Epitaphs

by Bill Pronzini

  I eased my left hand out of its cloth prison. Flexed the cramped fingers before I felt for the keys.

  “Remember, pops—no more trouble.”

  “I won’t do anything but open the gate,” I said.

  “Go,” he said.

  I freed my other hand, got stiffly out of the car. Rubbed the hands together, working the fingers, to restore circulation. Cold out here at this hour. The wind was up, blowing quick and chill off Tomales Bay and the ocean beyond; it seemed to transform the sweat on my body into a frosting of ice. I could hear it soughing gustily, rattling branches in the adjacent trees.

  The fourth key I tried opened the padlock. I dropped the chain, pushed the gate inward. Make a run for the trees? They were a huge shifting wall of black along this side, only a few yards away. But my chances would be slim at best. There weren’t enough trees to get lost in and I didn’t know the terrain and I was sure DeKuiper had a flashlight. He’d shoot me the minute he caught me.

  Not here, I thought, not yet. Just one move left, and when I make it I won’t be running away from him. If I’m going to die tonight, it’ll be right in his face.

  I walked the gate across to the far side of the road. Stood there waiting while he brought the Caddy through. The driver’s window was down; the blob of him in there said, “Leave it open. Walk around front, get in.”

  I did that. Valconazzi was sitting up now, leaning forward shakily with both hands clutching at the seat back. In the glow of the dash lights his face had a ghastly misshapen aspect, like a Halloween monster mask.

  “Where, Chet?” DeKuiper asked him.

  Barely audible whisper: “Few hundred ...”

  “What? Louder, don’t mumble.”

  “Few hundred yards ... cow track, right side.”

  “Then what?”

  “Half mile ... gully, some trees ...”

  “Is that where she is?”

  “Trees, yes.”

  “Tell me when, where.”

  Valconazzi whimpered, “Please ... listen to me ... accident, you got to believe—”

  “Shut up,” DeKuiper said. “Shut the fuck up. Only words from you, where to stop.”

  Another whimper, like a child or a hurt puppy. I felt no compassion for him. Liked to hurt women, got excited by the sight of blood and death, drowned Gianna in his bathtub during sex.... Chet was finally paying the price for his sins.

  DeKuiper put the car in gear and we began to jounce forward through the dusty ruts. Once we turned onto the cow track, the ride got twice as rough. The surface was potholed, rutted, studded with rocks—built for a Jeep or a pickup, not for a passenger car. Even at a crawl, we bottomed out twice in deep depressions, the second time hard enough to lift me off the seat and to crack my skull against the headliner. Valconazzi made no sound that time. When I looked over the seat I saw that he’d passed out again, was lying with his head down on the floor. I didn’t tell DeKuiper. Why make things any easier for him?

  The track curved around the base of a low hill, along the shoulder of another, then dipped down and through a narrow, flattish meadow. The headlights illuminated dry grass, scatters of rock, a squarish blob that was probably a salt lick, the silhouettes of trees in the distance. Otherwise the darkness pressed in tight around us. As near as I could judge we were moving away from where the ranch buildings were situated, in a southeasterly direction.

  We drew closer to the gather of trees. Then the track dipped downward again and the lights picked out a long, ragged tear in the earth that took shape as a shallow gully. There was water in it, but not much more than a trickle; we splashed through it, up through a cut in the bank opposite. The gully, I saw then, doubled back on itself ahead and that was where the trees were clustered—along it on both banks. Some sort of natural spring there, I thought, to support that much vegetation.

  “Half mile,” DeKuiper announced. “Those trees, Chet?”

  “He’s out again,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Passed out again.”

  “Shit.” He braked, angling the car so that the lights splashed over the thicket; the trees seemed to be waving at us like waiting mourners in the windy dark. “Wake him up,” he said to me.

  I leaned over the seat, took a handful of Valconazzi’s shirt, lifted him into a sitting position. Slapped his face—forehand and backhand, steadily, until he made aware noises and his eyes came open. At first the eyes were unfocused. Then he said, “Oh Jesus no,” and I knew he was seeing the trees and the gully—what lay ahead of him over there.

  “This it, Chet?” DeKuiper said.

