The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

  “Goddamned Bohunk has been dealin’ seconds all night long,” Carter answered.

  “I can’t believe that,” she said, still gentle, “can’t believe that any more than I can believe ...” She paused, then her voice became hard. “. . . that you forgot what I said about no guns, you needle-dicked bug-fucking son of a bitch.”

  Mabel had done it wrong a couple of times in the past and had to deal with convulsions, confusion, and anger — usually, with the Derringer — so experience had taught her exactly where to put the hatpin at the base of the skull. When she tapped the thick pin with the heel of her hand, it penetrated Carter’s dismal brain as easily as it might slip through a round of rat cheese. He was dead before his face hit the meager scattering of chips in front of him.

  “I guess you boys will have to play four-handed, now,” she said lightly as she picked up Carter’s .45 off the table. “Unless you can get the farmer to change his overalls.”

  Then Mabel lifted the pistol casually and shot Lindsey just where his forehead became his bald pate. He went over like an acrobat. Baby Em stepped around the corner with a nickle-plated .32, pressed it against Freddie’s temple, then pulled the trigger twice. She kept pulling the trigger as the gimp toppled sideways out of his chair. Crazy Al went for the piece under his jacket, but Sledge took him down with his first round at such close range that he blew Crazy Al’s gun hand off at the wrist and set fire to his dirty tie. Bruno started to raise his hands as if to plead, but Sledge shot him in the face before he could open his mouth.

  ~ * ~

  The sugarbeeter and his wife were shaking and weeping so hard that they had trouble dragging the bodies down to the root cellar, but Mabel kept reassuring them that the lime would destroy the bodies and that with their cut of the bank loot they could start over again in California or Oregon. The tattered couple had stopped shaking by the time they finished dumping the last sack of lime, and the tears had dried from their eyes when Mabel put the two .22 shorts into their brainpans. The couple fell on the pile as neatly as if they had planned it that way.

  Sledge finished setting up the house as the women dressed for traveling. He covered the bodies with Bell jars of coal oil and phosphorus, then arranged for a fire. He laid a slow black powder fuse from the root cellar to the kitchen table, where he wrapped it around the base of a three-day candle. Then he washed the Lincoln where the gimp had hidden it in the barn, changed the local plates for real New Jersey ones, and dressed in his driver’s uniform.

  The guns and money were stashed in a false bottom of the trunk, an obscene amount of luggage piled on top and strapped to the back. The women were lodged in the back seat, draped in traveling dusters, big hats, and dust veils — a wealthy widow and her daughter on their way to the West Coast for a new life.

  “Are we set, Mr. Sledge?” Mabel asked as he backed the large car out of the barn.

  “Everything but the match, ma’am,” he said.

  “Well, strike the match, please,” she said.

  “I wish we were gonna be here to see it,” Baby Em said as Sledge headed for the farmhouse. “What’s gonna happen next, Momma?”

  “There’s a plump little bank in Ogallala right next to the drugstore,” she answered. “I think we’ll pay it a little visit before we go home. I know a couple of old boys in Denver who might help.”

  “Just no more little red-headed pricks, okay? I’d rather suck a cough drop,” Baby Em said as Sledge drove out onto the section road.

  “Just a blue-faced monster,” Mabel said, “and he’ll have plenty of cough drops, and maybe even some hard rock candy. He used to have lots of hard rock candy.”

  “I wanna gun in the bank next time,” Baby Em whined. “Don’t you?”

  As the sun slipped toward the horizon, the wind paused for a moment, the dust settled, and a fire burned briefly in Mabel’s eyes, a fire as brief as her sad smile.

  “We don’t need guns, Babydoll.”

  >

  ~ * ~

  O’NEIL DE NOUX

  Death on Denial

  from Flesh and Blood: Dark Desires

  The Mississippi. The Father of Waters.

  The Nile of North America.

  And I found it.

  — Hernando de Soto, 1541

  The oily smell of diesel fumes wafts through the open window, filling the small room above the Algiers Wharf. Gordon Urquhart, sitting in the only chair in the room, a gray metal folding chair, takes a long drag on his cigarette and looks out the window at a listless tugboat chugging up the dark Mississippi. The river water, like a huge black snake, glitters with the reflection of the New Orleans skyline on the far bank.

  Gordon’s cigarette provides the room’s only illumination. It’s so dark he can barely see his hand. He likes it, sitting in the quiet, waiting for the room’s occupant to show up. Not quite six feet tall, Gordon is a rock-solid two hundred pounds. His hair turning silver, Gordon still sees himself as the good-looking heartbreaker he was in his twenties.

  He wasn’t born Gordon Urquhart those forty years ago. When he saw the name in a movie, he liked it so much he became Gordon Urquhart. He made a good Gordon Urquhart. Since the name change, he’d gone up in life.

  He yawns, then takes off his leather gloves and places them on his leg. He wipes his sweaty hands on his other pants leg.

  The room, a ten-by-ten-foot hole-in-the-wall, has a single bed against one wall, a small chest of drawers on the other wall, and a sink in the far corner. Gordon sits facing the only door.

