The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

by Elizabeth George

  After a pause, Kent said, “Why are you talking like that?”

  “Like what?” Loomis said.

  “Like a dimwit. Like someone sounding out the words.”

  “I’m just saying that I hope you’d tell me if you were angry at me, Kent.”

  “For what?”

  “Or disappointed.”

  “I don’t get it. Is everything okay with you and Kate?”

  “Why? Did she say something to you?”

  “This is a very odd conversation, Todd. I have to wonder if you’ve been drinking.”

  So this was Loomis now: sowing panic among the elderly. The beers had been a mistake—the last two, anyway. “I’m sorry. Work’s been tough. They’re downsizing our group. I’ve lost a lot of buddies.” He was thinking about Kent, alone in his ranch house, tying bass lures, making cups of Maxwell House. It was some ginned-up notion he had about loneliness, being left behind. He heard Kent release a half sob into the phone, then realized it was him.

  “I understand,” his father-in-law said. “You wouldn’t believe the stories I hear on the lot.”

  “Don’t say anything to Kate. It’s just nice sometimes to talk to another dad, you know?”

  Downstairs, Izzy was caressing her iPad like a lover. Kate was at a spinning class.

  “Where’s Trevor?”

  “In the bath,” Izzy said.

  “The bath?”

  “Don’t stress. I’m monitoring him. You smell like beer. Are you, like, an alcoholic now?”

  And what if he was? He wasn’t. But what if? It wasn’t every day that a guy’s persecution complex came true.

  After Kate and the kiddies conked out, he paced the perimeter of his darkened home debating the merits of gun control. He scanned the street for suspicious vehicles. A red Scion had tailed him home from work. Possibly twice. Later that night a loud thumping bolted him awake. “What the hell was that?”

  “Trevvie,” Kate murmured. “Kicks the wall.” She laughed drowsily. “You’re so jumpy. It’s cute.”

  Jumpy? Cute? He felt like slugging her in the kidney, wherever that might be.

  On Saturday she returned from her weekly sojourn to Trader Joe’s with nine recyclable sacks full of festive yuppie kibble: tandoori chicken skewers, chipotle hummus, trail mix brimming with mystical Mayan seeds intended to charm his cholesterol. Loomis was busy thrashing Izzy at Monopoly, which would eventually build her character. He had no intention of wandering into the kitchen to audit his wife’s purchases. That was something the Old Loomis would have done, a petty pleasure wrung from the fluke of his economic prerogative.

  No, all Loomis wanted was to see if there might be a little something he could nosh on while Izzy was in the bathroom. He even offered to help Kate put the groceries away, an offer she politely declined, a declination he politely ignored. Loomis was going to be helpful because it was the right thing to do. He held to this conviction until the precise moment his eyes fell upon a small container of Greek yogurt.

  He and Kate had discussed this product at length. They had agreed it was an unnecessary luxury. He tamped down his urge to speak, then realized he was tamping down his urge to speak, then glared at Kate, who was reaching into the fridge to put the almond milk away and humming—humming, of all things! Her ass looked delish. This made Loomis wish he had not seen the yogurt. But it was too late. He was going to say something now, something awful and thrilling—he’d had enough of muzzling himself, of kowtowing, of groveling, which is probably how Kate had got the idea that the fucking Greek yogurt was back in play. She turned from the fridge. Her eyes followed his. He suffered an exquisite moment of pre-regret, of wanting to fall to his knees in some kind of spiritual silence. Then his vile mouth began to speak.

  On Monday morning, having forgotten to pretend to have an early meeting, Loomis walked Trevor to preschool. They bonded. This consisted of listening to Trevor hold forth on the Uhmoomah, a species of his own invention that appeared to embody all the vital Freudian archetypes. (Pale wormy body? Check. Damp cave habitat? Check. Humps that squirt white lava? Check.)

  They passed all the landmarks Izzy had loved: the tree with the tiny door at the bottom, the doghouse shaped like an igloo. Trevor droned sweetly on. Loomis missed the days of one child. The math was so complicated now. Someone always had a cold. They all fought too much. Loomis was fat and unhappy and lonely in his unhappiness. That was why he picked fights. What did one do with such insights?

