The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

by Jonathan Lethem

  Now I almost smile. It starts with the guy’s well-traveled shoes. Terrible for giving chase. Mr. Suitcase is the right cocky, unsympathetic age. Flabby calves in shorts too cold for locals. That nonchalant reaction to Kid Cape? Couldn’t imagine himself as a mark. He wears that goofy tourist grin. His eyes stare past the grimy train windows—this town’s all new to him. The novelty has yet to fade, the real weather to spit on his days. A forgettable girlfriend naps on his shoulder. That bone propping up her eye socket? Cozy. My money says they won’t make it past this year. Every other stop, he checks his well-worn Rolex.

  But best of all? The bag. Dumpster chic. No luggage stickers. Outbound. Perfect.

  My best scores came from ratty, inconspicuous luggage on this early-morning train bound for the airport. Never seen a fancy bag here that wasn’t a knockoff full of things more at home at Goodwill than a pawn shop. People who travel with Louis Vuitton look-alikes live look-alike lives. But the slightly smarter set at least wrap the damn good in the quite ugly.

  If you can afford this trip, you can afford to leave me a memento on my weekly round trip to nowhere.

  Of all the police reports I once signed off on for precious bags, none ever itemized an engagement ring that woulda turned my ex, Cindy, into Cinderella. At least after that first score I afforded both alimony and our daughter’s trip to space camp. At least her mind soared. That’s worth losing a badge for. Most mornings.

  Sitting always draws less attention than standing. So I do my seat rotations, staying clear of anyone who might notice or remember me. I study Mr. Suitcase through the reflections in the dirty windows each time the train departs. What a goofy, unaware smile.

  Today I’ll hit him three stops before the airport. Decent neighborhood with enough airport arrivals that if I turn two corners and walk slow, I’m an arriving local. Also the least-staffed station. And they hired that sap with the lazy eye for security. Worst case? Minimal resistance.

  Hope that kid won’t come back to see it. Don’t feel like being someone else’s excuse for bad behavior.

  I exit the first door of the car and reenter from the second, wearing my baseball cap. We emerge from the last tunnel and morning light cracks into our car like a soft-boiled egg. I stand spitting distance from Mr. Suitcase, surfing the cheap waves of the train rocking forward. We pull into the stop.

  He checks his watch, and when he rests his wrist back down on his chubby little thigh, it angles right up at me. Wait. What kinda Rolex doesn’t have hands? No hours, no minutes, no seconds. I blink to make sure, staring longer than I should at an empty watch face. I’m sure I pawned one exactly like that, except it told time. Did he remove the hands?

  The girlfriend jolts awake and sneezes on me. Shit. Too close.

  But then she gawks at Mr. Suitcase.

  “Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, sir.” She brushes his shoulder.

  He shrugs and smiles.

  She dashes outta the open door. We’re exactly three stops from the airport. I spot a guard napping in his glass cubicle. Mr. Suitcase is staring in the other direction, away from me. Doors of opportunity wide open.

  What kinda man wears a watch that won’t tell time?

  The doors slide shut in my face. I let ’em. I take a seat. The disabled seat, facing Mr. Suitcase.

  Kid Cape flies back down our car, picking up speed, aiming himself at Mr. Suitcase’s bag. Dammit, don’t! He runs up and lifts a bag that’s bigger than him over his head like an ant. Whoa. The kid whispers that himself as he looks up at my score.

  And the only other person awake enough to be shocked isn’t. Mr. Suitcase stares up at his old bag with that same smile.

  “Careful with that power,” he says.

  “Mikey! Mikey, where are you?” A mother’s shrill voice plows into my ears.

  Kid Cape wobbles, his secret identity exposed. He sets down the oversized bag. He examines his hands, the bag’s owner, his hands again.

  Mr. Suitcase raises a lone finger to his lips, agreeing to keep the hero’s secret. Mikey smiles and dashes back past me toward his mother’s squeaky voice.

  I fixate on the bag. What the hell’s in there?

  We coast into the airport stop. End of the line. The incomprehensible announcements never wake anyone up—the final jolt of the car does the job. Passengers stand and check boarding passes, wristwatches, belongings. A series of paranoid pats. Mr. Suitcase’s smile grows.

