The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 Read online

  “I’m sorry about this.”

  “Don’t be. In a way, I’m glad it’s you and not some punk kid. So how much is Estaban paying anyway?”

  “Not enough. But I’ve got family. A sister out in Pasadena. Estaban knows where she lives.”

  “I understand. And, believe it or not, I don’t hold a grudge. This is all just part of the deal.”

  A cool breeze swept across the old man’s back yard, rustling leaves in the tree branches. McHenry shifted in his chair, set his drink down on the deck floor. “Hey,” he said with a smile, “you remember your first run? Down in Colombia?”

  “It was Peru. Eight years ago.”

  “That’s right, Peru. We landed that old twin-engine prop on some godforsaken airfield up in the mountains. In high wind too. You were what, twenty-three, twenty-four maybe? Christ, I don’t know what scared you more, the landing or them guys waiting for us.”

  “Bunch of mountain men with automatic weapons,” said Dillon, chuckling. “Almost wet my pants when I saw them. Kept seeing scenes from Deliverance run through my head.”

  “But how did you feel after it was through?”

  “Like I’d won the lottery,” said Dillon.

  McHenry’s smile faded. “I miss that feeling. Miss the rush. I guess it was over for me a while ago.”

  The old man stared blankly into the night sky, not looking at anything in particular. All the life seemed to drain from his eyes. “I’ve made some arrangements,” he said.

  “We’re not talking about a will, are we?”

  “Estaban’s a snake, always has been. Play with a snake, sooner or later you’ll get bit. But I’m not going down alone. I’ve seen to that.”

  “What’re you saying, Mac?”

  McHenry faced him. For the first time, Dillon noticed the deep lines of age etched into the old man’s brow, like time had run a razor across his skin. “In this game, every move is a risk,” he said. “Everything you do has repercussions. I want you to remember that.”

  Dillon nodded. “I’ll remember.”

  “Good,” said McHenry. “Now let’s get this over with.”

  The old man rested back in his chair and closed his eyes, as if he was about to take an afternoon nap. His face held an eerie calm.

  Slowly, Dillon raised the .45 and took careful aim. Never in his life had a gun felt so heavy.

  ~ * ~

  McHenry’s boys had been busy. Within an hour, Miguel had phoned Dillon’s apartment three more times, the panic in the Colombian’s voice growing with each call. Three of Estaban’s former lieutenants were dead. One went by bomb. Two others were shot. Then the phone calls stopped all together, and Dillon began to wonder if Miguel himself had gotten hit.

  Silence hung in the apartment like a poisonous gas. Walking to the fridge, Dillon dug out another beer and tilted the bottle back. Four empties sat on the kitchen counter.

  What the hell was he still doing here? He should’ve taken off by now. Yet something kept him. Dillon tried to tell himself he was just biding his time, waiting for things to cool down before he made his run. But that was a lie, and he knew it. It was the package. He had to know what was inside.

  Dillon took one last swig of beer then set the bottle next to its empty brothers. He grabbed hold of the package with both hands, carefully lifting it off the counter, testing its weight. It felt light. He shook it a little, hearing no hint at what was inside.

  If it was a bomb, it would’ve gone off by now, thought Dillon. He picked the box cutter up and repeated the words in his head, over and over. It would’ve gone off. It would’ve gone off. It would’ve gone off.

  Hand shaking, Dillon ran the cutter’s blade along the box top, slitting the tape wide. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes and quickly ripped open the package’s flaps.

  There were no explosives, no wires, no timers. Instead, the package was filled with paper shavings cut from the L.A. Times. Nestled among the shavings was Wilson McHenry’s old black fedora.

  Dillon let himself breathe again. He lifted the fedora out by its brim and looked at it hard. He recalled his last conversation with McHenry — the old man sitting on the deck, talking about “arrangements” and “consequences.” Dillon had thought it was some sort of threat, a last-ditch effort by the old man to stay alive. He should’ve known better. McHenry didn’t play that way.

  So what was McHenry’s game? The answer came to Dillon as he pulled the hat on over his brow.

  McHenry was tired of the business; he had said so himself. But he’d held on so long, he didn’t know how to let go anymore. He needed Dillon’s help. That was why he said he didn’t hold a grudge. McHenry wanted out, and he understood that Dillon was just protecting himself and his family.

  The fedora then was a symbol. McHenry was passing the baton. By having Estaban and his men killed, he was clearing a path so Dillon could take over. Run things the way the old man would have.

  Dillon couldn’t help but smile. Christ, McHenry was crazy. He wished he could see him now, have a drink together, tell a few jokes maybe. But all Dillon had left of the old man was the hat.

