“No,” Green said, and he tried to smile, tried to shrug it off. “No, I don’t believe you…This is some sick-”
“Hey, what’s the difference, Dad? Trust fund money is trust fund money.”
That was when he lost it, and rushed me, reaching out with curled fingers to try to strangle me, I guess. And he was a big man, bigger than me, and powerful, despite the years he had on me. I could hear the security guys, not bothering with headsets now, flat-out yelling, on the run.
But then I had Jonah Green locked in an embrace, my arms pinning his, and I was close enough to kiss the bastard.
I grinned into his fucking face and said, “That’s not all you’ll need to revise on that headstone…”
Then I shifted, holding him by one arm, and I let him sense the nose of the nine millimeter in his gut, just so he could know it was coming, and I fired twice. The sounds were muffled by his clothing and his body, and were like coughs, not even loud enough to echo.
Stepping back, releasing him from my embrace, I watched with pleasure as he stumbled back, open-mouthed, awkward and-arms windmilling-tripped over the metal tubing of the lowering device and tumbled backward into his daughter’s grave, smacking the metal of the casket, hard.
Now that echoed.
The security guys had me surrounded and I wheeled, going from face to face, smiling easily, my gun in hand pointed skyward, my other hand up, too.
“No need, fellas!” I said. “You’re off the payroll. Time to hit the unemployment lines…”
They began trading glances, considering my words-after all, they had just seen the prick they worked for gut-shot, twice, and presumably they’d been told I was dangerous, I was in fact why they were fucking here, so I was clearly a guy with a gun who, if confronted, would take some of them down.
But Jonah Green was a tough old bird, and badly wounded though he was, bleeding from the mouth, front of his clothing splotched with blood, he was nonetheless alive, and trying to crawl, claw his way up and out of the ground.
When his head popped up in that grave, his men jumped a little; and maybe I did, too.
“Shoot him!” Green cried, gargling blood a little as he did. He was holding onto a metal tube of the lowering device. “Cut him down!”
When the guns started appearing in the hands of the security men, I moved out, ducking back behind the massive Green family gravestone, firing the nine millimeter at the only guy in sunglasses, headset and raincoat on that side of the world.
The guy took it in the head, and fell backward, like a narcoleptic suddenly asleep, but leaving blood mist behind.
With the headstone as cover, I took out the two closest ones, and each did an individualistic death dance, though with much in common-spurting blood, tumbling to the snowy grass-while the surviving trio went scrambling for cover, behind other gravestones.
I used the rest of the clip exchanging gunfire with them, bullets careening and whing ing off the granite headstones, carving nicks and holes. But they were spread out just enough to make my task difficult.
Concentrating on one at a time, I took the nearest to me when he slipped his head out to take aim, my shot sending him back, sprawling against another gravestone, staring in surprise with both eyes and the new hole between them.
We all stayed put while shadows chased each other under the cold cloud-shifting sky. Wind riffled branches and stubborn leaves whispered and some of us were breathing hard, but not me. I felt fine, and was thinking what a tempting goal the Caddy hearse on the hillock made.
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:
MAR
Y 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.
Of course, staying on at Sylvan at all was itself a risk-Jonah Green had found me here, hadn’t he? Come walking right into my world?
But Jonah was dead; he wouldn’t be crawling up out of that grave again, not even on Judgement Day. And he had no doubt been discreet in his inquiries about me-he had to be, since he was a selfish sociopath plotting his own daughter’s death, which generally calls for discretion.
Thing was, I was just too goddamn old to start over.
And I liked it here. I liked the cabin, and Gary, and the (must I use this word?) lifestyle. In the unlikely event that assholes with guns came looking for me, they would find another asshole with a gun who would kill them.
A rationalization, sure; but I could live with it.
You will be relieved, I’m sure, to learn that my problem with insomnia was a thing of the past-I was sleeping long and deep with my only problem that low backache I had on waking, but walking over and swimming and using the Jacuzzi and doing a few stretches got rid of that.
Still, old habits die hard, and three nights before the Sylvan staff was about to arrive, a sound woke me-a clatter out there that was not fucking Santa Claus, and my waking thought was that somebody had broken in.
Funny how I can sleep so deep, but the littlest goddamn noise and I’m suddenly wide awake, alert as a butt-fucked sailor; I sat up in bed, the nine millimeter from the nightstand tight in my hand.
Call it paranoia, if you will. But when you make a career out of killing people, you tend to think the worst.
And something was definitely rattling around out in my kitchen.
I crept through the darkened cabin and saw a little light was on in there. Gun in hand, I slipped in and flipped the overhead light switch.
“Shit!” Janet said, wincing at the flood of illumination.
As usual, she was wearing one of my shirts, legs bare, her long dark blonde hair fetchingly tousled, and she was bending down, looking in the refrigerator. She straightened like an exclamation point. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”
I lowered the gun. “No.”
She shut the refrigerator door and turned to me, her expression innocently apologetic now. “Did I wake you?”
I sat at the kitchen table and put the nine millimeter down in front of me, like it was a fork or a spoon. Rubbed my face with two hands.
“I sleep light,” I said.
“So I’ve noticed.” She stood next to me and touched my shoulder and smiled in that way that meant she wanted something. “There’s not a damn thing in that fridge…Would you do me a favor?”
“Who do you want me to kill?”
She gave me a reproving look. One might say, a wifely look.
Then her expression softened and she asked, “Could you please make a convenience store run?”
I just looked at her. She had no notion of the significance of her request.
Janet gestured around the little kitchen, like a disaster survivor talking to a reporter about the damage. “We have cereal here, but no milk. I can make a little list…Would you mind, terribly? And, uh-this is embarrassing, but…”
And now the poor-pitiful-me look.
“…would you mind picking up some Tampax?”
I let out a long sigh, pushed out the chair, stood, and said, “No problem.”
She touched my face and kissed my cheek. “You are so sweet…”
Maybe I was.
But I took the nine millimeter with me.
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The last quarry q-6 Page 12