  I make for the other door. He’s the last person on the train. A fresh set of suitcases with peeling luggage stickers squeak onboard.

  I exit. He doesn’t.

  The doors stay open. Soon after all the arrivals board, this train will turn around. I stand with one foot on the platform, the other still on the train, waiting for his move.

  Mr. Suitcase steps off the train and I’ve got him in perfect profile.

  His eyes close. He inhales and pushes the air out like an old steamer. And before I can make any sense of it, he turns around and drags his suitcase back onto the train. Mr. Suitcase pulls and grimaces like a kid didn’t vault that bag over his head with ease. Its pipsqueak wheels yank my attention down as they cross the rumble strips. I favor the foot inside the train, lean in as the doors close.

  Mr. Suitcase sits opposite of where he just was.

  I lean on the handrail to his left.

  His face has transformed—dimples gone, mouth relaxed, eyes sloping down in satisfied rest.

  He raises his wrist and fiddles with the ring on the handless watch, rotating, rotating, perfect. New time zone, of course. He heaves the bag onto his lap and holds on to the zippers with both hands, like doorknobs he’s not quite ready to twist.

  Z-z-z-z-zip. The watch comes off his wrist and goes into a suitcase. An empty suitcase.

  A grin tucks itself into my cheek. I need a better way of picking targets. I should walk away, call this trip a wash, try again next week. Disappoint another kid in another cape by being a petty—

  “Do you need a suitcase?” Mr. Suitcase asks.

  I glance around. He’s staring at me. “Me? Why would I need a suitcase?”

  “You seemed more interested in it than that kid was.”

  He made me. This is more humiliating than losing my badge.

  “Are you in the market for one?” he asks.

  “I don’t need your suitcase, man.” Bailing—the fastest way to seem guilty. Stay put.

  “Maybe you can take it on a trip somewhere?”

  He’s seen me on this train before. He knows. “Me? A trip? Can’t recall the last time I could afford a fancy trip.”

  “Well. You don’t have to travel to travel,” Mr. Suitcase says.

  I slump into the seat across from him, nothing to add, no one to blame but myself. I need a better way of picking targets, I do. But I can’t list my criteria. Can’t decide which stop to take, where to go. I forget the map, stop profiling people, return to the same damn stations.

  Third stop from the airport. An old woman yelps in German and something sends a jolt up my foot before tumbling down. The thief’s on the ground with her purse and the guard’s got a knee in his back before the doors close. Did I . . . ? I’m noticed and cheered and thanked with fancy chocolate. Do they even know what I am?

  Mr. Suitcase isn’t around to notice.

  I remember asking my little girl why she wanted to go to space camp. Duh! Because here is boring, Daddy. I bob my head with the tracks like a little kid and stare, stare at the constantly shifting sky, finding the new in the familiar.

  HARLEY JANE KOZAK

  The Walk-In

  from For the Sake of the Game

  It’s not every day that you walk into your apartment and find that your cat has turned into a dog.

  Okay, it was London, so it wasn’t an apartment but a flat; and neither the flat nor the cat was mine, they were my brother Robbie’s. But the dog was unequivocally a dog.

  It was my second day in town, and because my brother’s flat was new, and lacking pretty much e
verything—including my brother—I’d been out buying random moving-in things: toilet paper, dish drainer, red wine. I was in the hallway juggling these and trying to get his door open when I heard a clickety-clack on the wood floors on the other side of the door. Inside the flat.

  Clickety-clack?

  I glanced at the gilt number near the keyhole: 2B. Right flat, wrong sound. Touie, Robbie’s annoying cat, padded around on silent paws. So who was this? Setting down my packages—parcels, as the Brits would say—I worked to get the door unlocked. At which point I was assaulted by the dog. A twenty-pound bulbous-bellied dog.

  He—the gender was glaringly obvious—was corpulent, gunmetal gray, and so hair-free he appeared to have been skinned. His legs were stubby but his ears were large, and sticking straight up, rabbitlike. His face was all frowns and folds, a canine Winston Churchill digesting bad news. But he greeted me like I was a giant dog biscuit: when I bent to rescue my stuff from the floor, he launched himself at my chest, tangled himself in my crossbody bag, and slathered me with saliva. For a small dog, he had a lot of saliva.

