The keys to it were in my pocket, but the remaining security boys were between me and the vehicle. I needed to get closer.
Plus, I had to get a better angle on the other shooters, so I quickly reloaded and took a chance, breaking cover to sprint for a better position. I heard three shots but none of them came close to catching me, and I flopped behind another headstone, alive and well.
“ Now,” I heard one of them say, and peeked out and saw them both running for new positions, in opposite directions.
I could only choose one. He had almost made it to cover when my shot caught him in the side of the head and he went tumbling on now useless legs.
The other guy had found a new spot, a good one, behind a massive affair with a granite angel perched on top. He and I both had good cover now, and we traded shots and chipped pieces off our respective headstones and didn’t get anywhere.
But I could hear him breathing-breathing hard-and, hell, I wasn’t even winded. I was older by fifteen years easy, but I was a swimmer, remember; this guy must have been a smoker, and that can kill your ass.
So I had that advantage, if nothing else. Listening carefully, I could hear him doing a speed-reload, and I was grinning as I popped up, blasting away at his headstone, specifically at the decorative angel, emptying the clip.
The cupid-like statue flew apart, into fragments, bursting into the guy’s face. He cried out as he reared back, and I took the opportunity to sprint for that hearse, shoving in a fresh clip as I did.
My opponent was too busy blinking away dust and chips, his face flecked with shards of granite, to get a good aim at my fleeing figure.
Still on the run, I took a look back and thought what the hell and aimed and fired.
He, too, took a bullet in the head and fell backward, haloed in blood, flung between stones, just as dead as anybody already underground.
I got into the hearse and started it up, then swung around onto the little gravel roadway, where the windshield gave me a view on a tableau that would have been memorable even without the scattered bodies of the security team…
…Jonah Green emerging from his daughter’s grave, crawling up over those metal lowering tubes, the front of him shot up, but definitely still alive, and then he was on his feet, albeit weaving like a damn drunk.
He teetered at the edge of the grave, his back to it-unsteady yes, but standing, and the square face set with almost crazed determination.
To do what? I wondered. Survive? Kill me?
So I floored the fucking thing, found a lane between gravestones, and went charging across the grass, and he must have heard the engine’s roar because he turned toward me, the determination shifting to terror, as the hearse bore down.
I clipped him good as I passed, garnering a truly satisfying crunch, and sent him toppling back into the grave, landing to make another metallic, echoing thud.
Slamming on the brakes, I hopped out, nine millimeter in my fist, and ran to the grave, where Green-down in there on top of his daughter’s copper coffin, arms in crucifixion position-looked up at me with the money-color eyes wide open and staring.
But he didn’t see me. He was very, very dead.
Which was a bit of a disappointment, because I would just as soon have shot him some more.
Time to go.
I was paused just long enough to dump the duct-taped mummy of the real hearse driver, and got back in a vehicle that looked little the worse for wear for having just run a guy down.
This time I didn’t floor it, just cruised out of the cemetery in my chauffeur’s uniform, my hands on the wheel of the hearse, passing assorted Oak Brook Memorial personnel coming out of hiding, scurrying along the periphery, now that the shooting was over.
Sixteen
Oak Brook Memorial was easing into spring, the snow gone, the grass greening, but this could just as easily have been November as late March. Once again cloud cover threw shadows on the cemetery, but this time they more or less stayed put, just lending a blue-gray cast to the tombstone-studded landscape.
The gravesite still looked fresh, the unusual procedure of the contents of a grave needing to be shifted one to the right making it look like two relatively recent burials had taken place.
A correction had also been made on the massive granite gravestone. Whether this was a fresh slab, or whether tombstone cutters have their own kind of Liquid Paper, I couldn’t tell you.
At any rate, it now read:
MARY ANN GREEN
(1940–1985)
Beloved Wife and Mother
JONAH ALLEN GREEN
(1938–2005)
Husband and Father and below:
JANET ANN GREEN
(1975-)
JULIA SUSAN GREEN
(1985–2005)
Cherished Daughter
A woman in a black wool coat, black slacks and red sweater knelt to place a floral wreath at one of the graves, taking care to position it just right. She lowered her head and, apparently, began to pray.
I let Janet finish the mumbo jumbo before I wandered down from my surveillance post behind that mausoleum on the hillock, and when she finally stood, I was at her side.
At first, she was startled-couldn’t blame her: she hadn’t seen me for several months, not since I’d shuffled her out of Homewood and onto a plane. But very soon her expression turned calm, almost serene.
“Your friend Gary,” she said, “was very nice.”
I nodded. “Florida makes a nice getaway in the winter.”
She was looking at me the way a mother checks a kid getting over the measles. “He wouldn’t tell me anything about you.”
And once again, I was glad I hadn’t killed my old Vietnam buddy, after getting drunk and spilling my guts to him, that time. Even a prick like me can use a friend now and again.
“His wife’s nice, too,” she said conversationally.
“Ruthie. Yeah. A peach.”
“She doesn’t know anything about you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an enigma wrapped up in a riddle.”
She almost smiled. “What now?”
My eyes met hers, and it wasn’t the easiest thing I ever did. “We can do it two ways. I can tell you everything…or nothing.”
She thought about that.
Then Janet said, “If you tell me everything…” She gestured toward the gravestone. “…will I be next?”
“No. But you were supposed to be.”
She frowned. “My father…?”
My eyes remained locked with hers. “Can you live with it?”
She sighed; looked away; shivered-it was still cold, after all-and folded her arms to herself, her hands in leather gloves. Her gaze lingered on the gravestone and then slowly shook her head.
“You mean, what Daddy did? Or what you’ve done?…What you might have done?”
“All that,” I said.
Her eyes came to mine again. “Or do you mean… could I live with you?”
I said nothing.
Our eyes remained locked.
“Your call,” I said, and I walked away, moving across the cloud-shadowed landscape, finding my way between tombstones, heading up that hill.
I could feel her eyes on me, but she did not call out.
So I was back where we began, in my A-frame, still managing Sylvan Lodge for Gary Petersen, and caught up in getting the place ready for the new season. Next week staff would be in, and I’d have to start dealing with being around people again.
Harry and Louis hadn’t shown up yet. Perhaps they were tangled in something down at the bottom of the lake, and were doing me the favor of feeding fish and turning to skeletons. I still felt that if their bloated remains did decide to float to the surface, their mob background would keep any heat off an innocent civilian like me.
And it was a big lake. Sylvan Lodge was only one little notch on it.