The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories

by Otto Penzler

  THIS IS NO JOKE

  IT’S A STICKUP!

  I WANT $4,000 NOW!

  Geraldine stopped smiling. The guy with the metallic hair was telling her he wanted it in hundreds, fifties, and twenties, loose, no bank straps or rubber bands, no bait money, no dye packs, no bills off the bottom of the drawer, and he wanted his note back. Now.

  “The teller didn’t have four grand in her drawer,” Daniel Burdon said, “so the guy settled for twenty-eight hundred and was out of there. Slick changing his style—we know it’s the same guy, with the shiny hair? Only now he’s the Joker. The trouble is, see, I ain’t Batman.”

  Daniel and Karen Sisco were in the hallway outside the central courtroom on the second floor, Daniel resting his long frame against the railing, where you could look below at the atrium, with its fountain and potted palms.

  “No witness to see him hop in his BMW this time. The man coming to realize that was dumb, using his own car.”

  Karen said, “Or it’s not Carl Tillman.”

  “You see him last night?”

  “He came over.”

  “Yeah, how was it?”

  Karen looked up at Daniel’s deadpan expression. “I told him I was a federal agent and he didn’t freak.”

  “So he’s cool, huh?”

  “He’s a nice guy.”

  “Cordial. Tells jokes robbing banks. I talked to the people at Florida Southern, where he had his boat loan? Found out he was seeing one of the tellers. Not at the main office, one of their branches, girl named Kathy Lopez. Big brown eyes, cute as a puppy, just started working there. She’s out with Tillman she tells him about her job, what she does, how she’s counting money all day. I asked was Tillman interested, want to know anything in particular? Oh, yeah, he wanted to know what she was supposed to do if the bank ever got robbed. So she tells him about dye packs, how they work, how she gets a two-hundred-dollar bonus if she’s ever robbed and can slip one in with the loot. The next time he’s in, cute little Kathy Lopez shows him one, explains how you walk out the door with a pack of fake twenties? A half minute later the tear gas blows and you have that red shit all over you and the money you stole. I checked the reports on the other robberies he pulled? Every one of them he said to the teller, no dye packs or that bait money with the registered serial numbers.”

  “Making conversation,” Karen said, trying hard to maintain her composure. “People like to talk about what they do.”

  Daniel smiled.

  And Karen said, “Carl’s not your man.”

  “Tell me why you’re so sure.”

  “I know him. He’s a good guy.”

  “Karen, you hear yourself? You’re telling me what you feel, not what you know. Tell me about him—you like the way he dances, what?”

  Karen didn’t answer that one. She wanted Daniel to leave her alone.

  He said, “Okay, you want to put a wager on it, you say Tillman’s clean?”

  That brought her back, hooked her, and she said, “How much?”

  “You lose, you go out dancing with me.”

  “Great. And if I’m right, what do I get?”

  “My undying respect,” Daniel said.

  As soon as Karen got home she called her dad at Marshall Sisco Investigations and told him about Carl Tillman, the robbery suspect in her life, and about Daniel Burdon’s confident, condescending, smart-ass, irritating attitude.

  Her dad said, “Is this guy colored?”

  “Daniel?”

  “I know he is. Friends of mine at Metro-Dade call him the white man’s Burdon, on account of he gets on their nerves always being right. I mean your guy. There’s a running back in the NFL named Tillman. I forget who he’s with.”

  Karen said, “You’re not helping any.”

  “The Tillman in the pros is colored—the reason I asked. I think he’s with the Bears.”

  “Carl’s white.”

  “Okay, and you say you’re crazy about him?”

  “I like him, a lot.”

  “But you aren’t sure he isn’t doing the banks.”

  “I said I can’t believe he is.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Come on—if he is he’s not gonna tell me.”

  “How do you know?”

  She didn’t say anything and after a few moments her dad asked if she was still diere.

  “He’s coming over tonight,” Karen said.

  “You want me to talk to him?”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Then what’d you call me for?”

  “I’m not sure what to do.”

