The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 Page 26

  “Mister?” she cried. “Mister! Where are you? Jesus, I’m sorry!”

  Down the hill, down his nose, Lafferty watched her panicky antics. Lighting the torch, she pointed it down in the hole, the beam bounding up again as if swatted away, and then all about the graveyard in a skelter of bedlam. Far too feeble to reach him. Lafferty watched, breathing in the cool night air.

  “Where are you? Mister? Terrence? I don’t know whatever come over me.”

  He watched. Watched the spirit seeping out of her. Saw the torch beam droop and falter, then fail altogether. Watched the shadow of her trailing away back down across the graveyard to the car. He considered showing himself, confronting her, but in the end he couldn’t do it. In the end he couldn’t be certain the passenger seat of the car was empty.

  So he watched. She climbed into the car and drove away, tail lamps disappearing down the road. When they were gone, when the sound of the engine had trailed off altogether in the still night air, not until then did he unclench his fist, no easy feat, so cramped was it from the work and the will. He held the thing up. Beheld it there. Even in the black of the night it gleamed against the sky, the genuine article, the real glimmering thing, the actual Ring of Kerry.

  Mrs. Lafferty had not raised her son to work with his hands. He’d always found manual labor distasteful, and so it was with travel by foot. So it came to pass an hour or two later, maybe more, when the eastern sky was beginning to give in to gray and the car came up the motorway, that Lafferty changed his plan and stuck out his thumb.

  For a long while the magic of the ring on his finger had sustained him, the heft and history and beauty and sheer gold lifting him above his weariness, and he’d vowed to trek on till morning, get as far away as he could on foot, then find shelter, rest, then plan out the rest of his life. He’d have put the ring in his pocket in the first place, only there were holes there, bloody holes his bloody wife could never be bloody bothered to sew, so he’d slipped it on his pinkie instead, where it fit snug as a rubber. But the weariness at last overcame him, that and the ache of his head, and after first determining that the car in question bore no resemblance to the little brown Ford of his erstwhile wife, Lafferty stuck out his thumb.

  It was a big black car, posh and polished to a gleam, that came to a stop on the side of the road. Lafferty hustled up, climbing in. A man was behind the wheel, a man all dressed to the nines with his vest buttoned up, a man with a face full of smiling teeth, his hair pulled back in a ponytail and gleaming as bright as the car. “Lonely night for thumbing,” he said.

  “It is,” said Lafferty.

  “Where to?”

  He was totally unprepared for the question. “Which way are you heading?”

  The driver had to smile again, leaning up to the wheel. “West.”

  “West it is, then,” Lafferty said, pointing like a cowpoke. “West across the island.”

  There came a loud metallic click, the sound of the doors being locked, and Lafferty felt a jolt. The driver wasn’t driving. He nodded toward Lafferty’s lap, where his hand lay. “Lovely ring you’re wearing.”

  The first thing he was was surprised. The last thing he supposed was the thing could be seen in the dark. He was about to respond with the first inanity that popped into his head, nothing special, when he looked at the lap of the driver, where a gun was quietly glinting.

  “You’d be Ray, then,” he said.

  Ray smiled even broader. “And you’d be Mister Lafferty.” He nodded again toward the ring. “Hand it over.”

  “I can’t get it off.”

  “What do you mean you can’t get it off?”

  “I mean it won’t come off.”

  The gun twitched up with impatience. “Give it a yank then.”

  “I’m after giving it a yank. I’m after giving it a yank and a tug and a jerk and a pull. The bloody thing won’t budge.”

  “Try spitting on it.”

  “I’m after spitting on it, too—do you think I’m a bloody eejit?”

  “Try it again with the spit. Only wipe it off good before you hand it over.”

  To no avail again. Lafferty nearly pulling off the skin.

  “Stick it over here.” Lafferty did, and Ray grabbed and yanked, yanking the finger nearly out of the socket, the shoulder nearly out of its own. Nor did twisting, prying, cajoling, and cursing do any good at all. Ray sat back and slapped the wheel, twisting his head to glare out the window at the sky growing bright. “You’re spoiling my morning, Mister Lafferty.”

