Kwik Krimes (24 page)

Matthew couldn’t speak but wrote notes:
nectar of the gods
,
the heart is an interminable artichoke
,
who ate the first oyster?

The next day the glaziers arrived, and by afternoon the greenhouse was finished. The idea had been to recreate some idea of
happiness, finish the project Matthew had started to remind him of the notion of love or joy. He’d written notes:
She preys on my mind. She wanted the greenhouse
. Ruth hadn’t left for some fresh life: she’d been clinically depressed, frayed from shock therapy and problematic drugs; she had found an unfindable place to kill herself.

That didn’t diminish the fact that her husband had loved her enough to build most of it before she left. Matthew had been upset until Paul reassured him that they wouldn’t cut down the trees around it, wouldn’t change the path or the view from the house. The first plant in the greenhouse would be the last one to survive Ruth, a stunted Turkish fig that Matthew had managed to keep alive in the den. It produced one fig a year, and every year he chopped the fruit into pieces and fed it to the flickers.

That afternoon they maneuvered the fig tree onto a dolly and rolled it down the path, then fetched Matthew and some glasses and champagne. It was trickier getting the tree through the door than it was the man in the wheelchair. “Where do you want it?” asked Paul.

He was asking Julia, but Matthew pointed. The flagstones were bumpier than Paul had realized, and the cork was tougher to pull than Julia had expected. Paul paused to open the bottle, then pushed a little too hard on the fig tree, rather than on the dolly. The massive pot tilted and crashed against the stone.

“The tree’s okay,” Julia said. “It’s okay. We can wiggle it into place now.”

“Watch your feet,” said Paul. “Don’t you see what happened?”

What had happened: the stone had cracked, and the cement around it, and the whole area, had sagged. He lifted the rock away and saw that the metal screen underneath had rusted to a red powder shadow and lay over a cavity where the base gravel or dirt
had subsided. “Fuck,” he said. “This is going to be a complete pain in the ass to fix.”

Matthew made a sound; Julia smoothed his hair without looking.

“It reeks,” she said.

“Just old,” Paul said. “Let it air out.”

“What’ll you do?”

“Clear it away, refill, repour, try to relay the stone.”

Matthew was crying; they’d botched the christening. Julia poured anyway. Paul plucked away the rotten wire and slivered wood under the broken concrete, wondering if the structure could handle the weight of the glass. He saw more wood and pulled out a piece, and dropped it next to his champagne.

It was a leg bone, a tibia.

“That’s human,” said Julia.

“Jesus, Papa, who built this thing?”

Matthew waved a hand, and Julia handed him the pad. Matthew wrote slowly, big jagged letters. He mantled over the paper, and Paul could only make out one word,
fucking
, and braced for another rant. It had been a few days, but this mess would set him off.

I did it myself. She wanted a fucking greenhouse.

Jamie Harrison is the author of
The Edge of the Crazies, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence,
and two other mysteries. She lives in Livingston, Montana, with her family.

Rob W. Hart

T
he digital readout on the dash of the rental says the outside temperature is ninety-seven degrees. The sun went down three hours ago. I tap the plastic—like that’ll make the numbers drop.

Fucking Texas.

I kill the engine. The air conditioner stops chugging, and heat creeps in like the cold air wasn’t even on. When I open the door, the swelter rushes up and clocks me across the jaw.

I hate this kind of weather, but in this economy it’s hard to say no to a job.

Especially when Ginny Tonic gives it to you.

The aluminum briefcase next to me is still cold. I hold it at arm’s length, try to guess at what’s inside. I can’t, so I drag myself into the parking lot as sweat breaks on my brow.

I hit the lock button on the key fob. The car beeps, and the sound bounces off the empty stretch of road and the laundry across the street. There’s nothing else around besides that, a streetlight, and the building in front of me: a vegetarian restaurant, in Texas.

The door is unlocked. Inside the lights are off and Muddy Waters is growling from the overhead speakers. Robust air-conditioning makes me chilly and thankful.

There’s a bar and a grid of heavy wooden tables. A man is seated at a table in the center of the grid. He doesn’t move when I shut the door. He doesn’t stand as I walk toward him. He just nods at the seat across from him, pulled out and waiting.

He’s got a half-eaten garden salad in front of him that he doesn’t acknowledge. He’s small but hammered out of iron. Tight military-style haircut and rigid shoulders. Even in the dim light, it looks like he’s vibrating. I set my feet in case he takes a dive at me.

He doesn’t, so I toss the briefcase onto the table and sit. He cocks his head.

“From Ginny,” I tell him.

“I know.” His voice echoes like it’s coming from another room.

“I got the first number for you.”

“She didn’t give you all three?”

“Wasn’t my job to look inside.”

Ginny was specific. When she slid the briefcase across her desk in Hell’s Kitchen, back where the weather behaves at night, she said: Deliver it and don’t open it. Acknowledge the contact was in receipt of the contents. Then come home.

She gave me the first number to the lock and said the other two were in Texas.

I did ask Ginny what was inside. She said, “A second chance.”

She didn’t need to explain what that meant. The last job I did, the job I fucked up, I thought that was the end, and my next living situation was on the bottom of the Hudson.

Ginny doesn’t dole out second chances. This was a generous offer and the whole ride down I wondered if it was too generous.

