“If there’s going to be a problem,” Tate said, “it’ll probably happen after we get the stuff.”
“I know.”
“If I were them,” Tate said, “considering the terrain, and how this is pretty much a moonscape out here, I think I’d figure on bringing, say, four cars. I’d blockade this road ahead and behind. That’s unless I got turned on by the idea of hiding my guys behind tombstones, something colorful like that.”
Within two hundred feet of the iron fence that surrounded the cemetery, Bernhardt downshifted to first gear. Lights out, they were crawling ahead.
“Okay,” he said into the walkie-talkie, his voice hushed. “Okay, here we go. It looks like I can get the car maybe half out of sight.”
“Hmm.”
Bernhardt gave the walkie-talkie to Louise, stopped the Honda at the small grove of trees. Yes, there was room enough between two large sycamores to conceal most of the car from casual observation. Bernhardt backed in between the two trees, switched off the engine, put the transmission in park, then turned to Louise. “If you want to do it, you can tell me now where the stuff is. You can stay in the car while I get it. You’ll have C.B. here with you.” As he spoke, he twisted, opened the duffel bag, withdrew two flashlights.
“I can’t tell you where it is. I mean—” She drew a deep, tremulous breath. “I mean, I can tell you, but then you’d still have to look for it. And that’d take time.”
As he waited for her to go on, he saw Tate’s Ford come into view, slowly passing from right to left. As Tate drew even, Bernhardt saw the big black man raise a forefinger—then two fingers, the victory sign. Bernhardt watched the Ford pass beyond the cemetery and then disappear, blocked out by the trees that concealed Bernhardt. Finally the walkie-talkie crackled to life.
“There’s no place where I can get the car out of sight,” Tate said. “No cover, except for those trees you’re in. I’m coming back to where you are.”
“Okay,” Bernhardt said. “Let’s just get it done, the sooner the better.”
“I agree. Definitely, I agree.” And, moments later, the Ford appeared, running with only the parking lights.
Acutely aware of his own anxiety, the growing fear that somewhere in the darkness there was danger, Bernhardt swung open his car door. Ordering brusquely: “Okay, let’s do it.” He took a flashlight and the shovel from the station wagon, closed the doors, gave the second flashlight to Louise. He walked to the front of the Honda. Also out of the car, Louise came to stand timidly beside him. Bernhardt looked at her one last time, handed her the walkie-talkie, her assigned task. He forced a smile. Then they were walking across the gravel road to the graveyard.
11:45 P.M., PDT
“NOTHING,” FABRESE SAID, PEERING out into the darkness. They sat in the Buick. They were parked on the shoulder of the gravel road, lights out. “Are you sure they’re stopped?
“They’ve been stopped for two or three minutes.” As Chin spoke, he glanced again at the scanner: all five lights were lit. Bernhardt’s car, then, was less than a half mile ahead, invisible in the dark, featureless landscape. Conclusion: the quarry had gone to ground. Without doubt, Bernhardt’s car was parked in the small grove of trees just ahead, the only identifiable feature of a dark, desolate landscape. Chin was aware of a sudden breathless constriction across his chest. He recognized the feeling. It was the excitement of the hunter, closing in for the kill. He switched off the scanner, touched the breech of the M-16, close beside him. Was the rifle set for single shot, not automatic fire? He glanced down, verified that, yes, the rifle would fire single shots. And, yes, the rifle was still on safety, with a round in the chamber.
“So what do we do?” Fabrese demanded. “Walk? Do we walk from here? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“No,” Chin answered, “I think we should drive ahead. But slowly. Very quietly, very slowly, without lights. I think another hundred yards, and we’ll see their cars.”
“Okay.” Fabrese put the Buick in gear, began their slow, blind progress. In the last several minutes fog had begun to drift around them. Was it an advantage? For whom—which side? “Okay,” he repeated. “But as far as I can see, you’ve fucked this whole thing up. If we had two cars, one of us could stay here and the other one could go ahead, beyond them. Then we’d have them bottled up. Another M-Sixteen, an Uzi, one of those, and we’d blast the shit out of them.”
