The Best American Mystery Stories 2012

by Otto Penzler

  I told him about Sal—his alleged New Jersey outfit ties, his bad attitude and slick black Beamer, his fix on a young dancer at Skin named Farrel.

  Dom nodded. “Yeah. I heard. My nephew, he’s a manager at Skin. I got some friends checking this guy out.”

  “Ever had any trouble out of Jersey?”

  “Never. Not any trouble at all, Robbie. Those days are long gone. You know that.”

  “What if he’s what he says he is, trying to move in?”

  “In on what?”

  “On business, Dom.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, business. But somebody blows into town and starts popping off about he’s a made guy and he’s mobbed up in Jersey and all that, well, there’s fools and then there’s fools, Robbie. Nobody I know talks like that. Know what I mean?”

  “I wonder if he’s got help.”

  “He better have help if he wants to shoot off his mouth. I’ll let you know what I find out. And Robbie, you see this guy, tell him he’s not making any friends around here. If he’s what he says he is, then that’s one thing. If he’s not, then he’s just pissing everybody off. Some doors you don’t want to open. Tell him that. You might save him a little inconvenience. How’s that pretty redhead wife of yours? Gina.”

  “We divorced seven years ago.”

  “I got divorced once. No, it was three times. You know why it’s so expensive, don’t you?”

  “Because it’s worth it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve told me that one before, Dom.”

  “And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  I met Farrel at Skin that night before she was set to perform. We sat at the bar and got good treatment from the bartenders. Dom’s nephew, a spidery young man named Joey Morra, came by, said hello, told Farrel the customers were liking her. I took down Farrel’s numbers and address and the name of her daughter and hometown and parents. And I also got everything she could tell me about Sal Tessola—where he lived and how they met, what he’d done for her and to her, the whole story. I told her she’d need all these things in order to write a good convincing complaint. We talked for a solid hour before she checked her watch.

  “You going to stay and see me perform?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Didn’t like it much, then?”

  “You were good, Farrel.”

  She eyed me. “I don’t want Vic trying to get me the money. I didn’t ask him to. I asked him not to. He’s not the brightest guy, Robbie. But he might be one of the most stubborn.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “How come you’re not married? You must be about legal age.”

  “I was once.”

  “I’d a found a way to keep you.”

  “You’re flattering me now.”

  “Why don’t you flatter me back?”

  “Center Springs took a loss when you packed it in.”

  She peered at me in that forthright and noncommittal way. “It sure did. And there’s no power in heaven or earth strong enough to drag me back there.”

  I saw the black triangles of dread and the yellow triangles of fear hovering in the air between us.

  I followed her from Skin. I’m not suspicious by nature, but it helps me do my job. The night was close and damp and I stayed well behind. She drove an early-’90s Dodge that was slow and slumped to starboard and easy to follow.

  She drove to a small tract home out in La Mesa east of downtown. I slowed and watched her pull into the driveway. I went past, circled the block, then came back and parked across the street, one house down.

  The house was vintage ’50s, one of hundreds built in La Mesa not long after World War II. Many of those navy men and women who’d served and seen San Diego came back looking for a place to live in this sunny and unhurried city.

  A living room light was on and the drapes were drawn casually, with a good gap in the middle and another at one end. Someone moved across the living room, then lamplight came from the back of the house through a bedroom window on the side I could see. A few minutes went by and I figured she was showering, so I got out and strolled down the sidewalk. Then I doubled back and cut across the little yard and stood under the canopy of a coral tree. I stepped up close to the living room window and looked through the middle gap.

  The room was sparsely furnished in what looked like thrift-shop eclectic—a braided rug over the darkly stained wood floor, an American colonial coffee table, an orange-yellow-black plaid sofa with thin padding. There was a stack of black three-ring binders on the coffee table. Right in front of me was the back end of a TV, not a flat screen but one of the old ones with the big butts and masses of cords and coax cable sprouting everywhere.

  I moved along the perimeter of the house and let myself through a creaking gate, but no dogs barked and I soon came to a dark side window. The blinds were drawn, but they were old and some were broken and several were bent. Through a hole I could make out a small bedroom. All it had was a chest of drawers and a stroller with a baby asleep in it, and I didn’t have to look at that baby very long before I realized it was a doll.

  Farrel walked past the room in what looked like a long white bathrobe and something on her head. I waited awhile, then backed out across the neighbor’s yard and walked to my car. I settled in behind the wheel and used the binoculars and I could see Farrel on the plaid sofa, hair up in a towel, both hands on a sixteen-ounce can of beer seated between her legs. She leaned forward and picked up one of the black binders, looked at it like she’d seen it a hundred times before, then set it down beside her. She seemed tired but peaceful with the TV light playing off her face.

  Twenty minutes later a battered Mustang roared up and parked behind the Dodge and Sal got out. Gone were the sharp clothes and in their place were jeans and a fleece-lined denim jacket and a pair of shineless harness boots that clomped and slouched as he keyed open the front door and went through.

