The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

Arthur Klepchukov A Damn Fine Town

from Down & Out

A little boy in a red cape whooshes past me on the early-morning train. He’s dead set on flying down this musty subway car headed for the airport. Kid Cape.

Heh, I must’ve had a costume like that for Halloween. Probably wore it too long too.

No one I scouted paid any attention to me thanks to this nondescript jacket in this indifferent pose with this vague stare. But this kid spins around, runs back, and eyeballs me. He’s my daughter’s age.

“POW!” Kid Cape says with a grimace and a tiny, hairless fist pointing at my nose. “I stopped you!”

I look around. The tourists are still asleep in the daze of the early train rocking us all from side to side. Good.

He wants a reaction like I used to. But I can’t give him one. Another disappointed kid.

Go away, little man. This is cute, but I can’t even smile. I need you to go away.

Kid Cape stares at me, not budging. His little fist trembles. The gray, uncorrupted eyes behind that cheap mask are intent on not being polite. He knows what I am. We all know what I am.

But I promise, I’ll only do this as long as necessary. So just go.

I raise my hands, bow my head, and almost close my eyes.

“Whoosh!” The kid makes his own sound effects.

I glance up and Kid Cape’s farther down the train car. He stops under one of those hanging hand straps — nooses for the nine-to-five crowd.

Kid Cape tries the same pow trick with a seated fella daydreaming in our car. A funny suitcase separates him from the hero. He smiles, and the kid takes off giddy, downright inspired.

Now I almost smile. It starts with the guy’s well-traveled shoes. Terrible for giving chase. Mr. Suitcase is the right cocky, unsympathetic age. Flabby calves in shorts too cold for locals. That nonchalant reaction to Kid Cape? Couldn’t imagine himself as a mark. He wears that goofy tourist grin. His eyes stare past the grimy train windows — this town’s all new to him. The novelty has yet to fade, the real weather to spit on his days. A forgettable girlfriend naps on his shoulder. That bone propping up her eye socket? Cozy. My money says they won’t make it past this year. Every other stop, he checks his well-worn Rolex.

But best of all? The bag. Dumpster chic. No luggage stickers. Outbound. Perfect.

My best scores came from ratty, inconspicuous luggage on this early-morning train bound for the airport. Never seen a fancy bag here that wasn’t a knockoff full of things more at home at Goodwill than a pawn shop. People who travel with Louis Vuitton look-alikes live look-alike lives. But the slightly smarter set at least wrap the damn good in the quite ugly.

If you can afford this trip, you can afford to leave me a memento on my weekly round trip to nowhere.

Of all the police reports I once signed off on for precious bags, none ever itemized an engagement ring that woulda turned my ex, Cindy, into Cinderella. At least after that first score I afforded both alimony and our daughter’s trip to space camp. At least her mind soared. That’s worth losing a badge for. Most mornings.

Sitting always draws less attention than standing. So I do my seat rotations, staying clear of anyone who might notice or remember me. I study Mr. Suitcase through the reflections in the dirty windows each time the train departs. What a goofy, unaware smile.

Today I’ll hit him three stops before the airport. Decent neighborhood with enough airport arrivals that if I turn two corners and walk slow, I’m an arriving local. Also the least-staffed station. And they hired that sap with the lazy eye for security. Worst case? Minimal resistance.

Hope that kid won’t come back to see it. Don’t feel like being someone else’s excuse for bad behavior.

I exit the first door of the car and reenter from the second, wearing my baseball cap. We emerge from the last tunnel and morning light cracks into our car like a soft-boiled egg. I stand spitting distance from Mr. Suitcase, surfing the cheap waves of the train rocking forward. We pull into the stop.

He checks his watch, and when he rests his wrist back down on his chubby little thigh, it angles right up at me. Wait. What kinda Rolex doesn’t have hands? No hours, no minutes, no seconds. I blink to make sure, staring longer than I should at an empty watch face. I’m sure I pawned one exactly like that, except it told time. Did he remove the hands?

The girlfriend jolts awake and sneezes on me. Shit. Too close.

But then she gawks at Mr. Suitcase.

“Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, sir.” She brushes his shoulder.