“That’s one way,” Chin answered calmly. “A war—three bodies, two cars shot up, all before we knew they really had the jewels. Is that your plan?” For the first time he allowed the contempt he felt for this repulsive little man to surface.
11:59 P.M., PDT
“THERE.” LOUISE’S VOICE WAS a low, ragged whisper. “There—that one. It’s my—my mother’s grave. The jewels are buried—” She fell silent, one last hesitation, facing the abyss. “They’re buried behind the headstone.”
“Ah …”
A million dollars’ worth of jewels. Mafia treasure, his for the taking.
Holding an unlit flashlight in his left hand, Bernhardt propped the shovel against his thigh, took the radio from Louise.
“C.B.?” Spoken softly, cautiously.
“Yeah?”
“I’m starting to dig. It shouldn’t take long. Anything?”
“I’m not sure …” In Tate’s voice Bernhardt heard uncertainty. Or was it fear? Had he ever known Tate to be afraid? Of anything?
“What’s that mean?”
“I thought I heard a car, coming from the direction of town. But now I don’t hear anything.”
“You should get away from our cars. Why don’t you come here, inside the cemetery? We’re on the north side, left from the gate. You go to your right, keep some distance between us. You can get down beside a tombstone. That way you can—”
“A tombstone?” Suddenly Tate’s voice erupted in a spontaneous guffaw. “You know what? I just realized that I’m superstitious. Like, graveyards at midnight—hiding behind tombstones—all this goddam fog, suddenly. I mean, let’s dig this stuff up, then get back to the bright lights.”
“Jesus, C.B. Come on.”
“Okay. Here I go.”
Bernhardt returned the radio to Louise, then stood motionless, staring through the gathering mist in the direction of the gate. The dim figure of Tate materialized, an outsize wraith disappearing now behind a large headstone. Tate, packing his two nine-millimeter Browning automatics, one with a twenty-shot rotary clip. Tate, with Bernhardt’s sawed-off, a walking arsenal.
Bernhardt calculated that perhaps a hundred feet separated them.
“Here.” Bernhardt gave his flashlight to Louise. Then he hefted the shovel and stepped behind her mother’s tombstone. “Shine it down there. Just for a second.”
She obeyed. The grass behind the tombstone was undisturbed.
“Ah … good.” Hearing himself say it, the words sounded like a benediction—a soulful prayer for final fulfillment. As the light winked off, he drove the spade into the hard, unyielding earth, stepped on the shovel with his full weight, turned a meager shovelful. He drove the shovel again into the earth—and again. Finally, with a foot-high mound of raw dirt beside a circular hole, he felt the shovel strike something solid, heard the dull thunk.
“Jesus,” he breathed, “there’s something there.”
Just as, from the walkie-talkie in Louise’s hand, he heard Tate’s metallic voice:
“Alan.”
Even in the single whispered word, Bernhardt could hear it: the life-or-death urgency of survival, kill or be killed.
“Gimme,” Bernhardt hissed, putting out his hand for the radio. “Quick.” Then, with the radio pressed to his ear: “C.B.?”
“There’s a car, coming the way we came. It’s stopped now, engine turned off. But I can see it. And—” He broke off. There was a moment of agonizing silence. Then: “They’re getting out of the car, coming down the road. Two of them.”
“Can they see our cars?”
�
�Hard to tell. They will, though, before they get much closer. One of them, it looks like he’s carrying a rifle. Maybe an M-Sixteen, one of those. You know, heavy duty. This goddam fog, all I can see is shadows, like. Ghosts. They’re walking on either side of the road. You know, like skirmishers. How close are you to getting the stuff?”
“I think I’ve just found it. Anyhow, the shovel hit something solid.”
“Their timing is right on, then. Makes you wonder whether—”
The sharp crack of a single shot split the night like the crash of lightning.
“God—damn.” It was Tate, on the radio. “The guy with the rifle, he fell back a little. Then he let the other guy have it.”
“Jesus …” As he spoke, Bernhardt realized that he was staring down at the hole behind the tombstone. Repeating solemnly: “Jesus.”
“Now the guy with the rifle, looks like he’s going to make sure. He’s—”
Another shot.