  I glassed the gap in the living room curtains and Farrel’s face rushed at me. She said something without looking at Sal. He stood before her, his back to me, and shrugged. He snatched the beer can from her and held it up for a long drink, then pushed it back between her legs and whipped off his coat. He wore a blue shirt with a local pizza parlor logo on it. This he pulled off as he walked into the back rooms.

  He came out a few minutes later wearing jeans and a singlet, his hair wet and combed back. He was a lean young man, broad-shouldered, tall. For the first time I realized he was handsome. He walked past Farrel into the kitchen and came back with a can of beer and sat down on the couch not too near and not too far from her. He squeezed her robe once where her knee would be, then let his hand fall to the sofa.

  They talked without looking at each other, but I can’t read lips. It looked like a “and how was your day” kind of conversation, or maybe something about the TV show that was on, which threw blue light upon them like fish underwater.

  After a while they stopped talking, and a few minutes later Farrel lifted the remote and the blue light was gone and she had picked up one of the black binders from the pile at her end of the couch.

  She opened it and read out loud. There was no writing or label or title on the cover.

  She waved the binder at him and pointed at a page and read a line to him.

  He repeated it. I was pretty sure.

  She read it again and he repeated it. I was pretty sure again.

  They both laughed.

  Then another line. They each said it, whatever it was. Sal stood over her then and aimed a finger at her face and said the line again. She stood and stripped the towel off her head and said something and they both laughed again.

  He got up and brought two more big cans of beer from the kitchen, and he opened one for her and took her empty. He tossed the towel onto her lap and sat down close to her, put his bare feet up on the coffee table by the binders, and scrunched down so his head was level with hers. She clicked the TV back on.

  I waited for an hour.
Another beer each. Not much talk. They both fell asleep sitting up, heads back on the sofa.

  It was almost three-thirty in the morning when Farrel stood, rubbed the back of her neck, then tightened the robe sash. She walked deeper into the house and out of my sight.

  A few minutes later Sal rose and hit the lights. In the TV glow I could see him stretch out full length on the couch and set one arm over his eyes and take a deep breath and let it slowly out.

  Two mornings later, at about the same dark hour, I was at headquarters writing a crime scene report. I’m an occasional insomniac and I choose to get paperwork done during those long, haunted times. Of course I listen to our dispatch radio, keeping half an ear on the hundreds of calls that come in every shift.

  So when I heard the possible 187 at Skin nightclub I was out the door fast.

  Two squad cars were already there and two more screamed into the parking lot as I got out of my car.

  “The janitor called 911,” said one of the uniforms. “I was first on scene and he let me in. There’s a dead man back in the kitchen. I think it’s one of the managers. I tried to check his pulse but couldn’t reach that far. You’ll see.”

  I asked the patrolmen to seal both the back and front entrances and start a sign-in log, always a good idea if you don’t want your crime scene to spiral into chaos. You’d be surprised how many people will trample through and wreck evidence, many of them cops.

  I walked in, past the bar and the tables and the stage, then into a small, poorly lit, grease-darkened kitchen. Another uniform stood near a walk-in freezer, talking with a young man wearing a light blue shirt with a name patch on it.

  I saw the autoloader lying on the floor in front of me. Then the cop looked up and I followed his line of sight to the exposed ceiling. Overhead were big commercial blowers and vents and ducting and electrical conduit and hanging fluorescent tube light fixtures. A body hung jackknifed at the hips over a steel crossbeam. His arms dangled over one side and his legs over the other. If he’d landed just one inch higher or lower, he’d have simply slid off the beam to the floor. I walked around the gun and got directly under him and stared up into the face of Joey. It was an urgent shade of purple and his eyes were open.

  “The safe in the office,” said the uniform, pointing to the far back side of the kitchen.

  The office door was open and I stepped in. There was a desk and a black leather couch and a small fridge and microwave, pictures of near-naked dancers on the walls, along with a Chargers calendar and Padres pennants.

  There was also a big floor safe that was open but not empty. I squatted in front of it and saw the stacks of cash and some envelopes.

  The officer and janitor stood in the office doorway.

  “Why kill a man for his money, then not take it?” asked the uniform. His name plate said Peabody.

  “Maybe he freaked and ran,” said the janitor, whose name patch said Carlos.

  “Okay,” said Peabody. “Then tell me how Joey got ten feet up in the air and hung over a beam. And don’t tell me he did it to himself.”

  Carlos looked up at the body and shrugged, but I had an opinion about that.

  “What time do you start work?” I asked him.

  “Two. That’s when they close.”

  “Is Joey usually here?”

  “One of the managers is always here. They count the money every third night. Then they take it to the bank.”

  “So tonight was bank night?”

  “Was supposed to be.”

  I drove fast to Vic’s hotel room downtown, but he didn’t answer the door. Back downstairs the night manager, speaking from behind a mesh-reinforced window, told me that Vic had left around eight-thirty—seven hours ago—and had not returned.

  I made Farrel’s place eleven minutes later. There were no cars in the driveway but lights inside were on. I rang the bell and knocked, then tried the door, which was unlocked. So I opened it and stepped in.

