The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

C. J. Box Pirates of Yellowstone

From Meeting Across the River

It was cold in Yellowstone Park in early June, and dirty tongues of snow glowed light blue in the timber from the moonlight. The tires of the van hissed by on the road.

“Look,” Vladdy said to Eddie, gesturing out the window at the ghostly forms emerging in the meadow, “elks.”

“I see ‘em every night,” the driver said. “They like to eat the willows. And you don’t say ‘elks.’ You say ‘elk.’ Like in ‘a herd of elk.’”

“My pardon,” Vladdy said, self-conscious.

The driver of the van was going from Mammoth Hot Springs in the northern part of the park to Cody, Wyoming, out the east entrance. He had told them he had to pick up some people at the Cody airport early in the morning and deliver them to a dude ranch. The driver was one of those middle-aged Americans who dressed and acted like it was 1968, Vladdy thought.

The driver thought he was cool, giving a ride to Vladdy and Eddie, who obviously looked cold and out of place and carried a thick metal briefcase and nothing else. The driver had long curly hair on the side of his head with a huge mustache that was turning gray. He had agreed to give them a ride after they waved him down on the side of the road. The driver lit up a marijuana cigarette and offered it to them as he drove. Eddie accepted. Vladdy declined. He wanted to keep his head clear for what was going to happen when they crossed the huge park and came out through the tunnels and crossed the river. Vladdy had not done business in America yet, and he knew that Americans could be tough and ruthless in business. It was one of the qualities that had attracted Vladdy in the first place.

“Don’t get too high,” Vladdy told Eddie in Czech.

“I won’t,” Eddie said back. “I’m just a little scared, if that’s all right with you. This helps.”

“I wish you wouldn’t wear that hat,” Vladdy said. “You don’t look professional.”

“I look like Marshall Mathers, I think. Slim Shady,” Eddie said, touching the stocking cap that was pulled over his eyebrows. He sounded a little hurt.

“Hey, dudes,” the driver said over his shoulder to his passengers in the back seat, “speak American or I’m dropping you off on the side of the road. Deal?”

“Of course,” Vladdy said, “we have deal.”

“You going to tell me what’s in the briefcase?” The driver asked, smiling to show that he wasn’t making a threat.

“No, I think not,” Vladdy said.

Vladimir and Eduard were branded “Vladdy” and “Eddie” by the man in the human resources office for Yellowstone in Gardiner, Montana, when they showed up to apply for work three weeks before and were told that there were no job openings. Vladdy had explained that there must have been some kind of mix-up, some kind of misunderstanding, because they had been assured by the agent in Prague that both of them had been accepted to work for the official park concessionaire for the whole summer and into the fall. Vladdy showed the paperwork that allowed them to work on a visa for six months.

Yellowstone, like a microcosm of America, was a place of wonders, and it sought Eastern Europeans to work making beds, washing dishes, and cleaning out the muck from the trail horses, jobs that American workers didn’t want or need. Many Czechs Vladdy and Eddie knew had come here, and some had stayed. It was good work in a fantastic place, “a setting from a dream of nature,” as Vladdy put it. But the man at human resources said he was sorry, that they were overstaffed, and that there was nothing he could do until somebody quit and a slot opened up. Even if that happened, the non-hiring man said, there were people on the list in front of them.

Vladdy had explained in his almost-perfect English, he thought, that he and Eddie didn’t have the money to go back. In fact, he told the man, they didn’t even have the money for a room to wait in. What they had was on their backs — cracked black leather jackets, ill-fitting clothes, street shoes. Eddie wore the stocking cap because he liked Eminem, but Vladdy preferred his slicked-back hair look. They looked nothing like the other young people their age they saw in the office and on the streets.

“Keep in touch,” the hiring man had told Vladdy. “Check back every few days.”

“I can’t even buy cigarettes,” Vladdy had pleaded.

The man felt sorry for them and gave them a twenty-dollar bill out of his own wallet.

“I told you we should have gone to Detroit,” Eddie said to Vladdy in Czech.

Vladdy pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the van window as they drove. The metal briefcase was on the floor, between his legs.

