The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 Page 8

  “There you are, Mrs. O’Toole,” a raspy voice called as she waited for the light. “Thought I’d missed you today.”

  Peg smiled as she turned to see a wide, smiling, graying cop head her way. His hat was pushed back on his head and his baton was in his hand, just like in the movies. Peg often wondered if the movies had copied him or he was copying the movies for the benefit of the tourists who spawned upstream to Times Square in the summer.

  “Off to work,” she said, smiling back at him.

  He shook his head. “Still don’t like you coming home after dark. Sure you couldn’t get that early shift back?”

  “Better pay in the evening, Officer Paretti. Besides, I like seeing the neon all lit up and sparkling when I come back.”

  One furry eyebrow lifted. “You can protect yourself?”

  She chuckled. “You’d be surprised. Working for the butcher has built muscle.”

  He shook his head. “Tiny thing like you. Just not right. You should be working in a store, somethin’ like that. Not choppin’ up chickens and steak.”

  “If a store paid as much as the butcher does, I’d agree with you. But I was lucky to have Mr. Goldfarb hire me. Best surprise of my life, getting that job. After all”—she leaned closer—“my tips come in chicken livers and ham hocks.”

  “It’ll sure be good to have all the boys home from the war, won’t it?” he asked, absently nodding to a family in Bermuda shorts and cameras. “You poor ladies have been handling too much of the burden, you ask me. Ain’t natural.”

  Peg knew she should have agreed. Should have told him that she was relieved to know that her Jimmy was coming home safe. Instead, she patted Officer Paretti on the arm and let the tide carry her across Broadway. And for another eight hours she shared a crowded, white-tiled back room with Phil Dawson, her knives flashing as she cut away steaks and roasts, ribs for barbecuing and flank for stew meat. And when the slicing was done, she grabbed the parts bucket and cranked the contents through the grinder to make hamburger. Her arms were on fire and her back ached like a sore tooth, but she actually liked what she did. There was something neat and predictable about it, a real sense of accomplishment. Mr. Goldfarb said that he would always be grateful that she was the one who answered his ad that day back in ’41, because she worked hard, never complained, and never missed work. She always smiled when she came in and smiled when she left.

  Peg heard about the atomic bomb, of course. Everybody did. But it didn’t really make a difference to her one way or another. Jimmy was coming home whether the Japs surrendered or not. And he’d promised to be home soon.

  Mildred Peabody saw that Peg was beginning to lose weight. Peg blamed it on the heat even as she spent the evening out on the street hitting fungoes to Mikey. Mr. Goldfarb noticed that Peg wasn’t smiling as much. Peg told him it was because after the one telegram she hadn’t heard any more from Jimmy, and it made her nervous.

  “Of course,” he comforted, patting her arm. “Who wouldn’t be nervous, after all this time? Don’t you worry, child. Your worries are over. He’s coming home to you.” Then, his bristly gray eyebrows drawing together like amorous caterpillars, he shook his head. “Although where I’m going to find another butcher as quick as you, I just don’t know.”

  For the first time since she’d known him, she hugged the old man, both of their white aprons blood-spattered and grimy from the day, her own hair drooping against her sweating neck. “I’m going to miss you.”

  And for the first time, Mr. Goldfarb hugged her back. “You deserve better.”

  Surprised by a flash of anger, she leaned back. “There is nothing better, Mr. Goldfarb. I’ve been very happy here.”

  Safe. She’d been safe. It was what she felt every day when she walked down the front steps of her brownstone, when she battled the tides of Times Square. When she wielded knives as sharp as razors, mere inches from fingers and veins and faces. It didn’t take Officer Paretti to tell her that New York was dangerous. Too many alleys, too many crime-thick shadows. But as often as she crossed those perilous streets late at night, as long as she’d lived without a man to protect her, she had never once felt threatened.

  Mr. Goldfarb lifted a hand and patted her face. “You sure your navy boy doesn’t want to be a butcher?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Mr. Goldfarb, you’ll have plenty of butchers coming home. Besides, Jimmy’s a hod carrier.”

  The old man shrugged. “He couldn’t lift cows instead?”

