“Can I pitch it into the ocean?” he asked hoarsely.
“You have to,” said Angelica, nodding and not looking at the thing.
Mavranos reached back over his shoulder and then snapped his hand forward, letting the pliers spring open at the last moment, as if he were casting a fishing fly. The little bloody metal fork spun away, glittering for a moment in the horizontal sunlight, and then disappeared behind a wave.
Cochran looked back at the body of Scott Crane. A spatter of fresh red blood stood out on the dark beard, but the pale, lined face was as composed and noble as before, and he reminded himself that at the moment Crane was incapable of feeling pain.
The two silver dollars were lying on the stones near Scott Crane’s bare feet. “Aren’t you gonna put the coins on his eyes?” Cochran asked.
“No,” snapped Angelica. “They’re his fare over. We want him to come back.”
Then why have them here at all? thought Cochran defensively. His raised arm was getting tired.
Angelica crouched to pick up the myrtle branches and the gold cigarette lighter, and she opened the lighter’s lid and flicked the striker; the myrtle caught and burned with an almost invisible flame, though Cochran could smell the incense like smoke.
Angelica nodded to Plumtree.
Plumtree faced the now-glittering gray water, and when she had lifted the glass she paused. “Not even Valorie?” she asked in a quiet voice, clearly not addressing any of the others present. “This is mine?”
Standing to the side of her with his arm stiffly raised, Cochran could see windblown tears streaming back across her cheek.
“Scott Craned she called strongly out toward the waves and the glowing fog. “I know you can fucking hear me! Come into me, into this body of your murderer!” And she tipped the glass up and drank it down in three convulsive swallows.
WITH A drumming roar like the sound of a forest fire sudden solid rain thrashed down onto the peninsula, flinging up a haze of splash-spray over the stones and blurring the surface of the sea. The sudden haze of flying water was lit by two rapid white flares of lightning, and the sudden hard crash of close thunder battered at the marble walls and rocked Cochran back on his heels.
Plumtree’s hair was instantly soaked, and it flew out like snakes when she flung her head back and shouted out three syllables of harsh laughter.
“Four-and-twenty blackbrides baked in a pie!” roared the voice of Omar Salvoy from her gaping mouth. “When the pie was opened, the brides began to sing! Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king!”
Cochran had lost his footing, and he twisted as he fell so that his knees and elbows knocked against the wet stones.
He could see the remains of Scott Crane, only a couple of feet in front of his face. It was a bare gray skull that now lolled above the collar of the shirt, and the already-wet fabric was collapsed against stark ribs and no abdomen at all, and the hands that spilled from the cuffs were long-fingered gray bone.
Plumtree turned away from the sea, and even through the dimness and the retinal afterglare from the lightning Cochran could see the white of her bared teeth, and he knew this was Plumtree’s father, Omar Salvoy. He might have been looking straight at Cochran.
“Moth-er!” Cochran yelled, and though he was only trying to induce the Foliow-the-Queen effect in her, to his surprise the wail powerfully evoked his own dormant childhood fear of being heartbreakingly lost and monstrously found, and he was glad that the rain would hide the tears he felt springing from his eyes. For his self-respect more than from any particular hope of its efficacy, he shouted, “Janis’s mom!”
Perhaps it had worked—at any rate the figure that was Plumtree was allowing itself to be hustled back up the stairs by Mavranos, and Angelica was now crouched on the other side of the dressed skeleton, hastily folding the stick-like arms and legs.
Angelica looked up at him over the arch of the cloth-draped breastbone. “Get the Wild Turkey bottle!” she said.
Cochran nodded, and crawled across the stones and snatched up the pint bottle in the moment before Pete Sullivan grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet. Cochran had almost dropped the bottle in surprise—it was as hot as if scalding coffee had just been poured out of it, and he shoved it into the pocket of his windbreaker.
Another flare of lightning lit the weathered stones through the thick haze of rain, and the instant bomb-blast of thunder fluttered the wet hair on the back of Cochran’s head.
Things like beanbags were falling out of the sky and hitting the stones all around him—he squinted at a couple of them as Pete hurried him across the pavement, and he saw that they were dead seagulls. Over the roar of the rain battering the pavement he could hear bestial groans and howls shaking out of the mouths of the deeply moored pipes now.
He and Pete followed Angelica up the slippery stone steps to the roadway mud, and after Angelica had unceremoniously dumped the armful of clothes and bones in through the open back window of Mavranos’s truck they all scrambled around to the side doors and piled in, kicking out old clothes and McDonald’s take-out hamburger wrappings.
Cochran and Plumtree and Pete were all wedged uncomfortably in the back seat; but Cochran relaxed a little when he heard Plumtree muttering about Jesus. Apparently the Follow-the-Queen invocation had worked, and this was the personality of Plumtree’s mother.
Mavranos had started the truck and levered it into gear before they had got the doors shut, and he clicked the headlights on as the truck rocked forward along the dirt path back toward the yacht-club parking lot. Tools and frying pans clanked in the truck bed, and Cochran wondered if Crane’s skeleton was being broken up back there.
Then he leaned forward over the back of the front seat to peer ahead past the squeaking whips of the windshield wipers. Translucent human figures waved and grimaced out on the road in the yellow headlight glare, and stretched or sprang away to the sides as the massive bumper and grille bulled through them.
Angelica was crouched in the front passenger seat with her carbine across her knees. “I see lights, ahead,” she said, speaking loudly to be heard over the rain and wind that were thrashing in through the broken window by her right elbow. “Don’t waste time focussing on these ghosts.”
“Motorcycles,” said Mavranos, squinting through the streaming windshield. He took his right hand from the steering wheel long enough to draw the revolver from under his belt and lay it across his lap. “They’re on Yacht Road, turning into the parking lot.” He tromped on the accelerator, and the old truck bounced violently on its shocks, clanging the tools and pans in the back. “I’m gonna stop,” he called, “sudden, when we’re past the Granada. You all jump out and get into it—I’ll use this truck to clear a path through these guys.”
“No, Arky—” Angelica began, but then the truck had slammed down over a curb and had passed the parked Granada, and was braking hard and slewing around to the right on the wet asphalt. Cochran was pressed against the back of the front seat, but he shoved the right-side door open while the truck was still rocking from side to side, its left side facing the oncoming glare of motorcycle headlights.