  “Get some butter,” Lafferty suggested. “Butter always works.”

  “Mister Lafferty,” said Ray, leaning over calm and peaceful. “I have no butter. Do you see any butter? Do you think I’m carrying butter in my fucking pocket?” The volume gradually increasing, as was the redness of his face. “Do you think there’s butter in the glovebox? There is no bloody butter! No butter on my person, in the car, lying out by the road, no butter within miles of this godforsaken shithole! There is no fucking butter!”

  “I should have known butter,” said Lafferty. Why, he didn’t know.

  Nor did Ray. He glared a moment, then started the car with a roar, turned, heading back toward Ballybeg. He settled into silence for a while, though it was a fierce silence to be sure, the ferocity of which was exhibited by his reckless driving, the likes of which would have caused Lafferty to fear for his life, had that fear not already been in place.

  Finally he slowed to a civil speed. “Mister Lafferty. Reach into the glovebox there. A celebration, a wee drop to the recovery of the ring.”

  Lafferty, leery, did as he was told. It was a bottle of Powers, clear and gold.

  “Well?” said your man, glancing askance at the faltering Lafferty. “Not thirsty?”

  “Awfully early,” said Lafferty.

  “Give it over,” Ray said. Lafferty handed him the bottle, and he took a gurgling draft, handing it back to Lafferty. “There. No poison. Now drink.”

  Lafferty shrugged. “To the Ring of Kerry,” he said, tipping it up.

  Ray looked at him, puzzled by the mention of the tourist trap. “Take another,” he said, and so Lafferty did. “There’s a lad,” Ray said, smiling now. He’d the face of a child, Lafferty noticed, the face of a child of the streets. Dangerous to be sure, but innocent as well, with a certain capacity for compassion. They drove for a while in time to the gurgles and swallows, Ray seemingly pensive, peering out through the windscreen at the windy little road. Nearly back to Ballybeg, he spoke. “Do you like puzzles, Mister Lafferty?”

  Lafferty, puzzled, neither nodded nor spoke.

  “Have another,” Ray said, “and I’ll tell you a puzzle. Eena—our mutual friend—calls me up in Dublin, what, not three hours ago, and isn’t she crying, full of grief and misery to tell me what’s happened, how Mister Lafferty has absconded with our ring. And what do you suppose is the story she tells me?” Looking Lafferty’s way again, drawing a blank again. “No guess in you then at all? Not very keen at the puzzles, are you?

  “Why, she’d wanted to surprise me. To fetch the ring back to me all on her own, to atone for all the harm she done me back then.” Glancing again at Lafferty. “You’d be unaware of the harm, then? How she cost me four bloody years of my life?” And so Ray told him. How Eena, five years before, had brung the ring to his attention in the first place. How Eena, who’d been a domestic for the wealthy Mrs. Moore, owner of said ring, had botched the simple snatch-and-switch late at night when the old lady was laid out at home for the wake. How just as Ray was about to do the switch, Eena knocked over a tray full of dirty saucers and such, alerting the family, who apprehended your man beating feet down the lane with the replica, which of course they mistook for the real thing. And Eena meanwhile fleeing under cover of the ruckus, having stashed the real McCoy under the old lady’s dead arse. And how her clumsiness cost him four years in Portlaoise—from which he’d been sprung but a few days before.

  “So here’s the puzzle then. Am
I to believe she was going to fetch the ring back to me? Or was she planning to make off with the bloody thing all along, go off on her own, and myself left in the proverbial lurch? What am I to believe, Mister Lafferty? Do you yourself believe little Eena Brown to be capable of treachery and betrayal? For I understand you’ve got to know her well since the day you left her the stinking little two-punt tip.”

  Lafferty was stung, though he kept it to himself.

  “But the thing of it is, Mister Lafferty,” said he, “the thing of it is, she could well be telling me the truth. That’s the nature of her. That’s Eena. She might well have been planning to bring me a get-out-of-jail present. Or she might have been planning to fuck me. With Eena, you just never know.”

  Lafferty didn’t know, couldn’t even think about sorting the thing out in his mind. Ray nodded. “Take another drink,” he said, and Lafferty did, thankful for small blessings.

