Mystery Writers of America Presents the Mystery Box

by Mystery Writers Of America Inc.

  Immediately, all the men standing on the catwalk surged a little closer into the doorway. Those stuck at the rear put their hands on the backs and shoulders of those in front and stood on tiptoes so they could get a better look.

  “Mens,” grumped the old woman as she pulled her husband back from the crowd, “you only got one thing on your minds.”

  “Gimme the pry bar,” said the Cuban standing by the crate, “and I’ll open it up.”

  Edward patted his overalls. “Think I left it in the truck.”

  “Anybody here got a hammer?” inquired the Cuban.

  “Let me through,” came an authoritarian voice from the rear of the crowd. “I’m the maintenance man for these apartments. Yeah, I got one.”

  “As old as you are,” quipped the young man with the sly grin, “you ain’t gonna nail anything in here with that dinky hammer you got.”

  A few chuckles of laughter erupted.

  His face flushed a bright red, the maintenance man pushed his way into the apartment.

  “See how long it takes to get your plumbing fixed the next time it breaks down,” he said to the young man as he elbowed his way past.

  “Hell, I’m still waiting for you to fix my busted air-conditioner,” came the retort.

  “You’ll wait your turn like everybody else. I’ll get around to it one of these days.”

  “It’s already been three weeks. Summer’ll be over before you show up at my place. What’s a tenant have to do to get some service in this rathole?”

  “Maybe if you had better-looking legs,” the heavyset woman shot at him with her own sly grin, getting some of her own back.

  “Gimme the damn hammer so we can get this done,” Big Tony directed the short black guy. “We don’t got all night to waste here.”

  Claw hammer in hand, the big Cuban started prying one end off the crate.

  “I can’t see nothing from here,” complained a younger woman in a tight-fitting halter top.

  Sizing her up from his position in the doorway, the young man with the sly grin figured what his chances might be for later, took a short step inside, and then surreptitiously slid sideways along the living room wall, where he pulled the cord to open the front room drapes. A mass of faces suddenly blossomed on the other side of the window. He got a promising smile of thanks from the younger woman.

  With an end panel of the crate removed, the short black guy reached in and started tugging on whatever was inside the wooden box. A black metal tube appeared at the top, with a black metal base at the bottom. Now the Cuban lent a hand and helped tug the object out of the container.

  “What is it?” inquired the heavyset woman.

  “Looks to me like one of them stair-steppy exercise machines,” replied the younger woman.

  “As much exercise as that woman gets at night, she don’t need no machine to help her stay that skinny. She already got bird legs and snake hips. What more she want?”

  “Can I try out my delivery?” asked Miss Delilah.

  “We got to put it together first,” said the Cuban.

  “Send somebody out for food while we’re working,” requested the short black guy. “I ain’t had nothing to eat since breakfast.”

  Tony dug in his pants pocket and came out with a twenty-dollar bill. He held it up for the crowd. “We’d like us a couple of burgers, some fries, and cold drinks.”

  Nobody moved.

  “I’ll throw in an extra ten for whoever goes and gets it.”

  A young boy weaseled his way through the mass and grabbed hold of the money. “I know an all-night place across the street. Be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “And I want plenty of ketchup for my fries,” added the short black guy.

  The kid ducked through the mob and out the doorway. By the time he returned, the two deliverymen had just about finished putting the exercise machine together. He handed over a large white paper bag with a greasy bottom, waited for his promised ten-spot, then squeezed back out through the doorway. Tony opened the bag and started eating. Right behind him, the stocky black guy reached over to claim his share.

  “Is my exercise machine ready now?” asked Miss Delilah.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is,” replied the Cuban between mouthfuls. “Go ahead and try it out.”

  There was a murmur of anticipation from the male population. A couple of older women in back snorted loud enough in disapproval to be heard up front.

  Miss Delilah looked around at the gathering like she hadn’t seen all these people until now.