  “Let the FBI work it.”

  “I’m supposed to be helping them.”

  “Yeah, but what good are you? You want to believe the guy’s clean. Honey, the only way to find out if he is, you have to assume he isn’t. You know what I’m saying? Why does a person rob banks? For money, yeah. But you have to be dumb, too, considering the odds against you, the security, cameras taking your picture. . . . So another reason could be the risk involved, it turns him on. The same reason he’s playing around with you. . . .”

  “He isn’t playing around.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t say, ‘Sucking up to get information, see what you know.’”

  “He’s never mentioned banks.” Karen paused. “Well, he might’ve once.”

  “You could bring it up, see how he reacts. He gets sweaty, call for backup. Look, whether he’s playing around or loves you with all his heart, he’s still risking twenty years. He doesn’t know if you’re on to him or not and that heightens the risk. It’s like he thinks he’s Cary Grant stealing jewels from the broad’s home where he’s having dinner, in his tux. But your guy’s still dumb if he robs banks. You know all that. Your frame of mind, you just don’t want to accept it.”

  “You think I should draw him out. See if I can set him up.”

  “Actually,” her dad said, “I think you should find another boyfriend.”

  Karen remembered Christopher Walken in The Dogs of War placing his gun on a table in the front hall—the doorbell ringing—and laying a newspaper over the gun before he opened the door. She remembered it because at one time she was in love with Christopher Walken, not even caring that he wore his pants so high.

  Carl reminded her some of Christopher Walken, the way he smiled with his eyes. He came a little after seven. Karen had on khaki shorts and a T-shirt, tennis shoes without socks.

  “I thought we were going out.”

  They kissed and she touched his face, moving her hand lightly over his skin, smelling his after-shave, feeling the spot where his light earlobe was pierced.

  “I’m making drinks,” Karen said. “Let’s have one and then I’ll get ready.” She started for the kitchen.

  “Can I help?”

  “You’ve been working all day. Sit down, relax.”

  It took her a couple of minutes. Karen returned to the living room with a drink in each hand, her leather bag hanging from her shoulder. “This one’s yours.” Carl took it and she dipped her shoulder to let the bag slip off and drop to the coffee table. Carl grinned.

  “What’ve you got in there, a gun?”

  “Two pounds of heavy metal. How was your day?”

  They sat on the sofa and he told how it took almost four hours to land an eight-foot marlin, the leader wound around its bill. Carl said he worked his tail off hauling the fish aboard and the guy decided he didn’t want it.

  Karen said, “After you got back from Kendall?”

  It gave him pause.

  “Why do you think I was in Kendall?”

  Carl had to wait while she sipped her drink.

  “Didn’t you stop by Florida Southern and withdraw twenty-eight hundred?”

  That got him staring at her, but with no expression to speak of. Karen thinking, Tell me you were somewhere else and can prove it.

  But he didn’t; he kept staring.

  “No dye packs, no bait money. Are you still seeing K
athy Lopez?”

  Carl hunched over to put his drink on the coffee table and sat like that, leaning on his thighs, not looking at her now as Karen studied his profile, his elegant nose. She looked at his glass, his prints all over it, and felt sorry for him.

  “Carl, you blew it.”

  He turned his head to look at her past his shoulder. He said, “I’m leaving,” pushed up from the sofa and said, “If this is what you think of me . . .”

  Karen said, “Carl, cut the shit,” and put her drink down. Now, if he picked up her bag, that would cancel out any remaining doubts. She watched him pick up her bag. He got the Beretta out and let the bag drop.

  “Carl, sit down. Will you, please?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m walking out and you’ll never see me again. But first . . .” He made her get a knife from the kitchen and cut the phone line in there and in the bedroom.

  He was pretty dumb. In the living room again he said, “You know something? We could’ve made it.”

  Jesus. And he had seemed like such a cool guy. Karen watched him go to the front door and open it before turning to her again.

  “How about letting me have five minutes? For old times’ sake.”

  It was becoming embarrassing, sad. She said, “Carl, don’t you understand? You’re under arrest.”

