The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 Read online

  “Okay,” I said. “Only, where do we get it?” After all, we’re girls, girly girls. I had been drinking and smoking pot since I was sixteen, but I certainly didn’t buy it. That’s what boyfriends were for. Pro: Brandon bought my drinks, and if you don’t have to lay out cash for alcohol, you can buy a lot more shoes.

  Molly thought hard, and Molly thinking was like a fat guy running — there was a lot of visible effort.

  “Well, like, the city.”

  “But where in the city?”

  “On, like, a corner.”

  “Right, Molly. I watch HBO, too. But I mean, what corner? It’s not like they list them in that crap Weekender Guide in the paper— movies, music, clubs, where to buy drugs.”

  So Molly asked a guy who asked a guy who talked to a guy, and it turned out there was a place just inside the city line, not too far from the interstate. Easy on, easy off, then easy off again. Get it? After a quick consultation on what to wear —jeans and T-shirts and sandals, although I changed into running shoes after I saw the condition of my pedicure — we were off. Very hush-hush because, as I explained to Molly, that was part of the adventure. I phoned my mom and said I was going for a run. Molly told her mom she was going into the city to shop for a dress.

  The friend of Molly’s friend’s friend had given us directions to what turned out to be an apartment complex, which was kind of disappointing. I mean, we were expecting row houses, slumping picturesquely next to each other, but this was just a dirtier, more run-down version of where we lived — little clusters of two-story townhouses built around an interior courtyard. We drove around and around and around, trying to seem very savvy and willing, and it looked like any apartment complex on a hot July afternoon. Finally, on our third turn around the complex, a guy ambled over to the car.

  “What you want?”

  “What you got?” I asked, which I thought was pretty good. I mean, I sounded casual but kind of hip, and if he turned out to be a cop, I hadn’t implicated myself. See, I was always thinking, unlike some people I could name.

  “Got American Idol and Survivor. The first one will make you sing so pretty that Simon will be speechless. The second one will make you feel as if you’ve got immunity for life.”

  “O-kay.” Molly reached over me with a fistful of bills, but the guy backed away from the car.

  “Pay the guy up there. Then someone will bring you your package.”

  “Shouldn’t you give us the, um, stuff first and then get paid?”

  The guy gave Molly the kind of look that a schoolteacher gives you when you say something exceptionally stupid. We drove up to the next guy, gave him forty dollars, then drove to a spot he pointed out to wait.

  “It’s like McDonald’s!” Molly said. “Drive through!”

  “Shit, don’t say McDonald’s. I haven’t eaten all day. I would kill for a Big Mac.”

  “Have you ever had the Big ‘N’ Tasty? It totally rocks.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a cheeseburger, but with, like, a special sauce.”

  “Like a Big Mac.”

  “Only the sauce is different.”

  “I liked the fries better when they made them in beef fat.”

  A third boy — it’s okay to say boy, because he was, like, thirteen, so I’m not being racist or anything — handed us a package, and we drove away. But Molly immediately pulled into a convenience store parking lot. It wasn’t a real convenience store, though, not a 7-Eleven or a Royal Farm.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Pre-diet binge,” Molly said. “If I’m not going to eat for the next week, I want to enjoy myself now.”

  I had planned to be pure starting that morning, but it sounded like a good idea. I did a little math. An ounce of Pringles has, like, 120 calories, so I could eat an entire can and not gain even half a pound, and a half pound doesn’t even register on a scale, so it wouldn’t count. Molly bought a pound of Peanut M&Ms, and let me tell you, the girl was not overachieving. I’d seen her eat that much on many an occasion. Molly has big appetites. We had a picnic right there in the parking lot, washing down our food with diet cream soda. Then Molly began to open our “package.”

  “Not here!” I warned her, looking around.

  “What if it’s no good? What if they cut it with, like, something, so it’s weak?”

  Molly was beginning to piss me off a little, but maybe it was just all the salt, which was making my fingers swell and my head pound a little. “How are you going to know if it’s any good?”

  “You put it on your gums.” She opened the package. It didn’t look quite right. It was more off-white than I remembered, not as finely cut. But Molly dove right in, licking her finger, sticking it in, and then spreading it around her gum line.

  “Shit,” she said. “I don’t feel a thing.”

  “Well, you don’t feel it right away.”

  “No, they, like, totally robbed us. It’s bullshit. I’m going back.”

  “Molly, I don’t think they do exchanges. It’s not like Nordstrom, where you can con them into taking the shoes back even after you wore them once. You stuck your wet finger in it.”

  “We were ripped off. They think just because we’re white suburban girls they can sell us this weak-ass shit.” She was beginning to sound more and more like someone on HBO, although I’d have to say the effect was closer to Ali G than Sopranos. “I’m going to demand a refund.”

  This was my first inkling that things might go a little wrong.

  So Molly went storming back to the parking lot and found our guy, and she began bitching and moaning, but he didn’t seem that upset. He seemed kind of, I don’t know, amused by her. He let her rant and rave, just nodding his head, and when she finally ran out of steam, he said, “Honey, darling, you bought heroin. Not cocaine. That’s why you didn’t get a jolt. It’s not supposed to jolt you. It’s supposed to slow you down, not that it seems to be doing that, either.”

