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:
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Sometimes Something Goes Wrong
From The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology
“You sure?”
Beemer looked at Pryor and said, “I’m sure. One year ago. This day. That jewelry store. It’s in my book.”
Pryor was short, thin, nervous. Dustin Hoffman on some kind of speed produced by his own body. His face was flat, scarred from too many losses in the ring for too many years. He was stupid. Born that way. Punches to the head hadn’t made his IQ rise. But Pryor did what he was told and Beemer liked telling Pryor what to do. Talking to Pryor was like thinking out loud.
“One year ago. In your book,” Pryor said, looking at the jewelry store through the car window.
“In my book,” Beemer said, patting the right pocket of his black zipper jacket.
“And this is...? I mean, where we are?”
“Northbrook. It’s a suburb of Chicago,” said Beemer patiently.
Pryor nodded as if he understood. He didn’t really, but if Beemer said so, it must be so. He looked at Beemer, who sat behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the door of the jewelry store. Beemer was broad shouldered, well built from three years with the weights in Stateville and keeping it up when he was outside. He was nearing fifty, blue eyes, short, razor haircut, gray-black hair. He looked like a linebacker, a short linebacker. Beemer had never played football. He had robbed two Cincinnati Bengals once outside a bar, but that was the closest he got to the real thing. Didn’t watch sports on the tube. In prison he had read, wore glasses. Classics. For over a year. Dickens. Hemingway. Steinbeck. Shakespeare. Freud. Shaw, Irwin, and George Bernard. Then one year to the day he started, Beemer stopped reading. Beemer kept track of time.
Now, Beemer liked to keep moving. Buy clothes, eat well, stay in classy hotels when he could. Beemer was putting the cash away for the day he’d feel like retiring. He couldn’t imagine that day.
“Tell me again why we’re hitting it exactly a year after we hit it before,” Pryor said.
Beemer checked his watch. Dusk. Almost closing time. The couple who owned and ran the place were always the last ones in the mall besides the Chinese restaurant to close. On one side of the jewelry store, Gortman’s Jewelry and Fine Watches, was a storefront insurance office. State Earm. Frederick White the agent. He had locked up and gone home. On the other side, Himmell’s Gifts. Stuff that looked like it would break if you touched it in the window. Glassy-looking birds and horses. Glassy, not classy. Beemer liked touching real class, like really thin glass wineglasses. If he settled down, he’d buy a few, have a drink every night, run his finger around the rim and make that ringing sound. He didn’t know how to do that. He’d learn.
“What?”
“Why are we here again?” Pryor asked.
“Anniversary. Our first big score. Good luck. Maybe. It just feels right.”
“What did we get last time?”
The small strip mall was almost empty now. Maybe four cars if you didn’t count the eight parked all the way down at the end by the Chinese restaurant. Beemer could take or leave Chinese food, but he liked the buffet idea. Thai food. That was his choice. Tonight they’d have Thai. Tomorrow they’d take the watches, bracelets, rings to Walter on Polk Street. Walter would look everything over, make an offer. Beemer would take it. Thai food. That was the ticket.
“We got six thousand last time,” Beemer said. “Five minutes’ work. Six thousand dollars. More than a thousand a minute.”
“More than a thousand a minute,” Pryor echoed.
“Celebration,” said Beemer. “This is a celebration. Back where our good luck started.”
“Back light went out,” Pryor said, looking at the jewelry store.
“We’re moving,” Beemer answered, getting quickly out of the car.
They moved right toward the door. Beemer had a Glock. His treasure. Read about it in a spy story in a magazine. Had to have it. Pryor had a piece-of-crap street gun with tape on the handle. Revolver. Six or eight shots. Piece of crap, but a bullet from it would hurt going in and might never come out. People didn’t care. You put a gun in their face they didn’t care if it was precision or zip. They knew it could blow out their lights.
Beemer glanced at Pryor, keeping pace at his side. Pryor had dressed up for the job. He had gone through his bag at the motel, asked Beemer what he should wear. Always asked Beemer. Asked him if he should brush his teeth. Well, maybe not quite, but asked him almost everything. The distance to the moon. Could eating Equal really give you cancer. Beemer always had an answer. Quick, ready. Right or wrong. He had an answer.
Pryor was wearing blue slacks and a Tommy Hilfiger blue pullover short-sleeved shirt. He had brushed his hair, polished his shoes. He was ready. Ugly and ready.
Just as the couple inside turned off their light Beemer opened the door and pulled out his gun. Pryor did the same. They didn’t wear masks. Artist’s sketches were for shit. Ski masks itched. Sometimes Beemer wore dark glasses. That’s if they were working the day. Sometimes he had a Band-Aid on his cheek. Let them remember that or the fake mole he got from Gibson’s Magic Shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina. That was a bad hit. No more magic shops. He had scooped up a shopping bag of tricks and practical jokes. Fake dog shit. Fake snot you could hang from your nose. He threw it all away. Kept the mole though. Didn’t have it on now.
“Don’t move,” he said.
The couple didn’t move. The man was younger than Beemer by a decade. Average height. He had grown a beard in the last year. Looked older. Wearing a zipper jacket. Blue. Beemer’s was black. Beemer’s favorite colors were black and white. That was the way he liked things. The woman was blond, somewhere in her thirties, sort of pretty, too thin for Beemer’s tastes. Pryor remembered the women. He never touched them, but he remembered and talked about them at night in the hotels or motels. Stealing from good-looking women was a high for Pryor. That and good kosher hot dogs. Chicago was always good for hot dogs if you knew where to go. Beemer knew. On the way back, they’d stop at a place he knew on Dempster. Make Pryor happy. Sit and eat a big kosher or two, lots of fries, ketchup, onions, hot peppers. Let Pryor talk about the woman.
She looked different. She was wearing a green dress. She was pregnant. That was it.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” said Beemer. “You know what to do. Stand quiet. No alarms. No crying. Nothing stupid. Boy or a girl?”
Pryor was behind the glass counters, opening them quickly, shoveling, clinking, into the Barnes & Noble bag he had taken from his back pocket. There was a picture of Sigmund Freud on the bag. Sigmund Freud was watching Beemer. Beemer wondered what Freud was thinking.
“Boy or girl?” Beemer repeated. “You know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl?”
“Girl,” said the man.
“You got a name picked out?”
“Melissa,” said the woman.
Beemer shook his head and said, “Too... I don’t know... too what everybody else is doing. Something simple. Joan. Molly. Agnes. The simple is different. Hurry it up,” he called to Pryor.
“Hurry it up, right,” Pryor answered, moving faster, the B&N bag bulging, Freud looking a little plump and not so serious now.
“We’ll think about it,” the man said.
Beemer didn’t think so.
“Why us?” the woman said. Anger. Tears were coming. “Why do you keep coming back to us?”
“Only the second time,” said Beemer. “Anniversary. One year ago today. Did you forget?”
“I remembered,” said the man, moving to his wife and putting his arm around her.
“We won’t be back,” Beemer said as Pryor moved across the carpeting to the second showcase.