  At Rattigan’s everything was gray, everything from the sky right down to the pavement beneath his feet when he stepped from the car. Something moved in the window—Eena peeping through the ratty green curtain. Peggy’s car nowhere to be seen, and only one other car in the car park, several doors down, Lafferty concluding that the owner of a rusty yellow Fiat with a dent in the fender would not possess the formidability needed to come to his aid at all.

  Eena rushing to Ray where she buried her face in his shoulder left Lafferty more stricken than ever. Wounded and hollow, and lightheaded from the whiskey, not to mention the thump on the noggin. Shot through with fear and sorrow. Though how much of the burying of her face was out of love for your man, how much out of not wanting to look Lafferty in the eye? Ray gently stroked the nape of her neck under the rowdy red hair.

  “Mister Lafferty,” said Ray, pointing the gun toward the bed. “Sit.”

  Lafferty did. Ray handed the gun to Eena, who held it in both of her hands like a foreign object, like a spade or a tray full of dishes. Ray took off his jacket, hanging it neatly on the rack. He unbuttoned his vest, removing it as well, hanging it beside the jacket. From the pocket of his trousers, he withdrew an object that Lafferty at first couldn’t identify. When he placed it by the car keys on the rickety table, he saw it was a knife. A long knife. A long, shiny knife, and this before the blade was ever out of it. Ray removed his trousers, lined up the creases, hung them neatly over a hanger. Unbuttoned his shirt, hung it by the rest of his clothes, then stood there in his boxers and undershirt, Lafferty noticing the round pucker of a scar above his knee.

  Eena looked at him as well, puzzled as well.

  “The ring won’t come free of his finger, love,” said Ray. “I have to perform surgery, and I don’t fancy ruining a good suit of clothes with the blood.”

  “Butter,” Lafferty said.

  “Butter works,” said Eena.

  Ray stamped his foot on the threadbare rug. “There is no butter!”

  “There’s always butter somewhere,” said Lafferty, his mouth dry as a cobweb.

  Ray took the gun. “Into the bathroom,” he said, taking Lafferty by the collar. “Eena, love, bring the knife. Gather up the towels.”

  Lafferty naturally resisted. Ray naturally pressed the gun to his cheek. “Mister Lafferty. I’m not a heartless man. I’m after allowing you your anesthesia—here, have another.” He handed Lafferty the bottle of Powers from the nightstand. “Now I intend to cut the pinkie from your hand to take possession of the ring that’s rightfully mine. I paid four years of my life for it. I intend to cut it off you and leave you alive, without a pinkie, which, in your line of work as I understand it, will not be much of a hindrance. However, if I must, I will cut the finger from a dead man. It would, in fact, be a far easier trick.”

  The bathroom was small, a sink with a little glass shelf and smeared mirror above it, a standing shower stall and the toilet with the lid up. “Would you like to sit then, Mister Lafferty? You might be needing to.”

  Lafferty shook his head. His voice had deserted him.

  “You wouldn’t have an apron in your bag, would you, love?” said Ray, looking down at his undershirt.

  Eena bit her lip and shook her head, the tips of her ears going red.

  “Pity,” said Ray. “Hold his hand there, love, tight to the side of the sink.”

  “Wait,” said Eena. “Let me try.”

  “You’d like to carve?”

  “Let me try to get it off. I used to be able to get the things off my own finger when they were stuck.”

  Ray nodded.

  She came to Lafferty, her brown eyes big and close. She took his hand in both her own, raising it up to her face, taking his pinkie into her mouth.

  “Easy, love,” said Ray. “You’re getting me all up.”

  She didn’t hear him. Lafferty watched her eyes that never left his own, feeling his pinkie in her mouth so warm and moist it nearly stopped him trembling. Nearly. He watched her lips at their work, lips he’d never seen so skillful before, watched her cheeks suck in, felt her tongue laboring every bit as hard, the ears of her going redder and redder, his pinkie wanting to disappear down her throat. He felt the ring loosen. Felt it loosen then come free, sliding quickly away down his finger, too fast, away from his finger and into her throat, too deep, into her throat where it caught.

