Джеффри Дивер - The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

Vladdy was taking the garbage out to the Dumpster when he first saw Cherry’s neighbor, a man whose name he later learned was Bob. Vladdy thought it was funny, and very American, to have a one-syllable name like “Bob.” It made him laugh inside.

Bob pulled up to the building in a dark, massive four-wheel-drive car. The car was mud-splashed, scratched, and dented, even though it didn’t look very old. It was a huge car, and Vladdy recognized it as a Suburban. Vladdy watched as Bob came out of the car.

Bob had a hard, impatient look on his face. He wore dirty blue jeans, a sweatshirt, a fleece vest, and a baseball cap, like everyone else did in Gardiner.

Bob stepped away from the back of the Suburban, slammed both doors, and locked it with a remote. That’s when Vladdy first saw the metal briefcase. It was the briefcase Bob was retrieving from the back of the Suburban.

And with that, Bob went into the building.

That night, after Eddie and Tony had gone out to bring back fried chicken from the deli at the grocery store for dinner, Vladdy asked Cherry about her neighbor, Bob. He described the metal briefcase.

“I’d stay away from him, if I was you,” Cherry said. “I’ve got my suspicions about that Bob.”

Vladdy was confused.

“I hear things at the K-Bar,” Cherry said. “I seen him in there a couple of times by himself. He’s not the friendliest guy I’ve ever met.”

“He’s not like me,” Vladdy said, reaching across the table and brushing a strand of her hair out of her eyes.

Cherry sat back in the chair and studied Vladdy. “No, he’s not like you,” she said.

After pleasuring Cherry, Vladdy waited until she was asleep before he crept through the dark front room where Eddie was sleeping. Vladdy found a flashlight in a drawer in the kitchen and slipped outside into the hallway. He went down the stairs in his underwear, went outside, and approached the back of the Suburban.

Turning on the flashlight, he saw rumpled clothing, rolls of maps, hiking boots, and electrical equipment with dials and gauges. He noticed a square of open carpet where the metal briefcase sat when Bob wasn’t carrying it around. He wondered if Bob wasn’t some kind of engineer, or a scientist of some kind. He wondered where it was that Bob went every day to do his work, and what he kept in the metal briefcase that couldn’t be left with the rest of his things.

Vladdy had taken classes in geology and geography and chemistry. He had done well in them, and he wondered if maybe Bob needed some help, needed an assistant. At least until a job opened up in the park.

Cherry surprised them by bringing two bottles of Jack Daniel’s home after her shift at the K-Bar, and they had whiskey on ice while they ate Lean Cuisine dinners. They kept drinking afterward at the table. Vladdy suspected that Cherry had stolen the bottles from behind the bar but said nothing because he was enjoying himself and he wanted to ask her about Bob. Eddie was getting pretty drunk and was telling funny stories in Czech that Cherry and Tony didn’t understand. But the way he told them made everyone laugh. Tony said he wanted a drink, too, and Eddie started to pour him one until Vladdy told Eddie not to do it. Eddie took his own drink to the couch, sulking, the evening ruined for him, he said.

“Cherry,” Vladdy said, “I feel bad inside that I cannot pay rent.”

Cherry waved him off. “You pay the rent in other ways,” she laughed. “My floor and windows have never been cleaner. Not to mention your other... services.”

Vladdy looked over his shoulder to make sure Tony hadn’t heard his mother.

“I am serious,” Vladdy said, trying to make her look him in the eyes. “I’m a serious man. Because I don’t have a job yet, I want to work. I wonder maybe if your neighbor Bob needs an apprentice in his work. Somebody who would get mud on himself if Bob doesn’t want to.”

Cherry shook her head and smiled, and took a long time to answer. She searched Vladdy’s face for something that Vladdy hoped his face had. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, for a change. She leaned her head forward, toward Vladdy.

“I told you I’d heard some things about Bob at the K-Bar,” she said softly. “I heard that Bob is a bio pirate. He’s a criminal.”

“What is this bio pirate?”

He could smell her whiskey breath, but he bent closer. “In Yellowstone, in some of the hot pots and geysers, there are rare microorganisms that can only be found here. Our government is studying some of them legitimately, trying to find out if they could be a cure for cancer, or maybe a bioweapon, or whatever. It’s illegal to take them out of the park. But the rumor is there are some people stealing the microbes and selling them. You know, bio pirates.”

Vladdy sat back for a moment to think. Her eyes burned into his as they never had before. It was the whiskey, sure, but it was something else.

“The metal briefcase,” Vladdy whispered. “That’s where he keep the microbes.”

Cherry nodded enthusiastically. “Who knows what they’re worth? Or better yet, who knows what someone would pay us to give them back and not say anything about it?”

Vladdy felt a double-edged chill, of both excitement and fear. This Cherry, he thought, she didn’t just come up with this. She had been thinking about it for a while.

“Next time he’s at the K-Bar, I’ll call you,” she said. “He doesn’t bring his briefcase with him there. He keeps it next door, in his apartment, when he goes out at night. That’s where it will be when I call you.”

“Hey,” Tony called from the couch, “what are you two whispering about over there?”

“They talk fornication,” Eddie said with a slur, making Tony laugh. As far as Vladdy knew, it was Eddie’s first American sentence.

Vladdy was wiping the counter clean with Listerine — he loved Listerine and thought it was the best disinfectant in the entire world — when the telephone rang. A bolt shot up his spine. He looked around. Eddie and Tony were watching television.

It was Cherry. “He’s here at the K-Bar, and he ordered a pitcher just for himself. He’s settling in for a while.”

“Settling in?” Vladdy asked, not understanding.

“Jesus,” she said. “I mean he’ll be here for a while. Which means his briefcase is in his apartment. Come on, Vladdy.”

“I understand,” Vladdy said.

“Get over there,” Cherry said. “I love you.”

Vladdy had thought about this, the fact that he didn’t love Cherry. He liked her, he appreciated her kindness, he felt obligated to her, but he didn’t love her at all. So he used a phrase he had heard in the grocery store.

“You bet,” he said.

Hanging up, he asked Eddie to take Tony to the grocery store and get him some ice cream. Eddie winked at Vladdy as they left, because Vladdy had told Eddie about the bio pirates.

The metal briefcase wasn’t hard to find, and the search was much easier than shinnying along a two-inch ridge of brick outside the window in his shiny street shoes with the mad river roaring somewhere in the dark beneath him. He was happy that Bob’s outside window slid open easily, and he stepped through the open window into Bob’s kitchen sink, cracking a dirty plate with his heel.

It made some sense that the metal case was in the refrigerator, on large shelf of its own, and he pulled it out by the handle, which was cold.

Back in Cherry’s apartment, he realized he was still shivering, and it wasn’t from the temperature outside. But he opened the briefcase on the kitchen table. Yes, there were glass vials filled with murky water. Cherry was right. And in the inside of the top of the briefcase was a taped business card. There was Bob’s name and a cell phone number on the business card.