The Best American Mystery Stories 2008

S. J. Rozan Hothouse

From Bronx Noir

A week on the lam.

The beginning, not so bad. In the first day’s chilly dusk, a mark handed up his wallet at the flash of cold steel. Blubbering, “Please don’t hurt me,” he tried to pull off his wedding ring too; for that Kelly punched him, broke his nose. But didn’t knife him. Kelly didn’t need it, a body. He’d jumped the prisoner transport at the courthouse. A perforated citizen a mile away might announce he hadn’t left the Bronx.

Which he’d have done, heading south, heading home, risking the Wanted flyers passed to every cop, taped to every cop house in every borough, if he hadn’t found the woods.

Blubber’s overcoat hid his upstate greens until Blubber’s cash bought him coveralls and a puffy jacket at a shabby Goodwill. Coffee and a Big Mac were on Blubber too, as Kelly kept moving, just another zombie shuffling through the winter twilight. Don’t look at me, I won’t look at you. His random shamble brought him up short at a wrought-iron fence. Behind him, on Webster, a wall of brick buildings massed, keeping an eye on the trees jailed inside, in case one tried to bolt. You and me, guys. Winter’s early dark screened Kelly’s vault over. traffic’s roar veiled the scrunch of his steps through leaves, the crack of broken branches.

Five nights he slept bivouacked into the roots of a monster oak, blanketed with leaves, mummied in a sleeping bag and tarp from that sorry Goodwill. Five mornings he buried the bag and tarp, left each day through a different gate after the park opened. One guard gave him a squint, peered after with narrowed eyes; he kept away from that gate after that. None of the others even looked up at him, just some fellow who liked a winter morning stroll through the Botanical Garden.

The grubby Bronx streets and the dirty January days hid him in plain sight, his plan until the heat was off. He thought of it that way on purpose, trying to use the cliché to keep warm. Because it was cold here. Damn cold, bone-cold, eye-watering cold. Colder than in years, the papers said. Front-page cold. Popeye’s, KFC, a cuchifritos place, they sold him chicken and café con leche, kept his blood barely moving. Under the pitiless fluorescents and the stares of people with nothing else to do, he didn’t stay. The tips of his ears felt scalded; he got used to his toes being numb.

The first day, late afternoon, he came to a library, was desperate enough to enter. A scruffy old branch, but he wasn’t the only human tumbleweed in it; the librarians, warm-hearted dreamers, didn’t read Wanted posters and were accustomed to men like him. They let him thaw turning the pages of a Florida guidebook. The pictures made him ache. Last thing he needed, a guidebook: pelicans, palmettos, Spanish moss, longleaf pines, oh he could rattle it off. But he couldn’t risk the trip until he wasn’t news anymore, until they were sure he was already long gone.

Then, last night, a new scent in the air, a crisp cold, a rising wind. Bundled in his bag, his tarp, and leaves, Kelly heard a hush, everything waiting, a little afraid. He slept uneasily, knowing. When he woke, he felt new weight, heard a roar like far-off surf. He climbed from his root den to see more shades of white than he’d ever known. Ivory hillocks, eggshell swells, chalky mounds burdening branches. And huge silver flakes still cascading from a low-bottomed sky. The surf-roaring wind whirlpooled it all around. Ice stinging his face, Kelly was in trouble.

Snow as insulation can work, you in the bag in the leaves in the tarp in the snow. But you can’t climb back in; you’ll bring it with you, and melt it, and lie in a freezing sodden puddle. Once out, in trouble.

A sudden howl of wind, a crash of snow off the crown of a tree. He tugged his hat low, wrapped his arms around his chest. The wind pulled the breath from him. He wasn’t dressed for this, coveralls over his greens, puffy jacket, boots — but he wasn’t dressed. Who ever was? Why had anyone ever come to live here, where casualties piled up every year? All the green leaves, the red, yellow, purple, solid or striped, small or gigantic, lacy or fat flowers all dead, the birds gone, the ones who stayed, starving. Every year you had to wait and pray, even if you weren’t a praying man, every year, that life would come back.

