Her father poured himself another glass. “Okay,” he said, “so tell me about this project. I never thought real estate was such a big deal around here."
I pressed my lips together and took a breath. “Well, Mr Bremen, I only wish I could tell you. But the thing is my employers—the ones who retained my services in town—they don't want me discussing my work with anyone but them. Making a bid like this, it can be delicate sometimes. I'm sure you understand."
He frowned and climbed out his chair. “Mr Bremen—I already told you, call me Gil.” He chewed the inside of his lip, picked up his glass and left the room.
"Dad?"
"Damn chairs're hell on my back,” he said, “I'll be out here on the couch."
After a few minutes, we could hear him snoring.
* * * *
( C )
* * * *
The safe was a problem. It was taking me longer than usual, longer than it ought to. It still looked like a standard Gardall, but the guy was a professional magician, so who knows—maybe there was nothing standard about it. Either that or else Steve was right, maybe Alice was a distraction. Behind me, he whispered, “Come on!” A pearl of sweat ran down the back of my arm and dropped off at the elbow. Something inside the Gardall clicked.
"Finally."
There was something inherently funny about cracking open a black box so you could liberate the Black Box inside. Ironically—or maybe not—the one inside looked even more secure than the one I'd just opened. It was made of heavy-gauge black iron, engraved with symbols that made me think of Steve's tattoos. Set in the lid was a tiny plasma view-screen and a few buttons, the only parts that didn't resemble a tiny treasure chest. Looking at it, I knew if it came with any sort of locking mechanism, it'd be nothing I could crack.
Steve put out his hands. “Lemme see."
"Careful. It's heavy as shit. You might as well carry it.” I handed it to him and started rolling up my tools.
We were nearly out the door when the lights went on. Instinctively, we both ran. I'd left everything unlocked, just in case. But now, from the inside, the door was sealed tight.
"You'll find the entire building is closed. There's no way out."
We turned around and there was the magician, perched at the top of his awful gold-leaf staircase. His hair, dark red and grey, wafted up around his head like burning leaves. In his hand was a small gun, his other one balled up tight in the pocket of his housecoat.
I said, “We don't want any trouble."
The magician grinned. He came down a few more steps. “Neither do I. So put the Box on the floor and I'll open up the door. You'll be free to go."
Steve took a deep breath and pushed the device into my arms. “Here,” he said, stepping forward, “lemme do my job.” The second time I held it, the Box seemed even heavier.
Steve approached the staircase. He was looking at the gun. “I've been shot before,” he said. “You don't wanna shoot me."
"You're probably right.” The magician's fist came out of his pocket so casually I honestly thought he was offering to shake hands. But his hand was oddly sheathed in a white glove. He flicked his wrist and a fine powder settled over Steve's face. Initially, Steve barely flinched. And for a small instant I could see the magician was scared. But then Steve inhaled sharply, like a hiccup. Then he coughed. To his credit, he nearly made it to the bottom of the stairs. But then he fell forward, burying his face in his hands, sputtering like an old car.
The magician came down the remaining steps and joined us. “Your friend is stupid."
"What'd you do? What was that?” I crouched down by Steve and placed the Box on the floor beside him.
"It's not too much worse than mace. Not much."
Steve grunted. He was struggling to breathe.
"Of course,” said the magician, stepping past us toward an archaic rotary-dial telephone that hung on the wall like a painting, “now I've no choice but to notify the police."
I stood up, wondering how to stop him. The gun was still there and it frightened me more than it'd frightened Steve. I caught myself thinking of Alice. “Listen,” I said. Listen to what? What could I say that was worth listening to? “Keep the Box. We'll go."
The magician looked at me. The gun was levelled at my belly. He dialled with his gloved hand. I watched some of the powder sprinkle off his finger.
On the floor behind me, Steve screamed. I felt the muscles in my belly go tense and I assumed he was dying. But he wasn't. Instead, he was standing up. He was on his feet and he had the Box in both hands. It came down first on the magician's arm and then across his face. I knew enough to get down and when the gun fired, twice, the bullets missed us both. Somewhere nearby, I heard the shattering of glass.