The guy cocks his head again, like it’s the only way he can express himself. He asks, “The number?”

“Three.”

He nods, rolls the other two numbers in place, and then clicks the top open.

He smiles. It’s the smile of a kid on Christmas morning, and for people like us that can only mean one thing.

I don’t even wait. I pull the Walther PPK from my waistband and put a bullet in his forehead.

The ringing in the air drowns out the music. The salad is on the floor, but I don’t know how it got there. He doesn’t fall off the chair, just sprawls back, his arms outstretched, palms to the ceiling.

I wait for something else to happen, and nothing does. Then I turn the briefcase around. Inside is a Smith & Wesson Model 500. A gun this big would have blown a hole through me, and then the back wall of the restaurant.

The silver gun is heavy in my hand. Maybe I’ll take it when I go visit Ginny. Because after this, she’s due for a visit.

I turn it over and find something stuck to the grip.

A magnet, the size of three stacked dimes.

I roll it over in my fingers. Ginny doesn’t do anything unless it’s on purpose.

Then my body erupts in sweat, sucking the warmth out of my skin under the strength of the air-conditioning.

I think I know what this is.

Under the red felt lining of the briefcase I find another, different kind of digital readout. These numbers are dropping, but not in a good way.

I look at the dead guy across from me.

“I guess we both fucked up.”

Rob W. Hart is a blogger and columnist at
LitReactor.com
. His writing has appeared at
Shotgun Honey
and in
Needle: A Magazine of Noir.
This story was originally published as “Second Chance” and was published in
Shotgun Honey
on August 17, 2011. You can learn more about him at his website,
RobWHart.com
.

John Harvin

S
he fastened her seatbelt, reached for the ignition, looked up, and stopped. Puzzled, she stared at the three small wires hanging where the rearview mirror should have been. At almost the same time, she felt the gun at the side of her neck and heard the man behind her say, “Don’t move, Judge Evans. Both hands on the wheel. Don’t turn around.”

“Okay,” she said. Her voice sounded higher than normal. She’d been to a class once on how to react in a hostage situation. She tried to calm herself. “What do you want?”

“Put that on your head,” the voice said. A small black silk bag floated over the seat.

“Now what?” she asked, voice muffled by the bag.

“Now you drive,” the voice said.

“I can’t see.”

“But you’ve driven your driveway a thousand times. It’s only, what, a quarter mile out to the road? Drive!” He jammed the barrel of the gun deeper into her neck.

Slowly she felt for the gears. She released the brake and pushed the accelerator. The engine revved, but the SUV did not move. She bumped the shifter down one and eased backward. A moment later she felt a thump, and slammed the brake.

“Hope that pot wasn’t expensive.” The voice laughed. “Tell you what. I’ll help you out. I’ll say ‘stop’ if you’re about to blow it. I don’t want you driving off one of those nice stone bridges and killing me. But here’s the deal. Only three times. The first three are free, the fourth time you die. Now drive!”

She shifted, slowly released the brake, and felt the car roll forward. Concentrate, Elizabeth, concentrate. She pictured the fountain and the slight curve to the right as she left the courtyard, then felt the transition from stone to blacktop under the tires and held her breath, waiting.

She heard a laugh. “Very good, Judge.”

Slowly she rolled along, trying to visualize the hard right curve at the end of the short straight. She pictured herself driving at night in a heavy rain. Or in the snow.

“Stop!” said the voice. “You need to turn right now or we go into the woods.”

She took her shaking hands down from the wheel and wiped them dry on the tweed skirt, turned the wheel sharply to the right, eased forward, and released the wheel on the count of a thousand-ten.

“What is this about?” she asked.

“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on the road, Judge?” The voice laughed. She could smell him now in the closeness of the car.

The driveway curved back to the left at some point, she knew. Without replying, she slowly eased the wheel to the left and counted to five, then released it.

“Good.”

She ran the movie of the road in her head, felt the rise and fall of the first bridge right where she expected it.

“Is this about the Riley case?” she asked.

“Bravo, Judge.”

She licked her lips. She should feel the second bridge any moment now.

“Stop!” the voice said. “You’re about to drive us right into it. Move left.”

She slammed on her brakes and felt his weight against the back of her seat. Slowly she backed up, cocked the wheel a fraction, and drove over the second bridge. Mentally she ran down the remaining road. Four curves. At the last curve, a forty-foot ravine. And at the highway, if they made it that far, traffic and a stone wall directly across from the mouth of the drive.

“What did you say at the sentencing?” the voice asked.

She stammered, trying to concentrate both on the road and to remember her words. “I don’t know.”

The gun jammed into her neck, forcing her head to the left. “Remember!”

“I said…”

“Stop! There’s a ditch. You need to turn left.”

Slowly she corrected and moved on. The temperature rose inside the hood, and she felt the silk sticking to her sweaty forehead. The air tasted moist and stale.

“That’s three, Judge. No more chances. Now what did you say today?”

Suddenly she remembered the shock on the face of the heavyset young man sitting in the third row as she handed down the maximum sentence. “I said, ‘Three strikes and you’re out.’”

They should be approaching the third turn now. She eased the wheel to the right and counted, holding her breath. At twenty she let go and straightened up.