At home the air was soft, the struggle not to make things grow but to clear yourself a corner in the extravagance, then keep it from getting overrun by the tangle that sprang up the minute you turned your back.

Up here everything ended and you shivered, as he did now. From cold, from anger, from fear. Eight years he’d shivered, the last four in lockup. It had been a month like this, cold like this — but heavy and totally still — when he’d killed her. Would he have, back home?

No. Why? In the warmth and openness, her taunts and her cheating would have been jokes. Back home, he’d have laughed and walked out, leaving her steaming that she hadn’t gotten to him. She’d have screamed and thrown things. He’d have found another beach, another jungle, lushness of another kind.

Here, there’d been nothing in the cold, nowhere in the gray, only her.

He shut his eyes, buried the memory. His face was stiff, his fingers burning. He had to move.

Astounding stuff, snow this dense, this heavy. Your feet stuck and slipped at the same time. It was day but you wouldn’t know it, trapped in this thick, swirling twilight. Fighting through drifts already to his knees, it took him forever to get near the gate. And the gate was locked. Beyond it, no traffic moved, no train on the tracks. A blizzard so bad the Botanical Garden was closed. It wasn’t clear to Kelly he could climb the fence in this icy wind, not with gloves and not without, and not clear there was any reason. No one was making Big Macs or cuchifritos out there, no sweet-faced spinsters in the reading room.

Two choices, then. Lie down and die here, and honestly, a fair idea. They said it was comfortable, in the end warm, freezing to death. Maybe keep it as an option. Meanwhile, try for a shelter at one of the buildings. He’d stayed away from them, not to be seen, not to be recognized, but who’d see him now?

One foot planting, the other pushing off, leaning on the wind as though it were solid, he made for the rounded mounds of the big conservatory. A city block long, two wings, central dome half-lost in the twisting white. Iron and glass, locked for sure, but buildings like that had garages, garbage pens, repair shops, storage sheds. Some place with a roof, maybe even some heat, there might be that.

The conservatory was uphill from here, and for a while it seemed to not get any closer. He almost gave up, but then he got angry. It had been her idea to come north. That she’d wanted to was why he was here, and that he’d killed her was why he was here, struggling up this icy hillside, muscles burning, feet freezing. Maybe he’d kill himself when he got back home. Then he’d never have to be afraid he’d end up here again. But damn her, damn her to hell, not before.

Snow boiled off the arched glass roof. One foot, the other. He fell; he got up. One foot. The other. A glow stabbed through the blinding white, made his watering eyes look up. Lights. A vehicle. He was insane, the cold and wind had driven him mad. A vehicle? It came closer without vanishing. No mirage, then. Some caterpillar-tread ATV whining across the tundra. Didn’t see him or didn’t care. Lumbered to the conservatory, growled to a stop at the end of the wing. A figure, dark parka, dark boots, blond hair swirling like the snow itself, jumped down, pushed through the storm. To the door? She was going to open the door?

She did. He followed. When he got to the ATV it was there and real, so he eased around it, inching to where the storm-haired woman had disappeared. He stopped, startled, when through its thick quilt of snow the glass suddenly glowed, first close, then along the wing, then the high dome. She was turning the lights on. And moving toward the conservatory’s center, away from the door.

He wrapped numb fingers around the handle. He pulled, and the door came toward him. Slipping inside, he closed it after, shutting the violence out.

First was the silence: no howling storm, no ripping-cloth sound of pelting snow. Then the calm: no wind ramming him, the ground motionless. Slowly, with nothing to fight against, his muscles relaxed. He pulled off his soaked gloves, his crusted hat, felt pain as his ears and fingers came back to life. His eyes watered; he scrambled in his pocket for an aged napkin and blew his nose. Looking down, he watched a puddle spread as melting snow dripped from his clothes.

