Lawrence Block - The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

Perhaps this person drinks a few beers on the weekend — not as much as some of his rowdier friends but enough to be social. He’s got his eye on some property out past the county line. He hopes to buy a new color television set. He usually goes to church on Sundays, not because he wants to but because, well, you never know, do you?

This is the person you would be facing.

This is the person who would smile at you, shake your hand, and behave in a neighborly fashion.

But never ask him about anything that lies beyond the next paycheck. Take care not to discuss anything more than work or favorite television shows or an article from this morning’s paper. Complain about the cost of living, yes; inquire about his family, by all means; ask if he’s got time to grab a quick sandwich, sure; but never delve too far beneath the surface, for if you do, the smile will fade, that handshake will loosen, and his friendliness will become tinged with caution.

Because this is a person who feels inadequate and does not want you to know it, who for a good long while now has suspected that his life will never be anything more than mediocre. He feels alone, abandoned, insufficient, foolish, and inept, and the only thing that keeps him going sometimes is a thought that makes him both smile and cringe: that maybe one of his children will decide, Hey, Dad’s life isn’t so bad, this burg isn’t such a hole in the ground, so, yeah, maybe I’ll just stick around here and see what I can make of things.

And what if they do? How long until they start to walk with a workman’s stoop, until they’re buying beer by the case and watching their skin turn into one big nicotine stain? How long until they start using the same excuses he’s used on himself to justify a mediocre life?

Bills, you know. Not as young as I used to be. Too damn tired all the time. Work’ll by God take it out of you.

Ah, well... at least there’s that property out past the county line for him to keep his eye on, and there’s still that new color television set he might just up and buy...

Then he’ll blink, apologize for taking up so much of your time, wish you a good day, and head on home because the family will be waiting supper.

It was nice talking to you.

Meet Cedar Hill, Ohio.

Let us imagine that it is evening here, a little after ten P.M. on the seventh of July, and that a pair of vivid headlight beams have just drilled into the darkness on Merchant Street. The magnesium-bright strands make one silent, metronome-like sweep, then coalesce into a single lucent beacon that pulls at the vehicle trailing behind.

Imagine that although the houses along Merchant are dark, no one inside them is asleep.

The van, its white finish long faded to a dingy gray, glides toward its destination. It passes under the diffuse glow coming down from the sole streetlight, and the words “Davies’ Janitorial Service” painted on its side can be easily read.

The gleam from the dashboard’s gauges reveals the driver to be a tense, sinewy man whose age appears to fall somewhere between a raggedy-ass forty-five and a gee-you-don’t-look-it sixty. In his deeply lined face are both resignation and dread.

He was running late, and he was not alone.

A phantom, its face obscured by alternating knife slashes of light and shadow, sat on the passenger side.

Three others rode in the back.

None of them could summon enough nerve to look beyond the night at the end of his nose.

The van came to a stop, the lights were extinguished, and with the click of a turned key, Merchant Street was again swallowed by the baleful graveyard silence that had recently taken up residence there.

The driver reached down next to his seat and grabbed a large flashlight. He turned and looked at the phantoms, who saw his eyes and understood the wordless command.

The driver climbed out as the phantoms threw open the rear double doors and began unloading the items needed for this job.

Merchant Street began to flicker as neighbors turned on their lights and lifted small corners of their curtains to peek at what was going on, even though no one really wanted to look at the Leonard house, much less live on the same street.

The driver walked up onto the front porch of the Leonard house. His name was Jackson Davies, and he owned the small janitorial company that had been hired to scour away the aftermath of four nights earlier, when this more or less peaceful industrial community of forty-two thousand had been dragged — kicking, screaming, and bleeding — into the national spotlight.

Davies turned on his flashlight, gliding its beam over the shards of broken glass that littered the front porch. As the shards caught the beam, each glared at him defiantly: Come on, tough guy, big macho Vietnam vet with your bucket and Windex, let’s see you take us on.

He moved the beam toward a bay window on the right. Like all the first-floor windows of the house, this one was covered by a large sheet of particle board crisscrossed by two strips of yellow tape. A long, ugly stain covered most of the outside sill, dribbling over the edge in a few places down onto the porch in thin, jagged streaks. Tipping the beam, Davies followed the streaks to another stain, darker than the mess on the sill and wider by a good fifty percent. Just outside this stain was a series of receding smears that stretched across the length of the porch and disappeared in front of the railing next to the glider.

Footprints.

Davies shook his head in disgust. Someone had tried to pry loose the board and get inside the house. Judging by the prints, they’d left in one hell of a hurry, running across the porch and vaulting the rail — scared away, no doubt, by neighbors or a passing police cruiser. Probably a reporter eager to score a hefty bonus by snapping a few graphic photos of the scene.

Davies swallowed once, loud and hard, then swung the light over to the front door. Spiderwebbing the frame from every conceivable angle were more strips of yellow tape emblazoned with large, bold, black letters: “Keep Out by Order of the Cedar Hill Police Department.” An intimidating, hand-sized padlock held the door securely closed.

As he looked at the padlock, a snippet of Rilke flashed across his mind: Who dies now anywhere in the world, without cause dies in the world, looks at me—

And Jackson Davies, dropout English Lit major, recent ex-husband, former Vietnam vet, packer of body bags into the cargo holds of planes at Tan Son Nhut, onetime cleaner-upper of the massacre at My Lai 4, hamlet of Son My, Quang Ngai Province, a man who thought there was no physical remnant of violent death he didn’t have the stomach to handle, began muttering. “Goddamn, god damn, goddamn, ” and felt a lump dislodge from his groin and bounce up into his throat and was damned if he knew why, but suddenly the thought of going into the Leonard house scared the living shit out of him.

Unseen by Davies, the ghosts of Irv and Miriam Leonard sat on the glider a few yards away from him. Irv had his arm around his wife and was good-naturedly scolding her for slipping that bit of poetry into Davies’s head.

I can’t help it, Miriam said. And even if I could, I wouldn’t, Jackson read that poem when he was in Vietnam. It was in a little paperback collection his wife gave to him. He lost that book somewhere over there, you know. He’s been trying to remember that poem all these years. Besides, he’s lonely for his wife, and maybe that poem’ll make it seem like part of her’s still with him.

Could’ve just gone to a library, said Irv.

He did, but he couldn’t remember Rilke’s name.

Think he’ll remember it now?

I sure do hope so. Look at him, poor guy. He’s so lonely, God love ’im.