The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 (41 page)

The furniture is not the most attention-getting feature in the room. That honor goes instead to the two men sitting on a couch and chair in the middle of it. Men several years younger than George or Muscovito. Younger, and tan, and fit, with healthy white teeth and big smiles. And each of them, like Muscovito, holding a weapon.

“Sit down, mailman,” says one of them, the one with the slicked-back hair, gesturing casually with the gun to a chair opposite them. A mild accent of some sort, unplaceable—Eastern European?

George sits. His body, his brain, are in a mode they have never experienced—a fog, a haze, in which he can barely process what is going on around him, can barely hear or see—and yet he feels a hyper-alertness to everything. Like being a disembodied observer of your own fate, your own approaching destiny. A destiny approaching fast.

There is silence for a moment, while the men study him. Then the one with the slicked-back hair says, “It's illegal to tamper with the U.S. mail.”

An accent, yes, but clearly fluent and at ease with English.

George is silent.

“Of all people, you should know that,” says the second man—a shaved head, a deeper, more curt voice than the first.

“You can be punished for something like that,” says the first man, circling the gun lazily, almost casually, in his hand.

There is obviously no one else in the house. Kids away at boarding school. Wife traveling.

“We've been waiting for you, mailman. But not for very long. Your schedule is extremely reliable,” says the one with the shaved head.

“Our partner, Muscovito, he didn't think a mailman could be doing this. Never even occurred to him,” says the one with the slicked-back hair, who looks momentarily annoyed—as if personally offended by Muscovito's provincialism. “You're about to retire, aren't you, mailman? Aren't you, George? Whose Maggie has died? Who now knows our business, inside and out?” He shakes his head of slicked-back hair and pretends to ask the rococo ceiling, “What are we going to do with you, George? What are we going to do?”

But George knows it is merely a rhetorical question.

He knows it is the last rhetorical question he will ever hear.

The last question of any sort.

‘Well, we do have an answer, mailman. Here's what we are going to do.”

An answer, not a question, thinks George, and the thought cuts bluntly through the thick haze of his terror.

His world will end with an answer, not a question.

All obedient, cooperative George can do is watch as the second one, the shaved-head one, grimly, matter-of-factly, with no evident glee but only focus on the task, checks his weapon, levels the gun, and applies the answer.

He fires a single shot.

Unerring. Professional. Passionless. Corrective.

Right where he aims it.

Right into the brain.

Right where all the troublesome scheming and illegal solutions and overreaching hubris began.

Right into Muscovito's forehead.

George is paralyzed. He has stopped breathing. He is only eyes. He is panic, terror personified.

The man with the shaved head silently, immediately, begins attending to Muscovito's body. Solemnly, like a mortician, folding arms, shifting him. But first, of course, handing Muscovito's fallen Walther to the man with the slicked-back hair, who watches the proceedings while addressing George.

“He never fit into the neighborhood, did he, George? Built walls, gates, drove his car with blacked-out windows too fast, never even introduced himself to the neighbors. That's not how you make yourself welcome. That's not how you blend in, is it? You've got to ingratiate yourself. Make yourself part of the scenery. You garden. Play some tennis and golf. You host a party or two. Everyone knows that's how you conduct yourself, right?”

He shakes his head with pity. “He never even thought that a mailman could be doing all that to the contracts. That's not a very alert or interested view of life, is it, George? A pretty prejudiced, unenlightened view of the postal service and its employees, don't you think? You've probably observed that view all your life. When the fact is, in our business, the postal service is one of our best friends.”

The man stops watching the proceedings with Muscovito's corpse and looks directly at George. Demanding, it seems, that George look directly back at him.