  “... Yeah.”

  “All right, out.”

  “I can’t ...”

  “Help him, pops.”

  I got out, got Valconazzi out. His legs didn’t want to support him, but I held him upright and the cold air and the movement seemed to give him strength. As I’d expected DeKuiper had a flashlight, a big six-cell that he switched on even before he keyed open the trunk and removed the shovel. The shovel went under the arm that was holding the torch.

  “Chet, you lead.”

  Over toward the gully, in among some scrub oak—me again supporting Valconazzi, DeKuiper crowding close behind but to one side, shining the flash beam ahead of us. The trees were buckeye and pepper, mostly, their combined smells giving the night a spice-closet scent. The ground under them was grassy, some of it dried out, some of it still spongy with life. No recently turned earth that I could see ... and then there was, at the base of a flowering buckeye.

  “There,” Valconazzi said weakly.

  DeKuiper said to me, “Untie him.”

  The knots in the necktie binding Valconazzi’s wrists were tight, slick with sweat and blood. It took me a while to work them loose, because I had to hold up his sagging body at the same time.

  “Let him go,” DeKuiper said when I was finished.

  “He’ll fall down ...”

  “Let him go.”

  I let go, stepped away, and Valconazzi fell down. Lay on his side shivering, hands pressed to his breastbone area. Ruptured spleen, maybe; there was blood on his mouth from his earlier vomiting.

  DeKuiper threw the shovel down next to him, told him to stand up. Valconazzi didn’t move.

  “Get up. Dig.”

  “I can’t ... hurt too bad ...”

  “Want me really hurt you?”

  “No ...”

  “Get up, then. Dig.”

  Somehow Valconazzi found the strength to obey. He grasped the shovel, used it to lift himself upright. And by the light of DeKuiper’s flash, he began opening up Gianna Fornessi’s grave.

  THERE WAS A TERRIBLE, hellish quality to it, like a scene out of a Poe story. The black night, the gibbering wind, the flash beam, Valconazzi’s slow, painful movements, the sound of the shovel chunking into the dry earth, even the deceptively fresh spice-closet smell. And all the while, DeKuiper kept talking, urging him to hurry, while I stood off at the edge of the light, where DeKuiper had positioned me—too far away to do anything except watch and wait and try to keep the lid screwed down tight on my emotions.

  Valconazzi kept falling down. Two or three shovelfuls of dirt, fall down, get up slowly, two or three more shovelfuls of dirt. After the first couple of times I’d tried to go help him—not because I cared to ease his suffering but because I wanted a chance to use that shovel as a weapon. DeKuiper must have guessed what was in my mind; he wouldn’t let me move. The second time he said he’d shoot me if I tried, and I knew he meant it.

  On and on it went, the three of us enacting our little nightmare. And the hole under the buckeye got deeper ... wider ... and now the spice-closet smell wasn’t the only one in the air ... and then the shovel bit into something that wasn’t earth or rock.

  Valconazzi pulled the blade back, sank to one knee. DeKuiper stepped forward at an angle, changing the trajectory of the flash to give himself a better look at what lay revealed. When the light shifted, something gleamed on the ground to my righ
t—a chunk of rock, softball-sized, partially imbedded in the earth. Eighteen or twenty inches from where I stood, in line with my right foot.

  “Goddamn sheet, huh?” DeKuiper said. “That all you bastards buried her in?”

  Nothing from Valconazzi. I eased my right foot closer to the rock, eased my left after it. DeKuiper didn’t notice; his eyes were on Valconazzi and the grave.

  “Get up, finish diggin.”

  “Can’t ... legs ... no feeling ...”

  “Stay there, then. Use hands. Dig!”

  Valconazzi pawed at the dirt with hooked fingers, exposed more of the white-shrouded body. While they were talking I’d made progress toward the rock; I kept on moving, slow inch by slow inch. The rock was near my right heel when DeKuiper’s voice lashed out again.

  “Enough. Unwrap her, Chet.”

  “No ...”

  “Unwrap her!”

  Valconazzi caught hold of the filthy sheet, tugged and tore at it, his breath coming in sobbing pants, until it opened up in his hands. What he saw inside made him gag, turn his head away.