He had not yet seen the whole park since he had been here, and it was something he very much wanted to do. He had read about the place since he was young and watched documentaries on it on television. He knew there were three kinds of thermal activity: geysers, mud pots, and fumaroles. He knew there were over ten thousand places where the molten core of the earth broke through the thin crust. He knew that the park was the home of bison, elk, mountain sheep, and many fishes. People from all over the world came here to see it, smell it, feel it. Vladdy was still outside of it, though, looking in, like Yellowstone Park was still on a television show and not right in front of him. He wouldn’t allow himself to become a part of this place yet. That would come later.

Eddie was talking to the driver, talking too much, Vladdy thought. Eddie’s English was very poor. It was embarrassing. Eddie was telling the driver about Prague, about the beautiful women there. The driver said he always wanted to go to Prague. Eddie tried to describe the buildings but was doing a bad job of it.

“I don’t care about buildings,” the driver said. “Tell me about the women.”

The girl, Cherry, would be angry with him at first, Vladdy knew that. While she was at work at the motel that day, Vladdy had sold her good stereo and DVD unit to a man in a pawn shop full of rifles for $115, less $90 for a .22 pistol with a broken handgrip. But when she found out why he had done it, he was sure she would come around. The whole thing was kind of her idea in the first place, after all.

Vladdy and Eddie had spent that first unhappy day after meeting the non-hiring man in a place called K-Bar Pizza in Gardiner, Montana. They sat at a round table and were so close to the human resources building that when the door to the K-Bar opened they could see it out there. Vladdy had placed the twenty-dollar bill on the table and ordered two tap beers, which they both agreed were awful. Then they ordered a Budweiser, which was nothing like the Czechoslovakian Budweiser, and they laughed about that. Cherry was their waitress. She told Vladdy she was from Kansas, some place like that. He could tell she was uncomfortable with herself, with her appearance, because she was a little fat and had a crooked face. She told Vladdy she was divorced, with a kid, and she worked at the K-Bar to supplement her income. She also had a job at a motel, servicing rooms. He could tell she was flattered by his attention, by his leather jacket, his hair, his smile, his accent. Sometimes women reacted this way to him, and he appreciated it. He didn’t know if his looks would work in America, and he still didn’t know. But they worked in Gardiner, Montana. Vladdy knew he had found a friend when she let them keep ordering even though the twenty dollars was spent, and she didn’t discourage them from staying until her shift was over.

Cherry led them down the steep, cracked sidewalks and down an alley to an old building backed up to the edge of a canyon. Vladdy looked around as he followed. He didn’t understand Gardiner. In every direction he looked, he could see only space. Mountains, bare hillsides, an empty valley going north, under the biggest sky he had ever seen. Yet Gardiner was packed together. Houses almost touched houses, windows opened up to other windows. It was like a tiny island in an ocean of... nothing. Vladdy decided he would find out about this.

She made them stand in the hallway while she went in to check to make sure her little boy was in bed, then she let them sleep in the front room of her two-bedroom apartment. That first night, Vladdy waited until Eddie was snoring and then he padded across the linoleum floor in his bare feet and opened Cherry’s bedroom door. She was pretending she was asleep, and he said nothing, just stood there in his underwear.

“What do you want?” Cherry asked him sleepily.

“I want to pleasure you,” he whispered.

“Don’t turn on the light,” she said. “I don’t want you to look at me.”

Afterward, in the dark, Vladdy could hear the furious river below them in the canyon. It sounded so raw, like an angry young river trying to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up.

While Eddie and Vladdy checked back with the non-hiring man every morning, Vladdy tried to help out around the house since he had no money for rent. He tried to fix the dripping faucet but couldn’t find any tools in the apartment besides an old pair of pliers and something cheap designed to slice potatoes. He mopped the floors, though, and washed her windows. He fixed her leaking toilet with the pliers. While he did this, Eddie sat on the couch and watched television, MTV mostly. Cherry’s kid, Tony, sat with Eddie and watched and wouldn’t even change out of his pajamas and get dressed unless Vladdy told him to do so.

