The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

Stuart M. Kaminsky The Shooting of John Roy Worth

From Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Wally Czerbiak was sane. At least he was as sane as Monty Vitalle, who stood behind the second of three chairs at The Clean Cut barbershop, five dollars for a haircut, three barbers, no waiting. But sometimes there were only two barbers. Sometimes only one. Actually, there was usually only one, Monty. It didn’t matter. There was never much of a wait, if any, at The Clean Cut.

Wally listened to Monty talk as Monty cut his hair. Monty was a throwback. He had seen barbers in movies, old movies where the barber just talks and talks. That was a major reason Monty had become a barber. He liked to talk about anything. Baseball, the market, the latest gossip about drug abuse by some million-million-dollar basketball player, Rhoda Brian’s stomach stapling.

Wally just sat and listened. Songs ran through his head, background music that fit the scene. For Wally, the major factor in his becoming a sign painter was that his father was a sign painter till arthritis crippled him and he turned over his brushes and paints to Wally. Wally had a natural talent, and it was easier to just paint signs than do what was necessary to become a doctor or something. The fact was that Wally couldn’t think fast on his feet. School had always been a puzzle he couldn’t solve, a game whose rules he could never learn.

Besides, Wally was proud of some of his work, the real challenges, like the sign he did a few months ago, black letters on yellow, Old English: piece of cake, with a picture Wally drew of a cake with white icing in a flowing, delicate pattern.

The cake was vanilla with cherries inside. You couldn’t tell that by looking at the sign, but Wally knew it. It was important to him to know things like that so he could make the cake look real. Without knowing what was inside, it was just a hollow shell.

Sometimes Wally felt like a hollow shell. When that happened, he quickly filled the shell with food. He was thinking of a Big Mac while Monty kept talking. He was thinking of a Big Mac and how he would kill John Roy Worth.

“You understand?” Monty said.

Monty looked like a twig, a bald twig with wide brown suspenders. Monty had blue eyes and peppermint breath. He popped Certs like Wally’s cousin Kenneth had popped uppers back in the 1980s, when they were kids.

“Yes,” said Wally, looking at himself in the mirror, watching the hair fall in ringlets as Monty cut and talked, narrow knobby shoulders huddled, holding today’s suspenders. The Clean Cut was old, ceiling a patterned tin, floor white tile with cracks that ran like meandering rivers, walls covered in paper with repeating pictures of ancient airplanes. Monty was alone today. The other barber chairs sat empty, and only Mr. Rosenberg, who lived in the Garden Gables Assisted Living facility, sat waiting. Mr. Rosenberg had been driven by the bus from the Garden Gables. It would be back for him in an hour. Mr. Rosenberg didn’t care if it was five hours. He liked the smell of the barbershop. He liked fingering the curled edges of the magazines that flopped on the small table next to him. He liked listening to Monty and throwing in an observation when he could.

“So, it’s a miracle,” Monty said. “All this.”

He paused to wave his comb and point it around the shop. Wally could see him in the mirror.

“You gotta think about it, Wally,” he went on. “People were on the earth with nothing, nothing at all, nothing at all. Just people and the earth and the animals and whatever was growing. And they made from it houses and cars and computers and cake mixers.”

“And streets and telephones and airplanes,” said Mr. Rosenberg.

“I’m going to shoot someone today,” said Wally softly, looking at the elegant letters painted on the window more than forty years ago by his father, saying this, indeed, was The Clean Cut Barbershop.

“That a fact?” said Monty. “Something eating you?”

“No, nothing special. It’s just the day I’m going to shoot someone,” said Wally again, very softly, calmly, looking in the mirror to be sure Monty was cutting his hair just the way he liked it, not too short. Too short and his face looked like a balloon, like John Candy.

“You got to kill somebody, kill Dwight Spenser,” said Mr. Rosenberg. “No loss there. You gotta kill somebody, kill Spenser, get it out of your system, rid the world of an anti-Semite.”

“I don’t know Spenser,” said Wally.

“Room next to mine,” said Rosenberg. “Must be a hundred years old. God’s keeping him alive to punish those around him who’ve screwed up their lives. I’m eighty-six. He’ll outlive me. The bad die ancient. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying,” said Wally. “But I’ve got to kill someone important.”

“Like who?” asked Rosenberg. “Who’s important in Bardo?”

“John Roy Worth,” said Wally.

“And that’s who?” asked Rosenberg.

