The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

  Giving herself a reason, an excuse.

  “We don’t need to talk about him,” Lourdes said. “You pay the money, all of it before, and we don’t speak of this again. You don’t pay, we still never speak of it.”

  “The Colombian guys have to have it all up front?”

  “The what guys?”

  “The concrete guys.”

  “You don’t know what kind of guys they are. What if it looks like an accident and you say oh, they didn’t do nothing, he fell off his boat.”

  “Woz doesn’t have a boat.”

  “Or his car was hit by a truck. You understand? You not going to know anything before.”

  “I suppose they want cash.”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t go to the bank and draw that much.”

  “Then we forget it.”

  Lourdes waited while the woman thought about it smoking her Virginia Slim, both of them smoking, until Mrs. Mahmood said, “If I give you close to twenty thousand in cash, today, right now, you still want to forget it?”

  Now Lourdes had to stop and think for a moment.

  “You have that much in the house?”

  “My getaway money,” Mrs. Mahmood said, “in case I ever have to leave in a hurry. What I socked away in tips getting guys to spot their pants and that’s the deal, twenty grand. You want it or not? You don’t, you might as well leave, I don’t need you anymore.”

  ~ * ~

  So far in the few weeks she was here, Lourdes had met Dr. Mahmood face-to-face with reason to speak to him only twice. The first time, when he came in the kitchen and asked her to prepare his breakfast, the smoked snook, a fish he ate cold with tea and whole wheat toast. He asked her to have some of the snook if she wished, saying it wasn’t as good as kippers but would do. Lourdes tried a piece; it was full of bones but she told him yes, it was good. They spoke of different kinds of fish from the ocean they liked and he seemed to be a pleasant, reasonable man.

  The second time Lourdes was with him face-to-face he startled her, coming out of the swimming pool naked as she was watering the plants on the patio. He called to her to bring him his towel from the chair. When she came with it he said, “You were waiting for me?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t see you.”

  As he dried his face and his head, the hair so short it appeared shaved, she stared at his skin, at his round belly and his strange black penis, Lourdes looking up then as he lowered the towel.

  He said, “You are a widow?” She nodded yes and he said, “When you married, you were a virgin?”

  She hesitated, but then answered because she was telling a doctor, No, sir.

  “It wasn’t important to your husband?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would you see an advantage in again being a virgin?”

  She had to think — it wasn’t something ever in her mind before — but didn’t want to make the doctor wait, so she said, “No, not at my age.”

  The doctor said, “I can restore it if you wish.”

  “Make me a virgin?”

  “Surgically, a few sutures down there in the tender dark. It’s becoming popular in the Orient with girls entering marriage. Also for prostitutes. They can charge much more, often thousands of dollars for that one night.” He said, “I’m thinking of offering the procedure. Should you change your mind, wish me to examine you, I could do it in your room.”

  Dr. Mahmood’s manner, and the way he looked at her that time, made Lourdes feel like taking her clothes off.

  ~ * ~

  He didn’t come home the night Lourdes and Mrs. Mahmood got down to business. Or the next night. The morning of the following day, two men from the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office came to the house. They showed Lourdes their identification and asked to see Mrs. Mahmood.

  She was upstairs in her bedroom trying on a black dress, looking at herself in the full-length mirror and then at Lourdes’s reflection appearing behind her.

  “The police are here,” Lourdes said.

  Mrs. Mahmood nodded and said, “What do you think?” turning to pose in the dress, the skirt quite short.

  Lourdes read the story in the newspaper that said Dr. Wasim Mahmood, prominent etc., etc., had suffered gunshot wounds during an apparent carjacking on Flagler near Currie Park and was pronounced dead on arrival at Good Samaritan. His Mercedes was found abandoned on the street in Delray Beach.

  Mrs. Mahmood left the house in her black dress. Later, she phoned to tell Lourdes she had identified the body, spent time with the police, who had no clues, nothing at all to go on, then stopped by a funeral home and arranged to have Woz cremated without delay. She said, “What do you think?”

  “About what?” Lourdes said.

  “Having the fucker burned.”

  She said she was stopping to see friends and wouldn’t be home until late.

  ~ * ~

  One a.m., following an informal evening of drinks with old friends, Mrs. Mahmood came into the kitchen from the garage and began to lose her glow.

  What was going on here?

  Rum and mixes on the counter, limes, a bowl of ice. A Latin beat coming from the patio. She followed the sound to a ring of burning candles, to Lourdes in a green swimsuit moving in one place to the beat, hands raised, Lourdes grinding her hips in a subtle way.

  The two guys at the table smoking cigarettes saw Mrs. Mahmood, but made no move to get up.

  Now Lourdes turned from them and saw her, Lourdes smiling a little as she said, “How you doing? You look like you feeling no pain.”

  “You have my suit on,” Mrs. Mahmood said.

  “I put on my yellow one,” Lourdes said, still moving in that subtle way, “and took it off. I don’t wear yellow no more, so I borrow one of yours. Is OK, isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Mahmood said, “What’s going on?”

