The Best American Mystery Stories 2004

Jack o’connell The Swag from Doc Hawthorne’s

From The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Yuk Tang likes to think of himself as Darcey’s partner. Darcey would choke if he knew this. He works with Yuk Tang because everyone else he knows has moved west or south. And because Yuk Tang is connected with more than one guy in Little Asia who can move anything — TVs and jewelry right down to paintings and rare stamps and precious metals — in less than a week. And because Yuk Tang agrees to a sixty-forty split, with Darcey hugging the sixty end.

Though Darcey dislikes Yuk Tang on instinct, he admitted to himself last week, while sober and bored, that they work well together. They work the way he dreams about, like they had one smart brain and six fast hands. Yuk Tang has this innate talent for smelling dogs. He can take one whiff, any room of any house, halfway in the window, and give the thumbs down. Darcey has never known Yuk Tang to be careless or unpredictable. He’d walk away from an open jewelry box without flinching if the fifteen-minute buzzer on his watch went off.

For his part, Darcey thinks of himself as smart and in control. And it’s his friends who know whether someone’s enjoying a week in the Bahamas or just doing three hours at a funeral. Darcey’s generous with these friends. He gives them money and as much time as he can spare. There’s the guy whose sister is a groomer at a ridiculously expensive kennel. There’s the kid who works for the award-winning landscaper. And there’s Scalley, a new electrician for a hot local burglar and fire alarm company.

Darcey pays close attention to these people. He studies them the way he’d study a hotel poker game. He knows, without exception, what it is they respond to, what it takes to cement their trust in his friendship. He bought himself a pager so he can return their calls immediately. He knows their favorite restaurants and reserves good tables monthly. He takes them to terrible movies and manages to discuss the films afterward over coffee. He spent a serious chunk of money recently on Scalley’s dental restoration.

All of this has paid off like you read about. Without getting sloppy or greedy, Yuk Tang and Darcey have put away a barrel of money. Yuk Tang has shipped a wad to less fortunate family members back in the homeland. Darcey has filled more than one closet suitcase with respectable dollars. It’s a happy time. They’re not logging a lot of hours and they’re rarely losing any sleep. And most importantly, the worry is minimal. Their timing, their attention to detail and planning, has meant few close calls and no sudden trips out of town.

Darcey would hate to have to leave Quinsigamond again. He’s done it in the past and it breaks his heart. Even when the trip has been to Miami or Bermuda. He’s spent hours on clean beaches, ninety degrees and a breeze, dreaming about the coffee and the smell of the meatloaf at the Miss Q Diner. What he’d really like to do, and what he keeps hidden from everyone, is let some time pass and then launch into a legitimate business. A bar or, more exactly, a club. Something with style and subtlety, where people dress up and it never gets too loud. Sometimes, while on the phone with Scalley, Darcey doodles pictures of the club. Ceiling fans. A long bar. An office for himself, in an upstairs loft, with a one-way mirror for a wall.

Yuk Tang has some of his own plans that he keeps to himself. They’re vague, but they also involve the entrepreneurial arts. He’s thought about opening a restaurant. Or maybe a video-rental franchise that specializes in martial arts films. What he’d like most is an import clothing store. Women’s satin dresses and silk scarves. The mark-up could be tremendous. Because of relations in need, he hasn’t managed to pile up as much ready cash as Darcey. And though he doesn’t resent this, he is unhappy with the sixty-forty split. But his options are limited and he knows he’d have a hell of a time finding a reliable and intelligent partner who’d work with an Asian immigrant who can’t drive.

They both hold irritating part-time jobs, though at this point there’s no need to do so. They had these jobs before things got lucrative and, because of a fear they don’t understand, they haven’t quit. They know that seeing someone go off to work on a regular schedule keeps any neighbors from being too interested and the routine keeps their minds calm and occupied for the few days before any gig.

Yuk Tang works as an aide in an old-age home out on Main South. Darcey drives a shuttle van for the Foundation for Experimental Biochemistry. Yuk Fang pushes around a cart twenty hours a week, placing tiny cups of ginger ale and apple juice into palsied hands. He pulls lit cigarettes out of sleeping mouths and helps pick up people who have slid out of chairs to the floor. Darcey drives a two-year-old silver Ford van back and forth, every twenty minutes, down the same boring stretch of tree-lined road, dropping off and picking up people who, for all he knows, could be world famous. They all carry large manila envelopes and ask about the weather. They’re condescending without meaning to be. About ninety percent of them are Asian, which amuses and annoys Darcey at the same time. It makes him look funny at Yuk Tang sometimes, even in the middle of a job.

Lately though, Yuk and Darcey’s luck won’t let up. It’s good and it’s steady. It’s like they can do no wrong. Storm windows are missing from the shrubbery side of the house. Rolex watches are left out on the bathroom vanity. Ten hundred-dollar bills, all brand new and banded together, are found by accident underneath a thirteen-inch Trinitron when they move it off its stand. Street lights are out. Dogs have died or been shipped down to Florida. It’s getting scary, it’s so damned easy.