“We knew it was you. We could tell. So we looked a little further. Did some research. Just like you did, George. And George, you have been utterly reliable.” Smiling for a moment. “Someone to count on through rain, snow, sleet, and hail. And now you've studied our businesses, and what you don't understand, and I'm sure there's still plenty, we can teach you. You are about to retire, you live alone, you're healthy and alert and skilled in the subtleties of the mail services. You are ready for the next phase, the next challenge in life, yes? So you are now our partner. And of course you have no choice. If you refuse, Muscovito's murder will be tied to you, very easily in fact, with your truck in his driveway at the time of death, which Muscovito's security camera clearly shows on the tape we will take from it shortly. The murder weapon, which will in a moment have your handprints on it, will be sitting for all time in a post office box that you have already requested and paid for with cash and will have mailed the weapon to for safekeeping.”

“We'll take care of everything from here, partner,” says the other man, the one with the shaved head. He gestures to Muscovito's body, already wrapped in plastic sheeting and taped up, a package ready for transportation and disposal. “We'll load it in the truck for you. We have instructions for where you will dump it. Don't worry, no one will see. But we'll be taking photos of you doing it, for our own insurance.”

The man with the slicked-back hair jumps in, as if to set George's mind at ease. “We'll have plenty of use for your skills and your knowledge. We'll compensate you very fairly. We'll be in touch.”

And then, more philosophically, the man says, “Listen, we all need something to occupy us. A hobby, a focus in life . . .”

“Continue your appointed rounds,” instructs the second man.

The first man smiles. “The neighbors will be so happy, won't they, George? Good job! You did it! Muscovito is gone.”

“Welcome, mailman . . . ,” says the second.

“Yes.” The first one smiles wider, as if with sudden inspiration. “Welcome to
our
neighborhood.”

ART TAYLOR

FROM
On the Road with Del & Louise

I
HADN'T BEEN
thinking about killing Delwood. Not really. But you know how people sometimes have just had enough. That's what I'd meant when I said it to him, “I could just kill you,” the two of us sitting in his old Nova in front of a cheap motel on Route 66—meaning it figurative, even if that might seem at odds with me sliding his pistol into my purse right after I said it.

And even though I was indeed thinking hard about taking my half of the money and maybe a little more—literal now, literally taking it—I would not call it a double-cross. Just kind of a divorce and a divorce settlement. Even though we weren't married. But that's not the point.

Sometimes people are too far apart in their wants—that's what Mama told me. Sometimes things don't work out.

That was the point.

“Why don't we take the day off?” I'd asked Del earlier that morning up in Taos, a Saturday, the sun creeping up, the boil not yet on the day, and everything still mostly quiet in the mobile home park where we'd been renting on the biweekly. “We could go buy you a suit, and I could get a new dress. Maybe we'd go out to dinner. To Joseph's Table maybe. Celebrate a little.”

He snorted. “Louise,” he said, the way he does. “What's it gonna look like, the two of us, staying out here, paycheck to paycheck, economical to say the least”—he put emphasis on
economical,
always liking the sound of anything above three syllables—“and suddenly going out all spiffed up to the nicest restaurant in town?” He looked at me for a while, then shook his head.

“We don't have to go to the nicest restaurant,” I said, trying to compromise, which is the mark of a good relationship. “We could just go down to the bar at the Taos Inn and splurge on some high-dollar bourbon and nice steaks.” I knew he liked steaks, and I could picture him smiling over it, chewing, both of us fat and happy. So to speak, I mean, the fat part being figurative again, of course.

“We told Hal we'd vacate the premises by this morning. We agreed.”

Hal was the man who ran the mobile home park. A week before, Del had told him he'd finally gotten his degree and then this whole other story about how we'd be moving out to California, where Del's sister lived, and how we were gonna buy a house over there.

“Sister?” I had wanted to say when I overheard it. “House?” But then I realized he was just laying the groundwork, planning ahead so our leaving wouldn't look sudden or suspicious. Concocting a story—I imagine that's the way he would have explained it, except he didn't explain it to me but just did it.

That's the way he was sometimes: a planner, not a communicator.
Taciturn,
he called it. Somewhere in there, in his not explaining and my not asking, he had us agreeing. And now he had us leaving.