  He closes his eyes and daydreams of Stella Dauphine. He’d caught a glimpse of her last night on Bourbon Street. She walked past in that short red dress without even noticing him. As she moved away, bouncing on those spiked high heels, he saw a flash of her white panties when her dress rose in the breeze. He wanted to follow, but had business to take care of.

  Sitting in the rancid room, Gordon daydreams of Stella, of those full lips and long brown hair. She’s in the same red dress, only she’s climbing stairs. He moves below and watches her fine ass as she moves up the stairs. Her white panties are sheer enough for him to see the crack of her round ass.

  They’re on his ship from his tour in the U.S. Navy. Indian Ocean. Stella stops above him and spreads her legs slightly. He can see her dark pubic hair through her panties. She looks down and asks him directions.

  Gordon goes up and shows her to a ladder, which she goes up, her ass swaying above him as he goes up after her, his face inches from her silky panties. Arriving at the landing above, she waits for him atop the ladder. He reaches up and pulls her panties down to her knees, runs his fingers back up her thighs to her bush and works them inside her wet pussy. She gasps in pleasure.

  A sound brings Gordon back to the present. He hears footsteps coming up the narrow stairs to the hall and moving to the doorway. Gordon pulls on his gloves and lifts the .22-caliber Bersa semiautomatic pistol from his lap. He grips the nylon stock, slips his finger into the trigger guard, and flips off the safety as the door opens. He points the gun at the midsection of the heavyset figure standing in the doorway.

  Faintly illuminated by the dull, yellowed hall light, Lex Smutt reaches for the light switch. Gordon closes one eye. The light flashes on and Smutt freezes, his wide-set hazel eyes staring at the Bersa.

  “Don’t move, fat boy!” Gordon opens his other eye and points his chin at the bed. “Take a seat.”

  Smutt moves slowly to his bed and sits. At five-seven and nearly three hundred pounds, Smutt knows better than to think of himself as anything but a toad. He runs his hands across his bald head and bites his lower lip. Wearing a tired, powder-blue seersucker suit, white shirt, and mud-brown tie loosened around his thick neck, Smutt is as rumpled as a crushed paper bag.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them.” Gordon rises, his knees creaking, and closes the door. In his black suit, Gordon wears a black shirt and charcoal-gray tie.

  Yawning again, Gordon says, “Long time, no see.”


  Smutt lets out a nervous laugh.

  Gordon’s mouth curls into a cold grin. “Lex Smutt. That’s your real name, ain’t it? It’s a stupid name. You stupid?”

  Smutt shakes his head slowly, his gaze fixed on the Bersa.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  Smutt’s eyes widen as if he hasn’t a clue.

  “Give me the fifteen thousand. Or die.”

  A shaky smile comes to Smutt’s thin lips. “I don’t have it.”

  “Then die.” Gordon cocks the hammer — for effect — and points the Bersa between Smutt’s eyes.

  Raising his hands, Smutt stammers, “Come on, now. Gimme a minute. “

  “You’ll have the money in a minute?” Gordon’s hand remains steady as he closes his left eye and aims carefully at the small dark mole between Smutt’s eyebrows. The loud blast of a ship’s horn causes Smutt to jump. Gordon is unmoved.

  As long seconds tick by, Gordon takes the slack up in the trigger and starts to pull it slowly. Staring eye-to-eye, Smutt blinks.

  “I got six grand,” Smutt says.

  Gordon’s trigger finger stops moving, but his hand remains steady. He blinks and nods.

  “Where?”

  “On me.”

  “Where?”

  Smutt wipes away the sweat rolling down the sides of his face and exhales loudly. “For a minute there I thought —”

  “Where?” Gordon interrupts.

  Leaning back on his hands, Smutt looks around the room.

  Gordon raises his size-eleven shoe and kicks him in the left shin. Smutt shrieks and grabs his leg. He rocks back and forth twice before Gordon presses the muzzle of the Bersa against the man’s forehead.

  “Where?” Gordon growls.

  “Under the bed.” Smutt rubs his shin with both hands. “Under the floorboard.”

  Gordon grabs the seersucker suit collar with his left hand and yanks Smutt off the bed, shoving the man to the floor. Kicking the bed aside, Gordon orders Smutt to pull up the floorboard.

  “Come up with anything except money and you’re dead.”

  On his hands and knees now, Smutt crawls over to where his bed used to stand. Reaching for the loose board, he looks up at Gordon and says, “We have to come to an understanding.”

  Gordon points the Bersa at the floor next to Smutt’s hand and squeezes off a round. A pop is followed by the sound of the shell casing bouncing on the wood floor.

  Smutt looks at the neat hole next to his hand, looks back at Gordon, then yanks up the loose board. He reaches inside and pulls out a brown paper bag. He hands it to Gordon without looking up.

  Snatching the bag, Gordon takes a couple of steps back. He opens the bag and quickly counts the money. Six grand exactly.

  “You’re nine thousand short.”

  Smutt rolls over on his butt and sits like a Buddha, hand on his knees. He wipes the sweat away from his face again and says, “Mr. Happer will just have to understand. You just came into this but it’s been goin’ on awhile. I need time. Most of the fifteen is vig ... interest. You know.”