When I looked back at the telephone, the magician was on the floor. Steve was pummelling him, mashing him with the Box. I tried pulling him back. “Steve, stop! Jesus!” He didn't stop right away. He took a few more swipes. When he did, I saw his face was like a balloon, raw and distended. He was wheezing. I'd never heard Steve wheeze before. He took a ragged breath and gave me the Box to carry. We escaped through a broken window.
* * * *
( B )
* * * *
On our way back to Heaven's Oasis, we stopped at a drugstore. I told the pharmacist we'd been hiking. I told her Steve had fallen face-first into a bush of poison oak. Whether or not poison oak grew in bushes was a mystery to me. The pharmacist gave us a funny look, but did her job. She was helpful. She sold us a bottle of something dubiously called witch hazel, a tube of ointment, and a box of antihistamines. Steve's left eye had swollen entirely shut and he'd scratched the skin around his ear until it was bleeding.
Crouched in the aisle with the foot-remedies, I daubed Steve's face with the witch hazel and fashioned an eye-patch with tensor bandage. It was on the way out that we ran into Alice, standing at her car.
"Peter? Hi, how're—” She stopped because she saw Steve standing behind me, that we were a pair. “Are you okay? I thought you had an early meeting."
"I did—I mean we do. This is Steve. He's another agent with the firm. We work together sometimes. You won't believe what happened."
"Hi,” said Steve, and offered Alice a little wave.
Alice came around her car and went straight for Steve, peering into his face. I hoped the huge discrepancy in their heights would soften her appraisal, but no. She took in a sharp breath and covered her mouth. “You need a hospital."
Steve sighed. “No. We still have to—” He looked at me stupidly. “Well, you know, we can't miss our next meeting, right?"
Alice laughed. It sounded nasty and unnatural. “You can't be serious. Look at you.” She pointed. “That could be infected. You need a doctor."
Steve stood up straighter and winced with his one good eye. “I'm fine,” he said, speaking through his teeth. He squeezed by her and out toward our rental. “C'mon, Pete,” he said, without looking back, “let's get to that meeting."
Alice put her hand on my chest. “Peter. What's going on? Are you honestly trying to tell me that guy's a real estate agent?"
I looked past her, trying to see Steve as something he wasn't. “Oh, yeah, Steve's great. But no, you're right—he's in construction, actually. It's like I said, he's a contractor. We work together sometimes, two sides of the same coin. He builds it, I sell it."
"But you said—"
"I think he's upset after what happened. Oh, I never told you."
"Go ahead."
"He was mugged, Alice. Can you believe, it? Listen, I'll get him to a hospital. I promise."
"You promise."
I clicked my tongue. “Oh, now, c'mon. There's no need to look at me like that."
She lowered her voice. “Look at him. Who'd be dumb enough to mug somebody who looks like that?"
"Alice, you're being silly. It can happen to anyone.” I pecked her cheek and with the slightest pressure, pushed her aside. “Anyway, you're right. I should get him to the
hospital."
Alice looked at her hands. “I don't know, Peter. I've been thinking—"
I opened the driver's side door. “I promise. I'll get him to a hospital."
"Are you honestly in real estate? You can tell me."
I did my best to appear incredulous. “Alice, c'mon, that's your father talking. Of course I'm in real estate. Besides, what does he know? You said it yourself, he's a drunk.” I dropped myself into the rental. I started the engine. Once we were paid, I thought, all'd be forgiven.
Alice stood on the curb. I could see her through the windscreen; she'd gone back to examining her hands. Her face was twisted up, but only a bit. It wasn't the ugly face she made when she got angry. But it wasn't her beautiful, regular face either. To be honest, I didn't know what it looked like, so I gave up trying to pin it down. I turned around in the seat, put the car in reverse.
