The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
Silence hung in the apartment like a poisonous gas. Walking to the fridge, Dillon dug out another beer and tilted the bottle back. Four empties sat on the kitchen counter.
What the hell was he still doing here? He should’ve taken off by now. Yet something kept him. Dillon tried to tell himself he was just biding his time, waiting for things to cool down before he made his run. But that was a lie, and he knew it. It was the package. He had to know what was inside.
Dillon took one last swig of beer then set the bottle next to its empty brothers. He grabbed hold of the package with both hands, carefully lifting it off the counter, testing its weight. It felt light. He shook it a little, hearing no hint at what was inside.
If it was a bomb, it would’ve gone off by now, thought Dillon. He picked the box cutter up and repeated the words in his head, over and over. It would’ve gone off. It would’ve gone off. It would’ve gone off.
Hand shaking, Dillon ran the cutter’s blade along the box top, slitting the tape wide. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes and quickly ripped open the package’s flaps.
There were no explosives, no wires, no timers. Instead, the package was filled with paper shavings cut from the L.A. Times. Nestled among the shavings was Wilson McHenry’s old black fedora.
Dillon let himself breathe again. He lifted the fedora out by its brim and looked at it hard. He recalled his last conversation with McHenry — the old man sitting on the deck, talking about “arrangements” and “consequences.” Dillon had thought it was some sort of threat, a last-ditch effort by the old man to stay alive. He should’ve known better. McHenry didn’t play that way.
So what was McHenry’s game? The answer came to Dillon as he pulled the hat on over his brow.
McHenry was tired of the business; he had said so himself. But he’d held on so long, he didn’t know how to let go anymore. He needed Dillon’s help. That was why he said he didn’t hold a grudge. McHenry wanted out, and he understood that Dillon was just protecting himself and his family.
The fedora then was a symbol. McHenry was passing the baton. By having Estaban and his men killed, he was clearing a path so Dillon could take over. Run things the way the old man would have.
Dillon couldn’t help but smile. Christ, McHenry was crazy. He wished he could see him now, have a drink together, tell a few jokes maybe. But all Dillon had left of the old man was the hat.
Tossing the empty package in the trash, Dillon smoothed out the brim of his new fedora. He wouldn’t be anyone’s muscle anymore, or a pilot running product. He was going to make something of himself, he decided. He’d make a deal with McHenry’s boys and reorganize what was left of Estaban’s crew. March right out and take control. After all, that’s what the old man would’ve wanted.
Two of McHenry’s boys sat in a Plymouth parked under a dead street lamp, waiting. They were both big men with square jaws and shoulders cut from stone. A sawed-off shotgun rested in the passenger’s lap, out of sight below the window.
“Someone’s coming,” said the driver, nodding in the direction of the apartments across the street.
The passenger peered through the front windshield, catching sight of a figure stepping out the front entrance. “That’s him.”
“You a hundred percent?”
“Trust me, it’s him.”
“We don’t got a picture or nothing. How can you be so sure?”
The passenger pumped the shotgun. A twelve-gauge slug cranked into the chamber, ready for business. “The old man left clear instructions,” said the passenger. “Told us to look for a guy wearing a funny old hat.”
Walter Mosley
Karma
From Dangerous Women
Leonid McGill sat at his desk, on the sixty-seventh floor of the Empire State Building, filing his nails and gazing at New Jersey. It was three-fifteen. Leonid had promised himself that he’d exercise that afternoon but now that the time had come he felt lethargic.
It was that pastrami sandwich, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll have something light like fish and then I can go to Gordo’s and work out.
Gordo’s was a third-floor boxer’s gym on Thirty-first Street. When Leonid was thirty years younger, and sixty pounds lighter, he went to Gordo’s every day. For a while Gordo Packer wanted the private detective to go pro.
“You’ll make more money in the ring than you ever will panty sniffin’,” the seemingly ageless trainer said. McGill liked the idea but he also loved Lucky Strikes and beer.
“I can’t bring myself to run unless I’m being chased,” he’d tell Gordo. “And whenever somebody hurts me I wanna do him some serious harm. You know if a guy knocked me out in the ring I’d probably lay for him with a tire iron out back’a Madison Square when the night was through.”
The years went by and Leonid kept working out on the heavy bag two or three times a week. But a boxing career was out of the question. Gordo lost interest in Leonid as a prospect but they remained friends.
“How’d a Negro ever get a name like Leonid McGill?” Gordo once asked the P.I.
“Daddy was a communist and Great-Great-Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland,” Leo answered easily. “You know the black man’s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”
Leo got up from his chair and made a stab at touching his toes. His fingers made it to about midshins but his stomach blocked any further progress.
“Shit,” the P.I. said. Then he returned to his chair and went back to filing his nails.
He did that until the broad-faced clock on the wall said 4:07. Then the buzzer sounded. One long, loud blare. Leonid cursed the fact that he hadn’t hooked up the view-cam to see who it was at the door. With a ring like that it could have been anyone. He owed over forty-six hundred dollars to the Wyant brothers. The nut was due and Leonid had yet to collect on his windfall. The Wyants wouldn’t pay any attention to his cash flow problems.
It might have been a prospective client at the door. A real client. Someone with an employee stealing from him. Or maybe a daughter being influenced by a bad crowd. Then again it could be one of thirty or forty angry husbands wanting revenge for being found out at their extramarital pastimes. And then there was Joe Haller-the poor schnook. But Leonid had never even met Joe Haller. There was no way that that loser could have found his door.
The buzzer sounded again.
Leonid got up from his chair and walked into the long hall that led to his reception room. Then he came to the front door.
The buzzer blared a third time.
“Who is it?” McGill shouted in a southern accent that he used sometimes.
“Mr. McGill?” a woman said.
“He’s not here.”
“Oh. Do you expect him back today?”
“No,” Leonid said. “No. He’s away on a case. Down in Florida. If you tell me what it is you want I’ll leave him a note.”
“Can I come in?” She sounded young and innocent but Leonid wasn’t about to be fooled.
“I’m just the building janitor, honey,” he said. “I’m not allowed to let anybody in any office in this here building. But I’ll write down your name and number and leave it on his desk if you want.”
Leonid had used that line before. There was no argument against it. The janitor couldn’t be held responsible.
There was silence from the other side of the door. If the girl had an accomplice they’d be whispering about how to get around his ploy. Leonid put his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear a thing.
“Karmen Brown,” the woman said. She added a number with the new 646 prefix. Probably a cell phone, Leonid thought.