  It was like an omen. A few nights later Peg was up listening to Cab Calloway on the radio. It was at least one in the morning, and the heat was still stifling in the old brick building. The kids were tumbled over the floor like puppies, the living room windows wide open to catch a breeze. The radio was playing softly into the night, and Peg was figuring out her finances at the dining room table. Jimmy still wasn’t home. Peg wasn’t holding her breath.

  “We interrupt this program to tell you . . .”

  Peg looked up.

  “We’ve had word that Japan will sign the treaty. They will sign . . .”

  That was it, then. It was truly over. No reason left for Jimmy to return to the navy. He’d loved the navy. Peg thought it was the freedom of it, the escape from wearing responsibilities. And she sympathized. But he was well and truly caught back in civilian life now. Cornered. Constrained. Committed to making a living, to being a father and a husband and a neighbor, answerable to all. Peg wondered if he’d do any better at it this time than he did before.

  Peg went into work the next day just like always. She packed her purse and her lunch and when she passed Jimmy’s dresser slid the drawer open and pulled out his favorite Italian stiletto. She had a feeling today. A different feeling, as if a timer had been set. As if the world was changing. Suddenly she didn’t feel so safe.

  She went into work anyway. Times Square was already humming when she reached it, and Officer Paretti kissed her on the cheek. The store was quiet, as everybody waited by the radio for President Truman to make the surrender official. A few car horns broke the odd hesitation, but it was as if the city waited, too, holding its breath, the jubilation corked and pressing hard.

  At 7 P.M. the world went mad. Even before President Truman finished telling the nation that Japan had surrendered, New York exploded in noise. In the butcher shop Peg could hear bells and whistles and horns. Shouts, singing, feet running past. She danced a jig with Mr. Goldfarb and Phil Dawson and Susie Beilstein, who ran the cash register out front. And then, with a big smacking kiss to the cheeks of the girls, Mr. Goldfarb told everybody to go home.

  “It’s a day for celebrating,” he said, shooing them like recalcitrant children. “Go. Celebrate.” And for his contribution, he gave them all sirloin steaks for their parties.

  Peg headed straight home. They’d been preparing a party on the block for the last two days, when the news seemed imminent. Peg carried her steaks as if they were the surrender agreement itself.

  On her way, she shared the jubilation of her city. She laughed and danced with a couple of cops on Thirty-third and waved at the cars who passed, horns and radios blaring. She reached Times Square to see the news ticker proclaim JAPAN SURRENDERS, on a constant crawl around the building, and she stopped to savor her favorite place reacting to this moment of history. In the greater scheme of things, it didn’t matter what happened to her. The war had ended, and all the boys were coming home. All the mothers and fathers, the wives and children and cousins and friends around the country could take a good breath and rejoice.

  She was standing there flat-footed when the sailor caught her. He was laughing, dancing down the street like Gene Kelly, grabbing any woman he could and kissing her. Grabbing Peg around the waist, he spun her, the bag of steaks hitting him on the backside. She couldn’t help laughing as she met him mouth to mouth. His hand supported her back and his nascent whiskers scraped her cheek. A puff of laughter, a cheeky grin, and he was off to another conquest.

  The photographer, a twee
dy, balding kind of man, flashed his own smile and followed. Peggy was still laughing.

  Suddenly the laughter caught in her chest. When the photographer trotted by, she finally saw past him to where another sailor stood. But this sailor wasn’t laughing or dancing. He was just looking. At her.

  Jimmy.

  Standing not ten feet away, smiling as if he were in better spirits than anybody in the city. Maybe Peg was the only one who saw the murder in his eyes. Maybe she was just too familiar with it to miss it. She froze, the instinctive reaction of all hunted animals. She knew better than to look away. But a shriek behind her, then laughter, told her that the sailor had captured another partner. She couldn’t resist looking.

  The photographer was there, too. Snapping as fast as he could, just beyond the couple. Peg couldn’t blame him. It was a great picture, like ballet, that girl in all white surrounded by the sailor in his dark navy blues. It was a picture she had once kept in her own mind of the future. Jimmy home from the navy, her proud in her nursing whites. She wanted so badly to not move, not let them out of her sight. Not lose that pretty picture she knew now would never come true.