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

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

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

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

And with that, Bob went into the building.

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

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

Vladdy was confused.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is this bio pirate?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Settling in?” Vladdy asked, not understanding.

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

“I understand,” Vladdy said.

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

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

“You bet,” he said.

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

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

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

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

Vladdy poured the last of the Jack Daniel’s that Cherry had stolen into a water glass and drank most of it. He waited until the burn developed in his throat before he dialed.

“What?” Bob answered. Vladdy pictured Bob sitting at a table in the K-Bar. He wondered if Cherry was watching.

“I have an important briefcase, full of water samples,” Vladdy said, trying to keep his voice deep and level. “I found it in your flat.”

“Who in the hell are vow? How did you get my number?”

Vladdy remembered a line from an American movie he saw at home. “I am your worst nightmare,” he said. It felt good to say it.

“Where are you from that you talk like that?” Bob asked. “How in the hell did you get into my apartment?”

Vladdy didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

“Damn it,” Bob said, “what do you want?”

Vladdy breathed deeply, tried to stay calm. “I want two thousand dollars for your metal briefcase, and I won’t say a word about it to anyone.”

“Two thousand?” Bob said, in a dismissive way that instantly made Vladdy wish he had asked for ten thousand, or twenty thousand. “I don’t have that much cash on me. I’ll have to get it in Cody tomorrow, at my bank. “

“Yes, that would be fine,” Vladdy said.

Silence. Thinking. Vladdy could hear something in the background, probably the television above the bar.

“Okay,” Bob said. “Meet me tomorrow night at eleven P.M. on the turnout after the tunnels on the Buffalo Bill Dam. East entrance, on the way to Cody. Don’t bring anybody with you, and don’t tell anyone about this conversation. If you do, I’ll know.”

Vladdy felt an icy hand reach down his throat and grip his bowels. This was real, after all. This was American business, and he was committed. Stay tough, he told himself.

“I have a partner,” Vladdy said. “He comes with me.”

More silence. Then a sigh. “Him only,” the man said. “No one else.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be in a dark Suburban, parked in the turnout.”

“Okay.” Vladdy knew the vehicle, of course, but he couldn’t give that away.

“If you show up with more than your partner, or if there are any other vehicles on the road, this deal is over. And I mean over in the worst possible sense. You understand?”

Vladdy paused, and the telephone nearly slipped out of his sweaty hand like a bar of soap.

“Okay,” Vladdy said. When he hung up the telephone it rattled so hard in the cradle from his hand that it took him two tries.

Vladdy and Eddie sat in silence on the couch and listened as Bob crashed around in his apartment next door. Had Vladdy left any clues next door, he wondered? Eddie looked scared and had the broken .22 pistol on his lap. After an hour, the crashing stopped. Vladdy and Eddie watched Cherry’s door, praying that Bob wouldn’t realize they were there and smash through it.

“I think we’re okay,” Vladdy said, finally. “He doesn’t know who took it.”

Vladdy kept his cheek pressed against the cold window as they left Yellowstone Park. He closed his eyes temporarily as the van rumbled through the east entrance, then opened them and noted the sign that read ENTERING SHOSHONE NATIONAL FOREST.

Eddie was still talking, still smoking. He had long ago worked his way into the front so he sat next to the driver. A second marijuana cigarette had been passed back and forth. The driver was talking about democracy versus socialism and was for the latter. Vladdy thought the driver was an idiot, an idiot who pined for a forgotten political system that had never, ever worked, and a system that Vladdy despised. But Vladdy said nothing, because Eddie wouldn’t stop talking, wouldn’t quit agreeing with the driver.

They went through three tunnels lit by orange ambient light, and Vladdy stared through the glass. The Shoshone River serpentined below them, reflecting the moonlight. They crossed it on a bridge.

“Let us off here,” Vladdy said, as they cleared the last tunnel and the reservoir sparkled beneath the moon and starlight to the right as far as he could see.

The driver slowed, then turned around in his seat. “Are you sure?” he asked. “There’s nothing out here except for the dam. It’s another half-hour to Cody and not much in between.”

