting his arm around her.

  “We won’t be back,” Beemer said as Pryor moved across the carpeting to the second showcase.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the man. “After this we won’t be able to get insurance.”

  “Sorry,” said Beemer. “How’s business been?”

  “Slow,” said the man with a shrug. The pregnant woman’s eyes were closed.

  Pryor scooped.

  “You make any of this stuff?” Beemer asked, looking around. “Last time there were some gold things, little animals, shapes, birds, fish, bears. Little.”

  “I made those,” the man said.

  “See any little animals, gold?” Beemer called to Pryor.

  “Don’t know,” said Pryor. “Just scooping. Wait. Yeah, I see some.”

  Beemer looked at his watch. He remembered where he got it. Right here. One year ago. He held up the watch to show the man and woman.

  “Recognize it?” he said.

  The man nodded.

  “Keeps great time,” said Beemer. “Class.”

  “You have good taste,” the man said.

  “Thanks,” said Beemer, ignoring the sarcasm. The man had a right. He was being robbed. He was going out of business. This was a going-out-of-business nonsale. The man wasn’t old. He could start again, work for someone else. He made nice little gold animals. He was going to be a father. The watch told Beemer that they had been here four minutes.

  “Let’s go,” he called to Pryor.

  “One more minute. Two more. Should I look in the back?”

  Beemer hesitated.

  “Anything back there?” Beemer asked the man.

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Forget it,” he called to Pryor. “We’ve got enough.”

  Pryor came out from behind the case. B&N bag bulging. More than they got the last time. Then Pryor tripped. It happens. Pryor tripped. The bag fell on the floor. Gold and time went flying, a snow or rain of gold and silver, platinum and rings. And Pryor’s gun went off as he fell.

  The bullet hit the man in the back. The woman screamed. The man went to his knees. His teeth were clenched. Nice white teeth. Beemer wondered if such nice white teeth could be real. The woman went down with the man, trying to hold him up.

  Pryor looked at them, looked at Beemer, and started to throw things back in the bag. Wait. That wasn’t Freud. Beemer tried to remember who it was. Not Freud. George Bernard Shaw. It was George Bernard Shaw with wrinkled brow who looked up at Beemer, displeased.

  “An accident,” Beemer told the woman, who was holding her husband, who now bit his lower lip hard. Blood from the bite. Beemer didn’t want to know what the man’s back looked like or where the bullet had traveled inside his body. “Call an ambulance, Nine one one. We never shot anybody before. An accident.”

  It was more than five minutes now. Pryor was breathing hard trying to get everything. On his knees, scampering like a crazy dog.

  “Put the gun away,” Beemer said. “Use both hands. Hurry up. These people need a doctor.”

  Pryor nodded, put the gun in his pocket, and gathered glittering crops. The man had fallen, collapsed on his back. The woman looked up at Beemer, crying. Beemer didn’t want her to lose her baby.

  “He have insurance?” he asked.

  She looked at him, bewildered.

  “Life insurance?” Beemer explained.

  “Done,” said Pryor with a smile. His teeth were small, yellow.

  The woman didn’t answer the question. Pryor ran to the door. He didn’t look back at what he had done.

  “Nine one one,” Beemer said, backing out of the store.

  Pryor looked both ways and headed for the car. Beemer was a foot out the door. He turned and went back in.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It was an accident.”

  “Get out,” the woman screamed. “Go away. Go away. Go away.”

  She started to get up. Maybe she was crazy enough to attack him. Maybe Beemer would have to shoot her. He didn’t think he could shoot a pregnant woman.

  “Joan,” he said, stepping outside again. “Joan’s a good name. Think about it. Consider it.”

  “Get out,” the woman screamed.

  Beemer got out. Pryor was already in the car. Beemer ran. Some people were coming out of the Chinese restaurant. Two guys in baseball hats. From this distance, about forty yards, they looked like truckers. There weren’t any trucks in the lot. They were looking right at Beemer. Beemer realized he was holding his gun. Beemer could hear the woman screaming. The truckers could probably hear her too. He ran to the car, got behind the wheel. Pryor couldn’t drive, never learned, never tried.

  Beemer shot out of the parking lot. They’d need another car. Not a problem. Night. Good neighborhood. In and gone in something not too new. Dump it. No prints. Later buy a five-year-old Geo, Honda, something like that. Legal. In Beemer’s name.

  “We got a lot,” Pryor said happily.

  “You shot that guy,” Beemer said, staying inside the speed limit, heading for the expressway. “He might die.”

  “What?” asked Pryor.

  “You shot that man,” Beemer repeated, passing a guy in a blue BMW. The guy was smoking a cigarette. Beemer didn’t smoke. He made Pryor stop when they’d gotten together. Inside. In State-ville, he was in a cell with two guys who smoked. Smell had been everywhere. On Beemer’s clothes. On the pages of his books.

  People killed themselves. Alcohol, drugs, smoking, eating crap that told the blood going to their heart that this was their territory now and there was no way they were getting by without surgery.

  “People stink,” said Beemer.

  Pryor was poking through the bag. He nodded in agreement. He was smiling.

  “What if he dies?” Beemer said.

  “Who?”

  “The guy you shot,” said Beemer. “Shot full of holes by someone she knows.”

  The expressway was straight ahead. Beemer could see the stoplight, the big green sign.

  “I don’t know her,” Pryor said. “Never saw her before.”

  “One year ago,” Beemer said.

  “So? We don’t go back. The guy dies. Everybody dies. You said so,” Pryor said, feeling proud of himself, holding G. B. Shaw to his bosom. “We stopping for hot dogs? That place you said? Kosher. Juicy.”

  “I don’t feel like hot dogs,” said Beemer.

  He turned onto the expressway, headed south toward Chicago. Jammed. Rush hour. Line from here to forever. Moving maybe five, ten miles an hour. Beemer turned on the radio and looked in the rearview mirror. Cars were lined up behind him. A long showroom of whatever you might want. Lights on, creeping, crawling. Should have stayed off the expressway. Too late now. Listen to the news, music, voices that made sense besides his own. An insulting talk show host would be fine.

  “More than we got last time,” Pryor said happily.

  “Yeah,” said Beemer.

  “A couple of hot dogs would be good,” said Pryor. “Celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “Anniversary. We’ve got a present.”

  Pryor held up the bag. It looked heavy. Beemer grunted. What the hell. They had to eat.

  “Hot dogs,” Beemer said.

  “Yup,” said Pryor.

  Traffic crawled. The car in front of Beemer had a bumper sticker: don’t blame me. i voted libertarian.

  What the hell was that? Libertarian. Beemer willed the cars to move. He couldn’t do magic. A voice on the radio said something about Syria. Syria didn’t exist for Beemer. Syria, Lebanon, Israe
l, Bosnia. You name it. It didn’t really exist. Nothing existed. No place existed until it was right there to be touched, looked at, held up with a Glock in your hand.

  Gluck, gluck, gluck, gluck, gluck.

  Beemer heard it over the sound of running engines and a horn here and there from someone in a hurry to get somewhere in a hurry. He looked up. Helicopter. Traffic watch from a radio or television station? No. It was low. Cops. The truckers from the Chinese restaurant? Still digesting their fried wonton when they went to their radios or a pay phone or a cell phone or pulled out a rocket.