He shrugs and smiles.

She dashes outta the open door. We’re exactly three stops from the airport. I spot a guard napping in his glass cubicle. Mr. Suitcase is staring in the other direction, away from me. Doors of opportunity wide open.

What kinda man wears a watch that won’t tell time?

The doors slide shut in my face. I let ’em. I take a seat. The disabled seat, facing Mr. Suitcase.

Kid Cape flies back down our car, picking up speed, aiming himself at Mr. Suitcase’s bag. Dammit, don’t! He runs up and lifts a bag that’s bigger than him over his head like an ant. Whoa. The kid whispers that himself as he looks up at my score.

And the only other person awake enough to be shocked isn’t. Mr. Suitcase stares up at his old bag with that same smile.

“Careful with that power,” he says.

“Mikey! Mikey, where are you?” A mother’s shrill voice plows into my ears.

Kid Cape wobbles, his secret identity exposed. He sets down the oversized bag. He examines his hands, the bag’s owner, his hands again.

Mr. Suitcase raises a lone finger to his lips, agreeing to keep the hero’s secret. Mikey smiles and dashes back past me toward his mother’s squeaky voice.

I fixate on the bag. What the hell’s in there?

We coast into the airport stop. End of the line. The incomprehensible announcements never wake anyone up — the final jolt of the car does the job. Passengers stand and check boarding passes, wristwatches, belongings. A series of paranoid pats. Mr. Suitcase’s smile grows.

I make for the other door. He’s the last person on the train. A fresh set of suitcases with peeling luggage stickers squeak onboard.

I exit. He doesn’t.

The doors stay open. Soon after all the arrivals board, this train will turn around. I stand with one foot on the platform, the other still on the train, waiting for his move.

Mr. Suitcase steps off the train and I’ve got him in perfect profile.

His eyes close. He inhales and pushes the air out like an old steamer. And before I can make any sense of it, he turns around and drags his suitcase back onto the train. Mr. Suitcase pulls and grimaces like a kid didn’t vault that bag over his head with ease. Its pipsqueak wheels yank my attention down as they cross the rumble strips. I favor the foot inside the train, lean in as the doors close.

Mr. Suitcase sits opposite of where he just was.

I lean on the handrail to his left.

His face has transformed — dimples gone, mouth relaxed, eyes sloping down in satisfied rest.

He raises his wrist and fiddles with the ring on the handless watch, rotating, rotating, perfect. New time zone, of course. He heaves the bag onto his lap and holds on to the zippers with both hands, like doorknobs he’s not quite ready to twist.

Z-z-z-z-zip. The watch comes off his wrist and goes into a suitcase. An empty suitcase.

A grin tucks itself into my cheek. I need a better way of picking targets. I should walk away, call this trip a wash, try again next week. Disappoint another kid in another cape by being a petty—

“Do you need a suitcase?” Mr. Suitcase asks.

I glance around. He’s staring at me. “Me? Why would I need a suitcase?”

“You seemed more interested in it than that kid was.”

He made me. This is more humiliating than losing my badge.

“Are you in the market for one?” he asks.

“I don’t need your suitcase, man.” Bailing — the fastest way to seem guilty. Stay put.

“Maybe you can take it on a trip somewhere?”

He’s seen me on this train before. He knows. “Me? A trip? Can’t recall the last time I could afford a fancy trip.”

“Well. You don’t have to travel to travel,” Mr. Suitcase says.

I slump into the seat across from him, nothing to add, no one to blame but myself. I need a better way of picking targets, I do. But I can’t list my criteria. Can’t decide which stop to take, where to go. I forget the map, stop profiling people, return to the same damn stations.

Third stop from the airport. An old woman yelps in German and something sends a jolt up my foot before tumbling down. The thief’s on the ground with her purse and the guard’s got a knee in his back before the doors close. Did I...? I’m noticed and cheered and thanked with fancy chocolate. Do they even know what I am?

Mr. Suitcase isn’t around to notice.

I remember asking my little girl why she wanted to go to space camp. Duh! Because here is boring, Daddy. I bob my head with the tracks like a little kid and stare, stare at the constantly shifting sky, finding the new in the familiar.