  “Gianna,” DeKuiper said.

  One more step and I would be close enough to get at the rock with my fingers by dropping to one knee. If it was loose in the ground, not buried too deeply so that it required prying, I might be able to pick it up and throw it in one continuous motion. Lousy odds, even so, but time was running out and I was not going to just stand here and let him shoot me....

  DeKuiper said Gianna’s name again, and this time his voice trembled and broke on the last syllable. He seemed to go rigid, to solidify like a substance hardening into stone.

  “Sick bugger,” he said to Valconazzi. “Not just another whore, damn you, not Gianna.”

  On the last two words his arm, the one holding the automatic, locked out straight. Valconazzi knew what the motion meant, just as I did, and he reacted to it by trying to throw the shovel at DeKuiper. Only he did it in such a frenzy of fear that his fingers slipped off the handle before he completed the motion. The shovel clattered harmlessly at DeKuiper’s feet.

  In that same instant DeKuiper shot him, the automatic making a noise like a thunderclap in the light-spackled dark.

  I was already moving by then. Not after the rock; there was no time for that. Straight-on rush at DeKuiper.

  He saw me, heard me, pivoted my way. The automatic swung up in line with my face so that I was looking right down the bore, and he fired again, and if his foot hadn’t slid in the grave dirt and thrown off his aim he would probably have blown my damn-fool head off. As it was, the explosion deafened me and I was nearly blinded by the muzzle flash; I felt the sting of burnt powder against one cheek. The bullet went by close on the right side of my head. How close I’ll never know.

  In the next instant I hit him, first with my upthrust hands, then with my shoulder—a solid lick, jarring us both. But I had all the momentum: he spun off his feet and I stayed upright, bounced back a step. I saw the gun come loose but he hung on to the flashlight, its beam making crazy yellow-white swirls as he fell. I staggered after him. He was down on all fours at the edge of the grave, still clinging to the torch, trying to pull his legs under him. The collision had dazed him; he was having trouble with his motor responses.

  I locked my hands together, brought them down hard on the back of his neck. The blow flattened him but he was such a big bastard that it wasn’t enough to take him all the way out. He tried to roll over, punch at me with the hand holding the flashlight. I caught a grip on the flash, yanked it out of his grasp, then hammered him across the side of the head with it. Had to do it twice more before he quit fighting me and went limp.

  I rolled him onto his back, ready to clout him again if he was playing games. He wasn’t. Out all the way this time.

  Reaction set in immediately, left me shaking and incapable of movement for a little time. Right in his face, yeah ... and almost right in mine. Sweet Jesus.

  Another thought crawled into my head and seemed to lodge there, like a voice talking to me. A sly voice, with a hint of mad laughter in it.

  Not your night to die after all.

  IT WASN’T CHET VALCONAZZI’S night to die either. The bullet had bitten through the fleshy part of his right shoulder; the wound wasn’t half as serious as the probable internal injuries DeKuiper had inflicted on him with hands and feet.

  The shock had made him lose consciousness again, so I left him lying half in and half out of the grave and went back to DeKuiper. I already had both guns; I looked for the necktie I’d stripped from Valconazzi’s hands. Found it, used it to bind DeKuiper’s in the same way. Then I took a two-handed grip on his collar and dragged him through the scrub oak to his Cadillac. The trunk lid was still raised. I hoisted him up, draped his body over the edge, then lifted his feet and flopped the rest of him inside and banged the lid.

  Valconazzi was not much easier to deal with. I virtually had to carry him to the car. By the time I had him arranged on the backseat, my rib was giving me fits. I sat on the driver’s side, with the door open and my feet on the ground and my head braced in my palms, until I could breathe more or less normally again.

  I did not go back to the grave. I wanted nothing to do with what had been buried there; I hadn’t looked at it once, not once, while I was taking care of DeKuiper and Valconazzi.

  I wanted nothing to do with Chet’s old man, either, but I had little choice there. The nearest phone was at the ranchhouse, and I was in no shape to drive far anyway.