Then there’s a moment in this lawyer’s place up in Windsor Hills. Because things have been so sweet, Darcey and Yuk Tang have been pushing it up in the Hills. They’ve talked about setting a monthly limit on jobs in the Hills. They kicked numbers back and forth on the way to this lawyer’s house. Yuk Tang wanted to play it simple, a given number of houses in the area in any thirty-day period. Darcey, thinking of his club, figured it would be better to work up until they hit an agreed gross. They decided nothing and drove the last block to the job in silence.

They’d been given the word on the house two days before. Attorney and Mrs. Bennett stopped at the Avondale Animal Hotel on their way to the airport. Darcey drove past the Bennett home after work and filled out his checklist. He drove by again with Yuk Tang and they spent a few minutes discussing it over a small dinner plate at the Grille. Though neither one will acknowledge it, they know they didn’t give this gig the attention it requires. But it’s hard when things have been coming so easy. It’s like they’re working with the guardian angel of thieves and he doesn’t want a cut.

Then, in the midst of lifting a Toshiba receiver out of its slot in an enormous media wall, Darcey’s beeper goes off. He nearly has a coronary and drops the receiver and it breaks on the hardwood floor. Yuk Tang runs down from the bedrooms, glares at him in the doorway, and motions a thumb outside. They leave with half the potential take. In the car — a semi-restored MG — Yuk Tang, ever the minimalist, says only, “You’re not thinking,” and Darcey comes back with a loud “Screw you, Bruce Lee. Find me a phone booth.”

There’s a tension that grows in the quiet. Yuk Tang only recently confided in Darcey that Bruce Lee was a real spiritual hero to him, that at night he said what Darcey might consider prayers to Bruce Lee. Darcey, in the driver’s seat, knows he’s screwed up for the first time since their streak began. It’s no big problem. No one is hurt or pinched. But the stupidity of bringing the pager on a job has brought him next door to panic. He knows what to do on a job like he knows his own name. Like he knows how to breathe.

Darcey swings into a drugstore lot and uses the phone outside. The page turns out to be from Scalley, who’s excited and confused: He’s got some information. He’s not sure Darcey’s interested. He’s talking second-hand tip here. He needs a few dollars. He hasn’t eaten in two days. He thinks he has a fever. He’s leaving tonight on a plane for Ensenada or Buenos Aires.

Darcey has to scream into the phone to get him to quiet down. He tells Scalley to be at the Menard Diner in twenty minutes, jumps back in the car, and starts to head for the Menard without consulting Yuk Tang. Yuk Tang, not normally a hateful or violent man, daydreams as they drive, too fast, to the meeting. He imagines Bruce Lee holding Darcey above his head. Darcey’s terrified body parallel with the ground. Bruce Lee’s arms expanding with muscle and tension, waiting to snap this careless thief in two.

The Menard is one of the best of the many diners in Quinsigamond, always clean and almost never crowded. They sit in the wooden booth near the exit for close to an hour, getting wired on too many coffees. Darcey would like to talk, but thinks Yuk Tang might take this as an apology and a sign of weakness. A kind of peace gets made when Darcey orders a veal cutlet sandwich and Yuk Tang puts half the money on the table and says, “I don’t think your friend is coming.”

Darcey nods and pushes the money back at Yuk Tang.

“I don’t think we would have wanted what he had to offer,” says Yuk Tang.

“Little hard to say at this point,” Darcey says, cracking his knuckles and immediately regretting it. “I didn’t think you ate meat.”

“I’m a flexible man,” Yuk Tang says.

Darcey nods again, readies himself, and says, “About the crap with the pager...”

“I don’t think we need to talk about that,” says Yuk Tang. “Am I right?”

“You’re right,” Darcey says, and he slides out of their booth and up to the counter to hurry along the sandwich.

At the end of the counter, on the last seat on the left, sits an elderly man that he hadn’t noticed before. As he looks at the man, he thinks the guy might be blind. The man’s eyes have that rigid, unmoving stare. The man holds a full soup spoon an inch from his lips but doesn’t blow on it or sip at it.

The fry-boy hauls up the cutlet from the grease and Darcey’s tongue goes a little wet. He’s about to ask for two large milks when the blind man, the old man he thinks is blind, says, “Would you be Mr. Darcey?” in a quiet voice you’d use to talk to someone next to you. The voice contains an accent that gives the man away as a foreigner, but won’t get more specific.

Darcey looks over his shoulder to Yuk Tang, who holds out his right hand, palm down, like this were some signal between the two of them. Darcey turns back to the old man and, like he’s been called before the Pope, he walks down the aisle and slides onto the stool next to him.

“That’s right. I’m Darcey,” he says.

“I’m George Lewis,” the old man says and sinks his spoonful of soup back in his bowl, uneaten. The name doesn’t sound foreign and as he turns his head, Darcey wonders why he had the impression this guy was blind.

“Do I know you, Mr. Lewis?” Darcey asks.

“You do look familiar,” Lewis says, “but I really doubt we know each other. I haven’t been in Quinsigamond in years. Actually, I’m just passing through tonight.”

He looks at Darcey’s face and decides to continue. “I’m really just an accidental messenger,” he says and pulls a long white envelope from the pocket of his raincoat.

“From a friend of yours, I assume,” he says, “a Mr. Scalley. He asked me to say that he had to leave and to give you this.”

The envelope has been folded over and Darce is written across it in what looks like a child’s handwriting.

“I’ve been here awhile,” Darcey says, even but firm.