“Country singer,” said Monty dreamily, still thinking about the miracle of the world, the wonders of a comb, the marvel of the scissors in his hand. “Born and grew up right here in Bardo. Mother and father still here. Won the Grammy last year for singing something about dirty women. He in town?”

“‘Hard-Drinking Woman,”‘ Wally said. “Youngest country-and-western singer to win a Grammy. Yes, he’s in town.”

“Done,” said Monty, sweeping the sheet out from under Wally’s chin so that the hairs on it floated neatly to the floor like snowfall in a glass bulb. Monty twirled the sheet like a toreador and laid it neatly in one movement on the empty barber chair next to him. It was Monty’s trademark. That little move.

Wally got out of the chair. He always gave Monty a dollar tip. Monty always said, “Thank you kindly, Mr. Czerbiak, sir.”

He did this time too. Rosenberg had put down the magazine and was walking slowly, stoop-shouldered, toward the chair. He looked like a gnome with a secret. Rosenberg had perfected the knowing look to hide his basic lack of intelligence.

Such, thought Wally, is the way of the world.

“You got a gun?” asked Monty, wrapping the cloth around Rosenberg’s wrinkled neck.

“Yeah,” said Wally as he went out the door and onto Fourth Street. The gun in his pocket belonged to his father. Kept it loaded in a drawer in the shop.

And this is what John Roy Worth was doing in Bardo, Texas. He was visiting his father and mother. He came back when he was in the area. He brought them something they didn’t need or want whenever he made his brief visits. John Roy’s mother and father always acted pleased to get the modern-looking lamp or new television to replace their new television. John Roy never stayed long, an hour or two at the most. He was always in a hurry, had someplace to go. John Roy’s mother had come to expect this.

“Go, Johnny,” she would say. “I know you’re busy. We’re proud of you.”

“Very proud,” John Roy’s father, Lee, would say with a smile he didn’t mean, happy that his son, who had dyed his hair and wore an earring and a cowboy hat, would be out of his life. Lee was a cop, retired. Sheriff’s office. He couldn’t carry a tune. Neither could his wife, and Lee didn’t think their son John Roy did an awful goddamn good job of it, either. Besides, Lee could tell from his breath that John Roy had been smoking. The smell was also on his son’s clothes. He was glad when John Roy, named for his mother’s father, was gone, back on the television and the radio and the tapes, where he could be turned off.

It was toward the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Worth that Wally, clean-shaven, freshly cut hair, determined look on his face, headed. He walked. He could have taken his car. He had a 1997 Geo Prizm. It was blue. He kept it in good condition, but didn’t have much of anywhere to drive it.

He didn’t need his car. Not today. He was going to shoot John Roy Worth with the gun in his pocket and then wait for the police. There might be someone with John Roy. He would shoot him or her or them too. He might have to shoot John Roy three or four or more times. There were enough bullets in the gun. He wanted to be sure. He didn’t want to be the man who tried to kill the sort-of-famous John Roy Worth. He wanted to be the man who killed the celebrity.

He walked. Nice sunny day. Slight breeze. Crows cawing somewhere but he couldn’t see them. The streets were almost empty. He was just turning into the driveway of the Fair Breeze Condos on Second Street. A lady came out of the doorway, putting on white gloves as she walked toward him with a smile. She was a friend of Wally’s mother. Her name was Stella Armstrong.

“Wally,” she said.

“Mrs. Armstrong.”

“You visiting someone?”

“No,” he said. “I’m here to shoot John Roy Worth.”

Mrs. Armstrong thought Wally meant he was going to take the singer’s photograph. He wasn’t carrying a camera, but they were so small nowadays that you could carry one in your pocket. Wally was a painter, not a photographer, but maybe, Mrs. Armstrong thought, he took photographs and then went back and painted pictures from them — not that she recalled any paintings of real people Wally had ever done.

“Got to get to an appointment with my doctor,” she said apologetically. “I’ve got a thing on my back. Down here, you see? My best to your mother.”

Wally nodded and smiled at her as she passed him. She smelled like lilacs.

Now, if someone were to ask Wally why he wanted to kill John Roy Worth, he would have had an answer. He would have had a different answer for whoever asked the question. He had a list of answers in his head depending on the questioner and when they asked him. He wondered what, if anything, he would tell the police. He was curious about how the system would work once he was under arrest. He looked forward to being questioned, talking to a lawyer, getting a uniform, lying on a cell cot, going to trial. He would definitely plead “not guilty.” No plea-bargaining. What was the point in plea-bargaining when part of the point was seeing himself on trial?