  “I can’t try this out with everybody watching.”

  Big Tony gave a hard look at the crowd. He stepped forward, stretching out his arms in a shooing motion.

  “Show’s over, all you folks’ll have to leave now. Let the lady be.”

  Those men inside the apartment slowly retreated to the doorway. The young man with the sly grin suddenly found himself all alone on the wrong side of the front picture window. When the Cuban glared in his direction, he hustled over to the door and threaded himself into the mass of bodies.

  At a nod from the Cuban, Edward walked over to the front window and closed the drapes. Those watchers outside the window glanced at each other.

  “Guess that’s all there is.”

  “Getting past my bedtime anyway.”

  They began drifting off in different directions.

  As Tony began shutting the front door, the maintenance man extended one foot to block the doorway.

  “Hey, what about my hammer?”

  “Come back later and pick it up from Miss Delilah.” Then the Cuban kicked the offending foot out of the way and slammed the metal door.

  With warring emotions between being treated so poorly by the deliverymen, yet now having an excuse to visit Miss Delilah later at night and all alone, the maintenance man couldn’t make up his mind whether to be angry or elated. Finally he stomped off to take care of other duties.

  A couple of hours later when the maintenance man was up on the sixth floor outside apartment 608, he heard a door open up one floor below him. Then it was quiet for several minutes. He poked his head over the rail and leaned cautiously out far enough to observe some of the fifth-floor catwalk. Mostly all he could see was those two deliverymen from their knees down, but he managed to catch parts of their quiet discussion.

  “All the lookie-lous gone?”

  “Yeah, everybody must’ve gone off to bed.”

  “Past my bedtime, too. Let’s get this crate out of here. We still got a lot of work to do with this.”

  There was some grunting and heavy breathing and then the lower part of the wooden box loaded on the dolly came into view. With a left turn, the dolly and its cargo headed for the open stairwell. When the two deliverymen got to the end of the catwalk and started down the stairs, the maintenance man pulled back a little so as not to be seen himself. Seeing how carefully the muscular Cuban and the stocky black guy maneuvered that wooden box and dolly going down the open stairwell, it appeared the crate was as heavy going down as it had been coming up. Of course the two workers could just be tired by now, he thought. After all, it was long past midnight.

  Waiting until both deliverymen had the crate up on the raised metal platform and were putting it into the back of the truck, the maintenance man went down the stairwell at the opposite end of the building to stay out of their view. Down on the fifth-floor catwalk, he was about to knock on the door of 507, when he noticed his hammer was already outside the apartment, lying in front of the closed door. No lights shone around the curtained picture window. He put his ear to the metal door. No music from the stereo, no sound at all.

  Damn, he’d have to find another excuse on another night to come see Miss Delilah.

  As the maintenance man walked toward the same open stairway that the deliverymen had gone down, the sole of his left shoe slipped on a wet patch. He glanced down. On the walkway cement shone a small smear of thick liquid.

  Red paint? No, more likely it was ketchup.
Them damn deliverymen must’ve dropped some of that extra ketchup the short black guy had ordered for his fries. The stuff had landed on the catwalk. Lucky the dolly wheels hadn’t run through it, else it’d be tracked everywhere. There was another smear about five feet further along. And another closer to the open stairwell. Also seemed like there were smears on some of the steps all the way down to the asphalt.

  Hell, he might as well take care of this mess before the owners saw it and raised a fuss. Bad enough that tenants complained about all them broken air-conditioners. Be worse yet if one of them complainers slipped on this red stuff and claimed a lawsuit for injuries whether they was hurt or not. Crazy people in this neighborhood would do anything to make a little money. Best go get a mop.

