The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

by Jonathan Lethem

  I wasn’t going to tell Jonny that I’d never let any man get my clothes off, nor any woman either. I never had and I could think of no reason why I ever would. But a rich man . . . that offered new possibilities.

  There are two kinds of people in the world: the rich and the rest of us. I think there’s been a genetic drift. I don’t think the rich are quite human anymore. I think they’re a new race.

  They think so too. I can read, and I read a lot. Mostly I read books, which I always picked up wherever I found any, but I’ll read anything—even the newscreen captions I spy through windows. And sometimes I sneak into the Closed Zone, where there’s free stuff I catch on my tab. I shouldn’t have had a tab, of course, and now I don’t. It must have been destroyed in the fire. But I had found one somebody lost. They’re useless outside the CeeZee except for what you put in the memory, and basically you can’t access anything to put in the memory unless you’re in the CeeZee, so I used to sneak back in for new ebooks when I got bored with the ones I had. Delete a few, add a few—and then make a quick exit before I was noticed by the cybercops.

  But I know what the privileged people think. I eavesdrop on them electronically when I can, and I read all I can. Most of what I read is written by them, for them.

  They believe they are superior. They talk about breeding a super race. Past tense. Like they’re already more highly evolved. So “uber.”

  Now some of them have decided to get rid of the rest of us. They regard us as vermin, wallowing in filth. They’re exterminating us. They’re burning us out. But there are a lot of us. It’s going to take time.

  “They see us as disease-ridden,” old Nellie once told me. “Like we ain’t healthier than them. But we got immunities. So that’s why they use fire and don’t let nobody escape. Disease control.”

  “They shouldn’t worry so much about us,” I said. “They should worry about the mosquitoes.”

  “The mosquitoes?”

  “They’re what carry disease,” I told her. “Like, you know, all those viruses. Zika, dengue fever.”

  “Wassat?”

  “Tropical diseases. Now that it’s warmer, we got tropical diseases.”

  “Yeah? You sure know a lot from them books you reading,” she said, shaking her head. “But that old-times stuff, that won’t do you no good now, here. You gotta get your head outta them books, you want to live to grow up.”

  She was shot, out on the avenue, by a block cop who was aiming at somebody else, a few months ago. I hadn’t thought about her since then. But having your block burned down sharpens the memory, I think.

  Jonny’s “rich man” was, he said, an infrequent customer, a man who descended from his no-doubt high-rise place in the CeeZee to go slumming in the badlands for some hot sex. I tried to figure out how I could turn him to my advantage.

  Actual sex was out, of course, but maybe the lure of sex? Unfortunately, I don’t look much like a street girl. It’s not just that I don’t dress like them. I’m kind of skinny, narrow-hipped and flat-chested for my age. I’m not pretty. And I wear my hair and clothes so that from any distance you’d take me for a boy. Jonny tells me he thinks that’s sexy, but it keeps most of the male predators at bay. Jonny has his own problems.

  But Jonny tells me his rich man isn’t looking to sex me. He wants to meet me because Jonny told him I read a lot.

  “What is he, some kind of kinky?” I asked.

  “He’s smart. And he reads too.”

  And, when I met him, he was nothing like what I expected.

  We met in an eatery tucked behind a fight club, Jonny introducing us. I was impressed with Jonny, being able to get in touch so quickly with his rich man, and setting things up right away. It was possible I might have a place to sleep tonight. Well, there’s always somewhere to sleep, but I sleep better when there are no rats sniffing around me. But I should have considered the implications of this speedy meeting.

  “Don’choo let her looks fool ya, Doc,” Jonny said.

  What I wondered was how the looks of this rich guy—Dr. Jones, if you can believe that—would affect me. He was about six and a half tall, somewhere north of his youth, but still very fit, very toned. He looked like a Greek god, or maybe a media star. He had curly blond hair and penetrating blue eyes. I thought he was gorgeous and wondered if that made him a real threat.

  We got soy burgers. Jones only had one bite of his, so I finished it off after I’d wolfed mine. I hadn’t eaten since morning.

  He said he’d been looking forward to meeting me, ever since Jonny had mentioned me—he didn’t say how or why my name had come up. “I’m really delighted,” he said to me across the tiny table.

  “Why?” I asked. “What am I to you?”

  “Well, you’re literate, for one thing—you read.”

  “Plenty of people read,” I said.

  “How many people do you know,” he asked me, “who actually read for pleasure, who enjoy reading?”

  I glanced at Jonny. He looked uncomfortable. “Not many,” I admitted. “But how many do you know?”

  Jones grinned. “Touché,” he said. “I think it’s a dying art—writing, especially. Literature. Do you write?”

  “Me?” I’d never thought of it. I shrugged. “What would I write about?”

  “Your life?” he responded. “Anything you know. Anything you care about.”

  “I cared about my home,” I said. “They burned it down today.”

  A look that might have been real concern passed briefly over his face. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Maybe I can help you there.”

  I folded my arms and pulled them close, and I think that told him something, so he changed the subject.

  “The reason I wanted to meet you—I’d like to give you some tests.”

