Read Online The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 by Elizabeth George - Free Book Online Page A

hung up, he ordered a beer, the night’s last tug from the bartender’s tap.
    Sitting by the picture window, he looked down into the canyon, and up to the Hollywood sign. Everything about the moment felt familiar. He’d worked this precinct for twenty years, minus three to Uncle Sam, so even the surprises were the same.
    He thought about the girl, about her at the station. Her nervous legs, that worn dress of hers, the plea in her voice.
    Someone should think of her for a minute, shouldn’t they?
    He looked at his watch. Two a.m. But she won’t see her little men tonight.
    A busboy with a pencil mustache came over with a long stick. One by one, he turned off all the dingy lanterns that hung in the window. The painted clowns faced the canyon now. Closing time.
    â€œDon’t miss me too much,” he told the sour waitress as he left.
    In the parking lot, looking down into the canyon, he noticed he could see the Canyon Arms, the smoke still settling on the bungalow’s shell, black as a mussel. Her bedroom window, glass blown out, curtains shuddering in the night breeze.
    He was just about to get in his car when he saw them. The little men.
    They were dancing across the hood of his car, the canyon beneath him.
    Turning, he looked up at the bar, the lanterns in the window, spinning, sending their dancing clowns across the canyon, across the Canyon Arms, everywhere.
    He took a breath.
    â€œThat happens every night?” he asked the busboy as the young man hustled down the stairs into the parking lot.
    Pausing, the busboy followed his gaze, then nodded. “Every night,” he said. “Like a dream.”

STEVE ALMOND
Okay, Now Do You Surrender?
    FROM
Cincinnati Review
    Â 
    L OOMIS WAS HEADED out of work, or out of his
workplace,
which is what you were supposed to call it now, so that later when the TV vans showed up and disgorged their heartbroken androids they would be able to utter sentences such as “The suspect was a familiar and friendly presence in his workplace . . .” Anyhoo, he was done for the day—done whoring himself to the hipster lords of Marketing, done creating
content
—and just a few steps from his car when two men appeared in his path. They wore vintage suits. The larger of the two had a furrowed scar that curled across one cheek. “You gotta minute here?” he said.
    â€œWhat?” said Loomis.
    â€œWe were hoping for a few words.” The men were suddenly very close to him, smelling of matches and Brut.
    Loomis had taken off early to beat traffic and was parked in the back of the building. Bobito the Security Guard was doubtless sprawled out in the smoker alcove, flirting with HR specialists who were going to fuck him only if their lives took a harrowing turn.
    â€œA few words about what?” Loomis said.
    The pair scanned the parking lot.
    â€œAre you guys FBI or something?”
    The one with the scar winced. “Afraid not.”
    â€œIt’s about the thank-you notes,” said the smaller one. He had the velvety rasp of Tony Bennett and a Roman nose that had been derailed a few times.
    â€œWhat thank-you notes?”
    â€œFor the kid’s party,” Scarface said.
    â€œThe kid?”
    â€œ
Your
kid. The older one. Isabelle.”
    â€œIsadora?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œHow the hell do you know the name of my daughter?”
    Scarface set a hand on Loomis’s shoulder. It was a tender gesture that suggested profound brutality. “Settle down,” he said. “There’s no reason for this to turn in the wrong direction.”
    Tony Bennett patted his coat in the way of an ex-smoker. “Quicker we clear this thing up, quicker we’re out of your hair.”
    â€œWhat thing?” Loomis couldn’t figure out how frightened he should be. He had to pee rather ardently.
    â€œA beautiful day like this,” Scarface said. He gestured toward the sky as if the director of a