The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 (28 page)

As Katie dozed he slipped away for his pee, the bed so fine and firm there was never a squeak to betray him, the carpet soaking up his footsteps like a sandy beach. And doesn't your man himself succumb to temptations of the flesh, though of a different class altogether, soon finding himself in the tub, up to his chin in hot water. Snug as a fist in a mitten. The flow of the warm water burbling in his ear, the piquant scent of the bubbles tickling his nose, he allowed himself to surrender to the comfort, having earned it, having performed so admirably in the service of his wife and their marriage, and on the other hand, so splendidly in the service of Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP, a widow with needs and wants of her own. Whose other hand, after a while, he heard on the knob of the door, whose footstep on the blue of the tiles, in perfect harmony with his dream of a balmy beach in the south of Spain, a dark-skinned girl in a white kimono, and a pitcher of green margaritas. Warm washcloth soothing his eyes, he showed her the dimple in his chin, which he lifted for a smile. “Come join me, love, the water's grand.”

But Katie only shuffled her feet.

“Plenty of room in here for a pair,” he said, his invitation enhanced and made all the more sincere by the stirring of his nether part, the blood flowing again, the buoyancy of the lovely hot water lifting him up, the thoughts of her nearby accessibility making him randy as a pup.

But Katie made no reply.

Removing the cloth, Lafferty opened his eyes. To lay them on two of the ugliest men he'd ever seen, standing there gaping down at him as though he were a two-headed donkey in the circus. Though it wasn't the pure ugliness that first caught his eye, to be sure; it was the gun in the fist of the first one, the cluster of yellow daffodils in that of the other.

No stranger to tight spots, Lafferty had indeed found himself naked in tight spots before, although tight spots such as those had generally been occasioned by a jealous lover, never before by two calm and ugly men. And seldom before had weaponry been involved, except for the once near Ballyjamesduff, the weapon in question having been a sailing cookie jar (the jealous lover in question having been of the female persuasion), a far cry indeed from a nine-millimeter pistol.

They brought him to the lounge, where he stood naked, dripping into the carpet. The nakedness was the worst of it and no place to hide, his heart wanting to jump from his throat. The man with the daffodils was the older and fatter of the pair, with lips and ears as thick as your thumb, his jacket brown and stained and two sizes too tight. “Where's the woman?” said he.

“What woman?” Lafferty said.

“What woman says he,” said the fat man.

“The woman whose name is on the fucking sign out in front of the fucking house,” the other man said. He was skinny and pink and jumpy, twitching the gun as he spoke. The black eyes of him never rested on any one object too long, and his checkered jacket was yellow and baggy and blue.

“Did you look in the bed?” Lafferty said.

“Did we look in the bed says he,” said the fat man.

“Of course we looked in the fucking bed,” said the skinny man.

Lafferty said, “She was there when I slipped in for my tub.”

“She was there when he slipped in for his tub says he,” said the fat man.

“Listen,” said Lafferty, “could you quit repeating everything I say?”

“Could I quit repeating everything he says says he,” said the fat man.

“Well, it is bloody fucking annoying,” the skinny man said.

“That's your problem,” said the fat man. “No appreciation of irony whatsoever. Everything's black and white to you.”

“We got a job to do, and last I looked irony wasn't in the job description.”

“That's your problem, right there,” said the fat man, the tips of his ears turning red. “No appreciation of irony whatsoever.”

“Can I put on my clothes?” Lafferty said.

“Fuck no,” said the skinny man.

“The nakeder you are,” the fat man explained, “the less likely are you to run. And the less likely you are to run, the less likely your man here will have to put a bullet in you.”

Lafferty's knees gave a lurch, his stomach a roll. “Can I sit?”

“Can he sit says he,” said the fat man.

They regarded the sofa beside them, deep and plush and beige, five oversized sections arranged in the shape of an L. “That's one L of a sofa,” Lafferty said.

It took a moment or two till the skinny man sniggered. Didn't the fat one chortle as well. “One L of a sofa,” exclaims he, and they both gave in to the laughter. “One L of a sofa!” said the skinny man. They laughed for a minute or more, Lafferty standing bewildered behind his smile. The fat man wiped his eye. “Good one.”