“Okay,” I told Del. “We'll just go then. But how 'bout we rent a fancy car? A convertible maybe. A nice blue one.” And I could see it—us cruising through the Sangre de Christos on a sunny afternoon, the top tipped back and me sliding across the seat, leaning over toward him, maybe kicking my heels up and out the window. My head would be laid on his shoulder and the wind would slip through my toes and the air conditioner would be blowing full-blast since June in the Southwest is already hot as blazes.

Now
that
would be nice.

“No need to waste this windfall on some extravagance,” he said. “No need to call attention to ourselves unnecessarily. Our car works fine.”

He headed for it then—that old Nova. Flecks of rust ran underneath the doors and up inside the wheel well. A bad spring in the seat always bit into my behind. Lately the rearview mirror had started to hang a little loose—not so that Delwood couldn't see in it, but enough that it rattled against the windshield whenever the road got rough.

He'd jury-rigged a hitch under the bumper and hooked up a flat-as-a-pancake trailer he'd rented to carry some of the stuff that wouldn't fit in the trunk. A tarp covered it now.

I stood on the steps with my hip cocked and my arms crossed, so that when he turned and looked at me in that rearview mirror, he'd know I was serious. But he just climbed in the car, then sat there staring ahead. Nothing to look back at, I guess. He'd already packed the trunk and the trailer both while I slept. The mobile home behind us was empty of the few things we owned.

“A new day for us,” he'd whispered an hour before, when he woke me up, but already it seemed like same old, same old to me. When I climbed in beside him, I slammed the passenger-side door extra hard and heard a bolt come loose somewhere inside it.

“It figures,” I said, listening to it rattle down. The spring had immediately dug into my left rump.

Del didn't answer. Just put the car in gear and drove ahead.

When I first met Del, he was robbing the 7-Eleven over in Eagle Nest, where I worked at that time. This was about a year ago. I'd been sitting behind the counter, reading one of the
Cosmo
s off the shelf, when in comes this fellow in jeans and a white T-shirt and a ski mask, pointing a pistol.

“I'm not gonna hurt you,” he said. “I'm not a bad man. I just need an occasional boost in my income.”

I laid the
Cosmo
face-down on the counter. I didn't want to lose my place.

“You're robbing me?” I said.

“Yes, ma'am.”

I bit my lip and shook my head—no no no—just slightly.

“I'm only twenty-eight,” I said.

He looked over toward the Doritos display—not looking at it, but pointing his head in that direction the way some people stare into space whenever they're thinking. He had a mustache and a beard. I could see the stray hairs poking out around the bottom of the ski mask and near the hole where his mouth was.

“Excuse me?” he said finally, turning back to face me. His eyes were this piney green.

“I'm not a ma'am.”

He held up his free hand, the one without the pistol, and made to run it through his hair—another sign of thinking—but with the ski mask, it just slid across the wool. “Either way, could you hurry it up? I'm on a schedule.”

Many reasons for him to be frustrated, I knew. Not the least of which was having to wear wool in New Mexico in the summer.

He glanced outside. The gas pumps were empty. Nothing but darkness on the other side of the road. This time of night, we didn't get much traffic. I shrugged, opened the cash register.

“You know,” I said, as I bent down for a bag to put his money in, “you have picked the one solitary hour that I'm alone in the store, between the time that Pete has to head home for his mom's curfew and the time that our night manager strolls in for his midnight to six.”

“I know. I've been watching you.” Then there was a nervous catch in his voice. “Not in a bad way, I mean. Not voyeuristically.” He enunciated both that word and the next. “Surveillance, you know. I'm not a pervert.”

I kept loading the register into the bag. “You don't think I'm worth watching?”

Again, with the ski mask, I couldn't be sure, but he seemed to blush.

“No. I mean, yes,” he said. “You're very pretty.”

I nodded. “There's not much money here we have access to, you know? A lot of it goes straight to the safe. That's procedure.”