  He said, “I don’t want to hurt you, Karen, so don’t try to stop me.” He went out the door.

  Karen walked over to the chest where she dropped her car keys and mail coming in the house: a bombé chest by the front door, the door still open. She laid aside the folded copy of the Herald she’d placed there over her Sig Sauer .38, picked up the pistol, and went out to the front stoop, into the yellow glow of the porch light. She saw Carl at his car now, its white shape pale against the dark street, only about forty feet away.

  “Carl, don’t make it hard, okay?”

  He had the car door open and half turned to look back. “I said I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Karen said, “Yeah, well. . . .” raised the pistol to rack the slide, and cupped her left hand under the grip. She said, “You move to get in the car, I’ll shoot.”

  Carl turned his head again with a sad, wistful expression. “No you won’t, sweetheart.”

  Don’t say ciao, Karen thought. Please.

  Carl said, “Ciao,” turned to get in the car, and she shot him. Fired a single round at his left thigh and hit him where she’d aimed, in the fleshy part just below his butt. Carl howled and slumped inside against the seat and the steering wheel, his leg extended straight out, his hand gripping it, his eyes raised with a bewildered frown as Karen approached. The poor dumb guy looking at twenty years, and maybe a limp.

  Karen felt she should say something. After all, for a few days there they were as intimate as two people can get. She thought about it for several moments, Carl staring up at her with rheumy eyes. Finally Karen said, “Carl, I want you to know I had a pretty good time, considering.”

  It was the best she could do.

  MICHAEL MALONE

  Red Clay

  FROM Murder for Love

  UP ON ITS SHORT SLOPE the columned front of our courthouse was wavy in the August sun, like a courthouse in lake water. The leaves hung from maples, and the flag of North Carolina wilted flat against its metal pole. Heat sat sodden over Devereux County week by relentless week; they called the weather “dog days,” after the star, Sirius, but none of us knew that. We thought they meant no dog would leave shade for street on such days—no dog except a mad one. I was ten that late August in 1959; I remembered the summer because of the long heat wave, and because of Stella Doyle.

  When they pushed open the doors, the policemen and lawyers flung their arms up to their faces to block the sun and stopped there in the doorway as if the hot light were shoving them back inside. Stella Doyle came out last, a deputy on either side to walk her down to where the patrol car, orange as Halloween candles, waited to take her away until the jury could make up its mind about what had happened two months earlier out at Red Hills. It was the only house in the county big enough to have a name. It was where Stella Doyle had, maybe, shot her husband, Hugh Doyle, to death.

  Excitement over Doyle’s murder had swarmed through the town and stung us alive. No thrill would replace it until the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Outside the courthouse, sidewalk heat steaming up through our shoes, we stood patiently waiting to hear Mrs. Doyle found guilty. The news stood waiting, too, for she was, after all, not merely the murderer of the wealthiest man we knew; she was Stella Doyle. She was the movie star.

  Papa’s hand squeezed down on my shoulder and there was a tight line to his mouth as he pulled me into the crowd and said, “Listen now, Buddy, if anybody ever asks you, when you’re grown, ‘Did you ever see the most beautiful woman God made in your lifetime,’ son, you say ‘Yes, I had that luck, and her name was Stella Dora Doyle.’” His voice got louder, right there in the crowd for everybody to hear. “You tell them how her beauty was so bright, it burned back the shame they tried to heap on her head, burned it right on back to scorch their faces.”

  Papa spoke these strange words looking up the steps at the almost plump woman in black the deputies were holding. His arms were folded over his seersucker vest, his fingers tight on the sleeves of his shirt. People around us had turned to stare and somebody snickered.

  Embarrassed for him, I whispered, “Oh, Papa, she’s nothing but an old murderer. Everybody knows how she got drunk and killed Mr. Doyle. She shot him right through the head with a gun.”

  Papa frowned. “You don’t know that.”

  I kept on. “Everybody says she was so bad and drunk all the time, she wouldn’t let his folks even live in the same house with her. She made him throw out his own mama and papa.”