  “Why? What kinda tests?”

  “Well, let’s just say that I’ve been in a dispute with some of my colleagues and I think you can help me prove my point.” He picked up a slim case from near his feet. He opened it and removed a large e-tablet. “Just a few basic tests—IQ, aptitude . . .”

  “You want me to take these tests here?”

  He looked up and took in his surroundings, maybe for the first time. He shrugged and smiled thinly. “Maybe not,” he said. He turned to Jonny. “You got some place that’s quieter, a little more private?”

  Jonny shook his head. “Not less ya wanna try a juice house, hope nobody’s got bad juice, havin’ a fit.”

  I frowned and Jones said, “I guess not. Okay, let’s go uptown.” He packed his tab and stood up. He towered over us. Jonny’s not much taller than me.

  “Uptown,” I said, “where uptown? How?”

  Jones gave me a very boyish grin. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? I’ve got a car that’ll pick us up. We’ll go to my place.”

  “In the CeeZee?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t need me,” Jonny said. I figured he’d collect his payment later, if it hadn’t been up front. He pushed his chair back, one leg catching on the rough-planked floor, and stood. “I’ll see ya, l’il—” he broke off, maybe not wanting to use his pet name for me in front of Jones. “See ya ’round, Nik,” he said, and left me with Jones.

  It didn’t bother me. I didn’t need Jonny for protection. I knew I could handle Jones. He still hadn’t told me why he wanted to test me.

  When we got out to the street, there was a black car waiting, all polished and gleaming in the scattered lights, the windows mirrored. Nobody was near it, which struck me as odd, until I saw a juicehead wobble up to it and start to lean against it. There was a visible spark and a yelp and the juicehead staggered quickly away from the car.

  Jones said, “The car’s protected,” and worked his remote, springing the doors open. “Get in,” he said, gesturing. “It won’t bite.”

  As I got into the car he went around to the other side and got in next to me. He touched a button on the dash and the doors closed. The car pulled out from the
curb, executed a neat U-turn, and headed for an avenue uptown.

  No one could see in, but we could see out. Not easily, though. From the inside the windows looked tinted, darkened, so that only bright lights could really be seen—and there weren’t many of them left on the avenue. Most had been vandalized years ago, the remaining streetlights bunched together along short stretches in “good” neighborhoods. There were few other lights. Shop owners and residents alike were stingy with their electricity.

  Fortunately, the car didn’t need light to go where it was programmed to go.

  “This is pretty neat,” I said. “I never been in one of these.”

  “Really? It’s just a car.”

  “To you, maybe.”

  He gave me a searching look in the car’s dim interior light, like he couldn’t figure me out. That was all right. I hadn’t figured him out either.

  Jones leaned toward me. “Why do you always wear that fierce look? Do you ever smile?”

  “What do I have to smile about?” I pressed my back against the door.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but life has many little pleasures. Riding in this car, perhaps?”

  “Okay.” I let my face relax into a small smile. “How’s that? For your car.”

  “Much better,” he said. “Makes you look cuter.”

  “I don’t want to look cuter.”

  “No? You’re a girl. You need to look cuter, be attractive. It’s going to be your stock in trade, when you’re grown up.”

  I lost the smile. What kind of advice was that—from a doctor?

  He changed the subject. “How old do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know. Older than me. What? Forty maybe?” That seemed like a safe and maybe flattering guess. Younger men like to be taken for five to ten years older. But I was wrong.

  Jones chuckled. “In a sense, you’re right. That’s the target age for my treatments. Actually, I’m eighty-six. You couldn’t guess, could you?”

  “Is this another test?”

  He laughed. “I’ve got the body and, um, the stamina of a forty-year-old man.” He seemed to smile and laugh a lot. “And the wisdom and experience of an older man.”

  I wondered what he was selling, and hoped it wasn’t what I thought.

  “What kind of a name is Jones? Is that your real name?”

  “Why do you ask? Do you think it isn’t?”

  “Jones—Smith—” I said. “Bogus names, scam artist names. Meet Mister Smith, wink-wink.” What I didn’t say was that half of Jonny’s customers were Smith or Jones. I’d made a natural assumption.

  “Well, it’s the name I was born with. And there are lots of real Smiths and Joneses, you know. Common names, really.”

  “Okay, so what’s your first—”

  I was interrupted. Somebody shot at us in one of the unlit patches. I heard a bell-like sound from the left front fender, and a moment later another bullet hit the window next to Jones’s head with a thwack. The window didn’t break. It just grew a scar. “Don’t worry,” Jones told me. “The car’s armored—bulletproof.” I didn’t relax until we got to the next stretch of lights.

  That was my mistake, and I was caught off guard when the car suddenly leapt into the air and came down on my side, skidding to a quick stop, dumping Jones on me, half-crushing me, my ears still ringing from the explosion. It had to have been right under the car when it went off. I wondered if it had been in the street or attached to the underside of the car.

  Jones stepped on me with a muttered apology as he attempted to stand up. He threw himself, shoulder first, against what had been the floor in front of his seat. I had no idea what he was doing until the car teetered on its rounded side and fell back onto its wheels, rocking on its springs. I fell back into my seat and Jones caught himself before he fell on his face into his.