* * * *
( A )
* * * *
Steve shut the lid. The view-screen lit up red and green—readouts and figures that made little sense. The Box itself vibrated quietly. Steve tried clearing his throat again; he patted his face with the damp towel I'd given him. “What's it doing?” he asked, as if I knew. The shaking intensified and the screen came up with a simple sequence of letters. They appeared one at a time, backwards, beginning with g: g, g, g, g ... f, f, f, f ... e, e, e, e...
Steve coughed like somebody was choking him. “Letters,” he growled, “g, f—whaddaya think they mean?"
I looked away from the Box and up at Steve's face. His other eye had swollen a bit, but it looked like he still had a pinprick to see through; the skin on his cheeks and forehead was still bright pink, but at least the blood on his neck had dried up. I didn't have an answer for him. “Jesus, Steve. Maybe you do need a hospital. Who knows what he sprayed you with, and there's some blood there so—what if you caught something? You could end up like Holloway."
Steve grimaced, conveyed the fact that I knew him better than that. “Alice isn't here, so shut up about the hospital. I'm not gonna end up like Holloway. If I did, what's the difference, now that we got our hands on this thing?"
The letters kept going, but they were slowing down. c ... c ... c ... c ... b ... b ... b ... b ... The thing was really shaking; the vibrations were so fierce I thought the Box might flip off the table, maybe leap out the window. Then it went dead calm. The screen just said a. Nothing was flashing.
Steve looked at me. “It's finished."
"How do you know?"
"'A', right? That's the start. The thing works backward, right? That makes sense. So ‘A’ means it's done."
I threw up my hands. “You don't know that. How do you know that?"
"I'll tell you why—because while you were out with your lady friend half the time, I was stuck in here, and I actually read the specs.” Steve opened up the Box. “Holy shit."
"What is it? It worked?"
Steve reached in. He took out the rat with his bare hands. The animal snuffled at the sharp black tattoos that went around his wrists. The rat looked at me. For whatever reason, I thought it looked hungry.
"You're fucking goddamn right it worked! And you can tell Alice the honeymoon's wherever the fuck she wants it. Shit, you can tell her she'll get ten honeymoons!"
Steve's enthusiasm was contagious. “Ten. Wouldn't be so bad."
"Here.” Steve thrust the rat at me. But I refused to take it from him.
"I don't think we should touch it."
"Suit yourself.” He put the thing down on the table and went for the phone that was bolted to the night stand. “I'm calling that skinny bastard—what's his name?"
"Yates. And remember you gotta dial nine.” I looked down at the table and watched the rat skitter over the shitty pressboard. After only a few steps, the skittering turned to walking and then the walk degraded to a limp. After that, the rat stopped moving at all.
I heard Steve saying something into the phone, but I wasn't listening to the words. I leaned down, close to the table. I almost prodded the rat with my finger, but right in front of my eyes, its spine collapsed. Its head lolled to one side and a little bubble of blood popped from its mouth. The Box was a fraud. Just a trick.
I put myself between Steve and the table. I scooped up the rat. Its body was already ice-cold and stiff. I thought I could actually feel the thing rotting away, crumbling up in my hands. “Gotta take a leak,” I said, over my shoulder, and I went to the bathroom.
I flushed the rat's body down the toilet and started scrubbing my hands with the motel's complimentary sliver of soap. I was still washing when Steve push open the door, beaming. “Yeah,” he said, looking me dead in the eye, “so Holloway didn't make it, but everything's set up with Yates. Whenever we deliver the Box, it's pay day."
I raised my eyebrows. “Great."
"Where's the rat?"
I pointed at the open window. “I set him free."
Steve stared at the window for a moment. He clapped his huge, brotherly arm over my shoulders like a painted rug. “Christ, Pete—since when're you such a bleeding heart? No wonder you scored a girl like Alice."
"No wonder,” I said.