  Tossing the empty package in the trash, Dillon smoothed out the brim of his new fedora. He wouldn’t be anyone’s muscle anymore, or a pilot running product. He was going to make something of himself, he decided. He’d make a deal with McHenry’s boys and reorganize what was left of Estaban’s crew. March right out and take control. After all, that’s what the old man would’ve wanted.

  ~ * ~

  Two of McHenry’s boys sat in a Plymouth parked under a dead street lamp, waiting. They were both big men with square jaws and shoulders cut from stone. A sawed-off shotgun rested in the passenger’s lap, out of sight below the window.

  “Someone’s coming,” said the driver, nodding in the direction of the apartments across the street.

  The passenger peered through the front windshield, catching sight of a figure stepping out the front entrance. “That’s him.”

  “You a hundred percent?”

  “Trust me, it’s him.”

  “We don’t got a picture or nothing. How can you be so sure?”

  The passenger pumped the shotgun. A twelve-gauge slug cranked into the chamber, ready for business. “The old man left clear instructions,” said the passenger. “Told us to look for a guy wearing a funny old hat.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  WALTER MOSLEY

  Karma

  from Dangerous Women

  Leonid McGill sat at his desk, on the sixty-seventh floor of the Empire State Building, filing his nails and gazing at New Jersey. It was three-fifteen. Leonid had promised him­self that he’d exercise that afternoon but now that the time had come he felt lethargic.

  It was that pastrami sandwich, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll have something light like fish and then I can go to Gordo’s and work out.

  Gordo’s was a third-floor boxer’s gym on Thirty-first Street. When Leonid was thirty years younger, and sixty pounds lighter, he went to Gordo’s every day. For a while Gordo Packer wanted the private detective to go pro.

  “You’ll make more money in the ring than you ever will panty sniffin’,” the seemingly ageless trainer said. McGill liked the idea but he also loved Lucky Strikes and beer.

  “I can’t bring myself to run unless I’m being chased,” he’d tell Gordo. “And whenever somebody hurts me I wanna do him some serious harm. You know if a guy knocked me out in the ring I’d probably lay for him with a tire iron out back’a Madison Square when the night was through.”

  The years went by and Leonid kept working out on the heavy bag two or three times a week. But a boxing career was out of the question. Gordo lost interest in Leonid as a prospect but they remained friends.

  “How’d a Negro ever get a name like Leonid McGill?” Gordo once asked the P.I.

  “Daddy was a communist and Great-Great-Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland,” Leo answered easily. “You know the black man’s family
tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”

  Leo got up from his chair and made a stab at touching his toes. His fingers made it to about midshins but his stomach blocked any further progress.

  “Shit,” the P.I. said. Then he returned to his chair and went back to filing his nails.

  He did that until the broad-faced clock on the wall said 4:07. Then the buzzer sounded. One long, loud blare. Leonid cursed the fact that he hadn’t hooked up the view-cam to see who it was at the door. With a ring like that it could have been anyone. He owed over forty-six hundred dollars to the Wyant brothers. The nut was due and Leonid had yet to collect on his windfall. The Wyants wouldn’t pay any attention to his cash flow problems.

  It might have been a prospective client at the door. A real client. Someone with an employee stealing from him. Or maybe a daughter being influenced by a bad crowd. Then again it could be one of thirty or forty angry husbands want­ing revenge for being found out at their extramarital pastimes. And then there was Joe Haller-the poor schnook. But Leonid had never even met Joe Haller. There was no way that that loser could have found his door.

  The buzzer sounded again.

  Leonid got up from his chair and walked into the long hall that led to his reception room. Then he came to the front door.

  The buzzer blared a third time.

  “Who is it?” McGill shouted in a southern accent that he used sometimes.

  “Mr. McGill?” a woman said.

  “He’s not here.”

  “Oh. Do you expect him back today?”

  “No,” Leonid said. “No. He’s away on a case. Down in Florida. If you tell me what it is you want I’ll leave him a note.”

  “Can I come in?” She sounded young and innocent but Leonid wasn’t about to be fooled.

  “I’m just the building janitor, honey,” he said. “I’m not al­lowed to let anybody in any office in this here building. But I’ll write down your name and number and leave it on his desk if you want.”

  Leonid had used that line before. There was no argument against it. The janitor couldn’t be held responsible.

  There was silence from the other side of the door. If the girl had an accomplice they’d be whispering about how to get around his ploy. Leonid put his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear a thing.

  “Karmen Brown,” the woman said. She added a number with the new 646 prefix. Probably a cell phone, Leonid thought.

  “Hold on. Let me get a pencil,” he complained. “Brown, you say?”

  “Karmen Brown,” she repeated. “Karmen with a K.” Then she gave the number again.