  I started the car and went to get the rest of it done.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  LONG NIGHT’S JOURNEY INTO DAY:

  John Valconazzi gave me a little trouble, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I would not have stood for much from him. In the beginning he was mostly concerned with his son’s health. With the help of one of the ranchhands and the housekeeper, he got Chet into a bedroom and undressed and into bed. I let him make the first two calls—county emergency services, for paramedics and an ambulance, and then his family doctor. Then I put in my call to the sheriffs department.

  Old John refused to believe his son was a murderer. I offered to escort him out to his south forty and show him the grave and Gianna Fornessi’s remains; that shut him up for a while. But pretty soon he started in again, and this time he twisted things around so that I was partly to blame for sticking my nose in, almost getting Chet killed. Some old man. In his way he was as fierce and proud and tenacious as one of his fighting cocks.

  The paramedics and the sheriffs deputies arrived simultaneously, along with a county meat wagon. By then DeKuiper was conscious and raising hell in the Caddy’s trunk —yelling, kicking at the lid with both feet. He stayed wild when he was finally let out. Even with his hands tied behind his back, it took three deputies to subdue him, replace the necktie with handcuffs, and stuff him into the back of one of the cruisers.

  Chet was still unconscious; the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance and took him away. Not long after that, the sheriff himself showed up, along with a Highway Patrol investigator, and we all went out to where the grave was. I didn’t venture near it, but old John took a long look at what was wrapped in the sheet. It shut him up for good. And hurt him bad; I could see the agony in his face when he came back to the cluster of cars. Some other time, some other place, I might have felt pity for him. Not here, not tonight.

  Back at the house the questions started in earnest. None of the authorities treated me badly, or accused me of anything; as far as they were concerned, I was both a peer and a victim. It might have been different if I’d told them the truth about finding Jack Bisconte’s body in Bolinas and not reporting it, but I didn’t. I said DeKuiper had told me he’d shot Bisconte at the cottage—beat him up first, then killed him, then kidnapped Chet at gunpoint. I admitted to having been at the ranch on Saturday afternoon, looking for information about Gianna, and to having questioned the housekeeper about the call Chet had received; but I said I’d had no idea where Chet had arranged to meet
Bisconte. I’d gone to Vortex Publications on a hunch, I said, and been careless and DeKuiper had nabbed me. I didn’t admit to ever having been inside the Bolinas cottage. DeKuiper might contradict that story later on, but it was his word against mine.

  Cover your ass—that was the name of the game these days, wasn’t it?

  The endless night eventually ended. Just as dawn was bleaching darkness out of the sky and a new day was borning.

  But this one wouldn’t be a good day for me, either.

  ONE OF THE DEPUTIES drove me back to the city and dropped me at my car. I managed to stay alert long enough to drive home, where I tumbled straight into bed. I slept until quarter of one; that was when the phone hammered me awake. I was oily with sweat, stiff and sore, and I couldn’t seem to get my eyes unstuck. I fumbled blindly for the receiver, whacked myself hard with it on the cheekbone before I got the thing to my ear.

  Kerry. I told her what had happened, omitting the grimmer details. She wanted to come right over, and I wanted to say yes; I needed her, as I always do in the bleaker moments of my life. But I said no, I had some things to do this afternoon; how about tonight? Anytime, she said. Come to her place, she’d fix me dinner, how did that sound? It sounded fine. What I didn’t say was that I would surely need her then even more than I did now.

  I lay there for a time, testing my breathing. Not too bad; the ache in my rib was dull even when I drew a deep breath. Just a bruise, to go with the one on my chest where DeKuiper had kicked me. Before long I got out of bed, took a hot shower. Strong black coffee, three cups, and some toast, and I was ready to face the afternoon. As ready as I would ever be.

  THE OLD MEN WERE playing bocce, of course. Every Saturday, every Sunday—a ritual that could only be ended by disaster or death. As long as there were two healthy players left to compete, as long as the city kept the Aquatic Park courts open to the public, the games would go on. Maybe they always would, here and on other courts like these in other cities; maybe I’d been wrong about bocce being moribund. Seven thousand years of history . . . it was not just a sport, it was a kind of Italian olympiad, a measure of the race itself. It only takes a few torch bearers to keep the flame from ever going out.