Half a quotation had been chiseled into a flat-sided boulder at the front of the monument: AND THE LEAVES OF THE TREE WERE FOR
To its left a turned-off Sky-Tracker spotlight, the type that shot a mile-high beam of beckoning light at movie premieres and cheesy car sales, sat dormant. Tim could barely make out the small hatch in the trunk of the tree through which the spotlight would slide and illuminate the tree from the interior with the proverbial thousand points of light.
An ambitious task, to outdo the Hollywood sign, but a task accomplished.
Tim walked over and pulled three Buds from the bag. He handed one to Mitchell and offered another to Robert, who shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, rustling in the bag himself and coming up with a Sharp’s.
Robert popped the top and took several deep gulps, draining half the bottle. He gazed at the tree before them. “I usually don’t like modern crap,” he said. “But this, this is all right.”
“It’s like Braque,” Mitchell said. “All planes and different perspectives. Do you know Braque?”
Robert and Tim shook their heads, and Mitchell shrugged off the reference self-consciously. Robert circled slowly, his boots kicking up puffs of dust, drawing close to his brother’s side as if by genetic pull. Mitchell lit two cigarettes and handed one to Robert, and they smoked and stood side by side, solid and immobile like two inverted triangles of hammered steel, sucking Camels, Mitchell with his sleeve-cuffed pack of cigs, Robert with his jacket collar turned up, both of them humming along to “Georgia on My Mind” beneath bristled mustaches as if no one had bothered to show up and tell them the seventies were over. Mitchell’s face, though less severe than Robert’s, held a certain acuteness, a sharpness of perception that Tim had not previously seen. The brothers were beside each other, but Mitchell’s elbow was in front of Robert’s, and he stood square-shouldered while Robert’s shoulders tilted slightly toward him in a vague hint of deference.
Robert raised his beer, and the three bottles clinked, a somber toast.
“A glowing tree is nice, but it ain’t gonna solve dick,” he said. “I’ll tell you what would make a good memorial. One guilty and unconvicted fuck swinging from each branch. That’s what I’d like. That’s the kind of memorial we oughta build for those victims.”
“Water the tree with the blood of retribution,” Mitchell said.
He and his brother laughed at the formality, the bad poetics.
The twins’ standing to either side of Tim made him claustrophobic, not just because of their bulk and proximity but because their sameness was disorienting. Mitchell sat on the dirt. Robert and Tim followed suit.
“It wears you down,” Robert said, “seeing good people take it from the wrong end, seeing the motherfuckers reign supreme, no remorse, no hesitation, no…”
“-accountability,” Mitchell said.
“Yeah. A part of me decided after our sister died that I wouldn’t lie down no more, and so now I’m standing up, even though it’s not what I would of stood up for before. Lesser of two evils and all that. And I’ve made my decision, and it’s the right one, and I’ll tell you what-I won’t lose a second’s sleep over the pieces of shit we execute. Not a fuckin’ second. We gotta stay firm and committed, guys like us. Not give in to cunts like Ananberg.” Robert tilted his face back and shot a stream of cigarette smoke at the moon, patches of dirt coloring his denim jacket at the elbows. “I guess I see things clearer now, about what needs to get done. It’s like we’re stuck in this…in this…”
“-conundrum-” Mitchell said.
“-where we’re fucked if we do and we get fucked if we don’t.”
“They say the worst cynics are frustrated idealists,” Tim said.
Mitchell drained his beer and popped a new one. “You think we’re cynics?”
“I don’t know what you are.”
The wind kicked up, making the scaffolding groan, sending red puffs up off the ground.
“We couldn’t wait to get started,” Robert said. “It’s the waiting that kills you. You find out that your little sister was brutally murdered, and then you’re…”
“-mired-”
“-in nothingness. Waiting for the investigation, waiting for a suspect to be produced, waiting on forensics, the first court appearance, then the next, then the next…” Robert shook his head. “It’s what we hate most of all.”
“Now, finally,” Mitchell said, “we don’t have to wait anymore.”
Tim mused on this silently.
“Let us in more next time around,” Mitchell said. “We can handle it. We’ll win your trust.”
The phone-book intimidation tactic hadn’t yielded, so they’d moved to Plan B: ingratiation. Tim was no more swayed by it. “We’ll see.”
Robert leaned forward abruptly. “What, our work wasn’t good enough for you?”
“Your work was fine. Excellent, even.”
“Then we want in on the kill. You can’t deny us that. We won’t be denied.” Mitchell shot Robert a sharp look, but he didn’t catch the hint because he was watching Tim closely. “We can help you with your daughter’s case,” he continued. “With Kindell. Before we vote even, me and Mitch can pay him a little visit. Rattle his cage, bend his elbow, pop a testicle or two. We’ll get you whatever answers you want. Who knows-we could even have a hands-on chat with that prick public defender of his.”
Tim stared at them in disbelief, trying to order his thoughts. “That’s exactly the opposite of how we need to conduct ourselves.” If their faces were any indication, the anger in his voice was startling. “This is not a proceed-at-any-cost operation. It’s not about rashness and lawlessness. Neither of you have the first idea what the Commission is actually about, and you’re wondering why I’m reluctant to cut you into the action.”
To Tim’s surprise neither brother matched his anger. Robert dug at the ground with a stick. “You’re right,” he said softly. “It’s just that your little girl’s case, Virginia’s case, really”-his cheeks drew up in a half squint, half grimace-“really tore us up. It about broke my fuckin’ heart.”
Robert’s reaction was completely genuine-it had none of the manipulation Tim had sensed in so much of the brothers’ previous maneuvering. The expression of empathy surprised him so thoroughly that his anger deflated at once, leaving him with only the sorrow he saw mirrored back at him from both faces. He got busy playing with his bottle cap so his eyes would have something to look at.
“Now and then, no matter what you’ve seen, a case sails through all the chinks in your armor and strikes home.” Mitchell’s throat gave off a rattle when he spoke. “At least our sister lived a few years before getting taken. Not like your little girl.”
Robert’s face, lit with the distant glow of downtown, was stone-hard with either rage or sclerosed sorrow. “I saw her picture on TV, that clip they ran. The one of her in a pumpkin costume, too big, kept falling down.”
“Halloween 2001.” Tim’s voice was so soft it was barely audible. “My wife tried to stitch the costume. She’s not very domestic.”
“She was a great kid, Virginia,” Robert said with an almost aggressive adamancy. “I could tell, even just from what I saw.”
Tim understood for the first time that the brothers weren’t simply justifying their desire to kill criminals, but that they’d taken Ginny’s death personally, as they took each of the Commission’s cases personally. Their sister remained frozen in time, locked in a hellish script, to be rekilled in their minds every time a murderer escaped justice. While this made them flawed participants for a cause that called for objectivity and circumspection, Tim couldn’t deny a certain gratitude for their brute emotionality. He grasped at last the note of affection, even admiration, hidden in Dumone’s voice when he spoke of them. They mourned with a hurt-animal purity uncomplicated by law or ethic. Maybe they mourned as Tim and Dumone wished they themselves were capable of doing.