The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  “Just don’t forget why we’re here,” Stilwell replied.

  The Cardinals went down one, two, three and left McGwire waiting on deck. In the bottom half of the first the Dodgers did no better. No hits, no runs.

  And no sign of Milky Vachon.

  Houghton came down the stairs and told them the ticket Vachon was carrying had been sold as part of a block of seats to a ticket broker in Hollywood. They took the name of the broker and decided they would check it out in the morning.

  As the second inning started Stilwell sat with his arms folded on the front sill of the press box. It allowed a full view of the stadium. All he had to do was lower his eyes and he would see row K, seat one of section eleven.

  Harwick was leaning back in his seat. To Stilwell, he seemed as interested in watching the three rows of sportswriters and broadcasters as he was the baseball game. As the Dodgers were taking the field again, he spoke to Stilwell.

  “Your son,” he said. “It was drugs, wasn’t it?”

  Stilwell took a deep breath and let it out. He spoke without turning to Harwick.

  “What do you want to know, Harwick?”

  “We’re going to be partners. I just want to . . . understand. Some guys, something like that happens, they dive into the bottle. Some guys dive into the work. It’s pretty clear which kind you are. I heard you go after these guys, the Saints, with a vengeance, man. Was it meth? Was your kid on crank?”

  Stilwell didn’t answer. He watched a man wearing a Dodgers baseball cap take the first seat in row K below. The hat was on backward, a white pony tail hanging from beneath the brim. It was Milky Vachon. He put a full beer down on the concrete step next to him and kept another in his hand. Seat number two was empty.

  “Harwick,” Stilwell said. “We’re partners, but we’re not talking about my kid. You understand?”

  “I’m just trying to —”

  “Baseball is a metaphor for life, Harwick. Life is hardball. People hit home runs, people get thrown out. There’s the double play, the suicide squeeze, and everybody wants to get home safe. Some people go all the way to the ninth inning. Some people leave early to beat the traffic.”

  Stilwell stood up and turned to his new partner.

  “I checked you out, Harwick. You’re a beat-the-traffic guy. You weren’t here. In ‘eighty-eight. I know. If you were here, you gave up on them and left before the ninth. I know.”

  Harwick said nothing. He turned his eyes from Stilwell.

  “Vachon’s down there,” Stilwell said. “I’m going down to keep watch. If he makes a move, I’ll tail. Keep your rover close.”

  Stilwell walked up the steps and out of the press box.

  ~ * ~

  McGwire struck out at the top of the second inning, and Brown easily retired the side. The Dodgers picked up three, unearned runs in the third off an error, a walk, and a home run with two outs.

  All was quiet after that until the fifth, when McGwire opened the inning with a drive to the right-field wall. It drew 50,000 people out of their seats. But the right fielder gloved it on the track, his body hitting hard into the wall pads.

  Watching the trajectory of the ball reminded Stilwell of the night in ‘88 when Kirk Gibson put a three-two pitch into the seats in the last of the ninth and won the first game of the series. It caused a monumental shift in momentum, and the Dodgers cruised the rest of the way. It was a moment that was cherished by so many for so long. A time in L.A. before the riots, before the earthquake, before O.J.

  Before Stilwell’s son was lost.

  ~ * ~

  Brown carried a perfect game into the seventh inning. The crowd became more attentive and noisier. There was a sense that something was going to happen.

  Throughout the innings Stilwell moved his position several times, always staying close to Vachon and using the field glasses to watch him. The ex-convict did not move other than to stand up with everybody else for McGwire’s drive to the wall. He simply drank his two beers and watched the game. No one took the seat next to him, and he spoke to no one except a vendor who sold him peanuts in the fourth.

  Vachon also made no move to look around himself. He kept his eyes on the game. And Stilwell began to wonder if Vachon was doing anything other than watching a baseball game. He thought about what Harwick had said about falling out of love with baseball. Maybe Vachon, five years in stir, was simply rekindling that love. Maybe he missed baseball with the same intensity he missed the taste of alcohol and the feel of a woman’s body.

  Stilwell took the rover out of his pocket and clicked the mike button twice. Harwick’s voice came back quickly, his tone clipped and cold.

  “Yeah.”

  “After the eighth you better come down here so we can be ready when he leaves.”

  “I’ll be down.”

  “Out.”

  He put the rover away.

  Brown let it get away from him in the seventh. St. Louis opened with two singles to right, spoiling the perfect game, the no hitter, and putting the lead in jeopardy with McGwire on deck.

  With the runners at the corners Brown walked the next batter, bringing McGwire to the plate with the bases loaded. The Cardinals would gain the lead and the momentum if he could put one over the wall.

  Davey Johnson trotted out to the mound for a conference with his pitcher, but the manager appeared to give only a quick pep talk. He left Brown in place and headed back to the dugout, accompanied by a chorus of applause.

