Джеймс Грейди - The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Stilwell moved past the urinals and stood between the rows of stalls. There were eight on each side. The far door on the left was closed. The rest stood half closed but still shielded the view into each stall.

Stilwell dropped into a catcher’s crouch and looked beneath the doors. No feet could be seen in any of the stalls. But on the floor within the closed stall was a blue Dodgers hat.

“Vachon!” he yelled. “Come out now!”

He moved into position in front of the closed stall. Without hesitation he raised his left foot and kicked the door open. It swung inward and slammed against one of the interior walls of the stall. It then rebounded and slammed closed. It all happened in a second, but Stilwell had enough time to see the stall was empty.

And to know that he was in a vulnerable position.

As he turned his body he heard a scraping sound behind him and saw movement in the far reach of his peripheral vision. Movement toward him. He raised his gun but knew he was too late. In that same moment he realized he had solved the mystery of who Vachon’s target was.

The knife felt like a punch to the left side of his neck. A hand then grabbed the back collar of his shirt and pulled him backward at the same moment the knife was thrust forward, slicing out through the front of his neck.

Stilwell dropped his gun as his hands instinctively came up to his torn throat. A whisper then came into his ear from behind.

“Greetings from Sonny Mitchell.”

He was pulled backward and shoved against the wall next to the last stall. He turned and started to slide down the yellow tiles, his eyes on the figure of Milky Vachon heading to the exit.

When he hit the ground he felt the gun under his leg. His left hand still holding his neck, he reached the gun with his right and raised it. He fired four times at Vachon, the bullets catching him in a tight pattern on the upper back and throwing him into a trash can overflowing with paper towels. Vachon flopped onto the floor on his back, his sky blue eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling, the overturned trash can rolling back and forth next to him.

Stilwell dropped his hand to the tile and let go of the gun. He looked down at his chest. The blood was everywhere, leaking between his fingers and running down his arm. His lungs were filling and he couldn’t get air into them.

He knew he was dead.

He shifted his weight and turned his hips so he could reach a hand into the back pocket of his pants. He pulled out his wallet.

There was another roar from the crowd that seemed to shake the room. And then Harwick entered, saw the bodies on opposite sides of the room and ran to Stilwell.

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”

He leaned over and studied Stilwell for a moment, then pulled out his rover and started to yell into it. He realized he was on a closed frequency, quickly switched the dial to the open band, and called in the officer down report. Stilwell listened to it in a detached way. He knew there was no chance. He dropped his eyes to the holy card he held in his hands.

“Hang in there, partner,” Harwick yelled. “Don’t go south on me, man. They’re coming, they’re coming.”

There was a commotion behind him, and Harwick turned around. Two men were standing in the doorway.

“Get out of here! Get the fuck out! Keep everybody back!”

He turned back to Stilwell.

“Listen, man, I’m sorry. I fucked up. I’m so fucking sorry. Please don’t die. Hang on, man, Please hang on.”

His words were coming out like the blood flowing from Stilwell’s neck. Nonstop, a mad torrent. Desperate.

“You were right, man. You were right about me. I–I-I lied about that game. I left and I’m so sorry I lied. You’ve got to stay with me. Please stay with me!”

Stilwell’s eyes started to close and he remembered that night so long ago. That other time. He died then, with his new partner on his knees next to him, blubbering and babbling.

Harwick didn’t quiet himself until he realized Stilwell was gone. He then studied his partner’s face and saw a measure of calm in his expression. He realized that he looked happier than at any other time Harwick had looked at him that day.

He noticed the open wallet on the floor and then the card in Stilwell’s hand. He took it from the dead fingers and looked at it. It was a baseball card. Not a real one. A gimmick card. It showed a boy of eleven or twelve in a Dodgers uniform, a bat on his shoulder, the number 7 on his shirt. It said, “Stevie Stilwell, Right Field” beneath the photo.

There was another commotion behind him then, and Harwick turned to see paramedics coming into the room. He cleared out of the way, though he knew it was too late.

As the paramedics checked for vital signs on his fallen partner, Harwick stepped back and used the sleeve of his shirt to dry the tears on his face. He then took the baseball card and slipped it into one of the folded compartments of his badge case. It would be something he would carry with him always.

From Murder on the Ropes

It could have happened anytime, on any of my daily commutes on the Crosstown 42. Every day I took it at eight in the morning, rode it over to my office on Forty-second and Lex, then back again in the evening, when I’d get off at Port Authority and walk one block uptown to my place on Forty-third.

It could have happened anytime, but it was a cold January evening, a deep winter darkness already shrouding the city at six P.M. Worse still, a heavy snow was coming down, blanketing the streets and snarling crosstown traffic, particularly on Forty-second Street, where the Jersey commuters raced for a spot in the Lincoln Tunnel, clotting the grid’s blue veins as they rushed for the river like rabbits from burning woods.

I should tell you my name, because when I finish with the story, you’ll want to know it, want to check it out, see if I’m really who I say I am, really heard what I say I did that night on the Crosstown 42.

Well, it’s Jack. Jack Burke. I work as a photographer for Cosmic Advertising, my camera usually focused on a bottle of perfume or a plate of spaghetti. But in the old days, I was a street photographer for the News, shooting mostly fires and water main breaks, the sort of pictures that end up on page 8. I had a front page in ’74, though, a woman clinging with one hand to a fire escape in Harlem, her baby dangling from the other hand like a sack of potatoes. I snapped the button just as she let go, caught them both in the first instant of their fall. That picture had had a heart, and sometimes, as I sat at my desk trying to decide which picture would best tempt a kid to buy a soda, I yearned to feel that heart again, to do or hear or see something that would work like electric paddles to shock me back to my old life.

Back in those days, working the streets, I’d known the Apple down to the core, the juke joints and after-hours dives. I was the guy you’d see at the end of the bar, the one in a rumpled suit, with a gray hat on the stool beside him. It was my seed time, and I’d loved every minute of it. For almost five years not a night had gone by when I hadn’t fallen in love with it all over again, the night and the city, the Bleeker Street jazz clubs at three A.M. when the smoke is thick and the riffs look easy, and the tab grows like a rose beside your glass.

Then Jack Burke married an NYU coed named Rikki whose thick lips and perfect ass had worked like a Mickey Finn on his brain. There were lots of flowers and a twelve-piece band. After that the blushing bride seemed to have another kid about every four days. Jack took an agency job to pay for private schools, and that was the end of rosy tabs. Then Jack’s wife hitched a ride on some other guy’s star and left him with a bill that gave Bloomingdale’s a boner. The place on Eighty-fifth went back to the helpful folks at Emigrant Savings, and Jack found a crib on West Forty-third. Thus the short version of how I ended up riding the Crosstown 42 on that snowy January night in the Year of Our Lord 2000.