  They were standing in front of the church basement where Trevor was being taught to clean up glue spills and use his words. Loomis crouched down to hug his little weirdo goodbye. Over Trevor’s shoulder he spotted a red Scion parked down the street. The vehicle pulled a U-ie and raced off. Loomis jumped up and waved his arms and started yelling, “Hey! Hey!”

  A number of kids and parents were by now staring at him. Loomis fell silent. Trevor regarded his father with the solemn majesty of one burdened by too many secrets. He held a pink finger to his lips. “The Uhmoomah don’t like yelling,” he whispered. “It hurts their tentacles.”

  The interview with The Lesbian Anita was brief. It had to be, because The Lesbian Anita was extremely busy. She was a rabbi and a tenured scholar of transgender literature, a kind of Venn-diagram celebrity. She had three offices, two secretaries, a solar system of overly sexualized graduate assistants. Loomis ambushed her outside her synagogue.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You’ve gotten fat, Toddy. It gives me real pleasure. Your hairline’s fucked too.”

  They stood, not hugging.

  The Lesbian Anita wore a flowing white robe and Pocahontas braids. She looked like a Manson Girl back from rehab.

  “I’ll cut to the chase,” Loomis said. “Two armed men approached me in a threatening manner regarding a dispute I had with Kate. I believe you hired these men because you’re in love with my wife and hope to drive us apart.”

  The Lesbian Anita roared like a pirate. “Is this what happens when you turn forty and start turning tricks for the man?”

  “If you come clean, I’ll let this go without involving the police.”

  “Omigod! Let’s by all means involve the police. Let’s call them right now. I want to see how this plays out. It’s so awesomely unhinged.” She pulled out her iPhone and dialed 911.

  On speaker, a dispatcher asked, “Is this an emergency?”

  The Lesbian Anita stared at Loomis. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Point made.” He tried to grab the phone, but The Lesbian Anita caught his hand and gave it a quick crushing. She’d been an Olympic finalist in the hammer throw.

  Loomis looked around to make sure no one had seen him physically subdued by The Lesbian Anita. It had happened before, on a vacation to Squam Lake long ago. Loomis was the new suitor, seeking the approval of Kate’s brilliant best friend. They drank a lot and smoked weed and skinny-dipped, and somehow the subject of Indian leg wrestling came up, as it often does among the drunk and erotically agitated. So there was Loomis with a confused half-chub and a bota bag of sangria, slathered in mud like an Iroquois. He stepped forward to fell The Lesbian Anita. Down he went, like Foreman in Zaire.

  He had squirmed in the muck, not unhappily. “Okay, now do you surrender?” he howled. Kate was doubled over on the porch. The Lesbian Anita cupped her mons pubis in a gesture whose precise meaning Loomis declined to interpret. Instead he adopted the accent of a Native American person imitating English. “I, Him Who Pisses Self at Dawn, bow down before you, the mighty warrioress She Who Munches Squaws!” and they all whooped and the loons whooped back and later, in front of the fire, Kate whispered that she loved him. Why not? He was man enough to take his licking with good humor, and he gave it right back that same night, between Kate’s sturdy thighs, the region he called Sweet Valley in tribute to her Kansan youth.

  The Lesbian Anita had pocketed her phone. She squinted rabbinically. “Whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, get out of it.”

  “I haven’t gotten into any
thing.”

  “I’d hate to think I was right about you all these years,” The Lesbian Anita said. “Pull it together, Toddy. Have a little faith in yourself.”

  Faith. Right. That was what Loomis needed—a little taste of the ancient codes, the chance to maybe slaughter an animal with sanctioned hooves. He settled for the local Unitarian Universalist Church, tagging along with Kate and the kiddos. “My little atheist wingman,” Kate called him, and he pretended the “little” part didn’t offend him. He made fruit salad for the potluck, sang the ungendered hymns. It was nice: holding hands, participating in the sudden vulnerability of human voices lifted together, letting the ponchoed crones fawn over his kids. Later he wolfed French toast stuffed with cream cheese and tried to forgive himself.

  He did his weekend time with the kids, the playground, the drop-offs, the dizzy itinerary of domestic duties that now passed for foreplay. Why was he so angry at his wife all the time? It was as if he’d come to the end of his decency. Kate herself was done arguing, into some ominous new phase.