Lewis stirs his thick orange soup and after a minute says, “Yes, well, you don’t look a bit like your friend described you.”

The night’s not going well. Darcey wishes he’d just remembered to leave the damn pager on his bureau. He feels as if forgetting about the pager is the first domino in a long row, just falling over. Scalley would be number two. George Lewis, with his eyes and his voice, he might be three.

Darcey nods to George Lewis and mouths the word thanks. He walks backward, pulling money out of his pocket and placing it on the counter to his right. Yuk Tang slips out of their booth, mixes his money with Darcey’s, and thanks the fry-boy. He lifts the sandwich off the plate, one half in each hand and tomato sauce oozing down the sides, and follows Darcey out of the Menard.

In the car, they sit for a moment, both a little shaken. To calm himself, Yuk Tang begins arranging the sandwiches on the glove box door like this was a formal banquet. He finds napkins from various drive-through restaurants, packets of salt and pepper, tubes of ketchup and mustard. When he comes across a container of duck sauce, he eases it out the window.

Darcey opens the envelope, reads it once, looks at Yuk Tang without expression, and hands the letter over. Yuk Tang sucks tomato sauce off his thumb and reads:

Yuk Tang hands the letter back to Darcey as if it were evidence in a trial. It ends up with a red tomato stain despite his attempt to be careful. Darcey folds the letter several times, lifts his behind off his seat, and crams the paper into a back pocket.

They sit in silence, watching cars run down Orbis Ave, until Darcey says, “What the hell you figure got into the little bastard?”

Yuk Tang stares forward, takes a breath, and says, “I think we know what got into your friend. I think we should discuss retirement.”

Darcey reaches over and pulls his half of the veal cutlet off the glove box door. He decides to ignore Yuk Tang and says aloud to himself, “And how the hell did he get to the Menard before me? The little shmuck is late for everything. He gets there, writes a half-assed note, gives it to some weird old fart at the counter, and gets on the road before I pull in?”

In an attempt to be taken seriously, Yuk Tang’s voice drops to a whisper. He says, “You can ignore me. This is fine, ignore me. But we both know there’s a problem here. Something scared your friend Scalley enough to make him run. Do you really want to wait around and find out what it is?”

Darcey licks across the front of his lips, swallows hard, and says to Yuk Tang. “First of all, stop calling the little bastard my friend. I hate it when you do that. My friend. Jesus. And second, you little wuss, you don’t cut and run because some half-retarded scumbag gets a tough question and decides to tour South America. Goddammit.”

“We could vacation,” says Yuk Tang. “Just for a little while.”

Darcey turns, mouth bulging with veal and bread, and says, “It’s this pager crap, isn’t it? You’re spooked because of this pager crap. Christ Almighty.”

They chew in the dark, watch lights go on and off in the apartments over the storefronts. When he finishes his sandwich, as if he’s decided to give in to things he can’t change or understand, Yuk Tang says, meekly, “So you want to do this Usher job?”

Darcey, unsure if this is a challenge or not, says, “You’re damn right.”

The quiet comes again. At one point they turn at the same moment, and look in the windows of the Menard Diner. Neither one says a word. George Lewis has left his soup and his stool and walked out of the diner.

At the Mother of Angels Home, Yuk Tang is having a confusing day. He’s followed two move-patient memos and found the wrong people in the rooms. A new carton of ammonia bottles was missing from the supply closet. Though he looked everywhere for Mr. Bernard Cooper from 319, the new nurse swears that Mr. Cooper did not die overnight. Yuk has put down six Extra-Strength Tylenol, but his headache seems to be getting worse. His stomach’s off and he can’t bear the thought of macaroni and cheese for lunch. He’s got more than one bad feeling about tonight.

Passing out ancient paperbacks in the dayroom — a Zane Grey for Mr. Ash, a Harlequin for Mrs. Wiclif — he thinks about jumping on a train after work. No call to Darcey. No explanation. But as he sits to read the first page of Tex Buckley’s Ambush to Mr. Kerrigan, he puts the thought out of his mind. As always, he’ll do the honorable thing. He’ll work tonight and let things happen. He’ll do the Usher job and give over to fate.

Yuk Tang finds the nurses’ lounge empty so he stops for a minute to rest and make a cup of tea. He closes the door and takes a few deep breaths. He wishes they had a couple of days to confirm some information. To double-check a few facts and drive through Windsor Hills with a stopwatch and a clipboard. But if the Usher job is going to happen, it has to be tonight. For a lot of reasons, one of them being their mutual diminishing nerve.

There’s an old metal coat rack in the corner, next to the table that holds Mister Coffee. Hooked on it are three or four nurses’ uniforms, simple white dresses that end at the knee. He guesses that they’re Doreen’s. They’re fresh from the dry cleaners, starched and looking perfect on separate wire hangers covered with cellophane. Yuk Tang lifts the sleeve of the top uniform and pulls up the cellophane. He holds it close to his nose and breathes in the fresh laundry smell. He takes it off the coat rack hook and looks to the neck for the size. He presses the uniform against the front of his body and holds out his arm and the sleeve, comparing lengths.