The smell hit him out of nowhere. Oh God, the smell. Sweet and spicy, damp and rich and full of life. Warm, wet earth. Complicated fragrance thrown into the air by sunset-colored blossoms hoping to attract help to make more like them. I swear, I’d help if I could. There should be more, Kelly thought. They should be everywhere, covering everything, they should race north and smother this dead frigid pallor with color, with scent, with lavishness.

Amazed, gulping moist vanilla air, he stood amid long rows of orchids, gardenias, who knew what else. He was no gardener. Back home you didn’t need to be. Back home these plants didn’t need you. Here, they had to have pots, drips, lights, towering glass walls to save them from vindictive cold, from early dark, from wind that would turn their liquid hearts to solid, choking crystals. Here, soft generosity had to be guarded.

He started to walk, farther in. He wanted to walk to the tropical core of the place. He wanted to walk home.

Each step was warmer, lovelier, more dreamlike. But when he got to the giant central room, something was wrong.

Plants with man-sized, fan-shaped leaves roosted on swelling hillsides at the feet of colossal palms. They were colored infinite greens, as they should be, and moving gently, as they would be, under the humid breezes of home. But this was not that breeze. A waterfall of icy air rolled into the glasshouse, vagrant snow flying with it but melting, spotting the high fronds the same way rain would have, but not the same. Outraged, Kelly bent his neck, leaned back, trying to find the offense, the breach. Near the top of the dome, he saw greenery bowing under the cold blast. Trying to shrink away.

And some other kind of movement. The woman with the wild hair. High up, near the gaping hole, pacing a catwalk. He watched her stretch, then jump back as jagged glass she’d loosened tumbled past, crashed and shattered on the stone floor not far from him. The echo took time to die.

She hurried along the catwalk, climbed over something. Machinery whined and a mechanical hoist lowered. A square-cornered spaceship, it drifted straight down past curves, bends, wavering leaves. Kelly flattened into the shadows of a palm’s rough trunk.

The woman jumped from the basket. She swept her wild hair from her face, whipped off her gloves, pulled out a cell phone. She spoke into it like a two-way radio. “Leo?”

“I’m here,” it crackled. “How bad?”

“Two panes gone. Some others cracked, four at least. A branch from the oak.”

“All the way there? Jesus, that’s some wind.”

“This weren’t a blizzard, it’d be a hurricane.” She had a breathless way of speaking, as though caught in the storm herself.

“If it were a hurricane,” the distant voice came, “we wouldn’t have a problem.”

“Agreed. Leo, the cracked panes could go. Weight of the snow.”

“It’s not melting?”

“Too cold, falling too fast.”

“Shit. You have to get something up there. You called security?”

On icy air, snow tumbled in, unreasonable, antagonistic. The temperature had dropped already, Kelly felt it.

“Only one guy made it in,” the woman was saying. “Wilson.”

“Oh, mother of God, that Nazi?”

“On his way. But he won’t climb. He already said. Union contract, I can’t make him.”

An unintelligble, crackling curse.

“I called Susan,” the woman said. “She’s phoning around, in case any of the volunteers live close.”

“And you can’t do it alone?”

“No.” She didn’t justify, explain, excuse. She was gazing up as she spoke, so Kelly looked that way too, watched the palms huddle away from the cold. Stuck here, up north where they didn’t belong, rooted and unable to flee. They should never have come. If that hole stayed open they’d die.

“I’m going to make more calls, Leo. See if I can find someone. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Do. Jesus, good luck. If they clear the roads—”

“Right, talk soon,” she cut him off, started punching buttons. A massive wind-shift shook the walls, shoveled snow through the hole. She looked up at the palms. Kelly read fear in her eyes. Fear and love.

He stepped forward. “John Kelly.”

She whirled around.

“Volunteer,” he said. “Got a call.”

Suspicion furrowed her face. “How did you get here so fast?”

“I live on Webster.”

“How—”

“Door was unlocked.” His thumb jerked over his shoulder, toward the wing. Silent, she eyed his inadequate jacket, his bad boots. His five-day growth. “You’ve got trouble,” he said, pointing up. “We’d better seal that.” And added, “That’s what Susan told me. On the phone.”