  “This is cumbia, Colombian music for when you want to celebrate. For a wedding, a funeral, anything you want. The candles are part of it. Cumbia, you should always light candles.”

  Mrs. Mahmood said, “Yeah, but what is going on?”

  “We having a party for you, Ginger. The Colombian guys come to see you dance.”

  >

  ~ * ~

  ROBERT MCKEE

  The Confession

  from Eureka Literary Magazine

  I pulled into the Thatcher driveway and shut down my motorcycle. I dropped the sidestand, but I didn’t climb off—not yet. When Jane called a half-hour earlier, she told me Charlie was worse and he wanted to see me. She asked me to come right away. I had rushed to their place, but now that I was there, instead of going in, I sat astride my bike taking in deep lungfuls of air. It had just stopped raining, and the night was heavy with the smell of jasmine. Charlie Thatcher took great pride in his yard, and I told myself I just wanted to steal a moment to enjoy the fragrance of his night-blooming jasmine. That was what I told myself, but even before the thought could form, I knew it was a lie.

  The porch light came on, but I was parked beyond the reach of its yellow glow. The front door opened, and Jane stepped outside. “Pry?” she called. “Is that you out there?”

  “Yeah,” I said as I stood and swung my leg over the bike, “it’s me.”

  She came down the steps and met me. “I can’t believe you rode a motorcycle,” she said. She held her hand palm up. “Didn’t you notice it was raining?” She tried to smile, but there was a puffy thickness to her face, and the smile couldn’t quite materialize.

  “Yeah, I know, but I felt like riding.” The truth was that when I got depressed, I liked to ride, and depression that night was as pervasive as the smell of Charlie’s jasmine. I gave a little shrug. “Sometimes it makes me feel better.”

  When I said that, Jane’s features came all unscrewed and fell apart. “Oh, Pry,” she said, and she rushed to me and threw her arms around my waist. She dropped her head to my chest, and deep, horrible gusts of sound came out of her. She was getting soaked from the
water that clung to my oilskin coat, but that didn’t seem to matter. “It’s happening,” she said. “It’s happening so fast.”

  I put my arms around her and pulled her close without saying anything. Charlie had been diagnosed a month earlier with liver cancer. A week ago, he had been admitted to the hospital. Two days ago, against his doctors’ advice, he had insisted we bring him home.

  “He asked me to call you,” Jane said. She lifted her head and looked up at me. “He said it’s important that he talk to you right away. He’s in terrible pain, but he won’t take anything because he wants to have it together when he talks to you.”

  I gave her a squeeze, and with my hands still on her shoulders, I pushed her back a step and looked down. “It’s okay. I’m here now. How are you doing?” I asked.

  She wiped her tears away with both hands and said, “I’m not doing so good. I cry constantly, except when I’m around Charlie. I haven’t cried in front of him yet. He doesn’t need to see my hysteria on top of everything else.” She punctuated her comment with another of those not-quite-right smiles.

  We walked to the house, and once we were on the porch, I took off my coat, shook the rain from it, and draped it over the railing. “Did he say what’s on his mind?” I asked.

  “No, he’s being secretive as hell, but I could tell that it’s important to him.” She opened the front door and led me inside. “He said he would explain everything to me and the boys once he’s had a chance to talk to you.” She nodded toward the staircase and told me to go on up. There was the glint of a scolding mother in her eye. “I’d offer to bring you a beer,” she said, “but since you’re riding that motorcycle, I won’t.” Jane never missed an opportunity to let me know she thought motorcycles were dangerous.

  I grabbed hold of the thick oak banister and pulled myself up the stairs. The Thatcher home was on Fifth Street, one block from Balboa Park. It was a large, drafty place built in the early 1930s. Charlie had been my number-two man for years, and when I sold my security business, the new owners promoted him to general manager. I assumed when that happened, he and Jane would then sell this place in San Diego and move up to North County, where the main offices were located. When I suggested that, though, Charlie wouldn’t consider it. “This is where we raised our two boys,” he told me, “and this is where we’ll stay.”

  Once I was at the landing outside Charlie’s room, I hesitated again about going inside. I could no longer smell the jasmine, so I was forced to admit the truth. Charlie Thatcher was as close to me as an uncle, and I was not taking this well.

  When a hoarse voice called, “Come on in, Father Delaney,” I swallowed, gave the door a shove, and stepped inside.

  “I’ve never been mistaken for a priest before,” I said. Charlie was in a hospital bed, and it had been adjusted so that he was more or less in a sitting position.

  “Oh, Jeez, lookie who’s here. It’s the biker trash.” Charlie was originally from Queens, New York, and to my West Coast ears he sounded exactly like Archie Bunker from that old television series. Except for his size, he even looked like Archie. Charlie was much bigger, though — six-three and well over two hundred pounds. At least before he’d gotten sick he’d been over two hundred pounds. Now he was losing weight fast. It had been only two days since I had seen him, and in that short time, Charlie looked to have taken off twenty pounds and put on twenty years.