And that’s when he’s engulfed in the pleasing smell of pipe tobacco. He turns around and sees, in the doorway, standing rigid and staring, a tall man with a dark complexion. The man is dressed in a well-tailored business suit. It’s impossible to tell his age. Though he seems fit and agile and in command of himself, something makes Yuk Tang want to estimate that the guy is as old as anyone in the Mother of Angels. He’s clean-shaven. In one hand he cradles the pipe. It’s white, maybe ivory, and carved into a shape that Yuk Tang can’t make out.

Yuk Tang puts the uniform back on the hook and, forgetting his normal politeness, says, “You really shouldn’t be in here.”

In his left hand, the man holds a leather suitcase that makes Yuk Tang suspect he’s a pharmaceutical salesman trying to catch Dr. Brophy. Though the case looks heavy, the man keeps it in his hand, at his side. He takes several steps into the lounge and says. “Would you be Mr. Tang?”

Without thinking, Yuk Tang reaches into his smock pocket for a Tylenol, but finds none. He repeats, “You really shouldn’t be in here. Is there someone I can help you find?”

The man eases into one of the blue plastic seats opposite Yuk Tang and says, “I’m Mr. Estrada. I believe you’re expecting me?”

Yuk Tang’s stomach heaves. He clenches his back molars and shakes his head “no.”

Mr. Estrada is undisturbed. He says, “No matter,” and for the first time, looks around the lounge. His eyes end up back on Yuk Tang and he says. “I’m glad we can finally get together. I’ve come to you about a purchase.”

Yuk Tang stays quiet and Mr. Estrada reaches to his back pocket and takes out a handkerchief. He dabs at his forehead and says, “Could you tell me when we might be ready to make the transaction?”

Yuk Tang repeats, “Transaction.”

Mr. Estrada closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. His eyes open and he seems on the verge of being angry. He says, “I assure you I’m fluid. And I’m not attempting to negotiate at this late date. You people have my word, three times the estimated book value with the payout in equal parts diamonds, bullion, and your choice of currency, though my people asked me to propose to you the option of paying the final third in dinar, for the obvious reasons of speed and convenience. You can trust that I forewarned them that, most likely, this would not be acceptable.”

Yuk Tang has no idea what to say. He wishes the nurses would file in laughing, having put this drug salesman up to a practical joke. He says, “I’m sorry, sir, you have me a little confused.”

Mr. Estrada’s face goes rigid. Then his mouth broadens into a smile and he gives out a short bark of a laugh. “Business is booming, I see,” he says and Yuk Tang laughs with him, relieved but just as confused.

Mr. Estrada folds his hands on the table and says softly, “Obviously we have a few missed connections here. I’m very sorry. My party is interested specifically in the Belgrano volume.”

“Belgrano,” Yuk Tang says.

“Yes. The Belgrano volume,” Mr. Estrada says. “Though it has been mentioned, and I shouldn’t be telling you this, but it has been mentioned that if things work out suitably here, there could be a future commission arrangement for yourself and Mr. Darcey.”

Darcey’s name hits him like a slap. He says, “I think you’ve confused me with someone else.” He’s on the verge of being giddy with fear.

Mr. Estrada doesn’t react immediately. Then he stands, nods, and whispers, “I understand.” He takes a business card from his suitcoat pocket and slides it across the table toward Yuk Tang. He turns precisely and moves out of the lounge.

Yuk Tang takes the card. It’s white and blank. He flips it over. Hand-printed in tiny block letters, it reads: Belgrano 552-7263.

With persistence and careful planning, Darcey has used the past month to turn his day job into an intricate and compulsive game. He found this necessary because of the boredom factor inherent in the constant five-minute, twenty-mile-an-hour van runs between the various labs of the Foundation. There were start-up expenses right off the bat to get the game under way — a Discman and a huge assortment of CDs (mostly 1950s collections from the discount bins), some stationery supplies, and, though it really wasn’t necessary, a thick rock ’n’ roll encyclopedia.

Darcey makes thirty sweeps a day around the Foundation’s grounds. On the last sweep of his day, he often says, “Last call for the ovens,” and lets the doctors wonder. The doctors could easily walk the short route between the labs. The grounds are beautiful and there are paths lined by flowerbeds. But the shuttle van supposedly saves precious time and there was money allotted for it. Darcey’s not about to complain. He loves the job. He’s come to rely on the monotony. The monotony gave birth to his game and the game has come into its own. It has started to grow and expand and take advantage of a number of possibilities.

The game originally used a basic point system and three testing categories. Category One involved beginning and ending the short drive at five-minute intervals exactly, points being deducted for seconds off, either fast or slow. Category Two involved knowing the exact wording of all the lyrics on any given CD, picked at random from a paper bag. Darcey started with a Sam Cooke disc and got hooked, so he stayed with the artist for two weeks and called it pre-season exhibition. Category Three — Darcey’s personal favorite — involved how many times in a day he could speed off, just as a passenger was about to catch the shuttle. Last month he began awarding himself bonus points for random and spur-of-the-moment achievements. And lately, things have gotten completely out of hand. There are now subcategories and half-points, challenges that involve the Ford’s tire pressure and the number of miles driven per gallon of gas. The scoring has gotten algebraic. Days of the week and times of the day have new and complex meanings. Darcey has begun keeping the long and complicated scores and results and ratings in a fat, spiral notebook. At the end of his shift, he leaves it in the van under the driver’s seat.

