“Erin, quick!” She reached down one arm and Erin caught it, almost pulled Tricia off, but grabbing hold of the horse’s mane with her other hand and kicking wildly with her feet she finally managed to sling herself belly-first across the horse’s back. She snaked one arm around Tricia’s waist, held on tight. Tricia kneed the horse in the sides, cracked the reins, shouted—
The horse pounded across the dirt, over the track, his sides heaving and hooves thundering. When he came to the low concrete wall separating the track area from the parking lot, he leapt it smoothly, landing with a jarring jolt that almost unseated them both. But Tricia held onto the reins and Erin, now upright at last, held onto Tricia, and the horse went
Cars swerved, honking, out of their path. Pedestrians, too, made way as the horse loudly approached, its metal shoes echoing against the pavement. This was one of the main shopping thoroughfares in this part of Queens and Sunday afternoon was prime shopping time. There was no shortage of people to goggle at Tricia and Erin as they galloped past.
Several ran for street-corner phone booths, leaving Tricia wondering how long they had before more than just the attention of passersby was directed their way. They’d left the men at the track far behind, but it wasn’t as though Nicolazzo’s men were the only ones interested in getting their hands on her. And riding a racehorse down Rockaway Boulevard was as fine a way to attract the attention of the others as any Tricia could imagine.
They sped along the avenue, attracting stares and gasps. One little girl on the sidewalk raised her arm and pointed, only to have her mother slap her hand down and yank her protectively out of the way. The girl started bawling, but at the pace they were going Tricia could only hear it for a few seconds.
The police sirens, when they came, were louder and lasted longer. One cruiser slid in behind them as they crossed 103rd Avenue, but they lost him by taking a sharp left against the traffic onto 102nd Road and then racing through a gas station parking lot and the scruffy back yards of three low brick homes. Another cop car picked up the chase when they hit Eldert Lane, the driver shouting at them through his bullhorn to pull over. “We’ll shoot if you don’t stop,” came the amplified voice.
Tricia could feel the horse tiring under her, felt its ragged breaths, its slowing pace. They wouldn’t be able to go a whole lot farther even if the cops didn’t shoot. But Erin urged her on. “Don’t,” Erin said. “We’ve got to shake them.”
“Where?” Tricia shouted back, her voice getting lost in the wind. But she tugged on the reins, turning the horse off the main road, and they vanished once more into the maze of yards and passages behind and between buildings.
“We’ll have to stop soon,” Tricia shouted and she felt Erin nodding against her back.
“You know where Jamaica Avenue is?” Erin said.
“No,” Tricia said.
“Up by all those cemeteries? Mount Cypress, Mount Lebanon, you know.”
She didn’t know. But somehow Tricia wasn’t surprised to find herself racing toward yet another cemetery. There seemed to be no getting away from them. New York was peppered with good places to lie down and have a final rest, to go with all the reasons you might need to.
“Just keep going, you’ll hit it,” Erin said.
“Why there?” Tricia shouted.
“We can ride into the cemetery,” Erin said. “The cops can’t drive in. They’d smash up all the graves. They’d never do it.”
“How far is it?”
“Not much farther.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know, eight blocks? Nine?”
“Great,” Tricia said and urged the horse on.
It turned out to be twelve blocks. By the time they reached the elevated tracks marking the end of the road, Tricia could feel the horse trembling from exertion and the unaccustomed weight they’d made him carry, like running a race with two jockeys. They sped under the high metal beams as a row of subway cars clattered by overhead, then through the wide-open front gate of a place identified by a large but tasteful sign as
A steep hill just inside the gate led to a cluster of mausoleum buildings at the top. The horse strained to climb it at a decent canter.
As they neared the top, Erin said, “We should get off here, quick. Let him keep going. Just slide off.”
“What do you mean ‘slide off’? You can’t just slide off a moving horse.”
“We don’t want him to stop,” Erin said. “We need them to keep chasing him.”
“They’ll see we aren’t on him,” Tricia said.
“Not right away. Now slide off. Slide!”
Tricia felt Erin tilting behind her, felt gravity take hold. The sweat on the horse’s sides contributed its part and she felt herself accelerating toward the ground—which was still going by at a considerable clip. She hadn’t been able to scream when she fell from the rain gutter, but she screamed now, and Erin joined her. It didn’t last: Colliding with the ground knocked the wind out of them. For an instant, all Tricia could see were the horse’s hooves raising and lowering like angled pistons just inches away from her head—but then they were a foot away, and then a yard, and then the horse was off in the distance, galloping to freedom among the tombstones.
The police sirens, meanwhile, had grown louder as the hoofbeats faded. A pair of cars squealed to a halt at the bottom of the hill. Tricia glanced around, saw Erin beside her doing the same. There wasn’t much here: the stone mausoleums, whose doors presumably were locked; a narrow footpath, winding off into the heart of the cemetery; another path, leading down the hill; a plot of graves, mostly old and overgrown, though one was freshly dug and covered with a tarpaulin, presumably for a burial later today.
Tricia and Erin looked at each other, gave each other a chance to object or to propose a better idea. Instead, they nodded simultaneously, then scampered on hands and knees toward the grave, lifted the side of the tarp, and slid under it. Carefully, they let themselves down into the hole. The tarp settled back into place.
Moments later, they heard the police arrive. They saw shadows through the tarp, heard sounds of men arguing, walking this way and that overhead, complaining. A radio crackled with static followed by the voice of someone back in the stationhouse issuing orders. Tricia couldn’t quite hear what they were but made out a few incredulous-sounding words, “horse” chief among them.
The cops departed a moment later, no doubt following the horse’s tracks. Tricia reached above her to push the tarp back, but Erin raised one palm in a gesture that meant
So they waited. It was cool and damp standing in the grave. Surprisingly, it wasn’t unpleasant. A bit of light filtered in through the tarp, the fabric tinting it a lush shade of green. Being off the horse gave Tricia the opportunity to flex her legs, strained from straddling the animal’s shoulders. She hadn’t ridden like that in years and her thighs had taken a pounding. She saw Erin doing the same, bending her knees in the limited space the grave afforded and massaging her lower back with one hand.
When a few minutes had passed without any further voices or tumult overhead (it felt like more than a few minutes, but Tricia figured everything felt longer when you were standing in a grave), Erin knelt and put her hands out in a cupped position. Tricia set one foot into them and Erin hefted her toward the tarp.
Tricia yanked the fabric to one side and popped her head out of the grave. Behind her, she heard a sharp intake of breath.
She pulled herself out of the hole and scrambled to her feet. A small man in a surplice stood at graveside, a prayer book open in his hands; beside him, an old woman in black, a veil lowered over her face, dipped a gloved hand below the veil to bring a handkerchief to her eyes. Beside her was a slightly younger woman. Her eyes, prominent to begin with, looked positively ready to leave their sockets.
Tricia bent down, extended an arm, and helped Erin out of the hole.
“Inspection,” Tricia said, by way of explanation, and Erin nodded. They both wiped their palms off on their