  Jimmy was home.

  “What the hell ya doin’ here?” she heard just behind her and knew that he was there.

  Run! her brain screamed. Her heart collided with her chest, right there between the fourth and fifth ribs. She had started to sweat, because she knew it was too late. It had been too late when she’d kissed that sailor.

  “When did you get in, Jimmy?” she asked, turning to face him with her purse and lunch pail and sirloins clutched in sweaty hands. “I didn’t get another telegram from you. I didn’t know you were coming today.”

  He stepped closer, his nostrils flaring as if he could smell the fear on her. The sailor and the photographer had moved on. Peg couldn’t hear the horns or bells anymore. She heard Jimmy’s breathing. Assessing it for change.

  “I sent it,” he said. “And I waited for you for fuckin’ hours. Hours, Peg.”

  Peg could barely breathe. “I was working, Jimmy.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Mrs. Peabody said. So I decided to come surprise you. Give you somethin’ to celebrate.” He swung an arm wide to take in the humanity around him. “Seems you found somethin’ else already, huh?”

  It was all Peg could do to keep from flinching. Surreptitiously she looked around them, wanting only to get out of the middle of this crowd. If Jimmy really was in a mood, she didn’t want to be here.

  “Oh, did you see the kids?” She tried to smile. “Haven’t they grown?”

  But he wouldn’t be distracted. “We’re not talking about the kids here. We’re talking about you. And what you’ve been up to since I’ve been gone. Whatever it is, it stops now. You hear me?”

  “I haven’t been up to anything but taking care of the kids and working, Jimmy. And Mr. Goldfarb already knows I’m quitting when you get home. But look.” Smiling again, she held up her booty. “He gave us a gift.”

  He grabbed her by the arm. There would be bruises, she knew, angry red finger marks left behind on her Irish white skin. Her stomach roiled. Would he do it here? In front of all these people?

  “Steaks?” he demanded, his breath accelerating, his fingers punishing. Reminding her who was in charge. Who was stronger. “Just what did you do to get those?”

  He’d just gotten back, was all she could think. Couldn’t he have given her a day? Maybe a week when she could believe that maybe this time it would be different?

  She wasn’t even going to make it home.

  “I did my job,” she said, refusing to cower. Not anymore. Not one more time.

  He almost spit in her face. “Bullshit. Nobody gives steaks away f’r nuthin’.”

  He was dragging her over toward Forty-fourth. She let him. Even so, she lifted her head. Stared straight at him, where she never would have before. She wasn’t going to be ashamed anymore. “I. Did. My. Job. You’re the one with the dirty mind, Jimmy.”

  He hit her. Nobody saw it; he caught her in the kidneys. Jimmy loved the kidneys, because nobody could see those bruises but him. Peg gasped and buckled. Her lunch pail hit the ground with a clang. But she held on to her purse. She held on to the meat, as if it were more important than protecting herself.

  “I’ll just bet you did your job,” he rasped, dragging her along the sidewalk. “I saw you with that sailor back there. I hope you got a lot of money from all the sailors who were here when I wasn’t, cause you ain’t gettin’ any more. And if I think you’re bein’ free with anybody else, I’ll beat the crap out of you. And then I’ll take the kids away. See how you like that.”

  She knew better. Still, she yanked back. “You’re not taking my kids anywhere.”

  This time he broke a rib. A couple of people paused in passing, and he glared them down before shoving her into an alley by the Majestic. It just figured, she thought, struggling to breathe past the relentless agony in her side. He’s going to beat me to death in sight of Billy Bigelow.

  “I’ll do whatever I damn well please,” he assured her, catching her by the hair and pulling, his mouth against her ear. “Don’t you get it? They’re my kids. You’re my wife. Je-sus, Peg, did you have to make me remind you this soon? Couldn’t you have let me have a little peace, a good home-cooked meal before you pissed me off?”

  She tried to swing her purse at him. He belted her in the face. She could taste the blood pouring from her nose. “Don’t, Jimmy. What’ll the kids think?”

  “They’ll think that you’ve been stupid again and I had to come home to stop that.”

