The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 Read online

  Though the twenty stories in this selection are all “mysteries,” the resemblances among them end just about there. Not one seems to me formulaic in the stereotypical way often charged against mystery fiction by people like the critic Edmund Wilson (see Wilson’s famously peevish diatribe of 1945, “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?,” an attack on the overplotted, psychologically superficial English-cozy whodunits by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, et al.). Not one evokes violence gratuitously, in the way of contemporary crime/action movies and video games. Not one is, in fact, driven by plot at the expense of probability and plausibility. These are all stories in which something happens, usually irrevocably, but they are not stories in which what “happens” is primarily the point. As in Kent Nelson’s collectively narrated “Public Trouble,” which traces the history of an adolescent boy who has committed acts of extreme violence, Oz Spies’s uncomfortably intimate “The Love of a Strong Man,” which tells us how it probably feels to be the publicly identified wife of a notorious serial rapist, and Tim McLoughlin’s excursion into an ironic sort of nostalgia, “When All This Was Bay Ridge,” it’s the effect of violence upon others that is the point. As McLoughlin’s stunned narrator is asked: “Who owns memory?” The expediency of ethics among professionals — in this case, police officers — that so shocks McLoughlin’s protagonist is the revelation of Lou Manfredo’s “Case Closed” with its street wisdom: “There is no right. There is no wrong . . . There just is.”

  It’s usually claimed that short stories are distilled, sleeker, and faster-moving forms of fiction than novels, but in fact, all that one can safely say about most stories is that they are shorter than most novels. Page for page, paragraph for paragraph, sentence for sentence, some of the stories in this volume move far more deliberately, if not more poetically, than many novels: David Means’s elliptical “Sault Ste. Marie” is aptly titled, for its setting is its most powerfully evoked character; Daniel Orozco’s stylishly narrated “Officers Weep” is a jigsaw puzzle of a story, requiring the kind of attentive reading usually associated with poetry (or postmodernist fiction); Stuart M. Kaminsky’s “The Shooting of John Roy Worth” is a fabulist tall tale that switches protagonists when we least expect it; John Sayles’s teasingly oblique and cinematic “Cruisers” tempts us to read too quickly, and forces us to reread; Scott Turow’s “Loyalty” is almost entirely narrated, a tour de force of suspense that uncoils with the dramatic kick of one of Turow’s long, densely populated, Chicago-set novels. So far removed from its initial violent act (which occurred forty years before) is Laura Lippman’s “The Shoeshine Man’s Regrets” that the story is resolved as a study of character, tenderly and shrewdly reconstructed. Joseph Raiche’s “One Mississippi” is similarly a reconstruction of violence after the fact, entirely absorbed in the mind of a man who has survived his wife, with no present-action drama: somewhere between story and elegy, convincing as a testament of our gun-ridden TV-tabloid culture. Daniei Handler’s “Delmonico” is an artful variation on the “locked-room mystery” that pays homage to Hollywood noir. Sam Shaw’s “Reconstruction” and Richard Burgin’s “The Identity Club” are sui generis, feats of voice, tone, perspective, and tantalizing irresolution that argue (as Edmund Wilson could not have foreseen) for the elasticity of borders between “literary” and “mystery” stories.

  Another debatable claim is that the short story is likely to be more self-consciously crafted and “shaped” than the novel. Yet at least two of the most memorable stories in this volume — Edward Jones’s “Old Boys, Old Girls” and Scott Wolven’s “Barracuda” — defy expectations at virtually every turn, as willfully shapeless as life. “Old Boys, Old Girls” meanders like a river over a period of many years, following a vague and haphazard chronological movement; Wolven’s much shorter story cuts from scene to scene with the nervous energy of a hand-held camera. Equally memorable stories by Wolven have appeared in the last several volumes of The Best American Mystery Stories, each an exploration of violence among men who have become marginalized, and thus as dangerous as rogue elephants, in an economically ravaged society that places little value on traditional masculinity. For Wolven’s men — loggers, tree poachers, corrupt cops — the impulse to do terrible damage to one another is as natural as watching pit bulls tear one another to pieces for sport.

  George V. Higgins (1939-1999) was a unique talent. His most acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972) has become an American crime classic. As guest editor of this anthology I’m grateful to have the opportunity to reprint what will probably be the last of Higgins’s stories to appear in this series. One might debate whether “Jack Duggan’s Law” is a story or a novella, but one can’t debate the verve, wit, authenticity, and wisdom of the world it memorializes: a Boston demimonde of harassed, overworked, yet quixotically zealous defense attorneys and ADAs. Higgins’s ear for the rough poetry of vernacular speech has never been sharper than in this posthumously published story from a collection titled The Easiest Thing in the World.

