"Thank you, Mrs. Bertecelli. That was St. Francis Cemetery?"
"That's right. Grand Central Parkway, Queens."
Tom Stratton hung up the phone and hurried to the nearest Eastern ticket counter. The video monitor now showed that his flight to Kennedy Airport would not depart until two in the morning. Dejectedly Stratton walked back to the lounge and ordered another beer and stared out the window to the runways, where the jets still waited in the rain. He prayed that it was storming like hell in Queens.
Wang Bin sat down in a heap on the ground. His chest heaved, and he could feel drops of sweat trickling into his eyebrows. He watched furiously while Harold Broom grappled with the coffin, muttering obscenties from the dank hole where he worked. The sky was cloudy. Cars and trucks raced by on the parkway, drowning out the other night noises. Headlights from the scattered traffic would suddenly turn the tombstones yellow, and cause an eerie dance of shadows across the hillside.
"We need assistance," Wang Bin declared.
"We need a backhoe," Broom growled. "The dirt down here is like concrete." He tossed down the shovel and tried swinging the pick. The musty earth around the coffin crumbled away in hard clods, but the box itself held fast where it had been buried under a chorus of Hail Marys. "Get down here and help me lift,"
Broom said.
But the two of them-Broom, nauseous and half-drunk; the deputy minister, exhausted, his thin arms cramped from the shoveling-could budge the coffin only a few inches and no more.
Broom glanced at his watch. Four in the morning. Time was running out. Wang Bin was right: They needed help.
"Stay here," he said, fishing for the keys to the rental car.
Wang Bin was too tired to object to being left alone, but after Broom had been gone half an hour, he began to worry. What if the fool never came back? What if he got scared and abandoned him? Enough money had been collected already to finance a very comfortable life for a man like Broom… and where would that leave Wang Bin?
He stood up and stretched his aching arms and legs. The headlights from the highway caught him square in the eyes and he turned away grimacing. In the opposite direction the sky was tinged orange by the incredible lights of Manhattan. Wang Bin doubted if he could ever grow accustomed to life in this city; he understood now why David had chosen a rural place, a small and orderly place. A manageable place.
Not far away, a dog barked excitedly.
Where was Broom?
The deputy minister regarded his American partner as a truly despicable man. He had not understood the vagaries of Broom's behavior at the graveyard in Florida, only that the desecrations had been meant as a ruse to confuse the police. The art broker had assured him that no one would check the coffin after they had buried it again, and he had been right. But it was the way Broom reveled in the vandalism that Wang Bin found so utterly repulsive. He would shed himself of the man as soon as possible, and now… now he was stranded in a cemetery, desperately hoping that Broom was greedy enough to come back. Wang Bin needed Broom and this, too, was a foreign emotion. In China, he had been provided everything he needed; here, without his title, absent of his authority, he felt helpless and common. To defer to a man like Broom was disgraceful, but, for now, quite necessary.
Wang Bin's heart raced at the sound of an automobile winding up the road toward St. Francis Cemetery. An involuntary smile came to his lips when he saw Harold Broom, flanked by two tall, slender figures, trudging down the hill.
"Pop, say hello to Tyrone and Charles."
Wang Bin nodded but caught himself before he bowed. Tyrone and Charles were both angular black teenagers, but they appeared very strong. Tyrone sported a red ski cap and Charles was dressed in a white-and-green sports jersey of some sort. It occurred instantly to Wang Bin that the two strangers could handily overpower him and Harold Broom and steal the treasure themselves.
"These gentlemen were testing the back door of a liquor store down the street,"
Broom was saying. "Good thing I happened to see 'em before they got into real trouble. They said they'd be happy to help."
"For how much?" the deputy minister inquired.
"Hundred bucks apiece," Broom said.
Wang Bin said nothing. Broom shrugged. "Whaddya want at four in the morning, Pop? I didn't have time to take out an ad in the goddamn Times. They look like good workers to me. Right, boys?"
Tyrone shrugged and Charles said, "What the hell is this deal?" He gestured at the open grave. "What's the fuckin' story? I ain't messin' with no stiffs."
"Me neither," Tyrone said.
"I'm not asking you to mess with a stiff, pal. I'm asking you to help us get the coffin out of the ground. A little manual labor, that's all. Won't kill you, take my word for it."
"Don't seem right," Charles said, peering into the hole.
Broom said, "Fine! You don't like it? Then beat it. Get the hell out of here!"
Wang Bin looked at him sharply.
"I didn't know you guys were a couple of pussies," Broom said. "Shit. For two hundred bucks I'll go find a couple of men to help with this."
As Broom waved his arms theatrically, Charles calmly seized him by the back of the neck and said, "Shut up, you greasy jive mo'fucker. Give us the bread and we'll dig."
The art broker huddled with Wang Bin as the two teenagers wrestled with the coffin. "You got to know how to talk to these people," Broom explained.
"I don't like them," Wang Bin whispered.
"Of course you don't."
"I don't trust them."
"Relax, Pop."
Broom hopped into the grave. Within minutes, he and the two teenagers had hoisted the coffin of John Bertecelli from the hole and laid it on the ground.
Tyrone sat down on a headstone and said, "So who's in it, Dracula?"
"I don't want to know," Charles said. "Let's split."
"No, man, I want the dudes to open it."
"You can go now," Broom said. "Thanks for the help, fellas."
"Open it, man!"
"No."
"Okay. I'll open it." Tyrone lifted the pick and windmilled it at the coffin.
The lid skewed from the hinges. Tyrone kicked it off with one of his basketball shoes.
"Shit," he said. "It's a mummy!"
Swaddled in plastic, a Chinese spearman stared through wise eyes into the firmament.
Broom stepped forward and said, "That's enough. You've seen it, now get the hell out of here."
"What's it worth?" Charles asked, leaning over the coffin, hands on his knees.
"Let's haul it out of there," Tyrone suggested. "You get that end-"
"No!" Wang Bin said.
The black teenagers looked up to see the old man pointing a chrome-plated pistol at them. They noticed that his arm was rigid. Charles chuckled and fumbled with the statue.
"Why you so uptight?" Tyrone said to Wang Bin. "This mummy must be somebody special for you, that right? Is this your old man?"
"Tell your friend to let go of the artifact," Wang Bin instructed.
"He ain't gonna break it."
The crack of the pistol got the dog barking again. Charles wriggled on the damp ground, clawing at his right arm. Tyrone was speechless.
"Oh shit, Pop," Broom said in a husky voice. "We've got to get out of here."
"I agree," the deputy minister said. "Mr. Tyrone, would you please help Mr.
Broom carry the artifact to our car? If you make trouble, I will shoot your friend again and again until he is dead."
By this time Charles was sobbing, and his New York Jets jersey was sticky with fresh blood. Tyrone gingerly lifted the Chinese spear carrier by the head while Broom-suddenly sober-carried the other end. The two unlikely pallbearers tenuously made their way up the hillside, weaving among the tombstones. Wang Bin held the pistol steadily on his captive and wondered sourly if this was going to be the only way to gain people's obedience.
The first cop on the scene was a patrolman named Sanderson, who borrowed a spool of kite string from one of the neighborhood kids and cordoned off the gravesite using four other tombstones as corner posts. The total effect, Sanderson noted with self-satisfaction, was to convey the impression of an actual crime scene.