  She drew away quickly, coughing, choking. Ray clapped her on the back, hard, once, twice, a third time, and the ring came shooting up out of her, lifting through the air, arching straight toward the toilet, where it landed with a neat little splash. Settling down to the bottom, lying there gleaming in all its golden splendor, beneath the foul water on the stained and dirty porcelain.

  The three of them stared at the thing. “Get it,” said Ray.

  “You get it,” Eena said.

  “I’m not putting my hand in that,” Ray said. “Mister Lafferty, you do it.”

  Reaching over, Lafferty flushed the toilet.

  The ring disappeared, sucked down a different throat. Lafferty looked at Ray. Eena stepped back. Ray trembled, the tremble going to quaking proportions, red all over with the boiling blood, and he sputtered unintelligible syllables, and the gun in his hand came up, pointing at Lafferty, his finger on the trigger twitching. Lafferty felt his knees buckle and go under, and he was falling toward the floor.

  “No!” said Eena, stepping in to knock it away, but doesn’t the bloody thing discharge with a bang that shook the shower curtain. Lafferty, concussed by the sound and the shock, took a moment to divine what was happening, for it was the oddest dance they were doing, Ray and Eena, clutched together there swaying, Ray’s little-boy face over her shoulder all white and grim and pulled back tight, and the head of Eena flopping loose and lolling.

  And the red splash of blood coming down.

  “God!” said Ray. “God, help me—Lafferty! Help me! Get something!”

  Lafferty reached up, handing him a cheap scrap of a towel that Ray pressed to her chest. He lowered her to the floor, her eyelids fluttering, looking up from one of them to the other. “Get help,” Ray said. “Hurry—get help!”

  Lafferty arose, riding his rubbery legs.

  Eena, surprise lingering on her face, stared up past Ray, straight into the eyes of Lafferty. “Hurry,” said Ray. “Get help.”

  Snatching the car keys from the rickety table, Lafferty galloped out the door, pulling it shut behind him. The car park was empty, no one out from the office, nor from the room near the Fiat, no one roused by the gunshot, no one wondering as to the mortal goings-on in the room at the end of the court. The morning was sleepy, motionless, as if he’d stepped into a painting, a still life, a landscape, all the trees arranged alongside the road, the house across the way with the tidy blue shutters, the clean gleaming glass of the petrol station next door, the letters on the sign so bold and red. The Audi started up in a fine, smooth purr, hitting on all cylinders, unlike his mind, for hadn’t he been sleepless the whole of the night, engaged in the most desperate of physical labors, thumped about the head, his
finger nearly cut off him, his very life in mortal jeopardy. He squealed away out of the car park, heading west, west across the island, the countryside sweeping by, the rock walls and hedgerows, the tumbledown cottages, leaving it all behind him, the cold awful touch of the dead woman, the porcelain white face of Ray, the blast of the gun and the blood.

  But even as he crested the hill and flew toward the next, the eyes stayed with him, the lying eyes of Eena, full of hope and truth at last, going bigger and browner as the color leached from her face. The eyes stayed with him, and the ring, the dreadful, awful, never-ending ring.

  MICAH NATHAN

  Quarry

  FROM Glimmer Train

  SAM SAW THE OWL a day earlier, resting in the eaves of the barn. Their father had left for market, and so Henry got the Browning and stood on a hay bale, stock set against his bony shoulder; he squeezed the trigger between breaths like his father had shown him. The owl fell in a storm of feathers and Henry set down the gun. He grabbed the bird by its tiny, curled feet.

  “It didn’t hurt anybody,” Sam said. He stared up at the motes swirling in stalks of morning light.

  “We lost eight chickens last month,” Henry said. “And it wasn’t from a fox.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Dad said a fox leaves a trail, but a bird of prey takes the whole damn thing.”

  “You said damn.”

  “So. You just said it, too.”

  Henry inspected the owl. The twenty-gauge had made holes in the rump and neck, but the face was unspoiled; he would clean and stuff it, and have it ready for his father.

  Sam smoothed the tail feathers. They were soft as velvet and left a dusty sheen on his fingers.

  “Maybe Dad will let you have it, when I’m done,” Henry said.

  “I’d put it over my door.”