  “What?” Loomis found himself saying defensively, standing in the middle of an empty room with some useless implement in his fist, a paint scraper or egg whisk. Then, with a note of scorn, “What?” Trevor had spent weeks building an elaborate home for his Uhmoomah out of construction paper, glitter glue, Legos, popsicle sticks. He carried it to the back porch and stomped on it with a sudden al-fresco wrath.

  Loomis burst through the back door. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s ruined,” Trevor explained.

  “It’s not ruined!” Loomis shrieked.

  “Yes it is,” Trevor said calmly. “There was a volcano that exploded. Why are you yelling, Dad?”

  A few days later Loomis was standing in back of the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street from Izzy’s soccer practice. She wouldn’t be done for another half hour, so he ordered a dozen Munchkins, half for the kid, but she didn’t need the sugar and he did, because he worked for a living and she didn’t. He finished the last one and sky-hooked the box into the dumpster.

  “Those are gonna go straight to your breadbasket.” Tony Bennett had materialized beside him, spiffy as a dime.

  Loomis felt the bolt of his hypothalamus. His bloodstream flushed with epinephrine. His soft muscles clenched. His plaqued heart thudded. A million years ago, or even, like, ten, he would have done something useful with all these panic hormones—fought, or more likely fled. But he was a modern domesticated human, a suburban kvetcher unversed in the protocols of genuine danger.

  Scarface appeared on the other side of Loomis and set a paw on his trembling shoulder. “This is what I’m wondering, friend: if my wife, God rest her soul, if she came back from shopping—”

  “Please don’t touch me without my permission,” Loomis managed.

  “She finally gets everything unloaded,” Scarface said, unperturbed, “but here I come, Big Mister Hubby Man, and I see something I don’t approve of on that kitchen island. Does this give me the right to . . .”

  “Demean,” Tony Bennett said.

  “Right.”

  “Insult.”

  “Sure.”

  “Hector.”

  “Listen to this guy. Friggin’ Roget.”

  “Is this about the Greek yogurt?”

  Tony Bennett reached into his hip pocket and left his hand there. “Yeah, let’s address the yogurt thing.”

  They were standing side by side, a brief, miserable chorus line.

  “I have a right to know how my money’s being spent,” Loomis said.

  “You don’t trust your wife?” Scarface made his tongue go tut. “The mother of your children?” He said something in Italian, and they both laughed.

  “What do you want me to say? That I’m a tyrant? Okay, I’m a tyrant.”

  “We don’t want you to say anything,” Tony Bennett said. “That’s the goal we’re pursuing here.”

  Loomis needed to shut up. He knew that. But the portion of his brain responsible for shutting up had lost function. “A buck seventy-nine for a single yogurt,” he said slowly. “Eight fucking ounces. How is that in any way reasonable? They put a little pod of strawberry jam next to the yogurt, like it’s so fucking sacred it requires its own habitat, like American consumers are so stupid as to think, ‘Wow, in Greece they’re sophisticated about their yogurt! They don’t put fruit at the bottom! No, Greeks assemble each yogurt themselves, as in the days of the ancient Athenian democracy, when Plato sat upon the steps of the Parthenon and stirred a brace of fresh berries into his single-serving portion!’ ”

  His interrogators said nothing. What could they say? Loomis had dazzled them into silence.

  “You really think like this?” Scarface asked finally.

  Tony Bennett turned to face Loomis. His breath smelled of sirloin and Altoids. “Do you work hard, Mr. Loomis?”

  “I do,” Loomis said, though he wanted to say something a bit more elastic, something like Define hard. Because the truth is he had offered a single good idea early in his tenure, a phrase uttered in jest at the end of a brainstorm, which had become a slogan, then a logo, then a campaign. He was a one-hit wonder. He was Men Without Hats. Did Men Without Hats work hard? Define hard.

  “So this hard work,” Scarface said, “it entitles you to a certain respect, am I correct?”

  Loomis nodded wearily.

  “And your wife, as the primary caretaker for your children, she works hard too, right?”

  “I respect my wife,” Loomis said.

  “Your behavior,” Tony Bennett said.