  I pushed the dog back into the flat and got the door closed behind us. “Robbie?” I called out, but my voice echoed through the bare rooms. No surprise. Robbie was my twin; I could feel his absence like a tangible thing.

  I pushed aside thoughts of Where’s Robbie? and made a grab for the dog’s tag. “So who are you?” I asked him.

  His collar looked just like the one Touie, the cat, wore: scarlet leather, the perimeter dotted with faux gems. One of Robbie’s extravagances. Strange.

  “Sit still, Dog. Let me read this.” But when he did and I had, strange turned to bizarre.

  The tag said “Touie” and the number on the tag was Robbie’s cell phone.

  My first thought was WTF? followed by Where’s Touie? I wasn’t her biggest fan, and she was definitely not mine, but I’d just spent five days relocating that cat from New York to London, a feat, on the misery meter, right up there with digging graves in winter. It just wasn’t possible that she’d disappeared. I went through the flat, checking under the comforter where I’d last seen her, inside closets, and even the microwave, which Touie was too fat to fit into. There were limited hiding places. The only things Robbie had brought in, before disappearing, were five boxes of books and a bed, its toxic new-mattress smell wafting through the flat like bad air freshener.

  The real Touie, like Robbie, was gone.

  “Now what?” I asked, and the dog responded by sniffing around in a distinctive manner, suggesting a bladder situation. I unclipped the shoulder strap from my pink carry-on bag, fashioning a leash, and let the dog lead me outside. He had strong opinions about our route, one block to Baker Street and then a left, and another left, until I lost track of where we were.

  The October day was murky with fog. And cold. I was wearing Robbie’s red rain slicker, but it wasn’t enough. How’d I gotten roped into doing this favor-turned-into-an-enigma-wrapped-in-a–Twilight Zone episode? Robbie had a lifetime of practice getting me to do stuff he didn’t like doing—pet immigration in this case—but I’d had the same lifetime of practice saying no. Yet here I was, and minus the pet in question. How had it happened? What had happened? And why? And where was my damned brother? Seriously, what was I supposed to do? Call 911? Was the number even 911 in England? And then what? I wasn’t one to chalk things up to supernatural forces, but it was a stretch to assume a criminal act. What self-respecting thief would want a plump, elderly cat? And why leave in her place this wheezing dog, straining at his makeshift leash, pulling me through London?

  I’d been wrong about the dog’s bladder: he was on a mission, and hardly paused to sniff, let alone pee. Oblivious to other pedestrians, he pushed onward like a horse heading for the barn at the end of a long day. Perhaps he lived around here? The thought gave me a glimmer of hope.

  Oops. The dog came to a sudden squat and was now doing the unmentionable alongside an iron gate guarding a storefront. As I hadn’t thought to bring along a plastic bag, I looked around guiltily, but no concerned citizens materialized to scold me. The storefront bore an ornate sign: THE RENOWNED MIRKO: PSYCHIC AND CARD READER. This was followed by a phone number, and then, in smaller font, WALK-INS—BOTH SORTS!—WELCOME. I was pondering that when I heard the tinkling of bells and looked up to see a man standing in the shop doorway.

  We stared at each other. He frowned at me, his lips set in a horizontal line. He was tall and thin, the kind of thin that makes you think, for just a second, stage four cancer, but there was a kinetic energy about him, something in his gray eyes that nixed that impression. A high forehead, made higher by a receding hairline, made him look aristocratic, and strangely attractive, as did a three-piece suit more suited to a wedding than a psychic reading. I felt very American, and not in a good way.

  “Unbelievable,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr.—” I glanced again at the sign. “Mirko. I didn’t bring a plastic bag—satchel—whatever you call them here—okay, never mind. If you have a paper towel or something, I’ll happily clean this up for you.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, ‘happily’ might be overstating it,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to—hey! Dog! Stop.” The dog was greeting the Renowned Mirko like a long-lost lover and attempting to mate with his dress pants. I tugged on the leash.

  “Go. Just go. Take yourself off,” Mirko snapped, and then, to the dog, “Not now.”

