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.
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