“Yeah,” Tate breathed. “He made sure.”
Bernhardt had fallen into a crouch. But he wasn’t crouching behind the tombstone to protect himself. Revolver in hand, he was crouching in front of the hole he’d dug, as if to protect the treasure. Louise was close beside him.
“Don’t let him see you, C.B.,” Bernhardt breathed. “If he’s got an M-Sixteen, you’ve had it. That goddam sawed-off, it’s no good beyond—”
“Wait,” Tate interrupted, his voice hardly audible now. Repeating urgently: “Wait. Hold on. This guy, the guy with the rifle, he’s—yeah—Christ, he’s going back to their car.”
Bernhardt realized that he was gulping incredulously. “Are you sure?”
“He’s just strolling along, carrying the rifle like he’s real comfortable with it, like that. And—yeah—he’s getting in the car now. You want my advice, get that goddam loot, whatever it is, and let’s go home.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“He’s starting the car, I think. And—yeah, there go the headlights. Looks like he don’t care, now. Looks like he’s finished up here, and he’s going home.” Tate’s voice was louder now, more confident.
Still pressed close to Bernhardt, Louise began to mutter, “It’s a trick. They’re all around us, in the dark. They waited for us to find the jewels. And now they’ll kill us.” She began to cry: dry, desperate sobs. Then, fervently thankful: “Thank God I didn’t let her come.”
For a moment Bernhardt stared at her incredulously. Angela, she meant. She thought they were going to die. She was grateful that it would be her, not her child.
Suddenly Bernhardt put the radio on the ground, took up the shovel, began furiously digging. Whispering, “Shut up. They aren’t going to kill us. So shut up.”
As, to the west, he saw the flash of headlights. The intruder—the murderer—was backing and filling on the narrow gravel road until, finally, he could go back down the road toward Fowler’s Landing, taillights winking.
Again and again now, the spade was striking something solid. The treasure, surely the treasure. Mafia gold. The walkie-talking was crackling; Tate was transmitting. Breathing hard, Bernhardt snatched up the radio.
“Well?” Tate demanded. “How much longer?”
“A couple of minutes, no more. Shut up and let me dig, why don’t you?” And to Louise: “You shut up, too. And get your head down. If you’re worried, get your goddam head down.” He laid the radio on the grass behind the grave and began desperately digging. Three more shovelsful, then four, and he took up the flashlight, shone the light down in the hole. A white cylinder was visible, half uncovered.
A million dollars encased in a white sewer pipe. Gleaming in the flashlight’s beam like a bleached skull.
“My God,” Louise breathed. “My God, there it is.”
Bernhardt laid the shovel aside, fell to his knees, began scraping at the dirt with his hands.
“Hurry,” Louise breathed. She, too, was on her knees, working with her hands, clawing the dirt.
“Wait.” He kicked at the half-exposed canister. Feeling it shift, he grasped it with both hands, felt it shift again. Flat on the ground now, he twisted the canister—and felt it come free. On his knees, he was holding it in both hands: the million-dollar prize. Somberly, he presented the trophy to Louise. Then he keyed the walkie-talkie.
“Got it,” he breathed. “We got it, C.B.”
“All right.” It was a jubilant response. Then, urgently: “So let’s go, man. This place, it’s giving me the creeps.”
“I’m going to fill in the hole first.” And to Louise: “Take it to C.B. Wait there for me.”
Obediently, she rose, took the canister with both hands, as if she were serving at an altar. In the dim light, her eyes were rapt.
Bernhardt began filling the hole, urgently bent to the task. From the surrounding darkness, in the mist rising from the graveyard, how many eyes were watching?
How many bodies would the authorities find tomorrow?
Hastily, he finished the job, replaced the sod, tramped it down. In two hours, they would be back in San Francisco: the five of them safe at his flat, guarding the treasure.
Bernhardt slipped the flashlight into the pocket of his jacket, loosened the .357 in its holster, picked up the shovel and the radio. Now he was walking between the tombstones in the direction of the gate. To the left of the gate, inside the cemetery, he could make out two figures: Tate and Louise, waiting for him. Together, they would go to their cars. When they were under way, he would call Paula on the cellular phone, tell her they’d found the treasure.
