“Here’re the new trousers.” Another voice, McReady’s. He dared not open his eyes, were they in McReady’s cottage again? Proximity to cemeteries makes me somewhat ill, Mullaney thought, or perhaps its only getting hit on the head so often.
“We wouldn’t have to be doing this twice if you’d done it right the first time,” Purcell said.
“We got the diamonds back,” McReady said, “so what difference does it make?”
“This time we’ll make sure he’s dead,” K said.
“Take off his shoes,” McReady said.
“Why?”
“So we can get these pants on him.”
“Is he still out?”
“Yeah.”
“Drag him over here, near the coffin.”
Someone’s hands clutched at his ankles. He felt the floor scraping beneath his shoulders and back, heard the rasping sound of cloth catching at splintered wood. They had not bound him, his hands and feet were free, he could still fight or run.
He wondered how they had located him in the basement room, and then remembered he had left the cab sitting at the curb outside the building, that had been a mistake, a terrible oversight; I have been making a lot of mistakes these past two days, he thought, and I am very tired. Kill me and put me in the goddamn coffin, get it over with.
“Take off his pants,” McReady said.
Purcell pulled at the pants he was wearing. It was cold on the floor of the cottage. He could feel the wind seeping under the front door, Why is it always so cold on the edge of cemeteries? he wondered.
“Polka-dot shorts,” Purcell said, and laughed. “That kills me.”
“Here,” McReady said.
Purcell pulled the new set of trousers over Mullaney’s feet and ankles, up over his legs.
“Doesn’t he need a belt?”
“No, the jacket will cover the trouser loops.”
“We’re lucky the buttons are still on it,” Purcell said.
“They’re fastened securely,” McReady said.
“We had a hole drilled through the pavilion of each diamond...”
“The what?”
“The pavilion,” K said. “The part below the mounting. Doesn’t he need a different tie?”
“A black one,” Purcell said. “You could have cracked those stones, you know.”
“An expert did the job. Don’t we have a black tie, McReady?”
“If you’d cracked the big ones...”
“I know.”
“... the value would have gone all the way down.”
“I’ll look in the other room.”
“We can’t put him in the coffin with a striped tie,” K said.
“How much did you say they’re worth?” Purcell asked.
“The three big ones?”
“Yeah.”
“Nine thousand dollars a carat.”
“And the smaller ones?”
“Five thousand a carat.”
“That doesn’t come to half a million, does it?”
“No one ever said it did.”
“You said it did.”
“I said four hundred and ninety thousand dollars.”
“You said half a million.”
“I said not quite half a million.”
“Are you getting that tie, McReady?”
“I could only find a black bow tie,” McReady said.
“Do they bury people in bow ties?”
“Why not?”
“This is a nice bow tie,” McReady said.
“I wonder what happened to his yellow shirt.”
“Jasmine,” McReady said, and chuckled.
“Jasmine,” K repeated, and chuckled with him.
“Let’s get the tie on him,” Purcell said.
“We’ll have to shoot him in the back of the head,” K said. “Otherwise it’ll show.”
“Yeah,” Purcell agreed. “I still say you should have done that in the beginning.”
“I told you we didn’t know the coffin would be hijacked.”
“You should have figured it might have been.”
“Why?” McReady said. “Gouda thought we’d already fenced the stuff and been paid for it.”
“How do you fasten this tie?” K asked.
“Isn’t there a clip or something?”
“No. Oh, wait a minute, is this it?”
“Yes, that’s it,” McReady said.
“I’ve never seen anyone buried in a bow tie,” Purcell said. “Bow ties are for weddings.”
“It’ll have to do,” K said. “You complain an awful lot, did you know that, Purcell?”
“I hate sloppy jobs.”
“Gouda used to complain a lot, too,” McReady said.
“Yeah, but I’m not working for Kruger.”
“We hope not,” McReady said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Calm down,” K said.
“Well, tell him not to make those kind of remarks.”
“Don’t make those kind of remarks,” K said.
“It’s not my fault you were careless,” Purcell said.
“We were not careless.”
“We wanted Gouda to think we’d received payment.”
“We wanted him to steal the money.”
“We wanted him to think we were innocently shipping half a million dollars in paper scraps to Rome.”
“Yeah,” Purcell said sourly, “the only trouble is it didn’t work.”
“It almost worked.”
“Almost ain’t quite,” Purcell said. “The way four hundred and ninety thousand dollars ain’t quite half a million.”
“We had no idea Kruger would tip.”
“The counterfeit bills were very good,” K said.
“Excellent,” McReady said.
“They were so good, I hated to part with them.”
“Where’d you get them?” Purcell asked.
“Ladro’s New York people supplied them.”
“He was furious when I spoke to him,” McReady said.
“Well, he’ll be happy tomorrow morning,” K said. “Let’s get the jacket on him.”
“Let’s shoot him first,” Purcell said.
“You think so?”
“Sure. Otherwise we’ll get blood on the jacket.”
“What do you think, McReady?”
“Either way, let’s get it over with.”
Well, how about it? Mullaney thought, and would have made his move right then, but something still was bothering him, the same elusive something that had begun nagging him back in the Brooklyn basement before he’d started gambling with Melissa, the same something that was eluding him now. You had better move, Mullaney, he told himself, you had better move now and fast and figure out what’s bothering you later because if you don’t you’re going to be figuring it out in a coffin, dead this time, and I am told getting shot in the head is not a very pleasant death. Grandma told me that, however, and she has been proven notoriously wrong about a great many things.
“Lift him,” K said.
“Why?” McReady asked.
“So Purcell can get to the back of his head.”
“Oh,” McReady said. “Yes.”
McReady tugged at his hands, pulling him up into a sitting position. He could hear Purcell walking around behind him.
“Watch the angle now,” K said.
“What do you mean?”
“Make sure you don’t send the bullet through his head and into me.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Point the gun up toward the ceiling.”
“Right,” Purcell said.
With his eyes still closed, Mullaney felt something hard and cold against the back of his skull.
“No, tilt it more,” K said.
“Like this?”
“Can’t you tilt it?”
“Not without crouching down.”
“Then crouch down.”
“You’re behaving like an amateur,” McReady said.
“Tell him to stop making those kind of remarks,” Purcell said. “Stop making those kind of remarks,” K said.