  As a concluding note, I should add that reading stories for this volume was a pleasure and that decisions were not easy to make. Both Otto and I read and reread. (I’ve read “Jack Duggan’s Law” at least three times. It keeps getting better.) Each of us had the idea, I think, of wearing the other down by stubbornly clinging to favored titles. In some cases this worked, in others not. Where we couldn’t finally agree, we decided to include the story in question. Our principal disagreement was over George V. Higgins: Otto preferred the even longer “The Easiest Thing in the World” to “Jack Duggan’s Law.” In this instance, Otto graciously deferred to me, but readers may want to decide their own preferences.

  Joyce Carol Oates

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  The Best American

  Mystery Stories 2005

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  RICHARD BURGIN

  The Identity Club

  From TriQuarterly

  SOMETIMES YOU MEET someone who is actually achieving what you can only strive for. It’s not exactly like meeting your double, it’s more like seeing what you would be if you could realize your potential. Those were the feelings that Remy had about Eugene. In appearance they were similar, although Eugene was younger by a few years and taller by a few inches. But they each had fine dark hair, still untouched by any gray, and they each had refined facial features, especially their delicate noses. Eugene’s body, however, was significantly more muscular than Remy’s.

  At the agency in New York where Remy had worked for three years writing ad copy, Eugene was making a rapid and much talked about ascent. A number of Remy’s other colleagues openly speculated that Eugene was advancing because he was a masterful office politician. But when Remy began working with him on an important new campaign for a client who manufactured toothpaste, he saw that wasn’t true at all. Eugene had a special kind of brilliance, not just for writing slogans or generating campaign ideas, but a deep insight into human motivations and behavior that he knew how to channel into making people buy products. Rather than being a master diplomat, Remy discovered that Eugene was aloof almost to the point of rudeness, never discussed his private life, and rarely showed any signs of a sense of humor. Yet Remy admired him enormously and wondered if Eugene, who Remy thought of as one of the wisest men he knew (certainly the wisest young man), might be a person he could confide in about the Identity Club and the important decision he had to make in the near future.

  All of these thoughts were streaming through Remy’s mind after work one night in his apartment when the phone rang. It was Poe calling to remind him about the Identity Club meeting that night. Remy nearly gasped as he’d inexplicably lost track of time and now had only a half hour to meet Poe and take a cab with him to the meeting.

  The club itself had to be, almost by definition, a secretive organization that placed a high value on its members’ trustworthiness, dependability, and punctuality. Its members assumed the identities— the appearance, activities, and p
ersonalities — (whenever they could) of various celebrated dead artists they deeply admired. At the monthly meetings, which Remy enjoyed immensely and thought of as parties, all members would be dressed in their adopted identities, drinking and eating and joking with each other. As soon as he stepped into a meeting he could feel himself transform, as if the colors of his life went from muted grays and browns to glowing reds and yellows and vibrant greens and blues. To be honest with himself, since moving to New York from New England three years ago, his life before the club had been embarrassingly devoid of both emotion and purpose. How lucky for him, he often thought, that he’d been befriended by Winston Reems — now known by club members as Salvador Dali — a junor executive at his agency who had slowly introduced him to the club.

  This month’s meeting was at the new Bill Evans’s apartment (who had patterned himself after the famous jazz pianist) and since Remy enjoyed music he was particularly looking forward to it. He had also been told that Thomas Bernhard, named for the late, Austrian writer, would definitely be there as well. As Bernhard was renowned for being a kind of hermit it was always special when he did attend a meeting and it made sense that as a former professional musician he would go to this one.

  Quickly Remy dried off from his shower and began putting on new clothes. He thought that tonight promised to be an especially interesting mix of people, which was one of the ostensible ideas of the organization, to have great artists from the different arts meet and mingle, as they never had in real life. The decision facing Remy, which he’d given a good deal of thought to without coming any closer to a conclusion, was who he was going to “become” himself. He was considered at present an “uncommitted member” and had been debating between Nathanael West and some other writers. Nabokov, whom he might have seriously considered, had already been taken. At least, since he still had a month before he had to commit, he didn’t have to dress in costume — though he rather looked forward to that. Remy had been a member for four months and it was now time for him to submit to a club interview to help him decide whose identity he was best suited for. Sometimes these interviews were conducted by the entire membership, which reminded Remy of a kind of intervention, other times by the host of that evening’s meeting or by some other well-established member. The new member was never informed in advance, as these “probings” were taken very seriously and the club wanted a spontaneous and true response.

  One of the reasons Remy was having difficulty choosing an identity — and why he felt some anxiety about the whole process — was that he’d kept secret from the club his hidden contempt, or at least ambivalence, about the advertising business and his disappointment with the emptiness of his own life as well. No wonder he found refuge in art and in imagining the lives that famous artists led. He’d heard other members confess to those exact sentiments, but the public admission of these feelings would be difficult for Remy. He thought it was the inevitable price he had to pay to get his membership in the club, and along with his work and Eugene (whose importance to him Remy also kept secret) the club was his only interest in life, the only thing worth thinking about.

  Poe was waiting for him in front of his brownstone, dressed, as Remy expected, in a black overcoat with his long recently dyed dark hair parted in the middle, the approximate match of his recently dyed mustache.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late,” Remy said.