Or, more precisely, tell her they’d found a length of white plastic sewer pipe, capped at either end, that rattled when it was shaken.
A small cylinder that, already tonight, had cost one man his life.
They gathered at the gate: Louise with the canister, the men carrying the guns, the radios, the shovel, and the flashlights.
“What about that dead one?” Tate asked, his voice pitched low. “What’ll we do about him?”
“Where is he?” Bernhardt asked.
Tate led them from the gate to the graveled road, where he pointed in the direction of Fowler’s Landing. “He’s just off the road, on the left shoulder. Two hundred feet, maybe.”
“Here.” Bernhardt gave Tate the shovel, then began walking down the road. Yes, he could make it out: a lifeless, shapeless, blood-drenched bundle with head and hands attached, the eternal caprice of death by violence. The victim lay on his back, one arm flung wide, one leg tucked beneath the other leg, as if he’d pivoted as he fell. The head and the torso were covered with blood, soaked with blood, clotted with blood. A revolver lay about a foot from the right hand.
As he stood motionless, frozen, Bernhardt felt his stomach convulse, felt the bile begin to rise. He bit his tongue, doggedly shook his head, moved the flashlight beam from the face down to the torso, the legs, the feet, then back again. The victim was dressed as Bernhardt was dressed: dark jacket, dark jeans. The shoes, though, were tasseled black loafers, Gucci style. And beneath the roughly cut outdoor jacket, call it army surplus, Bernhardt saw a gleaming white collar and silk tie. Conclusion: this well-dressed man had gotten costumed for the part—the hunter, tracking them in the darkness.
Bernhardt straightened, took an uncertain step to his right, toward Tate and Louise. The sooner they were in their cars, under way, the safer they would be.
But in seconds, if he could bring himself to do it, he might discover a wallet, an ID. If this man had come to kill them, then he must know the assassin’s identity—a deep, primitive necessity.
Urgently, he beckoned to Tate, who immediately put the shovel aside, said something to Louise. Then, carrying the double-barreled sawed-off, Tate quickly covered the distance between them, shone his flashlight down on the body.
“Jesus.”
“Here …” Bernhardt bent over the body. “Let’s roll him over. I want to get his ID.”
Both men found a grip on the dead man’s jacket, nodded to eac
h other, heaved in unison—then stepped quickly back as the grotesque shape seemed to momentarily prop itself on its side before, suddenly capitulating to gravity, it flopped facedown on the gravel, one arm almost touching Bernhardt as it came over, crashed to the ground. Once more, gritting his teeth, Bernhardt touched the body, feeling below the belt, above the buttocks—
—finding, yes, the rectangular bulge of a wallet. Fumbling, he withdrew the wallet. Should he thrust it in his own pocket, to be examined later, back in San Francisco?
No. Not later. If the police questioned him, found him with the wallet … even the random possibility numbed him with fear. Causing him, therefore, to leave the body as it lay and beckon to Tate, who was pocketing the dead man’s revolver. They strode quickly to the Honda. Still cradling the white plastic canister in both arms, a maternal embrace, Louise stood motionless beside the car. Bernhardt put the wallet on the car’s hood, waited for Tate to shine a light on it. Then, compartment by compartment, he emptied the wallet, spread out the contents: folding money, lots of it, a driver’s license, a few business cards. All the documents agreed: name, James Fabrese, residence, New York City. As Louise, still cradling the canister, drew close, Bernhardt took the driver’s license from its plastic sheath, held it close to the flashlight.
“Come on, Alan,” Tate urged, “let’s move it. Let’s take the money, toss the goddam wallet and the gun. Let’s—”
“Profaci,” Louise said. She spoke in a small, cowed voice. “The picture on the license. It’s Profaci.”
“Jesus.” Bernhardt looked at her. “You’re sure?”
She nodded silently, conclusively. Yes, she was sure. Dead sure.
Bernhardt looked at her for one last long moment. Then he nodded to Tate, who began stuffing the documents back into the wallet. “Here.” Tate handed over the money.
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