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:
“It doesn’t matter,” said the man. “After this we won’t be able to get insurance.”
“Sorry,” said Beemer. “How’s business been?”
“Slow,” said the man with a shrug. The pregnant woman’s eyes were closed.
Pryor scooped.
“You make any of this stuff?” Beemer asked, looking around. “Last time there were some gold things, little animals, shapes, birds, fish, bears. Little.”
“I made those,” the man said.
“See any little animals, gold?” Beemer called to Pryor.
“Don’t know,” said Pryor. “Just scooping. Wait. Yeah, I see some.”
Beemer looked at his watch. He remembered where he got it. Right here. One year ago. He held up the watch to show the man and woman.
“Recognize it?” he said.
The man nodded.
“Keeps great time,” said Beemer. “Class.”
“You have good taste,” the man said.
“Thanks,” said Beemer, ignoring the sarcasm. The man had a right. He was being robbed. He was going out of business. This was a going-out-of-business nonsale. The man wasn’t old. He could start again, work for someone else. He made nice little gold animals. He was going to be a father. The watch told Beemer that they had been here four minutes.
“Let’s go,” he called to Pryor.
“One more minute. Two more. Should I look in the back?”
Beemer hesitated.
“Anything back there?” Beemer asked the man.
The man didn’t answer.
“Forget it,” he called to Pryor. “We’ve got enough.”
Pryor came out from behind the case. B&N bag bulging. More than they got the last time. Then Pryor tripped. It happens. Pryor tripped. The bag fell on the floor. Gold and time went flying, a snow or rain of gold and silver, platinum and rings. And Pryor’s gun went off as he fell.
The bullet hit the man in the back. The woman screamed. The man went to his knees. His teeth were clenched. Nice white teeth. Beemer wondered if such nice white teeth could be real. The woman went down with the man, trying to hold him up.
Pryor looked at them, looked at Beemer, and started to throw things back in the bag. Wait. That wasn’t Freud. Beemer tried to remember who it was. Not Freud. George Bernard Shaw. It was George Bernard Shaw with wrinkled brow who looked up at Beemer, displeased.
“An accident,” Beemer told the woman, who was holding her husband, who now bit his lower lip hard. Blood from the bite. Beemer didn’t want to know what the man’s back looked like or where the bullet had traveled inside his body. “Call an ambulance, Nine one one. We never shot anybody before. An accident.”
It was more than five minutes now. Pryor was breathing hard trying to get everything. On his knees, scampering like a crazy dog.
“Put the gun away,” Beemer said. “Use both hands. Hurry up. These people need a doctor.”
Pryor nodded, put the gun in his pocket, and gathered glittering crops. The man had fallen, collapsed on his back. The woman looked up at Beemer, crying. Beemer didn’t want her to lose her baby.
“He have insurance?” he asked.
She looked at him, bewildered.
“Life insurance?” Beemer explained.
“Done,” said Pryor with a smile. His teeth were small, yellow.
The woman didn’t answer the question. Pryor ran to the door. He didn’t look back at what he had done.
“Nine one one,” Beemer said, backing out of the store.
Pryor looked both ways and headed for the car. Beemer was a foot out the door. He turned and went back in.
“Sorry,” he said. “It was an accident.”
“Get out,” the woman screamed. “Go away. Go away. Go away.”
She started to get up. Maybe she was crazy enough to attack him. Maybe Beemer would have to shoot her. He didn’t think he could shoot a pregnant woman.
“Joan,” he said, stepping outside again. “Joan’s a good name. Think about it. Consider it.”
“Get out,” the woman screamed.
Beemer got out. Pryor was already in the car. Beemer ran. Some people were coming out of the Chinese restaurant. Two guys in baseball hats. From this distance, about forty yards, they looked like truckers. There weren’t any trucks in the lot. They were looking right at Beemer. Beemer realized he was holding his gun. Beemer could hear the woman screaming. The truckers could probably hear her too. He ran to the car, got behind the wheel. Pryor couldn’t drive, never learned, never tried.
Beemer shot out of the parking lot. They’d need another car. Not a problem. Night. Good neighborhood. In and gone in something not too new. Dump it. No prints. Later buy a five-year-old Geo, Honda, something like that. Legal. In Beemer’s name.
“We got a lot,” Pryor said happily.
“You shot that guy,” Beemer said, staying inside the speed limit, heading for the expressway. “He might die.”
“What?” asked Pryor.
“You shot that man,” Beemer repeated, passing a guy in a blue BMW. The guy was smoking a cigarette. Beemer didn’t smoke. He made Pryor stop when they’d gotten together. Inside. In Stateville, he was in a cell with two guys who smoked. Smell had been everywhere. On Beemer’s clothes. On the pages of his books.
People killed themselves. Alcohol, drugs, smoking, eating crap that told the blood going to their heart that this was their territory now and there was no way they were getting by without surgery.
“People sunk,” said Beemer.
Pryor was poking through the bag. He nodded in agreement. He was smiling.
“What if he dies?” Beemer said.
“Who?”
“The guy you shot,” said Beemer. “Shot full of holes by someone she knows.”
The expressway was straight ahead. Beemer could see the stoplight, the big green sign.
“I don’t know her,” Pryor said. “Never saw her before.”
“One year ago,” Beemer said.
“So? We don’t go back. The guy dies. Everybody dies. You said so,” Pryor said, feeling proud of himself, holding G. B. Shaw to his bosom. “We stopping for hot dogs? That place you said? Kosher. Juicy.”
“I don’t feel like hot dogs,” said Beemer.
He turned onto the expressway, headed south toward Chicago. Jammed. Rush hour. Line from here to forever. Moving maybe five, ten miles an hour. Beemer turned on the radio and looked in the rearview mirror. Cars were lined up behind him. A long showroom of whatever you might want. Lights on, creeping, crawling. Should have stayed off the expressway. Too late now. Listen to the news, music, voices that made sense besides his own. An insulting talk show host would be fine.
“More than we got last time,” Pryor said happily.
“Yeah,” said Beemer.
“A couple of hot dogs would be good,” said Pryor. “Celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“Anniversary. We’ve got a present.”
Pryor held up the bag. It looked heavy. Beemer grunted. What the hell. They had to eat.
“Hot dogs,” Beemer said.
“Yup,” said Pryor.
Traffic crawled. The car in front of Beemer had a bumper sticker: DON’T BLAME ME. I VOTED LIBERTARIAN.
What the hell was that? Libertarian. Beemer willed the cars to move. He couldn’t do magic. A voice on the radio said something about Syria. Syria didn’t exist for Beemer. Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Bosnia. You name it. It didn’t really exist. Nothing existed. No place existed until it was right there to be touched, looked at, held up with a Glock in your hand.
Gluck, gluck, gluck, gluck, gluck.
Beemer heard it over the sound of running engines and a horn here and there from someone in a hurry to get somewhere in a hurry. He looked up. Helicopter. Traffic watch from a radio or television station? No. It was low. Cops. The truckers from the Chinese restaurant? Still digesting their fried wonton when they went to their radios or a pay phone or a cell phone or pulled out a rocket.