Today, after he clears out everyone on the last stop at the ovens and spends a few minutes jotting down the scores from his last round, he pops Sam Cooke into the player and cranks the volume. He sings along to “Chain Gang” at the top of his lungs on the drive to the Foundation’s garage. He parks before the song is over and so leaves the motor idling while he and Sam Cooke finish out the number. Then he turns off the key and as he reaches around to lock the sliding back door, a man in the far back seat says, “Good afternoon, Mr. Darcey.”

Darcey’s arm smashes into the steering wheel and the horn sounds.

“Jesus Christ,” he yells.

The man is apologetic. He holds an arm out before him and says, “I’m sorry, I...,” but Darcey again says, “Jesus Christ.”

They sit in silence for a second and Darcey catches his breath and finally lifts his head and says, “You stupid bastard, you nearly gave me a goddamn heart attack.”

The man tries, “Again, I’m sorry,” his voice strange and calming.

Darcey’s angry and embarrassed. He says, “What the hell are you doing in here? I thought I dropped everyone at the ovens.”

“The ovens?” the man asks.

Darcey wipes at his face and begins to settle himself.

“Goddamn,” he says. “You almost took me out.”

They look at each other over the distance of the van. The man is dressed for rain in a heavy trench coat. It’s fully buttoned and he has the collar turned up. Darcey suddenly thinks that the guy might have fallen asleep. He decides to sit, look menacing, and wait for an explanation.

“I apologize for startling you,” the man says. He accents some of his words in the wrong places. “I thought it was in our mutual interest to speak alone. I had thought you might be expecting me. I’m Mr. Rochelle.”

Darcey stays quiet, looks out into the garage, and tries to think. Finally he says, “Yeah, well, I’m sorry I jumped. I was listening to the music. You spooked me.” He pauses and squints at Mr. Rochelle. “So, I’m locking up now.”

Rochelle gives no indication that he intends to leave the van. It’s as if he’s made it his home and he won’t be evicted. He says, “I have people who are extremely interested in a recent acquisition of yours.” He doesn’t appear angry, just intent.

Darcey thinks about jumping out of the van, but instead he says, “I’m afraid I don’t understand you. Do you want me to drive you back to the labs? Did you fall asleep?”

Mr. Rochelle looks confused. He glances down at his shoes and then back up at Darcey and says, “Mr. Darcey, are we not alone? Is there a problem?”

Darcey can’t help getting edgy. He says, “I think you’ve got the problem, friend. We don’t know each other.”

Mr. Rochelle breaks in with an easy “Of course not.”

Darcey says, “Well, I’ve got to go. You want to spend the night in the van, that’s fine with me.” He pulls up on the door handle. The ceiling light snaps on.

Mr. Rochelle doesn’t flinch. He stares at Darcey for a minute and then reaches into a coat pocket and removes something. His hands are so large they cover the entire object. Darcey feels a little nauseated. Mr. Rochelle looks into his hand at a note card or picture, then replaces it. He sighs and smiles and says, “Mr. Darcey, this is not professional behavior on your part. Please sit.”

Darcey closes the van door.

“Is this a problem with money, Mr. Darcey?” Mr. Rochelle asks. “You should know better than that. My people are not interested in bargains. They are not looking for a...” His eyes turn to the side as if he’ll spot the word he’s searching for out the window. They turn back on Darcey and he says, carefully, “flea market.”

He smiles, pleased with himself. “I’m sure you are aware of the extent to which they will go,” he says. “Within reason, of course.”

Darcey repeats, “Of course.”

Mr. Rochelle continues, “Very simply, my people mean to acquire, from you and Mr. Tang, the Bikaner volume you recently removed from Dr. Hawthorne’s residence.”

Darcey’s breath starts coming hard. He hates the idea that he and Yuk Tang have been mentioned in the same sentence. He’d bet both their lives that this has to do with that scumbag Scalley and his note in the Menard. And then he remembers the note. Word for word.

Goddamn Scalley, he thinks. And goddamn that phone-pager.

Darcey wants to leave, to be out of the van and the garage. Out of Quinsigamond. He says, “I have to discuss a few things with my partner.”

Mr. Rochelle sighs again, then says, “Very well,” and moves to the front of the van. He presses a small card into Darcey’s hand. He climbs out the side door and into the darkness of the garage.

Usher Drive is a cul-de-sac. It branches off from Cromwell and bends, like a short, twisted arm of civilization interrupting Kingstown Woods. Kingstown Woods is a well-tended preserve that borders Windsor Hills, ropes it off from everything around it, as if nature gave the Hill’s residents their own buffer zone as a gift.

Usher Drive is the most remote and isolated street in the Hills, but it’s still entirely part of Windsor. It fulfills all the requirements. For a house to be part of Windsor Hills, it has to have a certain privileged and stable look. The homes are all oversized Colonials. Solid brick, a lot of them with ivy running up the walls. Five bedrooms and up. Three-and four-car garages. Long and curving brick or flagstone walks and perfect lawns that roll into a lake of mulch.

Darcey and Yuk Tang wait in the rented Jaguar down below the Hills. Once they break over the line and drive up, that’s it — head for the job, hit it, and get out. Time, during Windsor Hills jobs, becomes even more of an important factor than it normally is. Time becomes everything.