  The crowd rose to its feet and quieted in anticipation of what would be the confrontation of the night. Stilwell’s rover clicked twice, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you believe this? We gotta send that guy Houghton a six-pack for this.”

  Stilwell didn’t reply. His eyes were on Vachon, who had stepped away from his seat and was coming up the stairs to the concessions level.

  “He’s moving.”

  “What? He can’t be. How can he miss this?”

  Stilwell turned his back and leaned against a concrete support column as Vachon emerged from the stairs and walked behind him.

  When it was clear, Stilwell looked around and saw Vachon heading toward the lavatory, making his way by several men who were rushing out in time to see McGwire bat.

  Stilwell raised his rover.

  “He’s going to the bathroom just past the Krispy Kreme stand.”

  “He’s had two beers. Maybe he’s just taking a leak. You want me down there?”

  As Stilwell replied, a huge noise rose from the crowd and then quickly subsided. Stilwell kept his eyes on the entrance to the men’s room. When he was ten feet from it, a man emerged. Not Vachon. A large white man with a long dark beard and a shaved skull. He wore a tight T-shirt and his arms were fully wrapped in tattoos. Stilwell looked for the skull with halo insignia of the Road Saints but didn’t see it.

  Still, it was enough to slow his step. The tattooed man turned to his right and kept walking. Harwick’s voice came from the rover.

  “Say again. The crowd noise blocked you out.”

  Stilwell raised the radio.

  “I said get down here.”

  There was another short burst of crowd noise, but it was not sustained enough to indicate a hit or an out. Stilwell walked to the lavatory entrance. He thought about the man with the shaved skull, trying to place the face. Stilwell had left his photos in the rubber band on the Volvo’s visor.

  It hit him then. Weapon transfer. Vachon had come to the game to get instructions and a weapon.

  Stilwell raised the rover.

  “I think he has a weapon. I’m going in.”

  He put the rover back into his pocket, pulled his badge out of his shirt, and let it hang on his chest. He unholstered his .45 and stepped into the restroom.

  It was a cavernous yellow-tiled room with stainless steel urine troughs running down both sides until they reached opposing rows of toilet stalls. The place appeared empty but Stilwell knew it wasn’t.


  “Sheriff’s department. Step out with your hands visible.”

  Nothing happened. No sound but the crowd noise from outside the room. Stilwell stepped farther in and began again, raising his voice this time. But the sudden echoing cacophony of the crowd rose like an approaching train and drowned his voice. The confrontation on the baseball diamond had been decided.

  Stilwell moved past the urinals and stood between the rows of stalls. There were eight on each side. The far door on the left was closed. The rest stood half closed but still shielded the view into each stall.

  Stilwell dropped into a catcher’s crouch and looked beneath the doors. No feet could be seen in any of the stalls. But on the floor within the closed stall was a blue Dodgers hat.

  “Vachon!” he yelled. “Come out now!”

  He moved into position in front of the closed stall. Without hesitation he raised his left foot and kicked the door open. It swung inward and slammed against one of the interior walls of the stall. It then rebounded and slammed closed. It all happened in a second, but Stilwell had enough time to see the stall was empty.

  And to know that he was in a vulnerable position.

  As he turned his body he heard a scraping sound behind him and saw movement in the far reach of his peripheral vision. Movement toward him. He raised his gun but knew he was too late. In that same moment he realized he had solved the mystery of who Vachon’s target was.

  The knife felt like a punch to the left side of his neck. A hand then grabbed the back collar of his shirt and pulled him backward at the same moment the knife was thrust forward, slicing out through the front of his neck.

  Stilwell dropped his gun as his hands instinctively came up to his torn throat. A whisper then came into his ear from behind.

  “Greetings from Sonny Mitchell.”

  He was pulled backward and shoved against the wall next to the last stall. He turned and started to slide down the yellow tiles, his eyes on the figure of Milky Vachon heading to the exit.

  When he hit the ground he felt the gun under his leg. His left hand still holding his neck, he reached the gun with his right and raised it. He fired four times at Vachon, the bullets catching him in a tight pattern on the upper back and throwing him into a trash can overflowing with paper towels. Vachon flopped onto the floor on his back, his sky blue eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling, the overturned trash can rolling back and forth next to him.

  Stilwell dropped his hand to the tile and let go of the gun. He looked down at his chest. The blood was everywhere, leaking between his fingers and running down his arm. His lungs were filling and he couldn’t get air into them.

  He knew he was dead.

  He shifted his weight and turned his hips so he could reach a hand into the back pocket of his pants. He pulled out his wallet.

  There was another roar from the crowd that seemed to shake the room. And then Harwick entered, saw the bodies on opposite sides of the room and ran to Stilwell.

  “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”

  He leaned over and studied Stilwell for a moment, then pulled out his rover and started to yell into it. He realized he was on a closed frequency, quickly switched the dial to the open band, and called in the officer down report. Stilwell listened to it in a detached way. He knew there was no chance. He dropped his eyes to the holy card he held in his hands.