It was the best he could do. She’d believe him or not. Or decide she didn’t care, needing his help.

She looked him up and down, then: “You good with heights?”

From a supply room they gathered tarps, ropes, the one-by-fours they used here for crowd-control barriers. They dumped them into the hoist, climbed in.

“We’ll have to improvise.” She flicked a switch and the lift rose, quivering. “The crossbars have bolts and hooks. For emergency repairs. A hundred years, never anything like this.” Snow whipped and pounded on the roof, cascaded through the approaching void. “We’ll string the tarps where we can. Brace them with boards. I turned the heat up. If this doesn’t go on too long, we’ll be okay.” She turned worried eyes to the trees they were rising through, then swung to him, suddenly smiling. “Jan Morse. Horticulturalist.” She offered her hand.

“John Kelly,” he said, because what the hell, he’d said it already. Should have lied, he supposed, but he’d been disarmed by the heat. The softness. Her eyes. “You must live close too.”

“The opposite. Too far to go home, once the storm started. Stayed in my office.”

“And you were worried,” he said, knowing it.

“And I was worried. And I was right.”

“You couldn’t have heard it. The break.” He had to raise his voice now, close as they were to the hole, the storm.

“No. Temperature alarm. Rings in my office.” She turned her face to the intruding snow, blinking flakes off her lashes. Hands on the controls, she edged the hoist higher. It shuddered, crept up, stopped. “Wait,” she told him. She climbed from the basket, prowled the catwalk, inspecting the hole, the glass, the steel. The wind, rushing in, lashed her hair. She shouted back to him, “If we start here...”

He’d never worked harder. She was strong as he was, his muscles prison-cut, hers maybe from weights, or determination. Snow melted down his neck, ice stung his eyes. Wind gusted, shifting speed and bearing, trembling the dome. The catwalk slicked up with melted snow. With her pocketknife they slashed expedient holes in the tarps, ran rope through them, raised them like sails in a nor’easter. He wrenched, she tied, he tugged, she held. He wrestled boards between tarp and rope. Like seamen in a gale they communicated with shouts, pointed fingers. Straining to hold a board for her, his feet lost purchase. He skidded, slammed the rail, felt her clutch his jacket and refuse to let go. He’d have gone over, but for that. “Thanks,” he said. The wind stole his voice away, but she understood. They worked on, lunging for rope ends, taming flapping tarps, tying knots with bruised fingers. She bled from a forehead cut, seemed not to notice.

Sweat-soaked and aching, it dawned on him that the chaos had slowed. A few more tugs, another pull, and suddenly, quiet on their side of the improvised dam. They stood side by side on the glistening catwalk, breathing hard. Overhead, the overlapped, battened tarps quivered, shivered, but didn’t give, not where the hole was or where they’d covered and buttressed the panes in danger. They stood and watched for a long time. Kelly felt the temperature rise.

A pretty sound: He looked up. She was pointing at their handiwork and laughing. “That’s really ugly.” She shook her wild head.

“You mean we were going for art?” He folded his arms. “Damn!”

She smiled, right at him, right into his eyes. “Really,” she said, “thank you.”

“Hey. It was fun.”

“Fun?”

“Okay, it was terrible. But,” he shrugged, looked around, “I’m from the South.”

Her gaze followed his. “I’ve been looking after them for eight years. Some are rare, very valuable.”

“But that’s not the point, is it?”

Again, a direct look. Her eyes were an impossible blue, a lazy afternoon on a windless sea. “No.”

He smiled too, lifted a hand, stopped just before he touched her. “We’d better take care of that.”

“What?”

“You’re hurt.”

“Me?” In true surprise she put fingertips to her brow. She found blood. That made her laugh too. “Okay,” she said, taking a last survey, “I guess we can go down.”

They climbed into the basket, leaving the catwalk littered with fabric, with rope.

As the hoist inched down, she asked, “What do you do here?”

“I...”

She waited, still smiling. A volunteer, he’d said he was a volunteer. He’d gotten a phone call. How could he answer her? What do volunteers do at a place like this?