  Gordon points the Bersa at the mole again. “You’re certain this is all you have?”

  Smutt nods slowly, looking at the floor now. He waves a hand around. “Does it look like I got more?”

  “Try yes or no!”

  “No!” Smutt’s voice falters and he clears his throat.

  “I heard you won more than this at the Fairgrounds.”

  “Well, you heard wrong. “

  Gordon waits.

  Smutt won’t look up.

  So Gordon asks, “Why deny it? You cleared over twenty thousand.”

  “I had other bills to pay.”

  “Before Mr. Happer?” Gordon’s voice is deep and icy.

  “I told you this has been going on awhile. I need time.”

  “You shoulda thought of that before. Now look at me.” Gordon closes his left eye again.

  Smutt looks up and Gordon squeezes off a round that strikes just to the left of the mole. Smutt shudders and bats his eyes. Gordon squeezes off another shot, this one just to the right of the mole. Smutt’s mouth opens and he falls slowly forward, face first, in his lap.

  Gordon steps forward and puts two more in the back of the man’s head.

  Then he carefully picks up the spent casings, all five of them, and puts them in his coat pocket. The air smells of gunpowder now and faintly of blood. He searches the body and finds another four hundred in Smutt’s coat pocket. Still on his haunches, Gordon looks inside the hole in the floor, but there’s nothing else there.

  He ransacks the room before leaving.

  The night air feels damp on his face as he walks around the corner to where he’d squirreled away his low-riding Cadillac.

  ~ * ~

  Gordon checks his watch as he ascends the exterior stairs outside the Governor Nicholls Street Wharf. It’s nine o’clock a.m., sharp. He looks across the river at the unpainted Algiers Wharf. Shielding his eyes from the morning sun glittering off the river, he can almost make out the window of Smutt’s room.

  At the top of the stairs, he enters a narrow hall and moves to the first door. He knocks twice and waits, looking up at the surveillance camera. He straightens his ice-blue tie. This morning Gordon wears his tan suit with a dark blue shirt. Before leaving home, he told himself in his bathroom mirror that he looked “spiffy.”

  The door buzzes and he pulls it open.

  Mr. Happer sits behind his wide desk. Facing the TV at the far edge of his desk, next to the black videocassette recorder, the old man doesn’t look up as Gordon crosses the long office. Happer looks small, hunkered down in the large captain’s chair behind the desk.

  The office smells of cigar smoke and old beer. The carpet is so old it’s worn in spots. Gordon takes a chair in front of Mr. Happer’s desk and pulls out an envelope, which he places on the desk.

  Raising a hand like a traffic cop, Mr. Happer leans forward to pay close attention to the scene on his TV. Gordon doesn’t have to look to know what’s on the screen. It’s Peter Ustinov again and that damn movie Mr. Happer watches over and over. By the sound of it, Ustinov and David Niven are slowly working their way through the murder on the riverboat. What was the name of that French detective Ustinov plays? Hercules something-or-another.

  Mr. Happer suddenly turns his deep-set black eyes to Gordon.

  Pushing seventy, Mr. Happer is a skeleton of a man with razor-sharp cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and arms that always remind Gordon of the films of those refugees from Dachau. Mr. Happer reaches with his left hand for the envelope on his desk, picks it up with his spider’s fingers, and opens it.

  “That’s all Smutt had on him,” Gordon volunteers.

  Mr. Happer nods and says, “Four hundred?” He focuses those black eyes on Gordon and says, “What about the twenty grand from the Fairgrounds.”

  Gordon is careful as he looks back into the man’s eyes. He shrugs. “He said he had other bills to pay.”

  “Before me?”

  “That’s what I said to him.”

  “So?”

  “So I took care of him. Tossed the room and that’s it.”

  Mr. Happer shakes his head. Gordon watches him and remembers the man’s name isn’t Happer either. The old bastard was born Sam Gallizzio and tried for most of his life to become a made man, working at the periphery of La Cosa Nostra. Trying to be a goomba, Happer failed. He did, however, manage to remain alive, which isn’t easy for an Italian gangster who’s not LCN, even if he’s only a semi-gangster.

  Shoving the envelope into a drawer, Mr. Happer pulls out another envelope, which he slides across the desk to Gordon.

  Gordon picks it up and slips it into his coat pocket. He doesn’t have to count it. He knows there’s a thousand in there — the old bastard’s cut-rate hit fee.

  Mr. Happer picks up a stogie from an overflowing ashtray and slicks it in his mouth. He sucks on it and its tip glows red. He shakes his head again.

  “It?
??s worth it,” Mr. Happer says, as if he needs convincing. “The word’ll get out. Make it easier later on. That’s what the big boys do.”

  Gordon nods.

  “He woulda never come up with the fifteen,” Mr. Happer says, and Gordon wonders if the old man is baiting him. “He woulda never paid me.”

  Fanning away the smoke from between them, Mr. Happer says, “You sure you tossed the place right, huh? You weren’t in no hurry.”

  “No hurry at all.” Gordon feels the old man squeezing him.