Stratton got a good grip and stood up with an involuntary grunt. The coffin came loose of the earth. Stratton backstepped out of the grave, dragging the thing half out of its cool pocket until it rested at a peculiar angle-head down, feet toward the sky.
Stratton was panting. He scoured the pines and the cart paths for headlights.
His hands trembled and he wiped them on his jeans. He thought it obscene to use dirty hands for this. Obscene, but not inappropriate. With the point of the cheap shovel he gouged the seal of the coffin, and the lid flopped open with a cold click.
Stratton took a deep breath and aimed the flashlight.
The coffin of Sarah Rose Steinway was empty.
The cheap cotton lining bore the indentation of a rigid human form. Something sparkled microscopically against the fabric. Stratton ran a finger lightly along the inside of the casket, as if tracing the spine of the invisible dead.
In the beam of the flashlight, Stratton examined his fingertip and noticed a powdery film of red-brown clay. The ancient dust of another grave, another violated tomb.
CHAPTER 23
The cab ride from La Guardia was no more harrowing than a spin through downtown Peking, and Wang Bin rode in unperturbed silence. He grunted once when a sleek black limousine cut sharply in front of the taxi, and jumped slightly in his seat at the sudden blast of a trucker's horn. But it was the vista of Manhattan, seen from the Triborough Bridge, that left him breathless. At first glimpse Wang Bin leaned close to the window and stared at the vast skyline marching along the river, molten in the pink light of the late afternoon. The city was like nothing the deputy minister had ever seen.
Harold Broom glanced over and smiled with a superior air. "Hey, Pop, the cabbie is Russian. How about that?"
Broom had taken to calling Wang Bin "Pop," an annoying term that the deputy minister did not understand.
"Didya ever think you'd be riding with a Russian through the streets of America?" Broom roared at some dim irony while Wang Bin watched out the window in fascination as the skyline swallowed them.
The two men checked into a small, comfortable hotel on Central Park South. Broom did all the talking-to the cabbie, to the doormen, to the desk clerk, to the rental car agent. Wang Bin had nothing to say; New York was richer and more bewildering than he had ever imagined. Compared to that of Peking, even the air was a tonic. The crowds of walkers were garish, and certainly less orderly than the Chinese, but the Americans were equally hurried and wore the same expressions of determination. And the automobiles were boggling-more cars than Wang Bin believed existed in all of China, stacked on every street, inching forward with horns blaring. The noise jarred his nerves.
Wang Bin stood at the window of the fifth-floor hotel room and watched a hansom cab clop down the street toward the Plaza Hotel. On the sidewalk at Columbus Circle, a ragged group of men and women waved placards and shook their fists.
Two policemen stood at the corner, chatting calmly. Wang Bin could not understand why they did not hurry to arrest the demonstrators. He decided that the officers must be waiting for reinforcements.
Broom groomed himself in the mirror. "So what's it gonna be tonight, Pop? Studio
54?"
Wang Bin scowled at the joke. "I am tired."
"Okay, no disco. But we gotta eat," the art broker said.
"I want to rest before we work."
"Look out there, old man. That's the greatest city in the world. Don't you want to have a good time?"
"I am tired."
"Hey, Pop, let's celebrate a little. We're rich, remember? You and me, we're on a roll now. Packed our little pal off to our Florida buyer yesterday-that's one down, two to go, and money in the bank." Broom rubbed his hands together hungrily and gave the deputy minister another one of his winks. "Let's see the sights!"
"You go ahead," Wang Bin said, stepping away from the window. "I want to sleep."
The deputy minister was dressed for the graveyard when Harold Broom returned at one in the morning.
"Hey there, Pops, you missed a good time." Broom weaved across the room and eased down on the sofa. He kicked off his shoes and scratched at his feet.
"You are drunk," Wang Bin said angrily.
"Don't worry, partner." Broom struggled out of his clothes without assistance, but Wang Bin had to guide the art broker's arms and legs into the dark gray coveralls that they had selected as their grave robbers' uniform.
"Didya see the Post tonight?" Broom babbled. "It made the headline on one of the back pages: VANDALS DESECRATE JEWISH GRAVES AT FLORIDA CEMETERY. Just a little story, no big deal, but they printed part of my poem. Even had a photo of one of the headstones." Broom stretched out on the sofa and groaned feebly.
"It's time to go now," Wang Bin said, standing over him.
"In a minute."
"Now!" said the deputy minister, grabbing Broom's arm.
The art dealer easily shook himself free and pushed the old man away. "Don't fuck with me, Pop! I got a tiny headache right at the moment so I'm gonna rest.
I'm the driver, 'member? We go when I say."
Wang Bin sat down only when he heard Broom start to snore.
Tom Stratton slouched glumly in the Eastern Airlines lounge that overlooked the main runways at the Tampa-St. Petersburg Airport. A long line of jets sat in the slashing rain, the wing lights flicking red and white and red again, the pilots waiting for the weather to clear. Stratton's flight to New York had already been delayed thirty minutes.
Stratton was on his second beer when he got the idea for a modest head start. He found a nest of deserted pay phones in the main lobby near the gift shops.
In a neat brownstone in one of the better neighborhoods of Queens, Violet Bertecelli cracked her shin on a coffee table as she fumbled in the dark for the telephone. When she finally found it, she was in too much pain to say a gracious hello.
"Do you know what the hell time it is?"
"Is this Mrs. Bertecelli? Mrs. John Bertecelli?" asked a fuzzy voice.
"Yes. Yes, it is. Is this long distance?"
"Yes, ma'am," Tom Stratton said. "I apologize for calling at such an hour, but it's morning here in China-"
"What? You're calling from China?"
"Yes, ma'am. Peking. I'm Steve Powell, with the United States Embassy. I handled the arrangements after your husband's unfortunate… "
"Death," Violet said helpfully.
"Yes, of course, back in July. That's the reason I'm calling, Mrs. Bertecelli.
I'm not exactly sure how to go about telling you this, but in recent months there have been reports of irregularities in the shipment of human remains from China back to the United States."
Violet said, "Johnny died of a coronary."
"Yes, I know. But we've had complaints from a couple of families about the quality of the metal on the coffins. In the case of one poor fellow, the hinges snapped off and the lid came loose."
"The coffin was just fine. It was actually very nice. Did you pick it out yourself, Mr. Powell?"
"No, ma'am."
"Well, it was lovely. Everything was just fine with Johnny. They sent him to Riordan's Funeral Parlor and he was buried out at St. Francis with his ma."
"That's excellent," Stratton said. "And our files show he was laid to rest in plot E-seventy-seven."
"No, sir, that's wrong," Violet said. "It's plot number one-sixty-six. I remember 'cause one-sixty-six was Johnny's best-ever score in the bowling league. That's how I remember the plot number."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bertecelli, you're absolutely right. I see it here now, right in the file. Plot one hundred sixty-six.