They’ve left the MG behind, an unusual move and one that bothers Darcey. Though he doesn’t doubt the speed and performance of the Jaguar, he’s intimate with the MG. He knows how and when to push it. There’s a cushion of instinct when he has the MG. But, as Yuk Tang found out — and Darcey will admit it’s a worthy idea — Dr. Hawthorne’s out-of-town son drives an olive green Jaguar. An olive green Jaguar has parked often in the Hawthorne driveway, so it wouldn’t jar any neighbors’ eyes.

Darcey and Yuk Tang sit below the Hills, both wishing they were someplace else. They wish they were sitting on fat, foreign bank books and studying difficult languages on a beach with white sand. They’re having trouble concentrating. They’ve lost all the calmness that once came so naturally.

Yuk Tang did some checking with a few normally reliable people. He runs it down for Darcey: The guy’s a surgeon. Due for retirement. Comes from old money — his old man was a surgeon. Married forever. They’ve got one kid, a son, who’s doing a residency at Johns Hopkins. The old man’s got a houseful of awards. He’s a world traveler with a big interest in the Middle East. He’s tight about weird stuff — won’t eat in the better restaurants, wears the same clothes forever, and, bingo, the one that counts, won’t spend the money for an alarm system.

But there’s not a word about Dr. Hawthorne being any kind of collector. Even when Yuk Tang put out some dollars. Not a word about antiques, paintings, coins or stamps, wine. Nothing. So, they’re going in cold, no idea what to look for or where to start looking. That, combined with the time factor, does not make for an easy night. They know going in that they can’t be as neat and careful and professional as they’d like.

The Hawthorne house sits near the end of Usher. Because of the age of the houses in Windsor, the lots are only a half-acre. That doesn’t give them the best border protection. They’ll have to be frugal with noise and light. They’ve decided on mid-to-early evening, nine o’clock, because of the rented Jaguar/visiting-son angle.

The house is number six. Mid-sized. Brick with black shutters. A standard, moneyed Yankee estate. Darcey would’ve bet the owner was a doctor or a judge. Classy but subtle. A huge front door with a golden eagle above it. Fake “alarm protected” certificates pasted into the corners of the front windows. It’s like they put out a neon sign that they’re on vacation. Took a commuter-time ad on a popular radio station. There isn’t a light left on and the drapes are pulled tight across all the windows. The place looks like a tomb.

They pull slowly into the driveway and cut the engine. Yuk Tang moves into the entryway, takes a stack of banded mail out of the mailbox, and stands, easily and patiently shuffling through it. He wears latex gloves and tries to ignore the feeling they give him. Several letters have foreign postmarks, and on one the return address is in another language. Arabic, he thinks.

Darcey moves fast to the most hidden side of the house. He finds some good protection behind an out-of-control shrub. He cuts the screen out of the storm window frame and lays the mesh against the bush. He takes a diaper from beneath his jersey, lays it against the window. Takes a flashlight from his waist and smashes in the pane, then reaches in and up carefully and grabs the plastic alarm box that rests on the lip of the casing, He muffles the momentary honk against his body, then dumps the battery and box beneath the bush. He enters into the dining room, takes a breath, and calms himself and lets his eyes adjust to the darkness.

He finds his way to the living room and the front door, but tenses up when he discovers that it’s locked with a dead bolt. He can feel Yuk Tang’s nerves beginning to fray on the other side of the door. On instinct, Darcey lifts a cushion on a cane-back child’s chair, positioned by a coal rack to the side of the door. He finds the key, a thick Yale, turns off and removes the alarm box that’s hanging from the doorknob by a plastic strap, and lets Yuk Tang in.

They stare at each other in the dim foyer, both waiting for the other to flinch, to move back out the door and into the Jaguar. Finally, Yuk Tang looks to the floor and Darcey clears his throat. They’ve made a vague plan about splitting up once inside and taking different rooms, but now the plan seems useless.

“All right, let’s get at it,” says Darcey, and Yuk Tang moves instantly out of the room and up the stairs in the hallway. Darcey thinks Yuk Tang is being a fool. Instinct tells him that they’ll find what they’re after on the first floor of the house. He steps into the living room and snaps on a dim light on a side table by a huge leather chair. He guesses the bulb is about forty watts and laughs to himself at cheap Doc Hawthorne. He imagines the old surgeon suddenly at a desk somewhere in the house, scribbling on the backs of grocery lists his wife tried to throw out, squinting under the forty watts of illumination and figuring how many gall bladders or tonsils he has to chop out to equal the year’s electric bill.

Trying not to think about what he’s doing, Darcey eases himself into the leather chair. He sits back and lifts his legs onto the matching ottoman. It’s a comfortable chair. He could sleep or eat in it. He can hear Yuk Tang upstairs going through drawers. He knows he should be up and moving, thinking on his feet, but he tells himself this is a new approach. He’ll sit and think about the best single place to look for specialty items. He doesn’t care that his new approach is most likely brought on by panic or that he hasn’t felt panic on a job, even in the worst of situations, in five or six years.

He loves the leather chair and regrets that he can’t take it with him. He can picture the perfect spot in his apartment for it. Something made of glass falls and breaks upstairs and Darcey knows Yuk Tang is just as rattled.

