The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

It had been seven years since he had laid eyes on the man he had named in his mind Ugly Dick, but as soon as he pushed into the empty cafe at three in the afternoon, Arthur recognized him. Time had left the dumpy little man almost untouched. His silver-blond hair had thinned so that his mottled scalp showed through and contempt had made the lines of his lips and eyebrows more deeply crooked. When he spoke, he showed teeth small and brown and yellow.

“Hello, sport,” he said. “You remember me?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, and reached behind him for a soiled rag and wiped the clean counter in front of the man. “Last time you were in here, our coffee didn’t suit you. I don’t know that it’s changed much.”

“I believe I’ll try me a cup anyhow. It couldn’t’ve got no worse.”

“Price went up,” Arthur said. “Prices are up everywhere.”

“Even in Cherry Cola, North Carolina, huh?”

“Even in Cherry Cove.”

He poured in cream and added three precise spoons of sugar and stirred. Then he lifted his head to peer at Arthur and give him that wildly crooked smirk. “I bet you remember our mutual friend, too, don’t you?”

“You say you’ve got a friend?”

“Oh sure, you remember. Sheila Weddell. You wouldn’t be forgetting her.” He gave Arthur a soiled, heavy wink.

“I recall you asking about a woman. But I figured that you must do a lot of that, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Considering what a low-down son of a bitch you are.”

The man’s smile only grew more saturnine. “Still playing Sir Galahad, ain’t you? But I got to tell you, sport, that there ain’t no use in it anymore. You might be interested to see this newspaper story. ” He took a white envelope from his shirt pocket and laid it on the counter. When Arthur stood unmoving, content to give the man a long stare, he tapped it with a pudgy finger. “Go ahead and read it. I guarantee you’ll find it interesting. ”

He picked it up. The headline read: Woman In Spy Scandal Commits Suicide. The story was short and vague. A group of New York people were suspected of gathering information for “a foreign power.” Arthur supposed that the foreign power would be Russia, but the story was hazy in all its details. Sheila Weddell, thirty-four, had been found with her head in the gas oven of her apartment on Amsterdam Avenue. There was no evidence of foul play. The police investigation was continuing.

The clipping did not reveal which newspaper had printed the story. A photograph of the woman was placed above the headline and Arthur studied it intently. It was overexposed and the features were blurred. At first it looked a little like the woman he knew as Francesca and then it didn’t. Then it did again.

“So what do you think of your sweetheart now, huh?”

“I never saw this woman in my life,” Arthur said. He took care in replacing the clipping in the envelope, then laid it on the counter. “I hate to be such a big disappointment to you.”

He produced a toothpick and put it between his front teeth. “We know she passed some information on to you. Something technical. We know you got brains. You don’t fool us, hiding away in this little possum-turd settlement. We read them stories you write and I’ll go ahead and tell you, sport—we’re right on the edge of busting your code. We’ve just about got it figured out.”

“My code?”

“Yeah. The hidden messages in that crazy horseshit you write in them weird magazines. You don’t think your buddies overseas are the only ones that can read, do you?”