"Carlo, I'm fucked up," Bekker said. He said it quickly, the words snapping off after the last syllable. "I'm fuckin' crazy. I can't apologize for it. I don't want it. But it's there. And honest to God, I'm dying."
Druze took it in, not understanding, took the car onto the entrance ramp for I-94. "I mean, have you tried Valium or whatever?"
"You stupid shit…" Bekker's anger burst through like napalm, but he instantly backed off, humbling himself. "I'm sorry. I tried everything. Everything. Everything. There's only one way."
"Dangerous…"
"Fuck dangerous," Bekker shouted. Then, quiet again, straining to see through the rain as they accelerated off the ramp and into traffic, his voice formal, that of a man on an emotional seesaw: "A snake. There's a snake in my brain."
Druze glanced sideways at Bekker. The other man seemed to be sliding into a trance, his face rigid. "We were supposed to stay away from each other. If they see us…" Druze ventured.
Bekker didn't answer. He sat in the passenger seat, twisting his hands. Six miles later, coming back from wherever he was, he said, "I know… And one of them's no dummy. I had him in for coffee."
"You what?" Druze's head snapped around: Bekker was losing it. But no: he sounded almost rational now.
"Had him in for coffee. Found him in front of my house. Watching. Lucas Davenport. He's not stupid. He looks mean."
"Tough guy? A little over six feet, looks like a boxer or something? Dark hair, with a scar coming through his eyebrow?" Druze quickly traced the path of Lucas' scar on his own face.
Bekker nodded, his head cocked to one side: "You know him?"
"He was at the theater after you did Armistead," Druze said. "Talking to one of the actresses. They looked pretty friendly."
"Who? Which one?"
"Cassie Lasch. Played the maid in… you didn't go to that. She's a second-stringer. Good-looking. I could see this guy coming on to her. She lives in my building."
"You work with her much?"
"No. We're both part of the group, but we've never talked much or anything. Not personally."
"Could she pipe you into what Davenport's thinking?"
"I don't know. She might pick something up. If the guy's smart, I don't need him checking on me."
"You're right," Bekker said, looking at Druze as the Dodge's interior was swept by the lights of an oncoming car. "What was her name again? Cassie?"
"Cassie Lasch," Druze said. "A redhead."
Lightning crashed around them as they crossed the St. Croix River into Wisconsin and headed up the bluff. When they passed the Hudson turnoff, the thunderhead opened. Rain swept across the road, shaking the car, and Druze was forced to slow as they pushed into the dark countryside. By the time they reached the exit to the lake, they were down to forty miles an hour, the last car in an informal convoy.
"What a fuckin' night," Druze said. Lightning answered.
"I couldn't make it another twenty-four hours," Bekker answered. "Is he deep?"
Deep? Ah, he meant George. "More than two feet, anyway," Druze said. "Probably closer to three."
"Should be quick… Won't take long," Bekker said.
"You weren't here last night," Druze said sourly. "We're talking about a peat bog. This is gonna take a while."
They missed the turnoff to the cabin. Druze had slowed further on the blacktopped county road, driving thirty, then twenty-five, watching for the reflectors that marked the turn… but they missed them, went a mile too far, had to come back. They saw only one other vehicle, a pickup, passing in the opposite direction, a man with a hat and a face that was a blurred oval hunched over the steering wheel.
They found the track coming back, turned and picked their way between the high bushes. The rain was tapering off; the thunderhead, still spitting out long chains of lightning, had moved to the north. The cabin popped up in the headlights like a mirage, congealing out of darkness, suddenly, and close. Druze parked in front of it, killed the headlights and said, "Let's do it."
He took a gray plastic raincoat from the backseat and pulled it on. Bekker wore sophisticated foul-weather gear, with a hood like a monk's cowl.
"Take my hat," he said to Druze, snagging it out of the backseat and passing it to the other man.
They got out, the ground firm underfoot, sandy rather than muddy. As the rain slowed, a wind seemed to increase and moaned through the bare birch trees overhead. Past the cabin, perhaps two or three hundred yards across the lake, Bekker could see a blue yard light and, lower, the yellow rectangle of a lighted window.
"This way," Druze grunted. His pantlegs below the rain suit were already wet, and he felt the first tongue of water inside his athletic shoes. He put the spade over his shoulder and, with the flashlight playing on the ground, led the way through the brambles, back to the edge of the tamarack swamp. The ground changed from high and sandy to soft, and finally to muck.
"How much…" Bekker started.
"We're here." Druze shined the light on the ground, and Bekker could just pick out an oval pattern of raw earth.
"I kicked some shit over it before I left," Druze said. "In two weeks, you wouldn't be able to find it if you tried."
"We'll do that again before we leave. Maybe get some leaves on it," Bekker said vaguely. Rain ran down his face and collected in his eyebrows, and he sputtered through it. He was disintegrating in the water, falling apart like the wicked witch, Druze thought.
"Sure," Druze grunted. He jammed the flashlight into the branches of a bare bush and scooped up a shovelful of muck. "Dig."
Bekker worked frantically, shoveling, talking to himself, spitting in the rain, digging like a badger. Druze tried to be more methodical but after a few minutes simply tried to stay out of the way. To the north, the thunderhead was still rumbling, and another burst of rain put a half-inch of water in the hole.
"I can't tell…" Bekker said, gasping between words, "I can't tell… if the water's from the rain… or if it's coming up… from below."
"Some of both," Druze said. The flashlight caught a lump that looked different, and Druze prodded it with the tip of his shovel. The blade hit something resilient. "I think I got him."
"Got him? Here, let me…"
Bekker motioned Druze aside and knelt in the hole, holding the blade of his shovel like a scoop, working like a man in a frenzy, throwing the muck out in all directions. "We got him," he said, breathing hard. A hip, a leg, a shoulder, the sport coat. "Got him got him got him…"
Druze stood back, holding the light, while Bekker cleared the mud away from the top of the body. "Shit," he said, looking up at Druze, his pale face the color and consistency of candle wax, "He's facedown."
"I just kind of dumped him…" Druze said, half apologetically.
"That's okay, I just have to…"
Bekker tried to free the body by pulling on the sport coat, but there was still too much dirt around it and it held George as firmly as if he were frozen in concrete.
"Suction or something," Bekker grunted. His rain suit and his face were covered with mud, but he paid no attention. He straddled what he could see of the body, put his hands around George's neck and tried to pry the head free. "Can't fuckin' get it," he said after a minute.
"We have to clear away."
"Yeah." Bekker went back to the shovel, still using it as a scoop, a pan, and dug around the body, trying to loosen the arms, which were apparently sunk in the mud below. He got the left one first, the hand white as chalk, the fingers rigid and waxy as candles. Then Bekker got part of the left leg and turned his face up to Druze and said, "If you could help just here."
Druze squatted on the rim of the hole, reached in, grabbed George's belt. "Get his head," he said. "Ready? Heave."
George came partway out of the hole like an archaeological artifact on the end of a crane cable. Not stiff, but not particularly loose, either, his legs still anchored in the muck, his head hanging forward…