  MOKUME GANE

  BY TOM ROB SMITH

  Taro Oshiro entered Aokigahara, the forests at the northwest foot of Mount Fuji. If regarded with a dispassionate eye, these forests were a place of outstanding natural beauty. The trees and boughs were unusually close together, knotted around boulders; there were no easy paths, which caused some to feel a sense of claustrophobia; vines like rope cords could ensnare your feet, but there was exceptional serenity. The forests were not popular with ramblers. Few creatures lived among these trees: a fact science had so far failed to explain. There was no rustling of leaves, no birdsong—a silent sea of white cedars and pines. Perhaps partly because of its stillness, perhaps because it was located in the shadow of a sacred volcano, perhaps for reasons unknown, Aokigahara had become the most notorious suicide spot in Japan.

  Taro Oshiro had only been walking for a few minutes, but he was now entirely enclosed by the forests and cut off from the world. Upon entering the cover of these trees, many spoke of discomfort and fear, the unsettled presence of the tormented souls who’d taken their own lives—some would venture only a few hundred meters before running out, believing there was darkness seeped in the soil and emanating from the tree trunks. In contrast, Taro Oshiro, a man nearing his fortieth birthday, felt entirely at ease. He came here often, walked for many hours through these strange forests, not out of appreciation for their beauty but because he owed the forests everything. He walked here out of gratitude.

  Born poor, in a depth of poverty that offers few escape routes even to the most ambitious, Taro Oshiro had been unable to flourish in school, holding in contempt his fellow students for the smallness of their dreams, desiring good grades, or praise from a teacher. His mind was restless; he disliked hierarchies and was suspicious of authority; one thing was clear—entirely unemployable, he must become his own boss, control his own destiny, for he was no good at taking orders. However, even the humblest of fledgling enterprises requires a small amount of start-up capital, and his parents had none, nor would they sell anything to invest in him. They didn’t believe in him. He was turned down by relatives, friends, professional moneylenders who listened to his plans, found him arrogant and awkward, and took pleasure in declining his requests. No other moment in his life shaped his character more sharply. He learned a bitter lesson. He owed this world nothing.

  A setback, he told himself; he’d devise a solution, and that would make his eventual and inevitable success all the sweeter because he’d done it alone. He paced his village for days and days; his toes bled, his feet blistered, he didn’t sleep, until, finally, exhausted, he slumped in the sun, his mind still trying to find a solution even as his body implored him for just a moment of sleep. In the haze of his exhaustion, the sun warm on his skin, he heard the chitchat of two women from the village taking an idle stroll. This was the lifestyle of the rich with nothing else to do except gossip. Unaware they were being overheard, they loudly and indignantly discussed a popular novel called Tower of Waves by Seich Matsumoto. Taro Oshiro had no interest in fiction; he didn’t understand how people could concern themselves with matters that weren’t real—there was enough in life to be busy with; nevertheless, he remained still, unobserved, listening to their discussion about a story which ends with two lovers killing themselves in Aokigahara. Such melodrama was of no concern to him until he heard how this story had caused a great number of readers to copy the fictional characters. Like a hunting animal’s, his ears pricked up—inspiration struck.

  The next day Taro Oshiro packed a bag and set off for Mount Fuji, entering Aokigahara and vowing not to leave until he’d found what he was looking for—his future. Unlike any forests he’d walked in before, he found Aokigahara difficult to navigate; the compass he’d brought with him didn’t work; the needle would spin listlessly. The dense foliage forced him to climb trees in order to check his position, glancing at Mount Fuji before climbing back down and realizing he’d been completely wrong, he’d been going north when he’d been sure—absolutely sure—he’d been traveling south.

  On the fourteenth day he saw her, a shadow in the trees, slumped against the trunk as if the tree were pregnant with this young woman. She was no older than twenty, alone; no lover hung by her side. Out of obligation, rather than common sense, Taro checked her pulse, an unnecessary act since her skin showed signs of decomposition. He scolded himself; he was not here to check her pulse—he was here to check her purse. He looked around to see if she’d brought a bag, a purse to pay for the bus fare to reach the forests, and sure enough, he found a small bag and her purse; he took the modest amount of money and anything that he might be able to sell. Unfortunately, she was a young woman and, judging by her clothes, not rich. His gains were modest.