  I took my best shot at a smile and said, “Good God, Charlie, you look like hell.”

  “Thanks a lot. I was feeling kinda blue until now, but you really perk a fella up.”

  I patted his hand. “It’s the least I can do.”

  He growled. “Lately, doin’ the least is what you do the most.” Charlie liked to give me a hard time about what he considered my life of leisure. I had spent my twenties and early thirties building my business. By the time I sold out, we were doing it all: uniformed security guards, night watchmen, the installation of burglar alarms, private investigations. It had been an all-consuming process for a lot of years. Now I could afford to spend my time doing what I wanted to do, which usually involved riding the motorcycles I had customized myself at my home up the coast. It was not the sort of activity the hard-working Charlie Thatcher considered productive.

  We had gotten past our obligatory insults-at-first-sight, and now there was a moment thick with silence. It was Charlie who broke it. “The doc figures less than a week.” When he said that, I felt very heavy and allowed myself to drop into the straight-backed chair beside his bed. “Maybe a lot less,” he added. “I didn’t believe it at first, but I know it’s true. It’s strange, you know? It’s like I can feel myself draining away.”

  I started to tell him how sorry I was, but he knew that without my saying it. Charlie could always read my mind. We had known each other for eighteen years. Right after he retired from the navy, I hired him as a security guard for a strip mall in National City. It was a tough area, but Big Charlie was perfect for the job. Providing security for that place had been my first contract, so Charlie had been with me since the beginning.

  With what looked like a lot of pain, he lifted a hand toward the door. “Close that thing all the way, would you, John?” My name’s John Pryor, but most people call me Pry; Charlie always called me John. I shut the door, and as I came back he said, “I thought you might be Father Delaney because I asked Janey to give both of you a call. Since the rectory’s only a few blocks away, I expected him to show up first.”

  “You must have forgotten my disregard for speed limits.”

  He gave my little joke a quick smile — more than it deserved, really — but I could tell the niceties were over. Charlie had something on his mind. “This is better,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you first, anyway.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He stared for a long moment at his frail, blotchy hands. Finally he shook his head and said in a weak voice, “I’m not a good man, John.”

  I sat back down in the chair and leaned my forearms over the bed’s rail. “That’s crazy. You’re the best man I’ve ever known.” And I wasn’t just saying that, either. Charlie Thatcher was an honorable, unselfish man. He was a loving father and husband. He was a Boy Scout leader and a Little League coach. He spent one night a week serving soup in a shelter down on Market Street. He had been a Big brother to dozens of underprivileged kids. “Hell, Charlie,” I said, “you’re the guy that every sleazeball politician in the country pretends to be. What do you mean, you’re not a good man?”

  He turned to me, and the rims of his eyes stood out red against his yellowed complexion. “I’m not, John. I wanted to be. I tried to be.” He turned his head toward the window and looked into the darkness of his large backyard. “I wanted to make up for what I had done, but there was no making up for it.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  He turned back to me, and the pain I saw in his face was not pain caused by his sickness; it came from something else. “I’m a murderer, John. Thirty-five years ago, I killed a man.”

  I’m not sure how long it was before I stammered out, “You’re kidding, right?” Of course the question was so stupid, Charlie didn’t even bother to answer it.

  “You’re the first person I’ve ever told. But now it’s time I tell everyone. Father Delaney —” His voice broke. “—Jane, the boys. I should have told them long before now.”

  “What happened, Charlie?” I asked. I still didn’t believe him. I couldn’t picture Charlie Thatcher being a murderer; the image just wouldn’t come.

  He dropped his head back to the stack of pillows behind him and stared at some spot on the ceiling. “When it happened,” he began, “I was in the navy. I was drinking in a bar in East San Diego, and for some reason — I don’t remember why — this guy wanted to fight. I was a tough kid with a hot temper, so we stepped out into the alley.”

  I asked, “It happened in a fight?”

  “Not really. The guy was my size or even bigger, but he wasn’t
a fighter.” Charlie looked at me, and I knew what he was saying was true. “I punched him a couple of times, and he hit the ground hard, smacking the back of his head. It could’ve ended there, but something in me clicked, you know? I had this — I don’t know — this rage, and it took over. There was no stopping it. I knocked this guy down, and then I was on top of him driving my fist into his face over and over and over. When I came to my senses, I started running, and I didn’t stop until I was back at the ship. The next day I heard on the radio that the guy was dead.”

  “Were you ever questioned by the police?” I asked.

  “No, I didn’t know the man. There was nothing to connect me to him. I don’t even remember how the argument started in the first place. We’d only talked for maybe ten minutes in the bar, and I guess no one had noticed us. San Diego was a pretty rough place in those days, especially in that part of town. There was a story in the newspaper a couple of days later. His name was Duane Tragovic. He was a petty criminal. He’d been arrested a dozen times. There wasn’t much of an investigation. I don’t think this guy’s death was real high on the cops’ list of things to do.”