“This is our place,” Vladdy said. “Thank you for the drive.”

The van braked and stopped.

“Are you sure?” the driver asked.

“Pay him, Eddie,” Vladdy said, sliding across the seat toward the door with the metal briefcase. He listened vaguely as the driver insisted he needed no payment and as Eddie tried to stuff a twenty in the driver’s pocket. Which he did, eventually, and the van pulled away en route to Cody, which was a cream-colored smudge in the distance, like an inverted half-moon against the dark eastern sky.

“What now?” Eddie asked, and Vladdy and Eddie walked along the dark shoulder of the road, crunching gravel beneath their shoes.

“Now?” Vladdy said in English, “I don’t know. You’ve got the gun in your pants, right? You may need to use it as a threat. You’ve got it, right?” Eddie did a hitch in his step, as he dug through his coat. “I got it, Vladdy,” Eddie said, “but it is small.”

Vladdy’s teeth began to chatter as they approached the pullout and he saw the Suburban. The vehicle was parked on the far side of the lot, backed up against the railing of the dam. The car was dark.

“Are you scared?” Eddie asked. He was still high.

“Just cold,” Vladdy lied.

Vladdy’s legs felt weak, and he concentrated on walking forward toward the big car.

Vladdy said, “Don’t smile at him. Look tough.”

“Tough,” Eddie repeated.

Vladdy said to Eddie, “I told you to look professional but you look like Eminem.”

“Slim Shady is my man,” Eddie whined.

At twenty yards, the headlights blinded them. Vladdy put his arm up to shield his eyes. Then the headlights went out and he heard a car door open and slam shut. He couldn’t see anything now but heard fast-moving footfalls coming across the gravel.

Vladdy’s eyes readjusted to the darkness in time to see Bob raise a pistol and shoot Eddie point-blank in the forehead, right through his stocking cap. Eddie dropped straight down as if his legs had been kicked out from under him, and he landed in a heap.

“Some fuckin’ nightmare,” Bob said, pointing the pistol at Vladdy. “Where are you boys from?”

Instinctively, Vladdy fell back. As he did so, he raised the metal briefcase and felt a shock through his hand and arm as a bullet smashed into it. On the ground, Vladdy heard a cry and realized that it had come from inside of him. He thrashed and rolled away, and Bob cursed and fired another booming shot into the dirt near Vladdy’s ear.

Vladdy leaped forward and swung the briefcase as hard as he could, and by pure chance it hit hard into Bob’s kneecaps. Bob grunted and pitched forward, nearly onto Vladdy. In the dark, Vladdy had no idea where Bob’s gun was, but he scrambled to his feet and clubbed at Bob with the briefcase.

Bob said, “Stop!” but all Vladdy could see was the muzzle flash on Eddie’s face a moment before.

“Stop! I’ve got the—” Vladdy smashed the briefcase down as hard as he could and stopped the sentence. Bob lay still.

Breathing hard, Vladdy dropped the briefcase and fell on top of Bob. He tore through Bob’s clothing and found the gun that shot Eddie. Bob moaned, and Vladdy shot him in the eye with it.

With tears streaming down his face, Vladdy buckled Eddie’s and Bob’s belts together and rolled them off of the dam. He heard the bodies thump onto some rocks and then splash into the reservoir. He threw the pistol as far as he could and it went into the water with a ploop. The briefcase followed.

He found a vinyl bag on the front seat of the Suburban that bulged with two thousand dollars in cash. It puzzled Vladdy for a moment, but then it made sense. Bob had flashed his lights to see who had taken his briefcase. When he saw two out-of-place guys like Vladdy and Eddie — especially Eddie — Bob made his choice not to pay.

Vladdy drove back through Yellowstone Park in the Suburban, thinking of Eddie, thinking of what he had done. He would buy some new clothes, new shoes, one of those fleece vests. Get a baseball cap, maybe.

He parked on a pullout on the northern shore of Yellowstone Lake and watched the sun come up. Steam rose from hot spots along the bank, and a V of Canada geese made a long graceful descent onto the surface of the water.

He felt a part of it, now.

A setting from a dream of nature, he thought.