  Molly had worked up so much outrage that she still saw herself as the wronged party. “Well, how was I supposed to know that?”

  “Because we sell cocaine by vial color. Red tops, blue tops, yellow tops. I just had you girls figured for heroin girls. You looked like you knew your way around, got tired of OxyContin, wanted the real thing.”

  Molly preened a little, as if she had been complimented. It’s interesting about Molly. Objectively, I’m prettier, but she has always done better with guys. I think it’s because she has this kind of sexy vibe, by which I mean she manages to communicate that she’ll pretty much do anyone.

  “Two pretty girls like you, just this once, I’ll make an exception. You go hand that package back to my man Gordy, and he’ll give you some nice blue tops.”

  We did, and he did, but this time Molly made a big show of driving only a few feet away and inspecting our purchase, holding the blue-capped vial up to the light.

  “It’s, like, rock candy.”

  It did look like a piece of rock candy, which made me think of the divinity my grandmother used to make, which made me think of all the other treats from childhood that I couldn’t imagine eating now — Pixy Stix and Now and Laters and Mary Janes and Dots and Black Crows and Necco Wafers and those pastel buttons that came on sheets of wax paper. Chocolate never did it for me, but I loved sugary treats when I was young.

  And now Molly was out of the car and on her feet, steaming toward our guy, who looked around, very nervous, as if this five-foot-five, size-ten dental hygienist — size eight when she’s being good— could do some serious damage. And I wanted to say, “Dude, don’t worry! All she can do is scrape your gums until they bleed.” (I go to Molly’s dentist and Molly cleans my teeth, and she is seriously rough. I think she gets a little kick out of it, truthfully.)

  “What the fuck is this?” she yelled, getting all gangster on his ass—I think I’m saying that right — holding the vial up to the guy’s face, while he looked around nervously. Finally, he grabbed her wrist and said: “Look,
just shut up or you’re going to bring some serious trouble to bear. You smoke it. I’ll show you how...Don’t you know anything? Trust me, you’ll like it.”

  Molly motioned to me and I got out of the car, although a little reluctantly. It was, like, you know, that scene in Star Wars where the little red eyes are watching from the caves and suddenly those weird sand people just up and attack. I’m not being racist, just saying we were outsiders and I definitely had a feeling all sorts of eyes were on us, taking note.

  “We’ll go to my place,” the guy said, all super suave, like he was some international man of mystery inviting us to see his etchings.

  “A shooting gallery?” Molly squealed, all excited. “Ohmigod!”

  He seemed a little offended. “I don’t let dope fiends in my house.”

  He led us to one of the townhouses, and I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not some place with doilies and old overstuffed furniture and pictures of Jesus and some black guy on the wall. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I figured out later, but I was really distracted at the time, and thought it was the guy’s dad or something.) But the most surprising thing was this little old lady sitting in the middle of the sofa, hands folded in her lap. She had a short, all-white Afro, and wore a pink T-shirt and flowery ski pants, which bagged on her stick-thin legs. Ski pants. I hadn’t seen them in, like, forever.

  “Antone?” she said. “Did you come to fix my lunch?”

  “In a minute, Grandma. I have guests.”

  “Are they nice people, Antone?”

  “Very nice people,” he said, winking at us, and it was only then that I realized the old lady was blind. You see, her eyes weren’t milky or odd in any way, they were brown and clear, as if she was staring right at us. You had to look closely to realize that she couldn’t really see, that the gaze, steady as it was, didn’t focus on anything.

  Antone went to the kitchen, an alcove off the dining room, and fixed a tray with a sandwich, some potato chips, a glass of soda, and an array of medications. How could you not like a guy like that? So sweet, with broad shoulders and close-cropped hair like his granny’s, only dark. Then, very quietly, with another wink, he showed us how to smoke.

  “Antone, are you smoking in here? You know I don’t approve of tobacco.”

  ‘Just clove cigarettes, Grandma. Clove never hurt anybody.”

  He helped each of us with the pipe, getting closer than was strictly necessary. He smelled like clove, like clove and ginger and cinnamon. Antone the spice cookie. When he took the pipe from Molly’s mouth, he replaced it with his lips. I didn’t really want him to kiss me, but I’m so much prettier than Molly. Not to mention thinner. But then, I hear black guys like girls with big behinds, and Molly certainly qualified. You could put a can of beer on her ass and have her walk around the room and it wouldn’t fall off. Not being catty, just telling the literal truth. I did it once, at a party, when I was bored, and then Molly swished around with a can of Bud Light on her ass, showing off, like she was proud to have so much baggage.

  Weird, but I was hungrier than ever after smoking, which was so not the point. I mean, I wasn’t hungry in my stomach, I was hungry in my mouth. And what I wanted, more than anything in the world, were those potato chips on the blind lady’s tray, They were Utz Salt ‘n’ Vinegar; I had seen Antone take them out of the green-and-yellow bag. I looooooooooooooooooooooooooooove Utz Salt ‘n’ Vinegar, but they don’t come in a light version, so I almost never let myself have any. So I snagged one, just one, quiet as a cat. But, like they say, you can’t eat just one. Okay, so they say that about Lays, but it’s even more true about Utz, in my personal opinion. I kept stealing them, one at a time.

