The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  Cops were looking for a certain car. Must be hundreds, thousands out here. Find Waldo, only harder. Beemer looked in his rearview mirror. No flashing lights. He looked up the embankment to his right. Access drive. The tops of cars. No lights flashing. No uniforms dashing. No dogs barking. Just gluck, gluck, gluck. Then a light. Pure white circle down on the cars in front. Sweeping right to left, left to right. Pryor had no clue. He was lost in Rolexes and dreams of french fries.

  Did the light linger on them? Imagination? Maybe. Description from the hot-and-sour-soup-belching truckers? Description from the lady with the baby she was going to name Melissa when Joan would have been better? Joan had been Beemer’s mother’s name. He hadn’t suggested it lightly.

  So they had his description. Stocky guy with short gray hair, about fifty, wearing a black zipper jacket. Skinny guy carrying a canvas bag filled with goodies. A jackpot pinata, a heist from St. Nick.

  Traffic moved, not wisely or well, but it moved, inched. Music of another time. Tony Bennett? No, hell no. Johnny Mathis singing “Chances Are.” Should have been Tommy Edwards.

  “Let’s go. Let’s go,” Beemer whispered to the car ahead.

  “Huh?” asked Pryor.

  “There’s a cop in a helicopter up there,” Beemer said, moving forward as if he were on the roller coaster ride creeping toward the top, where they would plunge straight down into despair and black air. “I think he’s looking for us.”

  Pryor looked at him and then rolled down his window to stick his head out before Beemer could stop him.

  “Stop that shit,” Beemer shouted, pulling the skinny dryness inside.

  “I saw it,” said Pryor.

  “Did he see you?”

  “No one waved or nothing,” said Pryor. “There he goes.”

  The helicopter roared forward low, ahead of them. Should he take the next exit? Stay in the crowd? And then the traffic started to move a little faster. Not fast, mind you, but it was moving now. Maybe twenty miles an hour. Actually nineteen, but close enough. Beemer decided to grit it out. He turned off the radio.

  They made it to Dempster in thirty-five minutes and headed east, toward Lake Michigan. No helicopter. It was still early. Too early for an easy car swap, but it couldn’t be helped. Helicopters. He searched this way and that, let his instincts take over at a street across from a park. Three-story apartment buildings. Lots of traffic. He drove in a block. Cars on both sides, some facing the wrong way.

  “What are we doing?” asked Pryor.

  “We are doing nothing,” Beemer said, “I am looking for a car. I steal cars. I rob stores. I don’t shoot people. I show my gun. They show respect. You show that piece of shit in your pocket, trip over thin air, and shoot a guy in the back.”

  “Accident,” said Pryor.

  “My ass,” said Beemer. And then, “That one.”

  He was looking at a gray Nissan a couple of years old parked under a big tree with branches sticking out over the street. No traffic. Dead-end street.

  “Wipe it down,” Beemer ordered, parking the car and getting out.

  Pryor started wiping the car for prints. First inside. Then outside. By the time he was done, Beemer had the Nissan humming. Pryor got in the passenger seat, his bag on his lap, going on a vacation. All he needed was a beach and a towel.

  They hit the hot dog place fifteen minutes later. They followed the smell and went in. There was a line. Soft poppyseed buns. Kosher dogs. Big slices of new pickle. Salty brown fries. They were in line. Two women in front of them were talking. A mother and daughter. Both wearing shorts and showing stomach. Pryor looked back at the door. He could see the Nissan. The bag was in the trunk with George Bernard Shaw standing guard.

  The woman and the girl were talking about Paris. Plaster of? Texas? Europe? Somebody they knew? Nice voices. Beemer tried to remember when he had last been with a woman. Not that long ago. Two months? Amarillo? Las Vegas? Moline, Illinois?

  It was their turn. The kid in the white apron behind the counter wiped his hands and said, “What can I do for you?”

  You can bring back the dead, thought Beemer. You can make us invisible. You can teleport us to my aunt Elaine’s in Corpus Christi.

  “You can give us each a hot dog with the works,” Beemer said.

  “Two for me,” said Pryor. “And fries.”

  “Two for both of us. Lots of mustard. Grilled onions. Tomatoes. Cokes. Diet for me. Regular for him.”

  The mother and daughter were sitting on stools still talking about Paris and eating.

  “You got a phone?” Beemer asked, paying for their order.

  “Back there,” said the kid, taking the money.

  “I’m going back there to call Walter. Find us a seat where we can watch the car.”

  Pryor nodded and moved to the pickup line. Beemer went back there to make the call. The phone was next to the toilet. He used the toilet first and looked at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look good. Decidedly.

  He filled the sink with water, cold water, and plunged his face in. Maybe the sink was dirty? Least of his worries. He pulled his head out and looked at himself. Dripping-wet reflection. The world hadn’t changed. He dried his face and hands and went to the phone. He had a calling card, AT&T. He called Walter. The conversation went like this.

  “Walter? I’ve got goods.”

  “Jewelry store?”

  “It matter?”