  She could smell the whiskey on his breath, which meant he’d been working on this mad all day. His control was already gone.

  Did she have the guts to stick it out? She hurt so badly. She was so afraid.

  “I’ve lived alone for three years, Jimmy,” she said, her voice nasal and high. “I’m not going back to the way it was. I’m not. I’ll take the kids and run if I have to.”

  Five minutes later she was fighting for consciousness. He hadn’t just beaten her. He’d kicked her in the jaw. She wondered if it was broken. She curled into herself to try to protect her belly, her hand in her pants pocket.

  “Bastard,” she moaned, struggling to get up onto her elbow, her other hand tucked against her stomach. “I’m not standing for this anymore. I am . . . not . . . teaching my kids that this is . . . okay.”

  Jimmy bent all the way down and dragged her up. “You stupid bitch. Don’t you get it? I could kill you and nobody would care.”

  Odd, she thought, blinking her one open eye. I could do the same thing.

  So she did. Jimmy never heard the snick of the blade. He was focused on the hands he had around her neck. By the time he realized that this time she wasn’t so helpless, Peg had driven the razor-sharp eight-inch blade deep into his chest, right between the fourth and fifth ribs as if she was cutting out a rib eye. The blade went in so cleanly she didn’t even feel the scrape of a rib. She just felt a few pops, as if she’d broken through tough membranes. She hoped to hell she had.

  She was holding herself up on him, and he was staring down at the knife in his chest as if he couldn’t comprehend it.

  “That’s . . . mine.”

  She didn’t answer. She just turned the knife and drove it in deeper. His eyes widened. His mouth opened. And then he simply collapsed in on himself.

  He fell right on top of Peg. She couldn’t move; not while he gasped out his last breaths or while his heart faltered to a stop, never to start again. Her face was only inches from his staring, astonished eyes, and she waited, still not sure he wouldn’t wake and go after her again. She struggled to get air in past her broken nose and ribs.

  She couldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t believe it. She’d hoped. She’d prayed so hard that his time away would have made him a better man. Would have washed away his need to hit and hurt. She’d sure had her answer, hadn’t she?

  She needed to do something. The kids we
re waiting back at the Peabodys’. No more than half a block away, New York was dancing. And she was lying here under a man whose blood was seeping out onto the asphalt, his body a dead weight.

  She could feel the bruises swelling on her face. Her right eye was completely closed, and her lip was split. Blood stained her poplin shirt all the way to her waist, and she had to struggle to get enough air in.

  “Help!” she screamed, finally pushing at Jimmy. “Oh, God, help! My husband!”

  With a lurch, she pulled herself free of him, only to land on her knees. Her head spun. Her heart was thumping like a bass drum. She knew she was going to be sick. But she had to get to Officer Paretti. She had to . . .

  “Hey, what’s going on?”

  She caught a blurry glimpse of a couple of Marines shadowed at the Forty-fourth Street end of the alley.

  “Please. We’ve been mugged. Help my husband.”

  Officer Paretti came running. Bending down next to her, he cradled her poor face in his hands and sighed. “I told you it wasn’t safe.”

  “Somebody came . . . came and tried to steal . . . I think they’ve hurt my husband . . . with his own . . . knife.”

  “You sure?” one of the Marines asked. “We didn’t see nobody.”

  Officer Paretti laughed. “You have any other ideas? You think what, that Mrs. O’Toole beat herself up and then stabbed her husband? Look at her.”

  And Peg felt the gaze of the Marines, who took in her tiny frame and battered features and gasping breath.

  “Yeah,” one of them muttered. “I guess so. Sorry, ma’am.”

  Peg blinked up at them. “I tried so hard,” she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I really did.”

  “We know you did, Mrs. O’Toole,” Officer Paretti said. “Now, boys, you go find me some help. And tell ’em to bring an ambulance. I’ll stay with the victims.”

  He waited until the sound of the footsteps faded. Then he made it a point to give Peg a gentle frown. He looked over at Jimmy, who lay curled around the lethal knife that stuck from his chest. He looked at the blossoming damage on Peg’s face. He took one more look at the angle of the knife, the design of the cut, the way Peg was shaking.