“I like this fucking guy,” said the skinny man, jabbing his pistol toward Lafferty.

“Sit,” said the fat man, waving his daffodils toward the sofa.

“What are the flowers for?” Lafferty said.

“Ladies love the flowers, sure they do,” the fat man said. “And we deliver.”

“Special delivery,” said the skinny man.

“Here,” said the fat man, “you can hold 'em over your oul hoo-ha there.”

Thankful for little kindnesses, Lafferty took the flowers, holding them over his oul hoo-ha. He sat on the sofa, the fabric prickling his naked arse. The two men made no move to do likewise, hovering above him, feet planted apart. Only now, the shock of it sinking in, was Lafferty beginning to wonder where the hell Katherine Flanagan had got to, how indeed she'd managed to get away at all. Had she spotted them coming up the road and made off through the back? Was she hiding somewhere in the house? And of course the deeper mystery, why two desperate specimens such as these had come calling in the first place. When the fat man put his hands on his hips, Lafferty saw the holster peeping out from under his stained brown jacket, the wee wink of a pistol. Across the room, the curtain was parted on the wide front window, and outside the gloaming was going deeper, the rusty leaves of the rowan tree in front giving a shiver to a white panel truck passing down the road toward Kilduff.

Lafferty, with little to lose, pushed at his luck. “Can you put down the gun?”

“I can, of course,” the skinny man said, “but I won't. Mrs. Dunleavy didn't raise a fool.”

“Good job,” said the fat man. “Why don't you give him your bloody address too?”

“And why would I do that?”

“You just give him your bloody name.”

“He wouldn't have known it was my fucking name if you hadn't just fucking said so.”

“And who was your bloody Mrs. Dunleavy then? Your bloody nanny?”

The skinny man shrugged. “For fuck's sake, let's just get on with it.”

They looked down again at Lafferty sitting on the sofa, daffodils over his oul hoo-ha. “One L of a sofa,” the fat man said. “Good one.” He wasn't smiling. “One more time then. Where's the woman?”

One more time then Lafferty told them. All he knew was she was in her bed when he went in for his tub. “What are you doing here in the first fucking place?” the skinny man wanted to know. “How do you bloody well know her at all?” asked the fat man. “How much do you know about her fucking business?” the skinny man said, and the fat man said, “How bloody long have you been dipping your toe in her tub?” Lafferty talked till his mouth was dry. His missus, he told them, contemplating throwing him out of her house for no good reason at all, had bullied him into marriage counseling in the person of Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP, a newcomer to the area, chosen because the missus, noticing the spanking new sign by the road every day on her way to work—a nurse over at St. Christopher's she was—judged it to be of the finest professional quality. And hadn't Lafferty merely chanced upon Katherine Flanagan at Connor's News Agent, just across the street from his turf accountant Mickey G's, and hadn't one thing led to another. In his desire to come clean, to make a clean breast of it, to throw himself on the mercy of the court as it were, didn't the words come gushing out of Lafferty in a rush. How he attributed his extraordinary compatibility with members of the opposite gender not to the dimple in his chin, nor to the playful unruliness of his light brown hair—though those qualities certainly couldn't hurt—but rather to his innate ability to detect the tiniest, most subtle signal, such as when Katherine Flanagan, immersed in a session with himself and Mrs. Lafferty, had slowly drawn her eyes away from his and laid her bright red fingernail on the tip of her lip. So not at all surprised was he then, when following their chance encounter he merely wondered if she might be willing to show him what he was doing wrong in his marriage, and she proceeded to do so, in a manner quite eager.

“Let me get this straight,” the fat man said. “You're shagging your bloody marriage counselor.”

Lafferty shrugged. “Not habitually.”

The skinny man jabbed his pistol toward Lafferty. “I like this fucking guy.”

The fat man's thick lips curled into a reasonable facsimile of a grin. “Me too. But then again, some of my best friends are stone-cold liars.”

“What do you mean by that?” the skinny man said.

“What's your name?” said the fat man.