  “Antone? Are you taking food off my tray?”

  I looked to Antone for backup, but Molly’s tongue was so far in his mouth that she might have been flossing him. When he finally managed to detach himself, he said: “Um, Grandma? I’m going to take a little lie-down.”

  “What about your guests?”

  “They’re going,” he said, walking over to the door with a heavy tread and closing it.

  “It’s time for Judge Judy!” his granny said, which made me wonder, because how does a blind person know what time it is? Antone used the remote control to turn on the television. It was a black-and-white, total Smithsonian. After all, she was blind, so I guess it didn’t matter.

  Next thing I knew, I was alone in the room with the blind woman, who was fixated on Judge Judy as if she was going to be tested on the outcome, and I was eyeing her potato chips, while Antone and Molly started making the kind of noises that you make when you’re trying so hard not to make noise that you can’t help making noise.

  “Antone?” the old lady called out. “Is the dishwasher running? Because I think a piece of cutlery might have gotten caught in the machinery.”

  I was so knocked out that she knew the word cutlery. How cool is that?

  But I couldn’t answer, of course. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “It’s — okay — Granny,” Antone grunted from the other room. “It’s — all — going — to — be —Jesus Christ — okay.”

  The noises started up again. Granny was right. It did sound like a piece of cutlery caught in the dishwasher. But then it stopped — Antone’s breathing, the mattress springs, Molly’s little muffled grunts — they just stopped, and they didn’t stop naturally, if you know what I mean. I’m not trying to be cruel, but Molly’s a bit of a slut, and I’ve listened to her have sex more times than I can count, and I know how it ends, even when she’s faking it, even when she has to be quiet, and it just didn’t sound like the usual Molly finish at all. Antone yelped, but she was silent as a grave.

  “Antone, what are you doing?” his granny asked. Antone didn’t answer. Several minutes went by, and then there was a hoarse whisper from the bedroom.

  “Um, Kelley? Could you come here a minute?”

  “What was that?” his granny asked.

  I used the remote to turn up the volume on Judge Judy, “DO I LOOK STUPID TO YOU?” the judge was yelling. “REMEMBER THAT PRETTY FADES BUT STUPID IS FOREVER. I ASKED IF YOU HAD IT IN WRITING, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ALL THIS FOLDEROL ABOUT ORAL AGREEMENTS.”

  When I went into the bedroom, Molly was under Antone, and I remember thinking — I was a little high, remember — that he made her look really thin because he covered up her torso, and Molly does have good legs and decent arms. He had a handsome back, too, broad and muscled, and a great ass. Brandon had no ass (con), but he had nice legs (pro).

  It took me a moment to notice that Antone had a pair of scissors stuck in the middle of his beautiful back.

  “I told him no,” Molly whispered, although the volume on the television was so loud that the entire apartment was practically reverberating. “No means no.”

  There was a lot of blood, I noticed. A lot.

  “I didn’t hear you,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t hear you say any words.”

  “I mouthed it. He told me to keep silent because his grandmother is here. Still, I mouthed it. ‘No.’ ‘No.’” She made this incredibly unattractive fish mouth to show me.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I mean, I was totally up for giving him a blowjob, especially after he said he’d give me a little extra, but he was, like, uncircumcised. I just couldn’t, Kelley, I couldn’t. I’ve never been with a guy like that. I offered him a hand job instead, but he got totally peeved and tried to force me.”

  The story wasn’t tracking. High as I was, I could see there were some holes. How did you get naked? I wanted to ask. Why didn’t you shout? If Granny knew you were here, Antone wouldn’t have dared misbehaved. He had clearly been more scared of Granny than he was into Molly.

  “This is the stash house,” Molly said. “Antone showed me.”

  “What?”

  “The drugs. They’re here. All of it. We could just help ourselves. I mean, he’s a rapist, Kelley. He’s a criminal. He sells drugs to people. Help me, Kelley.
Get him off me.”

  But when I rolled him off, I saw there was a condom. Molly saw it, too.

  “We should, like, so get rid of that. It would only complicate things. When I saw he was going to rape me, I told him he should at least be courteous.”

  I nodded, as if agreeing. I flushed the condom down the toilet, helped Molly clean the blood off her, and then used my purse to pack up what we could find, as she was carrying this little bitty Kate Spade knockoff that wasn’t much good for anything. We found some cash, too, about $2,000, and helped ourselves to that, on the rationale that it would be more suspicious if we didn’t. On the way out, I shook a few more potato chips on Granny’s plate.

  “Antone?” she said. “Are you going out again?”

  Molly grunted low, and that seemed to appease Granny. We walked out slowly, as if we had all the time in the world, but again I had that feeling of a thousand pairs of eyes on us. We were in some serious trouble. There would have to be some sort of retribution for what we had done. What Molly had done. All I did was steal a few potato chips.