  “Hang in there, partner,” Harwick yelled. “Don’t go south on me, man. They’re coming, they’re coming.”

  There was a commotion behind him, and Harwick turned around. Two men were standing in the doorway.

  “Get out of here! Get the fuck out! Keep everybody back!”

  He turned back to Stilwell.

  “Listen, man, I’m sorry. I fucked up. I’m so fucking sorry. Please don’t die. Hang on, man, Please hang on.”

  His words were coming out like the blood flowing from Stilwell’s neck. Nonstop, a mad torrent. Desperate.

  “You were right, man. You were right about me. I-I-I lied about that game. I left and I’m so sorry I lied. You’ve got to stay with me. Please stay with me!”

  Stilwell’s eyes started to close and he remembered that night so long ago. That other time. He died then, with his new partner on his knees next to him, blubbering and babbling.

  Harwick didn’t quiet himself until he realized Stilwell was gone. He then studied his partner’s face and saw a measure of calm in his expression. He realized that he looked happier than at any other time Harwick had looked at him that day.

  He noticed the open wallet on the floor and then the card in Stilwell’s hand. He took it from the dead fingers and looked at it. It was a baseball card. Not a real one. A gimmick card. It showed a boy of eleven or twelve in a Dodgers uniform, a bat on his shoulder, the number 7 on his shirt. It said, “Stevie Stilwell, Right Field” beneath the photo.

  There was another commotion behind him then, and Harwick turned to see paramedics coming into the room. He cleared out of the way, though he knew it was too late.

  As the paramedics checked for vital signs on his fallen partner, Harwick stepped back and used the sleeve of his shirt to dry the tears on his face. He then took the baseball card and slipped it into one of the folded compartments of his badge case. It would be something he would carry with him always.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THOMAS H. COOK

  The Fix

  from Murder on the Ropes

  It could have happened anytime, on any of my daily commutes on the Crosstown 42. Every day I took it at eight in the morning, rode it over to my office on Forty-second and Lex, then back again in the evening, when I’d get off at Port Authority and walk one block uptown to my place on Forty-third.

  It could have happened anytime, but it was a cold January evening, a deep winter darkness already shrouding the city at six p.m. Worse still, a heavy snow was coming down, blanketing the streets and snarling crosstown traffic, particularly on Forty-second Street, where the Jersey commuters raced for a spot in the Lincoln Tunnel, clotting the grid’s blue veins as they rushed for the river like rabbits from burning woods.

  I should tell you my name, because when I finish with the story, you’ll want to know it, want to check it out, see if I’m really who I say I am, really heard what I say I did that night on the Crosstown 42.

  Well, it’s Jack. Jack Burke. I work as a photographer for Cosmic Advertising, my camera usually focused on a bottle of perfume or a plate of spaghetti. But in the old days, I was a street photographer for the News, shooting mostly fires and water main breaks, the sort of pictures that end up on page 8. I had a front page in ‘74, though, a woman clinging with one hand to a fire escape in Harlem, her baby dangling from the other hand like a sack of potatoes. I snapped the button just as she let go, caught them both in the first instant of their fall. That picture had had a heart, and sometimes, as I sat at my desk trying to decide which picture would best tempt a kid to buy a soda, I yearned to feel that heart again, to do or hear or see something that would work like electric paddles to shock me back to my old life.

  Back in those days, working the streets, I’d known the Apple down to the core, the juke joints and after-hours dives. I was the guy you’d see at the end of the bar, the one in a rumpled suit, with a gray hat on the stool beside him. It was my seed time, and I’d loved every minute of it. For almost five years not a night had gone by when I hadn’t fallen in love with it all over again, the night and the city, the Bleeker Street jazz clubs at three a.m. when the smoke is thick and the riffs look easy, and the tab grows like a rose beside your glass.

  Then Jack Burke married an NYU coed named Rikki whose thick lips and perfect ass had worked like a Mickey Finn on his brain. There were lots of flowers and a twelve-piece band. After that the blushing bride seemed to have another kid about every four days. Jack took an agency job to pay for private schools, and that was the end of rosy tabs. Then Jack’s wife hitched a ride on some other guy’s star and left him with a bill that gave Bloomingdale’
s a boner. The place on Eighty-fifth went back to the helpful folks at Emigrant Savings, and Jack found a crib on West Forty-third. Thus the short version of how I ended up riding the Crosstown 42 on that snowy January night in the Year of Our Lord 2000.

  The deepest blues, they say, are the ones you don’t feel, the ones that numb you, so that your old best self simply fades away, and you are left staring out the window, trying to remember the last time you leaped with joy, laughed until you cried, stood in the rain and just let it pour down. Maybe I’d reached that point when I got on the Crosstown 42 that night. And yet, I wasn’t so dead that the sight of him didn’t spark something, didn’t remind me of the old days, and of how much I missed them.