Chris Adrian - The Best American Mystery Stories 2007

“This a twenty,” Solomon said, offering it up.

Ngame waved it away. “We had a good day today.”

“Business wasn’t that good.”

Ngame got into his van and started the engine. He leaned out the window and patted Solomon on the shoulder. “Business isn’t all that makes a good day.”

Canal Road runs northwest out of Georgetown along the Potomac River. Round a bend, the bright lights fade and it becomes a country road. After a mile, Waverly Ngame noticed headlights coming up behind him, speeding at first, then taking a position fifty yards or so behind and hanging in there. He checked his rearview. The lights behind him belonged to Asad’s white Navigator.

And somebody in the passenger seat had an arm out the window, pointing something at him.

“Don’t get so close,” Asad said. “Drop back some.”

Gehdi eased off the gas. He gave Asad a leer. “Fried Nigerian.”

Asad laughed and pressed the button of the garage door opener. He imagined the sequence: the electronic command sent to the door opener’s receiver, the receiver that would shoot thirty-six volts into the blasting cap, the blasting cap embedded in the quarter pound of C-4 plastic explosive that the magnet held to the gas tank of the Nigerian’s van.

An hour later, José Phelps ducked under the police line tape.

Floodlights washed out color and turned the carnage two-dimensional: an axle with one wheel attached, its tire still smoldering, grotesque twists of metal strewn across the roadway and into the trees, a man’s shoe obscenely lined up on the asphalt’s center-stripe, a portion of the owner’s foot still in it.

Renfro Calkins huddled with two of his forensics techs at the far side of the road, looking into the drainage ditch.

José walked over. “ID?”

Calkins shook his head. “Gonna have to be DNA. All we gots is hamburger.” He pointed into the ditch. “That’s the largest.”

José walked over and looked. It took him several seconds to make out the thing that had been an arm. “What’s that in the hand?”

“Looks like a switch for a garage door. Best guess, these guys set off a bomb in their own vehicle.”

“How’d they manage that?”

Calkins shrugged. “They not gonna tell you, José.”

Gonna be a quiet day today.

Solomon looked down his alley, then across Wisconsin to where the Nigerian was setting up his stand.

“For once,” he said to Voice, “you got your shit together.”

From Hard Boiled Brooklyn

It happens so fast, Sussman only turns his head for, what, maybe two seconds, to check out that hoochie mama in the low-slung ram-riders and the spaghetti-strand top and when he looks back, his six-year-old Ben is already on the Coney Island — bound F train and the shiny metal doors are closing between them.

Sussman pushes through the crowd of departing passengers, trying to pry the doors apart, hut it’s too late. The train is already starting to move. He runs alongside it, yelling “STOP” and gesturing wildly, as Ben stares through the scratchiettied glass in open-mouthed confusion.

But then the window slips past him, like a frame going through a film projector, and he almost collides with a pillar near the end of the platform. A seismic rumble fills the station and he sees the white F on the hack of the train receding into darkness, going, going, gone, leaving him stranded.

He pictures his heart untethered from his body, falling through space but somehow still pulsing on its own.

The morning had begun on such a tremulous note of anticipation. This was supposed to be the day when he finally assumed his proper responsibilities and proved he wasn’t such a schmuck after all. For the first time since the divorce, he’d managed to get away from work and set aside a full weekend for the kid. No phone calls from clients, no answering e-mails, just quality father-and-son time. Up until eleven on Friday night with a Star Wars DVD marathon (which, truth be told, he kept watching even after Ben fell asleep two-thirds of the way into A New Hope); field box seats from the corporate account at a Saturday afternoon Yankees game (half the innings spent at the souvenir stand, hut that’s what you get for taking a six-year-old), and dinner at Junior’s (three-quarters of a strawberry cheesecake slice left uneaten).

But today was supposed to be the penultimate bonding experience, the maraschino cherry rescued from the bottom of the Shirley Temple glass: the long-awaited pilgrimage to Coney Island that Ben had been begging for. Sussman had been building it up for weeks, telling the kid about the trip he’d make to Astroland every summer with his father, who’d moved the family from Bay Ridge to Long Island back when he was seven. He’d told Ben about the Cyclone, the bumper cars, the shooting galleries in the midway, and of course, the Wonder Wheel. For some reason, the last attraction had meant the most to the kid; he woke up this morning to find Ben with his crayons in the kitchen, drawing a picture of a stick-figure man running after a spiny Ferris wheel as it rolled down a hill.

Now Sussman stands at the end of the platform, feeling a cold ripple of panic rise from the pit of his stomach. The murmur of the departed train still vibrates through the station.

The only thing that matters. I have lost the only thing that matters. His chest heaves and dread worms into his veins. He looks around — shouldn’t there be a station manager on duty or a call box with a button you can push in case of emergencies? But it’s still before noon on a Sunday morning in August and the place is desolate. He calls out, “Help,” but his voice sounds thin and nasal echoing off the tiled walls. An old bag woman on the opposite platform, her jaw working like Popeye’s from overmedication, glares at him furiously, as if she’s seen everything that’s just happened and knows he’s at fault.

He starts to run, half-remembering a pay phone he’d once used way down at the other end of the platform for another hassled conversation with his ex. Yes, I sent the check already. No, I can’t take him next weekend.. . What will she say about this time? I knew it! I knew I couldn’t leave him alone with you! You’re such a fucking thoughtless asshole! He grabs the phone’s gummy yellow receiver, the rusted coil slithers, and then red and green wires spill from the chrome mainframe. Broken! Of course!

He drops the receiver in disgust and charges toward the stairs, blood throbbing in his cars. He pictures Ben alone on the train, a wan frightened child in a forest of strangers. Would he think to look for a policeman or another responsible adult? Who knew what his mother had taught him to do in an emergency? He was a fragile kid at the very best of times, and the divorce had shaken him badly. He’d cowered in his bedroom when his parents fought and had turned shy and withdrawn after the split: “a bully magnet” according to his kindergarten teachers, easily buffaloed away from the more popular toys. Sussman imagines a stranger taking the child’s hand and leading him off the train at some unknown stop, saying Mommy and Daddy are waiting for him there. He leaps up the steps two at a time, the slap of concrete on the bottom of his loafers stinging the soles of his feet.

You’re taking your son for the weekend? One of the other guys in sales gawked at him Friday afternoon. Jesus, I never even knew you’d spawned.

He stops a second on the landing to catch his breath, his belt buckle digging into a flabby roll. He’s terribly out of shape these days, from eating junk food on the road and skipping the gym for weeks on end. You think somebody’s going to give you their account because you’re the most relaxed rep they’ve ever met? he’d asked one of the newbies just last week. He swallows and sees the token booth a football field and a half away. No awards for the best excuse. He who hesitates is lunch. He makes another run for it, his lungs already straining, his knees audibly squeaking. He realizes he’s become the stick figure from Ben’s drawing, chasing the giant wheel rolling down the hill. He lifts his thighs and digs for all he’s worth. The future has narrowed to this barren gray stretch of concrete from here to the token booth.