Copyright © 2007 Robert Weston
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THE GOLD WATCH by Kevin Prufer
* * * *
* * * *
Kevin Prufer is the author of four books of poetry, the newest of which are Fallen from a Chariot (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2005) and National Anthem (Four Way Books, forthcoming). With Wayne Miller, he's editor of both The New European Poetry (Graywolf Press, forthcoming) and Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing. His mystery stories have appeared recently in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. He lives in rural Missouri, USA. He can be found online at www.kevinprufer.com
* * * *
The lady in the trunk would not wake up. The schoolboys jabbed her with a stick, shone their flashlights over her closed eyes, but she wouldn't stir. “Forget it,” one of them said. Another agreed. “We already got the radio, what else do we need?” But when the third boy played his flashlight over the lady's still body, the glare caught on something shiny, something tempting. A delicate gold watch, a watch that looked like money, around her pale wrist. He leaned in, touched it gently, his finger sliding, for a moment, over the soft, cold skin just below her palm. The metal felt good against his fingers, cool and valuable, but the lady's arm was heavy, so it took him a moment to undo the clasp and, even then, it caught in her cool flesh, dragging a long scratch across her wrist before the watch came free. “Now we can go,” he said.
The others looked at him curiously. “What you got?” they said. But before he could answer, a glare of headlights clicked on not fifty feet away, in the River Market lot. The lights blinded him and a car started up, pulled forward. The boy slid the watch quickly into his jacket pocket, then looked inside as the car eased silently beside him. Not a cop, but a man with a thin mustache was driving, a man who smiled at him, waved, something golden around his wrist, waved and pulled away.
Relieved, the boy felt the weight in his pocket, noticed the taillights now, watched the car until it disappeared onto James Street, and his friend said, “You sure that wasn't a cop?” But it wasn't, he knew. He'd seen the face before, but where?
So they walked down Compton Avenue toward Vine Street, and the boy kept thinking about the lady's wrist, the thin green veins beneath the skin—had he seen them, or was he creating them now, in his head?—the cold skin and how her arm, when he tried to remove the watch, wouldn't give, but cracked almost imperceptibly. How long had she been asleep? he thought, because he didn't want to think she was dead, that he'd taken the watch from a dead person. How long until the arms grow stiff and cold? The watch in his jacket pocket felt heavy and when he touched it, too cold, and he found to his surprise that he didn't really want it anymore, he didn't want it, but what could he do? He'd have to hold onto it, and his two friends, laughing and talking about the stiff, the dead bitch in
the trunk, well, he didn't feel like laughing.
When they got to 27th street, he said he thought he'd crash out for the night, he was getting a cold, and they laughed at that. “What you gonna do with that watch, dog?” one of them asked, and the boy smiled and said he'd probably sell it, you know, they'd all see their share. And the other two laughed, said, “You better, boy, we'll come asking,” and they continued down the dark street until they disappeared.
But the third boy didn't go to bed. Instead he walked to the pay phone, dropped in a couple coins, and dialed. The air was getting cold and felt like October and he shivered in his thin jacket. “There's a lady,” he told the operator who answered, “a lady and she's not moving or nothing, she's not moving, but I seen her in the trunk of this car."
* * * *
Armand leaned over the trunk while Franklin set up the spotlight, adjusted it so it shone neatly over the woman's body. She seemed at peace in the square glow, her knees folded neatly, her head aslant, lips parted, cracked, and dry. The uniform who'd responded to the 911 did his job well. He hadn't touched a thing, had radioed dispatch, which sent the message off to homicide. The night desk there had called Armand at home, where he sat in front of the television, well into his third bourbon and lime. “Dammit,” he'd said, “can't you get Fitzwilliams? Can't you get Johnson?” but the desk said no, said Armand was on call, so he stubbed his cigarette out in the last of his drink, turned off the set, and put on his jacket. He'd forgotten it was his night, so he ate six or seven Certs on the way to the scene, hoping Franklin wouldn't smell the bourbon on his breath, though he always did. And sure enough Franklin raised his eyebrows and smiled at him, said, “Long night already, huh?” then adjusted the spotlight and taped down the crime scene.
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