“Lots of things,” he settled on. “Variety, you know.” The start of doubt shaded her eyes. He didn’t want that, so he said, “I build things. Temporary barriers, that kind of thing.” Every place needed those. No matter how carefully you planned, there were always changes in what was allowed, where you could go, how close.

She nodded. Maybe she was going to speak, but a shout blasted up from below. “Doctor Morse! Is that you in that thing?”

They both peered over the basket rail, found a uniformed man craning his neck below, obscured by foliage. “Of course it’s me!” she shouted back, her voice full of disgust. “Wilson,” she said quietly to Kelly. “An asshole.”

Takes care of Wilson. And when they reached the glasshouse floor, it got worse.

“Who’s that with you? Dr. Morse, you know you can’t take people up without a signed waiver! You—”

“Shut up, Wilson. This is John Kelly.” Don’t tell him my name! “A volunteer. He almost got killed helping me plug the break. Which you weren’t about to do, so shut up.” She jumped from the hoist’s basket, gave the guard a hard stare. He flushed. Once that happened she turned her back, clambered onto a bark-mulched mound to inspect a broken frond, a casualty.

The red-faced guard regrouped. His glare bounced off her back, her riotous hair, so he turned to Kelly. “John Kelly?” He said it slowly and squinted, and shit, it was that guard.

Kelly climbed from the basket too, spoke to the horticulturalist worrying over her plants. “Listen, I better go, see if—”

“Kelly! I thought so!” Wilson’s bark was full of nasty triumph. “They gave us your photo. They want you back, boy. Big reward. Saw you the other day, didn’t I? At the gate.” He came closer, still talking. “This guy’s dangerous, doctor.” He said Doctor like an insult.

“No,” Kelly said, backing. “Keep away.”

“You’re busted.”

“No.”

“What’s going on?” She jumped down, between them.

“He’s a killer. Escaped con.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re wrong,” Wilson sneered. “Cops passed out his picture. He sliced his wife up.”

She turned to Kelly.

“That was someone else,” he said, and he also said, “I’m leaving.”

“No!” the guard yelled, and drew a gun.

“Wilson, are you crazy?” Her shout was furious.

“Doctor, how about you shut up? Kelly! Down on the floor!”

“No.” Walk past him, right out the door. He won’t shoot.

“On the floor!” Wilson unclipped his radio, spoke into it, gun still trained on Kelly. “Emergency,” he said. “Dispatch, I need cops. In the conservatory—”

That couldn’t happen. Kelly lunged, not for the gun, for the radio. Pulled it from Wilson’s grip, punched his face, ran.

And almost made the door.

Two shots, hot steel slicing through soft, spiced air. The first caught Kelly between the shoulder blades. To the right, so it missed his heart, but all it meant was that he was still alive and awake when the second bullet, flying wild after a ricochet, shattered a pane in the arching dome. Glass glittered as it burst, showered down like snow, with snow, on waves of icy air Kelly could see. The wind, sensing its chance, shifted, pulled, and tugged, poured in, changed positive pressure to negative and ripped through an edge of the tarp patch. Collected snow slid off the tarp onto a broad-leafed palm. Kelly saw all this, heard a repeated wail: “No! No! No!” He tried to rise but couldn’t draw breath.

Looking around he saw blood, his blood, pooling. She knelt beside him, wild blond hair sweeping around her face, and he heard her knotted voice, choked with sorrow not for him. “All right, it’s all right. An ambulance is coming.”

In this storm? And he didn’t want an ambulance, he just wanted to go home. The trees, he tried to say to her, watching the palms cringe away from the cataract of frigid air. But he couldn’t speak, and what could she do for them? I’m sorry, he told the trees. I’m sorry none of us ever got home. Sprinkled with glass shards and snow, losing blood fast, Kelly started to shiver. As darkness took the edges of his sight, he stared up into the recoiling leaves. At least it wouldn’t be as bad for them as for him. Freezing, they say, is a warm death.