“Lafferty. Terrance Lafferty.”

“You sound like a Dub,” the skinny man said. “Any relative to Denis Lafferty from Summerhill?”

Lafferty seized the moment. He lied. “He's my brother.”

“Small world,” said the skinny man.

“Small indeed,” said the fat.

“Do you know him well?” Lafferty said.

“Do we know him well says he,” said the fat man.

The skinny one's black eyes finally settled, latching on to Lafferty's. “Well enough to know he's one of the grandest fucking liars ever to breathe Dublin air.”

“A trait known to run in the family,” the fat man said. “Tell us where the woman is. Tell us now. My manners are wearing thin.”

“Did you look under the bed?” Lafferty said, his mouth as dry as a camel's arse.

“Did we look under the bed says he,” said the fat man. The skinny man didn't answer. The fat man looked at him. “
Did
we look under the bloody bed?”

“Did
you
look under the bed?”

“How am I to look under the bed with my bloody knees?
You
didn't look under the bed?”

“For fuck's sake,” said the skinny man, sulking toward the bedroom door.

The fat man never budged, the tips of his ears turning red. Hovering over your man, staring down at him, he drew his pistol out from beneath his stained brown jacket two sizes too tight. Lafferty, his stomach in full riot, puckered up his arse, fearful of soiling the sofa. The flowers over his oul hoo-ha wilted and trembled from the heat and shaking of his hand, and his heart clambering in his chest like a hamster in a heated cage. He wished he was anyplace else. He felt the color fleeing his face like rats from a sinking ship. He wished he'd never been there.

Never there. Wasn't that the reason he was here in the first place. The first words out of Peggy's mouth at the first session the first time he ever laid his eyes on Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP: “He's never been there for me. Even when he's there, he isn't really there.”

Through the wide window behind his wife that afternoon, Lafferty saw the broad sweep of fields dotted with sheep grazing among the hedgerows and stone fences leading down to the village tucked in the hillside. He saw the steeple of the church in the mist, the blue façade of the Commodore Hotel, and in his mind he calculated just where the Pig and Whistle would be, down the street, beyond the green. How he wished he was there with his fistful of jar. Of course it wasn't the first time he'd heard the words out of Peggy, not at all, but he'd realized, seated in upholstered splendor in the office out front, gazing down at Kilduff, that he'd grown immune to them. Hearing them again, Lafferty disagreed, and disagreed emphatically. He never thought of himself as never there. Wasn't he someplace all of the time?

The time they'd been evicted from their Dublin flat, hadn't he been at the Curragh, trying to win back the price of the rent. The time of the miscarriage, lamentable, tragic to be sure, but hadn't he been at the Pig and Whistle celebrating his impending paternity, and him with no earthly way of knowing. Any number of other times she'd complained he was never there, hadn't the cause of it been that she'd told him to get the hell out of her sight. Though Peggy's ears were deaf to his persuasions—her brown eyes indeed feigning pain and disbelief as they stared at him across the broad and pricey teak tabletop—Lafferty thought he detected a glimmer of understanding in the eyes of Katherine Flanagan, LPC, IACP.

Didn't it run in the family after all. Lafferty's oul man had never been there either.

And at the end of the day, didn't absence make the heart grow fonder. Hadn't Lafferty himself witnessed as a youth the grand reunions, his oul man and his oul wain on any number of occasions, him waltzing her across the narrow kitchen floor between the table and the stove, and her with her head back to let out the laugh. Hadn't he seen with his own eyes the pair of them, arm in arm, making their way up Drumcondra Road in a zigzag stagger, half blind with the song and the drink and the joy.

Didn't never being there have its sweet side as well.

No sooner did the skinny man walk into the bedroom till a ruckus of noises broke out. The fat man over Lafferty bounced back a step, raising the gun toward the door of the bedroom. Lafferty, shrinking on the sofa, hunkered over his daffodils. There was a shout, a thump or two or three, the sound of a scuffle, another shout and a gasp and a curse, the fat man starting for the bedroom door just before the explosion, the bang of the gun.

Then the silence holding nothing.