They'd agreed to meet at an all-night supermarket on University Avenue, a place where the parking lot was usually full. Tonight there were only a few cars in front of the store, and one of them was a baby-blue St. Paul police cruiser. When he saw it, Bekker nearly panicked. Did they have Druze? How did they get him? Had he and Druze been betrayed? Had Druze gone to the police…? No, wait; no, wait; no, wait; wait-wait-wait…
There he was, Druze, in the Dodge, waiting, the windows steamed. No cops near the squad car. Must be inside. Bekker parked on the left side of Druze's car, killed the engine and slipped out, watching the lighted entrance of the supermarket. Where were the cops? He opened the back door of his car, got the shovel off the floor, locked the door. He was wearing a rain suit and a canvas hat, and had been out of the car for no more than fifteen seconds, but the water poured off the brim of the hat in a steady stream.
Druze popped the passenger door on the Dodge as Bekker stepped over. He was breathing hard, almost panting. He scanned the rain-blasted lot, then hurled the shovel on the floor of the backseat, on top of Druze's spade, and clambered into the car. With the door shut, he took off the canvas hat and threw it in the back with the shovel. Druze was shocked when Bekker turned toward him. Bekker was beautiful; this man was gaunt, gray-faced. He looked, Druze thought, like a corpse in a B movie. He turned away and cranked the starter.
"Are you all right?" Druze asked, as he put the car in gear.
"No. I'm not," Bekker said shortly.
"This is fuckin' awful, man," Druze said. He stopped at the curb cut, waiting for a stream of traffic to pass. His burned face was flat, emotionless, the scarred lips like cracks in a dried creek bed. "Digging up the dead."
"Fuck it-fuck it," Bekker rasped. A bolt of lightning zigzagged through the sky to the east, where they were going. "We gotta."
"I can't get the tarbaby out of my head," Druze said. "We can't shake this guy, Philip George." In other people, anger, fear, resentment flowed like gasoline. In Druze, even the violent emotions moved like clay, slowly turning, compressing, darkening. He was angry now, in his muted way, listening to Bekker, his friend. Bekker picked it up, put his hand on Druze's shoulder.
"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.