“You look like government,” Harvey said.
“Actually, I’m told I look like an aging Boy Scout.”
Finally, a smile from the guy. “Yeah, that, too. But I think those guys you shot were government, too. It was the way they held themselves. The way their hair was cut.”
And the car they drove, Jonathan thought.
“At least give me a name,” Harvey said. “Somethin’ to call you.”
He hesitated. His was a world of pseudonyms and fake credentials; he didn’t like being this far out on a limb under his own name in his own backyard-almost literally. Jeremy knew who he was, though, and soon Harvey would know where he came from, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to keep unnecessary secrets. “My name’s Jonathan,” he said as Boxers approached within hearing distance. “My friends call me Digger.”
Harvey considered that for a while. “Well, Jonathan,” he said, his eyes squinting to slits, “what the hell is going on here?”
Jonathan unlocked the Hummer and opened the front and back doors on the passenger side. “You stole my line, Harvey. I wanted to be first on the record with that very same question.” He looked beyond the hippie to Boxers. “Did you get it all?”
The big guy nodded. That meant he’d recovered the spent brass from the shootings, and he’d stripped the bodies of identification.
“Good,” Jonathan said. He leaned into the truck, across the massive front seat, and into the center console, from which he removed a black box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Turning to face Harvey he said, “I need to see your hand.”
Harvey shoved them into his pockets. “What for?”
Jonathan opened the box and displayed a flat surface that might have been an iPod but wasn’t. “I want a fingerprint from you. Just want to make sure you’re not scarier than you seem to be.”
“Fuck you.”
Boxers loomed over the man. “Watch your mouth, friend,” he growled. “The kid doesn’t need that kind of language.”
When Boxers wanted to look intimidating, even the toughest of men cowered. Harvey Rodriguez was nowhere near the toughest of men. He withdrew his hand and held it out flat. It was trembling.
“Thank you,” Jonathan said. He took the hippie’s forefinger and pressed it against the tiny screen, and then repeated the process for his thumb. After verifying that the images were clear, he pressed S END. Within minutes, Venice would begin the process of matching the prints to people.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he said. “Now I want you to climb into the backseat here, while Jeremy rides up front with Boxers.”
The big guy shot a furious glare at the sound of his real name. Jonathan ignored it.
“Why?” Harvey asked.
“Because I asked you to?”
“Where am I going?”
“Where Boxers takes you.” He paused for a smile. “Harvey, you’re safe, okay? You’re no longer in any danger.”
“What about my stuff?”
“It’ll keep,” Jonathan assured.
“Everything I own is out there.”
Jonathan cocked his head and let the words hang, hoping that Harvey would hear the nonsense of his own words. “You think those two guys are the last ones?” he asked. “When they don’t show up to wherever they’re supposed to be, don’t you think there’ll be more? I don’t think you want to be around when they arrive.”
Understanding bloomed in Harvey’s eyes. “People are gonna think I did that,” he said. “Whether it’s those guys’ friends or just some hiker, somebody’s gonna walk by and see those corpses, and they’re gonna think I’m the one who offed them.”
“No, they won’t,” Jonathan said.
“Of course they will.”
Jonathan placed a reassuring hand on Harvey’s shoulder, and as he reached, the hippie flinched. “Trust me, Harvey,” he said. “I know how to take care of these things.”
Lightbulb moment. Harvey got it.
“Now, please get into the vehicle. And please behave yourself when you’re in there.”
He hesitated, but finally climbed inside.
“The front seat’s for you,” he said cheerily to Jeremy.
The boy’s hand clamped tighter.
“Jeremy,” Jonathan said. The boy kept staring straight.
“He okay?” Boxers asked.
“Not now he’s not,” Jonathan said. “Jeremy, please look at me.”
The boy’s face pitched up.
“It’s okay for you not to be okay right now. You’ve been through a lot, but you’re safe now. My big friend here, Mr. Boxers, is going to take you back to Fisherman’s Cove. He’s going to take you to see Father Dom. You like Father Dom, right?”
Jeremy’s nod was barely perceptible.
“Nothing can happen to you now, understand? It’s been a terrible couple of days, but you’re completely safe now. I need you to get into the truck.”
“Are you coming, too?” Jeremy asked. His voice was a raspy whisper.
Jonathan was glad to hear him finally speak. “I’ll be along in an hour or so. Maybe two. I have some things I need to take care of.”
“What kind of things?”
Jonathan exchanged glances with Boxers. “Stuff that doesn’t involve you. Now, be a good kid and hop into the truck. Boxers will drive carefully for you.”
It took another two minutes of negotiation, but when it was done, Jeremy was strapped into the front passenger seat, and Jonathan closed both doors.
“You sure you don’t want me to take care of this for you?” Boxers said when they were shut off from prying ears. “We can trade places.”
Jonathan would rather walk through fire than deal with Jeremy’s anger and sorrow for much longer. “No, I’m good,” he said. “Just take them right to the mansion. Call Dom ahead of time and see if he can be there waiting.”
“And your scraggly friend?”
“Find a room for him. Make him comfortable while we sort him out.”
Boxers handed over the keys he’d pulled from one of the dead men’s pockets. “Let me know if you have any trouble,” he said, and then he walked around to the driver’s side.
Jonathan stripped to his boxer shorts to load the bodies into the Chrysler’s trunk. He felt more than a little ridiculous, but if someone wandered up in the next ten minutes or so, embarrassment would be the least of his problems.
Among the biggest surprises of this day that was filled with surprises was the fact that the gunmen-he’d sent their prints off to Venice as well-had already lined the interior of the trunk with plastic. How could you not smile at the irony of that?
Then the despicability of what they were planning came back to him, and the ironic smile dissolved to anger. These assholes’ mission had been to stash the body of a dead child in here. One of the House’s children, which made him one of Jonathan’s children. How dare they? Hell had two new residents tonight, and he suspected that even Satan held child killers in contempt.
He’d moved the Chrysler as close to the bodies as he could without running over them so that once he had the corpses hoisted onto his shoulders it would be as short a walk as possible. Both of the dead guys had been in good shape. The muscle tissue made them a little heavy for their size, but the lack of flab made them less slippery and therefore easier to flop into the trunk bed. He took perverse pleasure in the way the heads collided when he deposited the second body.