  Papa shook his head at me. “I don’t like to hear ugly gossip coming out of your mouth, all right, Buddy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She didn’t kill Hugh Doyle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His frown scared me; it was so rare. I stepped closer and took his hand, took his stand against the rest. I had no loyalty to this woman Papa thought so beautiful. I just could never bear to be cut loose from the safety of his good opinion. I suppose that from that moment on, I felt toward Stella Doyle something of what my father felt, though in the end perhaps she meant less to me, and stood for more. Papa never had my habit of symbolizing.

  The courthouse steps were wide, uneven stone slabs. As Mrs. Doyle came down, the buzzing of the crowd hushed. All together, like trained dancers, people stepped back to clear a half-circle around the orange patrol car. Newsmen shoved their cameras to the front. She was rushed down so fast that her shoe caught in the crumbling stone and she fell against one of the deputies.

  “She’s drunk!” hooted a woman near me, a country woman in a flowered dress belted with a strip of painted rope. She and the child she jiggled against her shoulder were puffy with the fat of poverty. “Look’it her”—the woman pointed—“look at that dress. She thinks she’s still out there in Hollywood.” The woman beside her nodded, squinting out from under the visor of the kind of hat pier fishermen wear. “I went and killed my husband, wouldn’t no rich lawyers come running to weasel me out of the law.” She slapped at a fly’s buzz.

  Then they were quiet and everybody else was quiet and our circle of sun-stunned eyes fixed on the woman in black, stared at the wonder of one as high as Mrs. Doyle about to be brought so low.

  Holding to the stiff, tan arm of the young deputy, Mrs. Doyle reached down to check the heel of her shoe. Black shoes, black suit and purse, wide black hat—they all sinned against us by their fashionableness, blazing wealth as well as death. She stood there, arrested a moment in the hot immobility of the air, then she hurried down, rushing the two big deputies down with her, to the open door of the orange patrol car. Papa stepped forward so quickly that the gap filled with people before I could follow him. I squeezed through, fighting with my elbows, and I saw that he
was holding his straw hat in one hand, and offering the other hand out to the murderer. “Stella, how are you? Clayton Hayes.”

  As she turned, I saw the strawberry gold hair beneath the hat; then her hand, bright with a big diamond, took away the dark glasses. I saw what Papa meant. She was beautiful. Her eyes were the color of lilacs, but darker than lilacs. And her skin held the light like the inside of a shell. She was not like other pretty women, because the difference was not one of degree. I have never seen anyone else of her kind.

  “Why, Clayton! God Almighty, it’s been years.”

  “Well, yes, a long time now, I guess,” he said, and shook her hand.

  She shook the hand in both of hers. “You look the same as ever. Is this your boy?” she said. The violet eyes turned to me.

  “Yes, this is Buddy. Ada and I have six so far, three of each.”

  “Six? Are we that old, Clayton?” She smiled. “They said you’d married Ada Hackney.”

  A deputy cleared his throat. “Sorry, Clayton, we’re going to have to get going.”

  “Just a minute, Lonnie. Listen, Stella, I just wanted you to know I’m sorry as I can be about your losing Hugh.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “He did it himself, Clayton,” she said.

  “I know that. I know you didn’t do this.” Papa nodded slowly again and again, the way he did when he was listening. “I know that. Good luck to you.”

  She swatted tears away. “Thank you.”

  “I’m telling everybody I’m sure of that.”

  “Clayton, thank you.”

  Papa nodded again, then tilted his head back to give her his slow, peaceful smile. “You call Ada and me if there’s ever something we can do to help you, you hear?” She kissed his cheek and he stepped back with me into the crowd of hostile, avid faces as she entered the police car. It moved slow as the sun through the sightseers. Cameras pushed against its windows.

  A sallow man biting a pipe skipped down the steps to join some other reporters next to us. “Jury sent out for food,” he told them. “No telling with these yokels. Could go either way.” He pulled off his jacket and balled it under his arm. “Jesus, it’s hot.”