The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

“We never did.”

“No.” She steered the car toward a farmhouse. “We didn’t. Neither of us.”

She stopped the car in the dark yard beside a Cadillac Gene thought he recognized.

“I’ll take you back right now, if you want,” she said.

“Will you stay with me?”

He saw her head shake.

“Then let’s go,” said Gene as he got out of the car. “They’re waiting.”

Her brother opened the farmhouse door. He wore a frayed white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, loose pants, and a pencil pusher’s black shoes that were as dull as his droopy eyes. His right hand that pumped Gene’s was strong enough to deal cards at the Palace Hotel but not much more, a weak grasp that whispered he was a man who couldn’t cover his bets.,

“Zhene Mallette!” he slurred. “What d’you say, what d’you know, good ta see you!”

“How you doing, Harry?” said Gene, though he knew enough to know that answer and sent all the question’s sincerity to the man’s sister. Gene’s fingers brushed Harry back into the living room where the two men who mattered waited, and though he silently prayed otherwise, he sensed Billie step into the farmhouse behind him and shut the door.

The Cadillac in the yard belonged to the pudgy Shelby banker standing by the table supporting a bottle of pre-Prohibition whiskey and glasses. The brass nameplate on his desk in the bank read PETER TAYLOR — VICE PRESIDENT. He had a knotty head of not much hair and reminded Gene of a grinning toad who never said no to another fly.

“Good evening, Mr. Mallette,” said Taylor. “Thank you for coming.”

“Wasn’t for you,” said Gene.

“We know,” said the other man, the one Gene had never seen. Least, he’d never seen that particular black-haired city-suited man who hadn’t bothered to get up off the couch — or to either fill his hand with the .45 on his lap or hide the gun. Gene’d seen those eyes and that set of face once in the trenches, another time in a Tijuana cantina, a third time ringside at a smoker in Fresno, and the last and worst time in a set of chains headed through the work camp to the scaffold at San Quentin. Wasn’t that the man was tough, though Gene knew he could take a beating and then some, it was that he’d crawl up off any floor you knocked him down on to tear your heart in two and suck in the sound of ripping flesh.

“Please,” said the banker, “have a chair. Call me Peter.”

“Never figured on calling you at all.”

“Life adds up like we don’t expect. Please, sit down. There, beside the woman.”

“Where should I sit?” said her brother, but his words went into the night as didn’t matter.

Gene eased himself into the folding chair closest to the couch and acted as if his legs weren’t coiled springs. Banker Taylor settled into an easy chair and filled glasses with whiskey. Harry Larson strutted to the folding chair close to Gene, grandly lowered himself but misjudged his balance and almost crashed to the floor. By the time he got himself stable, his sister stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder. The man on the couch didn’t move.

“Nice night for a drive.” Gene sent his words to the banker, kept the man on the couch in his gaze. “But that whiskey is illegal. Seems like a man in your position would be more careful.”

“Laws like Prohibition are for people who fear man’s nature.” Taylor held a whiskey toward Gene. When Gene didn’t take it, Taylor sat the glass on a milk crate near Gene’s legs. “Wise of you not to drink, given the opportunity in front of you. As for what’s legal, a man like you who’s served time in a prison work camp can’t be sanctimonious.”

“Your friend on the couch there would know more about prison than me.”

“Never been,” said the man on the couch. “Witnesses never make it to the trials.”

Banker Taylor extended a glass of whiskey to the black-haired man. “Gene, you’ll find that Norman here — pardon my manners, this is Norman Doyle — Mr. Doyle is a lucky man.”

Doyle took the whiskey glass with his left hand; the butt of the .45 faced his right.

“You don’t need a glass, do you, Harry? You took care of yourself as soon as your sis left for town. Your vice is still legal, though the politicians are going to fix that, too. And you, Wilemena — or should I call you Widow Harris? You know, Gene, she’s been without a man for a long time. A broke-in mare without a saddle for the itch. I don’t think we’ll give her a glass. She’s a woman, plus whiskey and Injuns don’t mix, even if they are breeds.”

“Get to it,” snapped Gene.

“How you doing in the market?”

“What?”

“The stock market,” said the banker. “Everybody plays the market these days. Going up, up, up. Going to make everybody a millionaire. How you doing in the stock market?”

“You know I’m not that kind of guy.”

“You mean you can’t be. ’Cause you don’t have the money. So how you going to get rich? This is America. Everybody wants to get rich. Can’t get a good car or the woman you want if you don’t have silver dollars to jingle. Are you going to get what you want, what you need, by roughnecking other people’s oil out of this God-forsaken ground?”