Darcey takes a long look around the room. Everything appears normal. There’s a fireplace, sofa, framed portraits, floor lamps, small tables covered with bells and photographs and small crystal figurines. There’s a small upright piano across the room, pushed against a wall, and Darcey would bet that no one in the house can play it well. There are dozens of things, right here around him, in easy reach, that he could pocket and turn over in a day. But none of them are what he came for.

He wonders if he could live here. In Doc Hawthorne’s house. He wonders what it feels like to be Doc Hawthorne’s son. Does the kid call the old man up and ask technical questions about tough cases? He can picture them, the cheap bastards, both sitting in dark rooms, late in the evening when the rates are low, talking about people they’ve cut open and the things they’ve found inside.

The thought pumps Darcey up. He pulls himself out of the chair and bounces on the balls of his feet, looking around the room. He takes a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, opens a blade, and slashes across the seat of the chair. He’s never done anything like this on a job. He’s never even tracked mud into a house or dropped a cigarette. He feels flighty and unsure of himself. He hops up and down in place, tosses the army knife up and down in his hand. He turns and spits on a family portrait hanging on the wall. He picks up two figurines and smacks them together like cars on a wet highway. On an end table he finds a pair of reading glasses and tries them on. The room seems to bend. He takes them off, squats, and places them on the carpet, then stomps, shatters the glass, snaps the arms, grinds the mess under the toe of his boot.

He waits to hear Yuk Tang’s voice from upstairs, but he hears only movement, drawers being opened, things hitting the floor. Darcey walks to the piano and opens the key cover, sits on the stool as if he were about to play. He looks over the keys, then barely rests some fingers on them. No note sounds. He thinks about pressing down on the keys again, but hesitates. And then a thought hits him. He gets up from the stool and moves to the side of the piano. He tries to raise the top to look in, but it won’t budge. When he tries again, harder, his side of the piano swings away from the wall. The opposite side is hinged to the wall, making the entire thing a huge, bulky door.

Darcey puts his hand over his mouth and tries to think. What he wants to do is to grab Yuk Tang and start driving south. Secondary highways. Drive-through food. Dump the Jaguar in some thick southern forest, and pick up something common but fast. For reasons he doesn’t understand just now, he’d like to get hold of Scalley and break all of his straight new teeth.

Behind the piano is a hole in the wall. There’s imitation walnut molding that makes it look like a weird low window frame. It’s roughly three feet by three feet and it’s too dark to see what’s on the other side.

Darcey feels as if time is slipping away from him. He feels incapable of making small decisions. Suddenly, he can’t recall the layout of the downstairs of the house. Wasn’t there an open hallway on the other side of the living room wall? It’s like his brain is punishing him for lack of sleep. He would bet serious dollars that specially items are through this door, this window. He wishes there were a stranger here to give him direction. He wishes Mr. Rochelle would speak to him harshly. Throw money at him and order him through the hole.

And, as if he has received orders, he scrambles. He throws himself, off balance, onto the floor and through the opening. As if he were diving into freezing waters and couldn’t get an idea of depth. He stays on his hands and knees, wishing his heart would stop racing, but it’s no use. He’s so aware of the possibilities that lie in the next few minutes that there’s no chance of keeping calm and unimpressed. The trick here, he thinks, might be to avoid any extensive thought, to operate like some determined animal or tremendously reliable machine. The trick, most likely, is to avoid thinking about why or how he has come to be in this position.

He pulls his flashlight from his pocket and thumbs it on.

He sees books.

He is in a small compartment, a vault maybe, loaded with books. He shoots the light up and down the walls rapidly and sees shelf after shelf of books. His breath comes slowly as he turns, on his knees, in a circle. The room is about a six-by-six square box, lined on all sides by thick metal shelves. And the shelves are completely covered. Volume after volume. Most of them look very old and the words that he sees on some spines are written in foreign languages. He expects to smell a musty odor but there’s none. He moves into a sitting position and stays still, his legs tucked in as if he were about to meditate.

He knows he should get Yuk Tang but decides against it. He looks around trying to get comfortable with the vault, trying to notice as much as possible. Beyond books, there are a few other items: a golden bowl, or at least a bowl that once looked gold but now is tarnished and junky. It’s filled with letters and postcards and a magnifying glass. His flashlight reflects back at him and his heart pounds and when he follows the beam to a corner where the wall meets the ceiling, he sees a tiny window, no bigger than a half-dollar, and round. He stands carefully to look. The ceiling is only an inch or two above his head. The round thick pane has a syrupy look to it. Darcey puts his eye to the glass and can see the night sky, stars and light from the moon.

He knows he’s going to have to decide what to take soon and this bothers him. How can he know? He sits again in front of the gold bowl and notices, for the first time, candles on either side of it, secured in elaborate gold candlesticks. Automatically, he pulls out a butane lighter from his pocket and sparks the candles. The vault gets brighter. He starts to relax a little, then is startled by the idea of flames so close to all these books. But he can’t bring himself to blow out the candles.

He stares without really focusing at a wall of books. Darcey would never describe himself as a reader to anyone. Now and then he goes on a binge with the crossword puzzle books, tears through them with no problem, word after word and page after page. And occasionally he’ll read one of those Louis L’Amour westerns. Sometimes, a mystery. Espionage stuff. A fact that Darcey understands now is that he has never thought a great deal about books. He has never considered them a movable properly. He always thought stamps and wine were as weird as it got.