  “Matters. Cops moved fast. Man’s in the hospital maybe dying. Church deacon or something. A saint. All over television with descriptions of two dummies I thought I might recognize.”

  “Goods are goods,” said Beemer.

  “These goods could make a man an accessory maybe to murder. Keep your goods. Take them who knows where. Get out of town before it’s too late, my dear. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Walter, be reasonable.”

  “My middle name is ‘reasonable.’ It should be ‘careful’ but it’s ‘reasonable.’ I’m hanging up. I don’t know who you are. I think you got the wrong number.”

  He hung up. Beemer looked at the phone and thought. St. Louis. There was a guy, Tanner, in St. Louis. No, East St. Louis. A black guy who’d treat them fair for their goods. They’d check out of the motel and head for St. Louis. Not enough money, without selling the goods or going to the bank, to get a new car. They’d have to drive the Nissan, slow and easy. All night. Get to Tanner first thing in the morning when the sun was coming up through the Arch.

  Beemer went down the narrow corridor. Cardboard boxes made it narrower. When he got to the counter, the mother and daughter were still eating and talking and drinking. Lots of people were. Standing at the counters or sitting on high stools with red seats that swirled. Smelled fantastic. Things would be all right. Pryor had a place by the window where he could watch the car. He had finished one hot dog and was working on another. Beemer inched in next to him.

  “We’re going to St. Louis,” he said behind a wall of other conversations.

  “Okay,” said Pryor, mustard on his nose. No questions. Just “Okay.”

  Then it happened. It always happens. Shit always happens. A cop car, black and white, pulled into the lot outside the hot dog place. It was a narrow lot. The cops were moving slowly. Were they looking for a space and a quick burger or hot dog? Were they looking for a stolen Nissan?

  The cops stopped next to the Nissan.

  “No,” moaned Pryor.

  Beemer grabbed the little guy’s arm. The cops turned toward the hot dog shop window. Beemer looked at the wall, ate his dog, and ate slowly, his heart going mad. Maybe he’d die now of a heart attack. Why not? His father had died on a Washington, D.C., subway just like that.

  Pryor was openly watching the cops move toward them.

  “Don’t look at them,” Beemer whispered. “Look at me. Talk. Say something. Smile. I’ll nod. Say anything.”

  “Are they coming for us?” asked Pryor, working on his second dog.

  “You’ve got mustard on y
our nose. You want to go down with mustard on your nose? You want to be a joke on the ten o’clock news?”

  Beemer took a napkin and wiped Pryor’s nose as the cops came in the door and looked around.

  “Reach in your pocket,” said Beemer. “Take out your gun. I’m going to do the same. Aim it at the cops. Don’t shoot. Don’t speak. If they pull out their guns, just drop yours. It’ll be over and we can go pray that the guy you shot doesn’t die.”

  “I don’t pray,” said Pryor as the cops, both young and in uniform, moved through the line of customers down the middle of the shop, hands on holstered guns.

  Beemer turned and so did Pryor. Guns out, aimed. Butch and Sundance. A John Woo movie.

  “Hold it,” shouted Beemer.

  Oh God, I pissed in my pants. Half an hour to the motel. Maybe twenty years to life to the motel.

  The cops stopped, hands still on their holsters. The place went dead. Someone screamed. The mother or the daughter, who had stopped talking about Paris.

  “Let’s go,” said Beemer.

  Pryor reached back for the last half of his hot dog and his little greasy bag of fries.

  “Is that a Glock?” asked the kid behind the counter.

  “It’s a Glock,” said Beemer.

  “Cool gun,” said the kid.

  The cops didn’t speak. Beemer didn’t say anything more. He and Pryor made it to the door, backed away across the parking lot, watching the cops watching them. The cops wouldn’t shoot. Too many people.

  “Get in,” Beemer said.

  Pryor got in the car. Beemer reached back to open the driver-side door. Hard to keep his gun level and open the door. He did it, got in, started the car, and looked in the rearview. The cops were coming out, guns drawn. There was a barrier in front of him, low, a couple of inches, painted red. Beemer gunned forward over the barrier. Hell, it wasn’t his car. He thought there was just enough room to get between a white minivan and an old convertible who-knows-what.

  The cops were saying something. Beemer wasn’t listening. He had pissed in his pants and he expected to die of a heart attack. He listened for some telltale sign. The underbody of the Nissan caught the red barrier, scraped, and roared over. Beemer glanced toward Pryor, who had the window open and was leaning out, his piece-of-crap gun in his hand. Pryor fired as Beemer made it between minivan and convertible, taking some paint off both sides of the Nissan in the process.

  Pryor fired as Beemer hit the street. Beemer heard the hot dog shop’s window shatter. They wouldn’t be welcome here in the near future. Then came another shot as Beemer turned right. This one went through Pryor’s face. He was dead, hanging out the window. Beemer floored the Nissan. He could hear Pryor’s head bouncing on the door.