  He seated himself and we exchanged looks. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure. You?”

  “A little battered. Nothing serious.”

  I looked out my window. “Company,” I said. A group of four or five men were converging from the darkness. They were carrying big pry-bars, the kind you can use to bash someone’s head in. They looked purposeful. Not random sightseers, curious about the explosion.

  “Let’s see if this thing still works,” Jones said, and punched a button on the dash. The nearest man swung his pry-bar at my window, but it bounced off, leaving no mark, and the car didn’t give him a second chance. Tires chirping, it scooted us up the avenue.

  “This is a rough area,” Jones said, looking back at the frustrated attackers as they disappeared from sight, abandoning the road as quickly as they’d appeared in it.

  “They’re all rough areas, until you’re in the CeeZee,” I told him. “What did you expect?” I retracted its blade and put my knife away.

  “I’m not usually down here after dark,” he said. He hadn’t noticed the knife.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  We came to another burning block. The car plowed through the smoke without slowing. “Why do your people do that?” I asked. “Set fires.”

  “My people? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those fires are caused by the deplorable conditions in which some people live. I’m amazed they haven’t burned the whole city down by now. I guess we have the firefighters to thank for that.”

  I stared at him, incredulous. “Firefighters?” I said. “You see any firefighters back there? You see anybody trying to put out that fire?”

  “It was too smoky to see anything back there,” he said, turning around to peer out the back window too late.

  “Let me tell you something,” I said. “I watched the fires being set on my block. Big men, in black uniforms, with flamethrowers. And you know what they did when people tried to get out, escape the fire?”

  “What?”

  “They shot them. Killed them, those who weren’t killed by the fire. Who do you think they were working for?”

  “I don’t know,” Jones said, shaking his head. “It certainly wasn’t me.”

  Twice the car turned off the avenue to take side streets to a parallel avenue. Jones said some kind of problems forced the detours. “It’s all automatic. The car knows. I don’t.”

  “So, okay,” I said after the second detour, “why do you want to give me those tests? What’re you trying to prove?”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know what you know about the One Percent, but we are not monolithic. We don’t all think alike. We have disagreements, even controversies.”

  I shrugged. “Like everyone else, huh?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “But you guys don’t think you’re like everyone else though, do you?”

  “What do you know about that?” His tone became sharp.

  “I read, you know,” I said, folding my arms again.

  “Right. Well, I’ve gotten into a disagreement with several of my colleagues. It’s about human intelligence.”

  “Which side are you on? Race-based intelligence quotients, or—”

  His mouth fell open.

  “It’s not a new argument,” I told him. “Goes back centuries.”

  He closed his mouth and then opened it again to say, “You’re quite right. But our argument isn’t over racial variations in IQ—an old and pretty dead issue, really. Our argument is different and concerns the growing genetic gap between the One Percent and the, um, others—between me and you.” He gestured at each of us in turn.

  “A genetic gap? Can we still crossbreed?” I let a trace of sarcasm creep into my voice.

  Color rose in his face. “It’s—not that great a gap,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “So—?”

  “So I think you’re as intelligent as most of us—in the One Percent, I mean. I want to prove it.”

  “You must know you’ll lose,” I told him. “You think I’m an idiot.”

  He stared at me, his mouth working, no words coming out.

  “You know one high-
scoring IQ from my side of the fence means nothing. You know it’s statistically worthless—no matter how high I tested it wouldn’t win your argument for you. You know that. And I know that. Maybe I’d ace your tests, but so what? You know I like to read, so you think I must be smart? How smart does that make you?” I felt my voice rising, and I stopped. I shouldn’t have said a single word. I realized that, too late to take any of them back. So I leaned back against my side of the car and glared at him.

  “What do you really want from me?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.

  The car’s interior was only lit with little glowing lights on the dash, so it was hard to make out Jones’s expression when he said, “I’ll explain it to you upstairs. We’re here.”

  I hadn’t been paying attention. We’d entered the CeeZee without my noticing the brighter lights and cleaner streets. Now the car pulled into a building entrance, a portico just off the street. Jones did something and both doors swung open. Warily, I climbed out.

  He took my arm gently and led me through the big, bank-vault doors, through an air-lock-like vestibule, and into the building’s lobby.

  As we went through the first doors I glanced back at the car. My side was scraped up and dented. “What about your car?” I asked.

  He laughed. “It’s not my car. It’s a public car.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. “Won’t somebody get mad about the damage?”

  “No, it’s pretty much expected now—when they’re taken out of this zone.”

  The lobby surprised me. I’d expected better. It was all chrome or maybe stainless steel and glass and it probably looked really good fifty or a hundred years ago. Now, like its faded carpet, it looked almost shabby and it smelled musty.

  Jones hurried me through the lobby to a bank of elevators. The door to one of them opened as we approached. We entered, the door closed, and we started up. I’ve been in elevators before and I looked without success for the floor buttons, or even a floor indicator. Nothing. Just smooth paneled walls and a glowing ceiling.