He reaches to a close shelf and starts taking down volumes and piling them next to his legs. They’re all heavy. Much heavier than he’d have bet. They don’t feel like normal books that he sees around. There are no illustrations on the covers. No pictures of the authors on the back. The bindings are all smooth and cold as if the vault were a refrigerator. He picks the books up, holds them, runs his hands over them, and reads the titles, when he can, off the spines.

There are two short, slim white volumes — Vortigern and Rowena and Henry II. There’s a pamphlet sealed in plastic called The Diagnosis and Treatment of Bibliophagia. Darcey thinks about breaking open the seal and taking a look. He thinks there’d be some great pictures in that one. He picks up The Courier’s Tragedy and Other Jacobean Revenge Plays and puts it down. Glances at More Astronomical Studies, R. A. Loke & S. John Herschel; Rappaccini’s Other Daughter by Auberpiner; The Life and Death of Og of Bason; Recipes and Cocktails for a New State by Ernst Toller. His eyes linger on Travels in North America: Quinsigamond by Chesterton, then he throws it to the side. He pulls a thick and tall volume called A History of Bitic Literature, Vol. 1, into his lap. He judges its weight and lets it slide to the floor. He tosses on top of it The Babel Catalogue: Argentina Ed., 1899. He breathes deeply and feels confused and nauseated.

Darcey can find no order or category to the books. They’re published in different years, in different languages. There are plays and medical texts, histories and cookbooks, atlases and bibles. He begins to have hateful and destructive thoughts. Like torching this goddamn vault. Torching Doc Hawthorne’s whole house. Driving the rented Jaguar off the Havelock Cliffs. Maybe with Yuk Tang locked in the trunk.

He decides to pocket the magnifying glass that’s in the gold bowl. As he reaches for it, he notices, underneath the thick stack of bulging envelopes, the top of a package wrapped in brown paper. He pulls it out. It looks like a large brown brick. It’s addressed to Doc Hawthorne and it hasn’t been opened. Darcey rips off layers of brown wrapper. He pulls and tears at the paper, getting frustrated and tense, but finally uncovering a book. Another book. It’s old, not in great shape, and bound in cloth. The front is blank, but on the spine are the words Holy Writ and beneath them, Bombay.

Darcey’s not sure why he’s excited. He moves closer to the two candles and licks his lips. As he begins to open the volume, a cough explodes behind him and his heart and lungs collapse for a second. He falls to the side and awkwardly turns his body. The book stays in his hand, shaking.

In front of him, in the opening to the vault, shoulders hunched and on his knees, is Yuk Tang. Darcey has lost his voice. Yuk Tang lets his head fall to the side and in the dim light, Darcey gets a better look: Yuk Tang’s face is completely made up. He looks like a rodeo clown. He has on lipstick, rouge, mascara, false eyelashes. There are long, dangling diamond earrings hanging from his earlobes and around his shoulders is some kind of fur stole.

Yuk Tang leans into the vault. Darcey begins to rise and Yuk Tang swings his arm forward and catches Darcey solidly above the eye. Darcey falls backward. He has no idea what has hit him. Something heavy and metal. A wide and fast stream of blood is making its way from Darcey’s skull down his face. He tries to move and falls back against a shelf of books. He watches with one eye as Yuk Tang withdraws from the vault. The light from the living room closes out and he hears a metallic click as the piano comes flush against the wall.

Now two streams of blood make their way in a slow race down Darcey’s right cheek and past the corner of his mouth. His tongue comes out and licks at his own blood, hesitantly at first, and then furiously. The tongue twists and stabs, trying for the thick lines of red. There is an ache that takes over his skull, obliterates everything else for a time, and then eases off, leaves just a dizzying and constant echo of pain and confusion. Darcey thinks he hears his own voice and gets startled, sits up to listen, but gets dizzy and falls back to the floor.

He rests his head against books and time goes by. He dozes and wakes, dreams quickly and mumbles to himself. His eyes blink open and closed, one continually bathed in a fresh wash of blood. He has confusing, rapidly changing nightmares: Yuk Tang and Darcey, buried alive in a cave. Yuk Tang and Darcey buried alive in a rented, olive green Jaguar. Buried alive in the Menard Diner, an earthquake or avalanche throwing walls of mud and rock up on the roof and against the stained glass windows, sealing them in. And himself, alone and helpless, all energy run out a hole in his body, being carried into a raging ocean in the arms of George Lewis, carried like a sleeping child into deafening surf, and the ocean changes form, becomes a heaving sea of books, encyclopedias and dictionaries, ebbing and banking, swallowing broken Darcey under an endless wave.

His good eye opens then closes. It opens again. He forces vision. The vault seems to be getting darker, the flame from the candles seems to be shrinking, flickering. He looks up the wall of books opposite him, to the half-dollar window in the corner, and he thinks he sees blue and white lights revolving, lighting the circle of sky and then leaving it.

He would bet something will happen soon. In his lap is the Holy Writ from Bombay. He opens the cover and several pages slide under his fingers. He tilts his head and tries to focus his eye and makes a ridiculous effort to read. An almost perfect way of killing time.