He tried to hum “Hard-Drinking Woman” as he nodded at Richie Stawn, who manned the desk, wore a uniform, and was responsible for security. Richie liked his uniform, his job. Gave him plenty of time to write poetry. He had given a lot of it to John Roy Worth when the famous singer came to see his parents in Apartment 4G. John Roy had always taken the ring binder filled with what Richie was certain, or at least hoped, were lyrics for a big hit.

“Who you going to see, Wally?” Richie asked.

“Going to shoot John Roy Worth.”

“Little camera?”

“Yes,” said Wally, thinking only now that he should have brought a camera or something. He had not considered the possibility that people would think what he meant by shooting was something quite different.

Richie had been three years ahead of Wally at Lyndon Johnson High. They hadn’t been friends. They hadn’t been enemies. All they shared was the fact that neither participated in anything at school. Not football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, the photo club, the collectors club, the herpetology club, the Young Republicans, nothing. Wally had painted all the signs for school dances, elections, meetings, none of which he attended. Everything he had created had been thrown away or washed away by wind, rain, and time. All these years since he barely graduated, Wally had continued to do the signs for homecomings, graduation, the town’s annual Founder’s Day, the Prairie Flower Festival.

Reasons, Wally thought as he waited for the elevator, reasons he could have given had he been asked about what he planned to do in a few minutes:

John Roy Worth had been against the war with Iraq. He was unpatriotic.

John Roy Worth had done nothing for the very town in which he was born.

John Roy Worth took the Lord’s name in vain in his songs.

John Roy Worth fornicated.

John Roy Worth was planning something big and evil. Wally wasn’t sure what it was, but it was clearly spelled out in his songs.

John Roy Worth had one of those smug I’m-a-star faces that let you know he thought you were a dust mite and he knew something funny and embarrassing about you.

John Roy Worth’s death would make Wally famous for a little while. He’d be interviewed by Diane Sawyer just before the weather on Good, Morning America.

John Roy Worth’s death would put Wally in prison forever and he’d never have to make another decision again about much of anything. Maybe they’d let him paint signs till the arthritis got him the way it had gotten his father. Did they need someone to paint signs in prison?

These were all reasons he might give. One or two of them might even be right, or maybe not.

“Worths expecting you, Wally?” asked Richie.

“No.”

“Gotta call them up, then,” he said with a deep sigh, as if the sigh were a major task.

The elevator doors opened while Richie was dialing. Out stepped John Roy Worth. He was wearing a cowboy hat, nice tan one with a black band and a tiny feather. His face was shaved clean, a concession to his parents, because when he did his videos or TV appearances John Roy always looked like he needed a shave.

He was also wearing clean, new-looking jeans and a Dallas Cowboys shirt, not the T kind but a white one with a collar and just a little Dallas Cowboys insignia on the pocket.

He was smoking, looked deep in thought, didn’t see Richie or Wally. He walked past them toward the door.

“Mr. Worth,” Richie called.

John Roy paused and turned, his mind still somewhere, maybe upstairs with his parents, maybe in some studio in Nashville or in bed with some girl. He looked at Richie.

“Wally wants to shoot you,” Richie said. “That all right?”

John Roy Worth looked at Wally, head to foot, maybe recognizing something.

“Shoot me?”

“Picture, photograph, you know,” Richie explained.

Wally’s hand was in his pocket. The gun felt surprisingly warm. He imagined, tasted gunmetal in his mouth, on his tongue.

“Wally Czerbiak?” asked John Roy, taking a step toward Wally.

Wally nodded.

“You painted the horse on the sidewalk in front of Lyndon Johnson High for the homecoming when I graduated.”

“Yeah,” said Wally.

John Roy smiled. “Great horse. Forgot about that till just now. Funny how you forget things and they just come back.”

“I’ve got a poem about a horse,” Richie lied. “I can get it to you at the hotel before you leave.”

John Roy wasn’t listening.

“You still painting?” John Roy asked, taking a deep drag on his cigarette.

“Signs,” said Wally.

“That horse,” John Roy said, looking up at the ceiling, maybe trying to see the horse. “All white and wide-eyed. It had wings or a horn on its head or something.”

“Both,” said Wally. “A flying unicorn.”