  The living room looked exactly as it had two nights ago, except that the beer cans were gone and the pile of black binders had been reduced to just one. In the small back bedroom the stroller was still in place and the plastic doll was snugged down under the blanket just as it had been. I went into the master bedroom. The mattress was bare and the chest of drawers stood open and nearly empty. It looked like Farrel had stripped the bed and packed her clothes in a hurry. The bathroom was stripped, too: no towels, nothing in the shower or the medicine chest or on the sink counter. The refrigerator had milk and pickles and that was all. The wastebasket under the sink had empty beer cans, an empty pretzel bag, various fast-food remnants swathed in ketchup, a receipt from a supermarket, and a wadded-up agreement from Rent-a-Dream car rentals down by the airport. Black Beamer 750i, of course.

  Back in the living room I took the black binder from the coffee table and opened it to the first page:

  THE SOPRANOS

  Season Four/Episode Three

  I flipped through the pages. Dialogue and brief descriptions. Four episodes in all.

  Getting Sal’s lines right, I thought.

  Vic didn’t show up for work for three straight nights. I stopped by Skin a couple of times a night, just in case he showed, and I knocked on his hotel room door twice a day or so. The manager hadn’t seen him in four days. He told me Vic’s rent was due on the first.

  Of course Farrel had vanished, too. I cruised her place in La Mesa, but something about it just said she wasn’t coming back, and she didn’t.

  On the fourth afternoon after the murder of Joey Morra, Vic called me on my cell phone. “Can you feed my scorpion? Give him six crickets. They’re under the bathroom sink. The manager’ll give you the key.”

  “Sure. But we need to talk, Vic—face-to-face.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Who else could throw Joey up there like that?”

  Vic didn’t answer.

  “Dom and his people are looking for you, Vic. You won’t get a trial with them. You’ll just get your sentence, and it won’t be lenient.”

  “I only took what she needed.”

  “And killed Joey.”

  “He pulled a gun, Robbie. I couldn’t think a what else to do. I bear-hugged and shook him. Like a reflex. Like when I threw you.”

  “I’ll see you outside Higher Grounds in ten minutes.”

  “She met me at Rainwater’s, Robbie. I walked into Rainwater’s and there she was—that beautiful young woman, waiting there for me. You should have seen her face light up when I gave her the money. Out in the parking lot, I mean.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “Meet me outside Higher Grounds in ten minutes.”

  “Naw. I got a good safe place here. I’m going to just enjoy myself for a couple more days, knowing I did a good thing for a good woman. My scorpion, I named him Rudy. Oh. Oh shit, Robbie.”

  Even coming from a satellite orbiting the earth in space, and through the miles of ether it took to travel to my ear, the sound of the shotgun blast was unmistakable. So was the second blast, and the third.

  A few days later I flew to Little Rock and rented a car, then made the drive north and west to Center Springs. Farrel was right: it wasn’t on the rental-car company driving map, but it made the navigation unit that came in the vehicle.

  The Ozarks were steep and thickly forested and the Arkansas River looked unhurried. I could see thin wisps of wood-stove fires burning in cabins down in the hollows and there was a smoky cast to the sky.

  The gas station clerk said I’d find Farrel White’s dad’s place down the road a mile, just before Persimmon Holler. He said there was a batch of trailers up on the hillside and I’d see them from the road if I didn’t drive too fast. Billy White had the wooden one with all the satellite dishes on top.

  The road leading in was dirt and heavily rutted from last season’s rain. I drove past travel trailers set up on cinder blocks. They were slouched and sun-dulled and some had decks and others just had more cinder blocks as steps. Dogs eyed me w
ithout bothering to sit up. There were cats and litter and a pile of engine blocks outside, looked like they’d been cast there by some huge child.

  Billy answered my knock with a sudden yank on the door, then studied me through the screen. He was midfifties and heavy, didn’t look at all like his daughter. He wore a green-and-black plaid jacket buttoned all the way to the top.

  “I’m a San Diego cop looking for your daughter. I thought she might have come home.”

  “Would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Come home to this from San Diego?”

  “Well.”

  “She okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “Come in.”

  The trailer was small and cramped and packed with old, overstuffed furniture.

  “She in trouble?”

  “Farrel and her boyfriend hustled a guy out of some money. But he had to take the money from someone else.”

  Billy handed me a beer and plopped into a vinyl recliner across from me. He had a round, impish face and a twinkle in his eyes. “That ain’t her boyfriend. It’s her brother.”

  “That never crossed my mind.”

  “Don’t look nothing alike. But they’ve always been close. Folks liked to think too close, but it wasn’t ever that way. Just close. They understood each other. They’re both good kids. Their whole point in life was to get outta Center Springs and they done did it. I’m proud of them.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Preston.”

  “Did they grow up in this trailer?”

  “Hell no. We had a home over to Persimmon but it got sold off in the divorce. Hazel went to Little Rock with a tobacco products salesman. The whole story is every bit as dreary as it sounds.”

  “When did Farrel and Preston leave?”

  “Couple of months ago. The plan was San Diego, then Hollywood. Pretty people with culture and money to spend. They were going to study TV, maybe go start up a show. San Diego was to practice up.”