  “Whoa. Hold up,” I said. “Do you know this dog?”

  “No.”

  “You do. You know this dog. This dog knows you.”

  “Nonsense,” he said.

  “It’s not nonsense. He dragged me right to you.”

  “Leave.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I said. “I’m walking in. A walk-in. Like the sign says. Both sorts!”

  He gave me a curious look, but then glanced past me and said, “Bloody hell. Too late. Go in.”

  “What?” I looked over my shoulder.

  “In, in, go inside, are you deaf? Quickly.” The man took my arm and yanked me—he and the dog—through the open door.

  The shop was warm, and musty with the odor of antiques and incense, the signature scents of psychics the world over. The decor was Victorian clutter. I got a fast impression of chintz, wallpaper, and books, books, books as Mirko herded me across the room to a kitchenette.

  “Sit,” Mirko said, and I thought he was talking to the dog until he pushed me into an armchair and scooped the dog into my lap. He then hauled over a rococo screen and arranged it in front of me, blocking my view of the room. He leaned in so close I could smell the damp wool of his suit. “Do not make a sound,” he said. “Do not let the dog make a sound. This is critically important.”

  Before I could argue the point, the tinkling bell sounded again, signaling someone entering the shop. “If you value your brother’s life, stay quiet,” Mirko said, and walked away.

  That shut me up.

  The dog and I listened as Mirko said hello to someone. Actually, he said zdravstvujtye. A man responded in kind. In Russian. I knew a few words of Russian, but after the pleasantries, the newcomer told Mirko to wait. A second later came the sound of Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond singing “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” a ballad Robbie once said made him want to cut off his ears. The music source was a cell phone, was my guess, and I wondered why we were listening to it, until I realized it masked conversation. I could pick out only random words now, during the song’s lugubrious pauses, of which there were many. Then came the sound of a zipper zipping. The urge to peek around the screen was strong, but the dog began to struggle, wanting out of my arms and onto a small, narrow refrigerator next to us, on top of which sat a large frozen turkey, thawing, and a large ceramic Blessed Virgin Mary. As I thwarted his efforts to investigate the bird, the tinkling bell sounded again, and Streisand, Diamond, and Russian left the building.

  “You may come out,” Mirko said.

  I came around the screen
to find Mirko taking off his jacket and kicking off his shoes. Alongside him was a wheelie suitcase, fully zipped.

  “So how do you know my brother?” I asked, and promptly took off my own jacket, the room being hellishly hot.

  “I haven’t time for this,” he said.

  “But you know where he is?”

  “I do not.” Now he had his vest off and was unbuttoning his dress shirt, as adroit as a stage actor doing a quick change. “I suggest you return to your flat, with the dog-who-is-not-your-dog, and sleep off the jet lag that you’re trying to ignore. It’s four in the morning Los Angeles time, and that red-eye you took did you no favors even with an exit row and a window seat. Nor does sleeping on floors agree with you.”

  My eyes must’ve widened. He smiled, before whipping off his shirt and giving me a view of his naked chest. Not a bad chest, if you don’t mind skinny, which I don’t, but I wasn’t about to be distracted. “I don’t know how you know the things you know,” I said, “but all I care about is Robbie.” The dog, perhaps reacting to my tone of voice, produced a sound that was less a bark and more the yowl of a human infant. “You tell him, Churchill,” I said.

  “Churchill? I’d have said Gladstone.” Mirko walked to a bureau covered with tarot cards, opened a drawer, and took out a some clothes and a pair of Converse high-tops.

  “Whoever that is.”

  “Victoria’s prime minister, who more closely resembled a French bulldog.” He pulled a T-shirt over his head, followed by a hoodie, a purple Grateful Dead relic from some bygone decade.

  I stooped to let Gladstone wiggle out of my arms and over to Mirko, who was pulling on his sneakers, though not bothering to lace them up. “Fine,” I said. “But you’re pretty much the only person I know in London, not counting Pet Immigration, and I’m not leaving until—”

  “Suit yourself.” He stood up, ruffled his hair, and put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses. The transformation from aristocrat to geek was not just fast, it was total. From his pants pocket he withdrew a remote, which he aimed at the wall behind me.