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:
Pryor was openly watching the cops move toward them.
“Don’t look at them,” Beemer whispered. “Look at me. Talk. Say something. Smile. I’ll nod. Say anything.”
“Are they coming for us?” asked Pryor, working on his second dog.
“You’ve got mustard on your nose. You want to go down with mustard on your nose? You want to be a joke on the ten o’clock news?”
Beemer took a napkin arid wiped Pryor’s nose as the cops came in the door and looked around.
“Reach in your pocket,” said Beemer. “Take out your gun. I’m going to do the same. Aim it at the cops. Don’t shoot. Don’t speak. If they pull out their guns, just drop yours. It’ll be over and we can go pray that the guy you shot doesn’t die.”
“I don’t pray,” said Pryor as the cops, both young and in uniform, moved through the line of customers down the middle of the shop, hands on holstered guns.
Beemer turned and so did Pryor. Guns out, aimed. Butch and Sundance. A John Woo movie.
“Hold it,” shouted Beemer.
Oh God, I pissed in my pants. Half an hour to the motel. Maybe twenty years to life to the motel.
The cops stopped, hands still on their holsters. The place went dead. Someone screamed. The mother or the daughter, who had stopped talking about Paris.
“Let’s go,” said Beemer.
Pryor reached back for the last half of his hot dog and his little greasy bag of fries.
“Is that a Glock?” asked the kid behind the counter.
“It’s a Glock,” said Beemer.
“Cool gun,” said the kid.
The cops didn’t speak. Beemer didn’t say anything more. He and Pryor made it to the door, backed away across the parking lot, watching the cops watching them. The cops wouldn’t shoot. Too many people.
“Get in,” Beemer said.
Pryor got in the car. Beemer reached back to open the driver-side door. Hard to keep his gun level and open the door. He did it, got in, started the car, and looked in the rearview. The cops were coming out, guns drawn. There was a barrier in front of him, low, a couple of inches, painted red. Beemer gunned forward over the barrier. Hell, it wasn’t his car. He thought there was just enough room to get between a white minivan and an old convertible who-knows-what.
The cops were saying something. Beemer wasn’t listening. He had pissed in his pants and he expected to die of a heart attack. He listened for some telltale sign. The underbody of the Nissan caught the red barrier, scraped, and roared over. Beemer glanced toward Pryor, who had the window open and was leaning out, his piece-of-crap gun in his hand. Pryor fired as Beemer made it between minivan and convertible, taking some paint off both sides of the Nissan in the process.
Pryor fired as Beemer hit the street. Beemer heard the hot dog shop’s window shatter. They wouldn’t be welcome here in the near future. Then came another shot as Beemer turned right. This one went through Pryor’s face. He was dead, hanging out the window. Beemer floored the Nissan. He could hear Pryor’s head bouncing on the door.
The cops were going for their car, making calls, and Pryor’s head was bouncing like something out of the jungle on the door. Beemer made a hard right down a semidark street. He pulled to the curb, reached past Pryor, and opened the door. It swung open, Pryor draped over it. Beemer grabbed the dead man’s shirt, pulled him back through the window, and pushed the body out the door. Then he reached over to close the door. Pryor was looking up at him with three eyes, one of them brand new.
Beemer drove. There were lights behind him now, a block back. Sirens. He turned left, wove around. No idea where he was. No one to talk to. Just me and my radio.
Who knows how many minutes later he came to a street called Oakton and headed east, for Sheridan Road, Lake Shore Drive, Lake Michigan.
People passed in cars. He passed people walking. People looked at him. The bloody door. That was it. Pryor had marked him. No time to stop and clean it up. Not on the street. He hit Sheridan Road and looked for a place to turn, found it. Little dead end. Black on white sign: NO SWIMMING. A park.
He pulled in between a couple of cars he didn’t look at, popped the trunk lock, and got out. There was nothing in the trunk but the bag of jewelry. He dumped it all into the trunk, picked up the empty canvas bag, closed the trunk, and went looking for water.
Families were having late picnics. Couples were walking. Beemer found a fountain. He soaked George Bernard Shaw and brought him dripping back to the Nissan, where he worked on the bloody car door. It streaked. He worked, turned the canvas bag. Scrubbed. He went back for more water, wrung the bloody water from the bag. Worked again. Gunga Din. Fetch water. Clean up. Three trips and it was done.
George Bernard Shaw was angry. His face was red under the parking lot lights.
Beemer opened the trunk and threw the bag in. When he turned, he saw the cop car coming down the street. Only one way in the lot. Only one way out. The same way. He grabbed six or seven watches and some little golden animals and shoved them in his pockets quickly. Then he moved into the park, off the path, toward the rocks. Last stand? Glock on the rocks? Couldn’t be. It couldn’t end like this. He was caught between a cop and a hard place. Funny. Couldn’t laugh though. He hurried on, looking back to see the cop car enter the little lot.
Beemer found the rocks. Kids were crawling over them. Big rocks. Beyond them the night and the lake like an ocean of darkness, end of the world. Nothingness. He climbed out and down.
Three teenagers or college kids, male, watched him make his way down toward the water.
Stop looking at me, he willed. Go back to playing with yourselves, telling lies, and being stupid. Just don’t look at me. Beemer crouched down behind a rock, the water touching his shoes.
He had no plan. Water and rocks. Pockets full of not much. Crawl along the rocks. Get out. Find a car. Drive to the motel. Get to St. Louis. Tanner might give him a few hundred, maybe more, for what he had. Start again, find a new Pryor to replace the prior Pryor, a Pryor without a gun. Beemer knew he couldn’t be alone.
“You see a man out here?” He heard a voice through the sound of the waves.
“Down there,” came a slightly younger voice.
Beemer couldn’t swim. Give up or keep going. He kept going. A flashlight beam from above now. Another from the direction he had come.
“Stop right there. Turn around and come back the way you came,” said a voice.
“He’s armed,” said another voice.
“Take out your gun and hold it by the barrel. Now.”
Beemer considered. He took out the Glock. Great gun. Took it out slowly, looked up, and decided it was all a what-the-hell life anyway. He grabbed the gun by the handle, holding on to the rock with one hand. He aimed toward the flashlight above him.
Before he could fire he heard a shot, felt the pain, fell backward. His head hit a jutting rock. The rock hurt more than the bullet that tore at his stomach. But the water, the cold water, was worst of all.
“Can you get to him, Dave?” someone called.
“I’m trying.”
Beemer was floating on his back, bobbing in the black waves. I can float, he thought, looking at the flashlight. Float out to some little sailboat, climb on, get away.
He bobbed further away. Pain gone cold.
“Can’t reach him.”
“Shit. He’s floating out. Call it in.”
Footsteps. Beemer looked up. Beyond the light aimed at his eyes, he could see people in a line looking down at him as he floated farther and farther from the shore into the blackness. He considered waving to them. He looked for the moon and stars. They weren’t there.