  Poe stared at him. “Something is preoccupying you,” he said.

  “You’re right about that,” Remy said, thinking of Eugene and wishing he could somehow be at the party.

  “Do you mind if we walk?” Poe said. “There’s something in the air tonight I crave, although I couldn’t say exactly what it is. Some dark bell-like sound, some secret perfumed scent coming from the night that draws me forward ... besides,” he said, with a completely straight face, as he took a swallow of some kind of alcohol concealed in a brown paper bag, “it will be just as fast or just as slow as a taxi.”

  “Fine,” Remy said; he felt he was hardly in a position to object. In the club Remy suspected that members assumed their identities with varying degrees of intensity. Clearly Poe was unusually committed to his to the point where he had renounced his former name, become a poet, short story writer, and alcoholic, and given up dating women his age. Because he worked mostly at home doing research on the Internet he was able to be in character pretty much around the clock.

  “You need to focus on your choice,” Poe said. “You have an important decision facing you and not much time to make it.”

  “I hope I’ll know during the probing,” Remy said. “I hope it will come to me then.”

  “Listen to your heart, even if it makes too much noise,” Poe said, smiling ironically.

  They walked in silence the rest of the way, Poe sometimes putting his hands to his ears as if Roderick Usher were reacting to too strident a sound. As they were approaching the steps to Evans’s walkup, from which they could already hear a few haunting chords on the piano, Poe turned to Remy and said, “Are you aware that we’re voting on the woman issue tonight?”

  “Yes, I knew that.”

  Poe was referring to the question of whether or not the Identity Club, which was currently a de facto men’s club, would begin to actively recruit women. Remy had sometimes thought of the club as practicing a form of directed reincarnation, but did that mean that in the next world the club didn’t want to deal with any women? “I’m going to vote that we should recruit them. How can we fully be who we’ve become without women? I need them for my poetry, and to love of course. I think the organization should try to increase our chances to meet them, not isolate us from them.”

  “I completely agree with you,” Remy said.

  They rang the bell and Dali opened the door, bowing grandly and pointing toward a dark, barely furnished, yet somehow chaotic apartment.

  “It’s Bill Evans’s home. I knew it would be a mess,” Poe said quietly to Remy, drinking again from his brown paper bag.

  Evans was bent over the piano, head characteristically suspended just above the keys, as he played the coda of his composition “Re: Person I Knew.” He also had long dark hair but was clean-shaven. From the small sofa — the only one in the room — Erik Satie shouted “Bravo! Encore!” Remy couldn’t remember seeing any photographs of the French composer but judged his French to be authentic. As a tribute to his admirer, Evans played a version of Satie’s most famous piano piece, “Gymnopedie,” which Remy recalled the former Evans had recorded on his album Nirvana. This was the first time Remy had heard the new Bill Evans play and while he was hardly an Evans scholar he thought it sounded quite convincing. The harmony, the soft touch and plaintive melodic lines were all there (no doubt learned from a book that had printed Evans’s solos and arrangements) though, of course, some mistakes were made and the new Evans’s touch wasn’t as elegant as the first one’s. Still, Remy could see that the new Evans’s immersion into his identity had been thorough. Remy had recently seen a video of the former Evans playing and could see that the new one had his body movements down pat. Could he, Remy, devote himself as thoroughly to the new identity he would soon be assuming?

  “Encore, encore,” said Satie again and now also Cocteau, who had joined his old friend and collaborator on the sofa. Continuing his homage to his French admirers, Evans played “You Must Believe in Spring” by the French composer Michel Legrand. When it ended Remy found himself applauding vigorously as well and becoming even more curious about the former life of the new Evans. All he knew was that he’d once been a student at Juilliard and was involved now in selling computer parts. He wished he’d paid more attention when he talked with him five months ago at the meeting but now it was too late, as members were not allowed to discuss their former identities with each other once they’d committed to a new one.

  After a brief rendition of “Five,” Evans took a break and Remy slowly sidled up to him, wishing again that Eugene were there. Though he was often aloof, when the situation requ
ired, Eugene always knew just what to say to people. What to say and not a word more, for Eugene had the gift of concision, just as Evans did on the piano.

  “That was beautiful playing,” Remy finally said.

  “Thanks, man,” Evans said, slowly raising his head and smiling at him. Like the first Bill Evans, his teeth weren’t very good and he wore glasses.

  “I know how hard it is to keep that kind of time, and to swing like that without your trio.”

  “I miss the guys but sometimes when I play alone I feel a oneness with the music that I just can’t get any other way.”

  It occurred to Remy that Evans had had at least four different trios throughout his recording career and that he didn’t know which trio Evans was “missing” because he didn’t know what stage of Evans’s life the new one was now living. Perhaps sensing this, Evans said, “When Scotty died last year I didn’t even know if I could continue. I couldn’t bring myself to even look for a new bassist for a long time or to record either. And when I did finally go in the studio again a little while ago, it was a solo gig.”