  The cops were going for their car, making calls, and Pryor’s head was bouncing like something out of the jungle on the door. Beemer made a hard right down a semidark street. He pulled to the curb, reached past Pryor, and opened the door. It swung open, Pryor draped over it. Beemer grabbed the dead man’s shirt, pulled him back through the window, and pushed the body out the door. Then he reached over to close the door. Pryor was looking up at him with three eyes, one of them brand new.

  Beemer drove. There were lights behind him now, a block back. Sirens. He turned left, wove around. No idea where he was. No one to talk to. Just me and my radio.

  Who knows how many minutes later he came to a street called Oakton and headed east, for Sheridan Road, Lake Shore Drive, Lake Michigan.

  People passed in cars. He passed people walking. People looked at him. The bloody door. That was it. Pryor had marked him. No time to stop and clean it up. Not on the street. He hit Sheridan Road and looked for a place to turn, found it. Little dead end. Black on white sign: no swimming. A park.

  He pulled in between a couple of cars he didn’t look at, popped the trunk lock, and got out. There was nothing in the trunk but the bag of jewelry. He dumped it all into the trunk, picked up the empty canvas bag, closed the trunk, and went looking for water.

  Families were having late picnics. Couples were walking. Beemer found a fountain. He soaked George Bernard Shaw and brought him dripping back to the Nissan, where he worked on the bloody car door. It streaked. He worked, turned the canvas bag. Scrubbed. He went back for more water, wrung the bloody water from the bag. Worked again. Gunga Din. Fetch water. Clean up. Three trips and it was done.

  George Bernard Shaw was angry. His face was red under the parking lot lights.

  Beemer opened the trunk and threw the bag in. When he turned, he saw the cop car coming down the street. Only one way in the lot. Only one way out. The same way. He grabbed six or seven watches and some little golden animals and shoved them in his pockets quickly. Then he moved into the park, off the path, toward the rocks. Last stand? Glock on the rocks? Couldn’t be. It couldn’t end like this. He was caught between a cop and a hard place. Funny. Couldn’t laugh though. He hurried on, looking back to see the cop car enter the little lot.

  Beemer found the rocks. Kids were crawling over them. Big rocks. Beyond them the night and the lake like an ocean of darkness, end of the world. Nothingness. He climbed out and down.

  Three teenagers or college kids, male, watched him make his way down toward the water.

  Stop looking at me, he willed. Go back to playing with yourselves, telling lies, and being stupid. Just don’t look at me. Beemer crouched down behind a rock, the water touching his shoes.

  He had no plan. Water and rocks. Pockets full of not much. Crawl along the rocks. Get out. Find a car. Drive to the motel. Get to St. Louis. Tanner might give him a few hundred, maybe more, for what he had. Start again, find a new Pryor to replace the prior Pryor, a Pryor without a gun. Beemer knew he couldn’t be alone.

  “You see a man out here?” He heard a voice through the sound of the waves.

  “Down there,” came a slightly younger voice.

  Beemer couldn’t swim. Give up or keep going. He kept going. A flashlight beam from above now. Another from the direction he had come.

  “Stop right there. Turn around and come back the way you came,” said a voice.

  “He’s armed,” said another voice.

  “Take out your gun and hold it by the barrel. Now.”

  Beemer considered. He took out the Glock. Great gun. Took it out slowly, looked up, and decided it was all a what-the-hell life anyway. He grabbed the gun by the handle, holding on to the rock with one hand. He aimed toward the flashlight above him.

  Before he could fire he heard a shot, felt the pain, fell backward. His head hit a jutting rock. The rock hurt more than the bullet that tore at his stomach. But the water, the cold water, was worst of all.

  “Can you get to him, Dave?” someone called.

  “I’m trying.”

  Beemer was floating on his back, bobbing in the black waves. I can float, he thought, looking at the flashlight. Float out to some little sailboat, climb on, get away.

  He bobbed further away. Pain gone cold.

  “Can’t reach him.”

  “Shit. He’s floating out. Call it in.”

  Footsteps. Beemer looked up. Beyond the light aimed at his eyes, he could see people in a line looking down at him as he floated farther and farther from the shore into the blackness. He considered waving to them. He looked for the moon and stars. They weren’t there.

  Maybe the anniversary hit hadn’t been such a good idea.

  He closed his eyes and thought that he had never fired his Glock, never fired any gun. That would be a regret if they didn’t save him. That would be a regret if they did. It was a damned good gun.

  Beemer fell asleep. Either that or he died.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  JOE R. LANSDALE

  The Mule Rustlers

  from The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology

  On a blustery San Jacinto day, when leggy black clouds appeared against the pearl-gray sky like tromped-on spiders, Elliot and James set about rustling the mul
e.

  A week back, James had spotted the critter while out casing the area for a house to burglarize. The burglary idea went down the tubes because there were too many large dogs in the yards, and too many older people sitting in lawn chairs flexing their false teeth among concrete lawn ornaments and sprinklers. Most likely they owned guns.

  But on the way out of the neighborhood, James observed, on a patch of about ten acres with a small pond and lots of trees, the mule. It was average-sized, brown in color, with a touch of white around the nostrils, and it had ears that tracked the countryside like radar instruments.