  “I’ll put it on his desk,” Leonid promised. “He’ll get it the minute he gets back to town.”

  “Thank you,” the young woman said.

  There was hesitation in her voice. If she was a thinking girl she might have wondered how a janitor would know the whereabouts of the private detective. But after a moment or two he could hear her heels clicking down the hall. He returned to his office to stay awhile just in case the girl, and her possible accomplice, decided to wait until he came out.

  He didn’t mind hanging around in the office. His sublet apartment wasn’t nearly as nice, or quiet, and at least he could be alone. Commercial rents took a nosedive after 9-11. He picked up the ESB workspace for a song.

  Not that he’d paid the rent in three months.

  But Leonid Trotter McGill didn’t worry about money that much. He knew that he could pull a hat trick if he had to. Too many people had too many secrets. And secrets were the most valuable commodity in New York City.

  At 5:39 the buzzer sounded again. But this time it was two long blasts followed by three short. Leonid made his way down the hall and opened the front door without asking who it was.

  The man standing there was short and white, balding and slim. He wore an expensive suit with real cuff links on a white shirt that had some starch in the collar and cuffs.

  “Leon,” the small white man said.

  “Lieutenant. Come on in.”

  Leonid led the dapper little man through the reception area, along the hallway (that had three doors down its length), and finally into his office.

  “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

  “Nice office. Where’s everybody else?” the visitor asked.

  “It’s just me right now. I’m in a transition phase. You know, trying to develop a new business plan.”

  “I see.”

  The slender white man took the chair in front of Leonid’s desk. From there he could see the long shadows across New Jersey. He shifted his gaze from the window to his host. L. T. McGill, P.I.

  Leonid was short, no taller than five seven, with a protrud­ing gut and heavy jowls. His skin was the color of dirty bronze and covered with dark freckles. There was a toothpick jutting out from the right side of his mouth. He wore a tan suit that had been stained over time. His shirt was lime green and the thick gold band on his left pinky weighed two or three ounces.

  Leonid McGill had powerful hands and strong breath. His eyes were suspicious and he would always appear to be a decade over his actual age.

  “What can I do for you, Carson?” the detective asked the cop.

  “Joe Haller,” Carson Kitteridge said.

  “Come again?” Leonid let his face wrinkle up, feigning ig­norance if not innocence.

  “Joe Haller.”

  “Never heard that name before. Who is he?”

  “He’s a gigolo and a batterer. Now they’re trying to tell me he’s a thief.”

  “You wanna hire me to find something on him?”

  “No,” the cop said. “No. He’s in the Tombs right now. We caught him red-handed. He had thirty thousand right there in his closet. In the briefcase that he carried to work every day.”

  “That makes it easy,” Leonid said. He concentrated on his breathing, something he had learned to do whenever he was being questioned by the law.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Carson asked.

  “Is there a problem with the case?”

  “You were seen speaking to Nestor Bendix on January four.”

  “I was?”

  “Yeah. I know that because Nestor’s name came up in the robbery of a company called Amberson’s Financials two months ago.”

  “Really?” Leonid said. “What does all that have to do with Joe whatever?”

  “Haller,” Lieutenant Kitteridge said. “Joe Haller. The money he had in the bag was from the armored car that had just made a drop at Amberson’s.”

  “An armored car dropped thirty thousand dollars at the place?”

  “More like three hundred thousand,” Kitteridge said. “It was for their ATM machines. Seems like Amberson’s had got heavy into the ATM business in that neighborhood. They run sixty machines around midtown.”

  “I’ll be damned. And you think Joe Haller and Nestor Ben­dix robbed them?”

  Lieutenant Carson Kitteridge stayed silent for a moment, his gray eyes taking in the rough-hewn detective.

  “What did you and Nestor have to say to each other?” the cop asked.

  “Nothing,” Leonid said, giving a one-shoulder shrug. “It was a pizza place down near the Seaport, if I remember right. I ducked in there for a calzone and saw Nestor. We used to be friends back when Hell’s Kitchen was still Hell’s Kitchen.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Not a thing. Really. It was just a chance meeting. I sat down long enough to eat too much and find out that he’s got two kids in college and two in jail.”

  “You talk about the heist?”

  “I never even heard about it until you just said.”

  “This Joe Haller,” the policeman said. “He practices what you call an alternative lifestyle. He likes married women. It’s what you might call his thing. He finds straight ladies and bends them. They say he’s hung like a horse.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. What he does is gets the ladies to meet him
at hotels near where he works and goes in to teach them about how the other eight inches live.”

  “You’ve lost me, Lieutenant,” Leonid said. “I mean unless one of the she-guards at Amberson’s is Haller’s chicken.”