The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
- Автор: Грейди Джеймс, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2002
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-12494-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2002». Краткое содержание книги:
“Care to set my mind at rest, bro?” he asked me.
He’d let go of my nose and the Smith wasn’t cutting into my neck anymore, but I was scared to tell him nothing and just as nervous about saying something dumb.
“I can’t hear you,” he crooned, leaning close again like a father confessor.
“Hear this?” another voice inquired, and the next sound was unmistakable, the slide on a pump shotgun being racked.
Red went absolutely still.
“We’ll do this by the numbers,” the new guy said. I’d heard his voice before, but I couldn’t place it. “Point the weapon away from your body and safe it.” Red uncocked the Smith. “Good. Now put it down and back away. You too, girlie. I got no compunction about taking you off at the knees.”
I felt them give me some room. I glanced around.
“You’re looking a little the worse for wear, Jack,” Max Quinn said to me, grinning. He was holding a Mossberg pump at port arms, relaxed and obviously enjoying himself. “You able to walk?”
I picked up my gun and got carefully to my feet. I had to favor my left leg to get it to hold my weight.
“Now, about these two,” Max said. I had some ideas on that score, but what I wanted to do was likely to see me pulling eight to ten at MCI Cedar Junction.
“No?” Max asked. He shrugged. “Well, in that case, we’ll take our leave of you lovely people,” he said to Red and the girl. “I’d think it right intelligent if you’d just lie down on the pavement until we left.”
The girl hadn’t even looked at me while this whole business was going on, but Red was watching me with a hostile squint.
“I meant now, people,” Max said. They got down and assumed the position.
I limped toward my car, and Max backed away behind me, the shotgun held down next to his leg, where it was less conspicuous.
The lights were coming on in the parking lot.
He leaned down to the window when I got behind the wheel. “This probably isn’t the place to talk,” he said.
“I’ll call you,” I said. “Thanks.”
“No sweat,” he told me.
I watched him cross the street to where he was parked and put the shotgun in his trunk. He’d probably had me under surveillance from the time I walked into the bar. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it seemed a little too convenient.
Max gave me a wave as I drove away and climbed into his own car. I went home to pack my sore knee in ice and brood about how big a dope I’d been.
“So you figure the bikers are a red herring?” Tony asked the next morning.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I think Quinn set me up, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dirty.”
“Quinn just wants to make himself look good?”
“Pulling my chestnuts out of the fire? That’s one way of looking at it. Or he could be using me as a stalking horse, get them looking in the wrong direction.”
“Andy Ravenant?”
“Yeah, something’s hinky,” I said. “But I don’t see how it connects to the Stanley problem.”
We were driving out to the hospital in Ayer to see Stanley. He’d collapsed the day before while I was busy getting myself washed, dried, and folded. He wasn’t home — he was out cruising junkyards or something, up in apple orchard country — and the paramedics got him to the closest ICU. Once he was stabilized, he’d probably be moved into town to Peter Bent Brigham if things still looked bad.
“Any other irons in the fire?”
I shook my head. “I was hoping Stanley might come up with something else I could use,” I said. “Only trouble is, I’ve got nothing to give him in return.”
The hospital was fairly new, built sometime in the early seventies. I guessed. It was on a rise north of town, set off from neighbors, with a view through the trees to a small pond. A lot of the country villages beyond 495, the outer beltway, have become bedroom communities for the high-tech industries along Route 128, but Ayer is an anomaly. It sits outside the main gates of Ft. Devens, and for a good sixty years or more it’s been a company town supported by the army presence. Now there was talk of closing down the post. There was still a squadron of Ranger choppers based out there, and some logistical and support operations, but there was no longer a captive population of enlisted dependents, and the rental market was going down the tubes. Not a bad thing considering how local landlords had gouged the GIs with inflated rates. And the used-car dealers out on the Shirley road no longer had such easy prey. But the downside was that the bottom had fallen out of the tax base, and maintaining a decent hospital was suddenly a squeeze.
Tony wasn’t crazy about the hospital scene in any case. He’d spent too much time helpless on his back after he’d gotten creamed on the ice, but he was still game to go in and visit Stanley. I got his wheelchair out of the back seat, unfolded it, and helped him lever himself out of the front seat and into it. I was awkward about it, but Tony had long since gotten over any embarrassment.
“How’s your leg?” he asked.
I had an Ace bandage wrapped around my knee, but the tendon was still badly swollen and it felt like I had a lemon wedged behind the joint. I couldn’t bend my leg, and I couldn’t put any weight on it, either. Not that I didn’t feel foolish, since it was my own fault.
“Shouldn’t have turned your back on a woman,” Tony said.
“Don’t get me started,” I told him.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Tony said. “It’s not about sex, or gender, or whether she’s a victim herself. I only meant you shouldn’t take anything for granted.”
The thing about being brothers us that you figure you’re always in competition one way or another, but then they somehow manage to sneak under your radar.
We made our way through the automatic doors into the lobby.
Stanley was down the hall in a private room. We startled Maria when we went in. I realized she’d dozed off sitting next to Stanley’s bed, and it took her a moment to gather her wits.
Tony unbridled the charm. He had a gift for it, an effortless interest, because it was genuine. He rolled his wheelchair over next to Maria, not so close he was crowding her space, but making himself available. I didn’t hear what he said to her, but she smiled bravely and took his hand.
Stanley seemed to be just coming to, floating in a sea of painkillers and barely breaking water. I had the feeling he was losing buoyancy. He made an effort to focus.
“Hey,” I said, leaning in close so he’d recognize me.
“Jack,” he whispered, hoarsely. “Who’s that with you?”
“My brother Tony,” I told him.
He nodded, smiling, his eyes fluttering closed. “Always liked having you two come around,” he murmured. “Liked having kids at the shop. Reminded me of Stosh. Kept me alive during the war, knowing I had a boy I had to come home to.” His concentration was drifting, the drugs in the intravenous drip clouding his thoughts. He’d cut his moorings and was headed out to sea. “The Blue Mirror,” he muttered indistinctly.
I thought I’d misheard him. “What?” I asked, too sharply.
Tony had caught it. He swiveled around.
Stanley was in a reverie. “That’s what we used to call it, the Adriatic,” he said, so softly I had to bend over the bed.
“The blue mirror. On bombing runs into Rumania. Before you had to worry about the fighters. It looked beautiful, but it was hard as iron if your plane went down. I used to write letters to my son in my head, but I always forgot them by the time we got back.”
I glanced at Tony.
“I always forgot,” Stanley whispered, sinking back into the pillows, exhausted.
I straightened up.
Tony caught my attention, and belatedly I went over to pay my respects to Maria. I always feel awkward in situations where I have to pretend everything’s swell. I get claustrophobic and look for an early avenue of escape. Tony smoothed us out of it, covering our retreat.