Doug Allyn: The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

Any thoughts I had of running for it evaporated when I read his eyes. I popped the electric door lock and he slid in beside me, the gun leveled at my midsection.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“Out to Twenty-four, then north.” Not to his home then. Bad omen.

“Look, you can’t—”

“Shut up and drive or I'll pop you right here. Your choice.”

I shut up and drove, out of the business district on M-24, then north into the boondocks. The farther we went, the less I liked it, but there was nothing I could do. We were both belted in, and Marino kept the automatic on me. His eyes were somewhere else, though, in some inner place. Deciding what to do with me.

And then he relaxed a little, the decision taken. I tried to read his face with a glance, but it showed me nothing.

The few directions he offered took us farther into the empty countryside through barren fields, already harvested, a few isolated farms so widely scattered that a distant gunshot wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

The sun was setting when Marino suddenly tensed. “Slow down here, turn right on the next dirt road.”

I did as he said, wheeling down a narrow two-rut lane that circled the base of a lowering mound. The fading light dimmed, then we suddenly plunged into deep shadows as the hilltop blocked the sunset, engulfing us. I reached for the headlight switch but Marino shook his head.

“No lights. Stop here.”

We climbed out of the car beside a tall, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Marino motioned me ahead, keeping his distance, his gun trained on my spine.

“Hold up right here.”

In the dimness I could make out a gate secured with a padlock. He unlocked it, swung it open just far enough to let us pass, then motioned me through.

There was no place to go but up. As we climbed the hill in the gloom I could make out wider white shapes in the distance. And my heart sank. They vaguely resembled tombstones, but in a way they were even worse.

My calves were aching from the strain of the long climb when the shadows above me began to lighten, then glow, then suddenly we broke into the auburn light on the crest of the hill. The massive grassy hillside sprawled out below us for most of a mile, bathed in the glow of the dying sun, marked at regular intervals by white plastic pipes.

A landfill, a cavernous hole filled with a mountain of garbage, then covered with earth and seeded with grass. In these hills it could almost pass for a natural rise. Except for the PVC pipes that vented the gases generated by the corruption below.

I turned slowly to face Marino. “What now?”

“I don’t know. You’re a pain in the ass, you know that? I asked you to leave us alone. More than once.”

“You also pointed me at two dead-end leads, hoping one or the other would run me off.”

“Too bad it didn’t work. So we’re down to it now. You were dead set on finding Bobby. Here he is.”

“Where?”

“I’d guess seventy, maybe eighty feet down. This wasn’t a hill then, it was still a pit. I worked here in those days and had a key. Still do. It was night and I was pretty wrung out when I brought him here, so I don’t have a real clear recollection of where I put him exactly. I remember carrying him through that gate, though, so we’re close.”

“What happened?”

“What I told you. He stopped by with that guy from the Outlaws. Bobby wanted to leave his dope stash with me so the bikers wouldn’t rip him off. Figured he could mooch off them. And he said we had to come to a permanent arrangement about the kid. I knew he meant money, only I didn’t have any. I was working my way through school, driving a trash truck on the night shift. Jeanie’s legs were still in casts from the accident, but she was dragging herself around to care for the baby.”

“The child was living with you then?”

“She’s been with us since she was a few months old. Krystal took off to work with a gospel show and dumped the kid on her landlady. When the band came back from Canada, Bobby picked Cher up and left her with us. We’re the only parents she’s ever had.”

“You never adopted her?”

“A garbageman with a handicapped wife? We didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping her without Bobby’s consent. I was an orphan myself, I know the drill.”

“And Bobby?”

“He came back a few nights later, roughed up pretty bad. Said some of the Mounts had worked him over. Hadn’t fixed in a couple days, had the shakes really bad. Talking crazy. About how he’d use the money I’d pay him for the kid to get his career going. And if I couldn’t pay him, he’d go back to Zeman, offer him a deal he couldn’t turn down. Like a fire sale or something.”

“What did you do?”

“I looked at him,” he said simply. “Maybe for the first time, I saw what he’d turned into. We grew up together like brothers, but this wasn’t about us, it was about a child, his child. And about Jeanie. She loved that kid more than her life. So I sat at the kitchen table with Bobby and dickered for the kid over a bottle of Cuervo. He was hurtin’ pretty bad, so he killed most of it. And then he needed to fix, so I gave him his stash. He shot up, and I put him to bed on the couch. And, um...”

He looked away and took a deep breath. His eyes were unfocused, seeing something a long way off, a long time ago. And he was trembling. With pain or rage, I couldn’t tell.

“A couple of hours later I heard him groaning. He was sick. Between the booze and the drugs and the beating, he should’ve been in a hospital. But instead of getting help, I... I asked him if he wanted another fix. For the pain. And he said yes.

“I took him his works but he was shaking so bad he couldn’t do it. So I... did it for him. I shot him up. And he knew.

“He watched me load up. He knew what another hit would do on top of the junk he’d already done. And he didn’t care. He looked in my eyes... and then he offered me his arm. He was my brother. And I put him to sleep like a dog.”

He fell silent for a while. The sun dropped lower, pine shadows from the trees at the base of the hill crept up toward us. I didn’t say anything. No point.

“I’ll never get past what I did,” he continued softly. “But I’d gotten to where I could live with it, to make a good life for Jeanie and Cher. Then I saw the news about Krys and her husband losing their kid and you called asking about Bobby. We figured something was up and stashed Cher with my in-laws. Only you wouldn’t let it go. How did you know?”

“In my business, you learn to follow the money.”

“What money?”

“Newcomb’s royalties. Bobby was obviously on the skids, ready to peddle his own blood for a few bucks. But he was also a pro musician. He should have remembered that royalty money and tried for it. Since he didn’t, I guessed he was probably dead. Only there was no record of that, so he didn’t die in bed.

“Either Zeman or the Outlaws could have waxed him, but they talked to me. If they’d taken him out they would have stonewalled or run me off. The last time anybody saw Bobby, he was crawling, banged up pretty badly. I figured he’d go to you. He had nowhere else.”

“And now he’s here. Someplace.”

“And so are we. You figuring to plant me with Bobby?”

He eyed me a moment, then swallowed. “That’s why I brought you here. I almost killed you back in town. Maybe I should have.”

“And now?”

“Hell, this isn’t your mess,” he said, lowering his weapon, “it’s mine.”

“Offhand, I’d say Bobby made most of it. You carried the weight for him his whole life and you still are. You’re even raising his child.”

“Up to now, you mean. What are you going to do?”