  “Not respectful,” Scarface said.

  “Because respectful would be to thank her for going shopping.”

  “Give her a kiss. Say, Thanks, honey.”

  “Then later, if you got a problem, away from the kids.”

  “You find a nice way.”

  “You don’t jump down her throat about the yogurt, the applesauce.”

  “That fucking applesauce!” Loomis barked. “You tell me, you guys are so reasonable, does it make sense to put an ounce of fruit-based paste into a brightly colored polyurethane pouch with a screw top, a pouch no doubt assembled by underaged slaves on the outskirts of some toxic Asian megalopolis—”

  Scarface nudged Loomis. He gestured with his chin toward Tony Bennett, who brushed open his coat to reveal an elaborate holster, out of which peeked the black butt of a pistol.

  Loomis’s knees went to jelly. He tried to take a step and stumbled, and his brow struck something.

  “You got a decision to make,” Tony Bennett said from somewhere up above. “We don’t want to have to keep doing this. It’s not to our liking.”

  “A decision,” Loomis said woozily. Then he was on the ground next to the dumpster, and his ribs hurt.

  Now many things were happening simultaneously, and Loomis was struggling to process each of them. Scarface stood over him, looking spooked. The scar itself—and this made no sense—seemed to be peeling off at one end. The red Scion was parked across the street, and a figure stepped out of it and began twirling a baton. Someone was yelling at a much higher, feminine pitch. Loomis could feel an itchy trickling down his cheek. It was unclear how much time had passed.

  The scene began to resolve: The guy from the red Scion was Bobito. He was working a pair of nunchucks (not a baton!) and instructing Tony Bennett to “Step off.” Tony Bennett appeared unsure what to do. With some difficulty, he removed the gun from his holster, which brought Bobito up short. Scarface had his hands out, palms up. This was all taking place behind a Dunkin’ Donuts, in what one might call a low-traffic asphalt area.

  Then a fourth figure became visible: his daughter Izzy in orange soccer shorts and shin guards; Izzy, who had inherited his big dumb nose—he felt terrible about it—what in God’s name had he ensnared her in? She was marching toward Scarface and Tony Bennett from behind, at such an angle that she couldn’t see the basic standoff scenario. “I told you guys, no being rough!” she yelled. Then, catch
ing sight of the weapons, she shrieked: “Omigod-omigod-omigod!”

  Loomis concurred. He did not ponder why his daughter had been shouting at Scarface and Tony Bennett. He did not think about anything but Izzy, who was still wearing her cleats, which he’d expressly told her not to do because nongrass surfaces wore the plastic down, but what did it matter, what did any of it matter? She was his baby girl, his number one; he had caught her at birth, her tender bluish body coated in hot slop. He rose up and staggered toward her, right through the line of fire. He was going to possibly die a hero, and this felt, for a gorgeous fraction of a second, true and good. He lunged and knocked Izzy to the ground and lay on top of her like a soggy rug, bellowing, “Please don’t shoot oh god she’s my baby daughter please don’t shoot I beg you oh god I’m begging.”

  This went on for a while.

  Scarface gestured toward Bobito. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  “Mr. Loomis’s personal security detail is who I am, bitch.”

  Loomis was too terrified to mention that this was not technically true.

  “Drop the Chink sticks,” Tony Bennett said. He was trying to sound tough, but his voice strained for the effect, and Loomis, cowering below him, could see his hands trembling, as if the gun clasped between them weighed next to nothing.

  “You first,” Bobito said.

  “Please do it,” Loomis whimpered. “Please, Bobito. Please please.”

  Bobito sneered and dropped the nunchucks. “For the girl.”

  Tony Bennett had just lowered his weapon when a siren sounded. Suddenly all three men were yelling shit and fuck and glaring at Loomis as if this were all his fault. Bobito tossed his nunchucks in the dumpster. To Tony Bennett he said, “Ditch the piece, dammit.”

  “Wait,” Tony Bennett said. “Wait wait.”

  “Ditch it,” Bobito snarled.

  The gun landed on the pavement with a hollow plasticky clatter. Loomis could see that the weapon, which lay a few feet away, had a tiny plug in back, to keep the water inside.

  “What the fuck?” Bobito said.