  It was the body of a dead businessman, found two months later, still wearing an expensive gold watch, and with a wallet full of cash, that gave Taro the capital he required. For two months, he’d lived in those forests, like a wild animal—his patience had been rewarded. After cleaning himself at an onsen, he caught a bus to Tokyo, where he would enact his plans, turning a gold watch into a business empire. Carefully, he stole regular glimpses at this fine gold watch, made in Switzerland. He was careful not to allow the other passengers to see, terrified that they might call the police, he would be shamed, and his plans would collapse before they’d begun. Privately he took the philosophical approach that life continues regardless, and he was merely part of the process. The dead decompose. Life goes on, it feeds on the dead. He was not going to feel guilty; the man had killed himself, giving up even though strapped to his wrist was more wealth than Taro Oshiro had known in his entire lifetime. At least he was turning their wasteful deaths to some productive end. But he was well aware that no one else would see his actions that way and that the origins of his business must always remain a secret between him and Aokigahara.

  The discovery of the gold watch was over twenty years ago, and Taro Oshiro was now a wealthy man; his various businesses employed over five thousand staff; he’d weathered financial storms; his disdain for banks and moneylenders meant that he never overborrowed. His personal wealth was such that he did not need to work again: he could live out the rest of his days in lavish luxury. Needless to say, his restless mind had no interest in retirement; he was not driven merely by material gain but by a hunger for success and perfection. Though it would have made sense never to return to the forests, since they were the scene of a crime, the dark seed from which he’d grown his career, he could not turn his back on the forests that had helped him when no other person had wanted to hear his name. Whenever there was a problem that required a great deal of consideration, a merger, a whistleblower, a takeover, he would drive to Aokigahara and walk among its trees. He felt a connection here and a greater attachment to these trees than he did to his own parents. This was his home. The child Taro Oshiro might have been born in a village. But the great and respected businessman had been born here, in these forests.

  The problem that occupied him today, as it had done for some years now, was the irresolvable fact that Taro Oshiro was unloved. He wasn’t a sentimental man; he felt no need for a companion and would’ve been content to live alone, except that remaining a bachelor could not be considered the act of a successful man. He
could not accept the way in which people would dismiss his great achievements by saying “But has he found love?” To remedy this situation, he must find a wife. Wealth meant that he could easily have formed a dishonest relationship based on material gain, but once again, he could not tolerate the idea that people would whisper behind his back that his wife was merely with him for the money. If he was to marry, the woman must love him, love absolutely, there must be no possibility that it could be considered anything other than a success. However, there was a problem. He’d discovered that women did not love him. He was a handsome man, exercised regularly, there was no physical reason why a woman might not find him attractive, but any woman who spent long enough in his company began to withdraw from him; they pulled away, as if sensing that something was not quite right with him, something askew and invisible to the eye. They recoiled, not immediately but inevitably. The kind of woman he required by his side, the kind of woman whose adoration was beyond question, always declined his advances.

  As he walked through the forests he opened his heart, sometimes spoke aloud, resting a hand on the trunk of a tree, hoping the answer would come to him here—perhaps Aokigahara would give him one more thing, just one more. He’d already bought the wedding rings after reading an article on the ancient metalcraft of mokume gane, in which two metals are melted together, forming a ripple pattern not dissimilar to the grain found in wood—curves and swirls composed from the random movement of precious metals. The rings symbolized everything he was looking for—two people becoming inextricable upon marriage, a perfect union. In an effort to concentrate his mind, Taro Oshiro carried these rings with him at all times, crafted from the most expensive blending of platinum and white gold, inside a box decorated with the same craftsmanship. Strangely, he loved the box more than the rings, since the lid looked as if it had been sliced from the trunk of a magical metal tree.