“Flying unicorn,” John Roy repeated almost to himself.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Richie lied again. “My poem is about a white flying unicorn.”

“It’d make a good album cover,” John Roy said, looking at Wally. “I could write a song about homecoming, that horse, Connie Appleton, but I wouldn’t use her name. You know.”

Richie sighed. He wasn’t getting through. He knew it. He was doomed to his uniform.

“You got a card?” John Roy asked.

“No,” said Wally.

‘Well, you can write your name and number down for me and I’ll have someone call you.”

“You’d forget,” said Wally. “You’d shove it in your pocket and forget and five months from now you’d forget why you wrote my name and number and throw it away.”

John Roy adjusted his cowboy hat and grinned.

“You may be right, but don’t count on it. You want to take my picture?”

“No,” said Wally, taking the gun out of his pocket and aiming it at the singer.

“Wally,” Richie cried out from behind the desk.

John Roy Worth looked at the gun and lost his grin.

“Hold it, Wally. I’ve got about five hundred dollars in my wallet. I’ll just pull it out and hand it over. Put the gun away and we’ll call it a loan, no, a first payment for the flying-horse album cover.”

“Not about money,” said Wally. “I’ve got eleven thousand, four hundred and six dollars in savings at First Farmers.”

“I do something to you?” asked John Roy. “I mean, you got a grudge, something? I knock up your sister or cousin or something, insult you or your family? Hell, I was a kid.”

“You’re everybody,” Wally said as John Roy started to raise his arms, though no one had asked him to.

John Roy glanced at Richie for help. Richie had none.

The idea had just come to Wally. Right out of the blue nowhere. John Roy Worth was everybody. John Roy Worth wasn’t just a country singer who used to live in Bardo, Texas. John Roy was Texas, was the United States, was the world. The world had 110 meaning. That’s what had started Wally down this gun-weighted road. It was all made up. All a story people told each other to make them forget they were going to die and the world was going to blow up or blow away or freeze or burn someday.

Maybe Monty had said something like this once and the idea had just slept all curled up inside him and woke up just now wondering what was going on.

Wally was going to be a shooting star. He was going to be a bright light for a few seconds. He was going to shoot a star. He was going to be a star. It was that or just keep painting signs till his fingers got too much arthritis like his father’s had and then he’d live alone in the house and watch television with his mother and father and eat cereal with freeze-dried fruit in it that got soggy when you added milk.

Richie said, “Wally, no.”

Wally pulled the trigger. He was no more than a dozen feet from John Roy Worth, but he had never fired a gun before and missed, shattering the window behind the man who had written and sung “Hard-Drinking Woman.”

Then, in that little snip of an instant that hardly covered any real time and seemed like a dream, Wally saw the young cowboy drop to the floor and pull something out of his pocket.

Wally was going to fire again. Maybe he did. He didn’t remember. The thump on his chest like someone jabbing him to make a point pushed him back a step. Then something stuck in his throat the way a big vitamin pill did sometimes. He dropped to his knees and felt like coughing and sneezing at the same time. And then Wally fell forward on his face into shattered glass from the window.

The gun was no longer in his hand. Nothing was in his hand. His head was to his left side. He could see shards and bits of glass forming some kind of figure. He imagined chance or God or his own imagination was starting to make a stained-glass window. A flying white horse?

Someone turned him over. He looked up at John Roy Worth, who held a little gun in his hand. John Roy was shouting, “Call the police!”

Wally wanted to talk but words wouldn’t come.

“You crazy son of a bitch,” John Roy said.

Somewhere far away, maybe as far as Houston, Richie was talking to someone on the phone.

“Hero,” Wally gasped, and choked.

John Roy brushed some shards of glass from Wally’s face.

“You’re no hero,” said John Roy. “Just be quiet. Police are coming.”

“No,” said Wally. “You. You’re the hero. Shot it out with a crazy sign painter. Beat him to the draw. All over the news. That gun registered?”

John Roy nodded and tilted his cowboy hat back like Roy Rogers or James Garner.

Wally wanted to say something else. Me wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t matter because he could no longer speak. He closed his eyes. John Roy lifted Wally’s head and Wally suddenly, vividly saw the flying white unicorn and John Roy Worth astride it, cowboy hat in one hand, horse bucking in the clouds.

Someone was breathing into his mouth. John Roy was trying to keep him alive. Hero.

It was then that Wally Czerbiak decided not to die. And he didn’t.