The Undertaker

including yours. I have a briefcase full of cash and diamonds with your fingerprints all over it. And as the fait accompli, I have this whole conversation on tape,” he said, patting his jacket pocket. “But none of that matters. When Rico finds out how badly you screwed this thing up, you'll be the one begging for Witness Protection, if you don't want to end up in that cement mix over in Paramus.”

Parini bounced the flash drives up and down in his hand, taunting Hardin.

“Personally, Senator, I'm glad this operation is finally over. It's taken four years, and if I never see Italian food again, it'll be too soon. However, we did put Jimmy “the stump” in Marion, we shut down Tinkerton's security operation. And with Panozzo's accounting files, they'll need a whole new wing at Marion. I can just see you in a cell right in the middle of all the boys. You ever played “drop the soap”, Senator? Well, you're gonna be taking some real interesting showers for the next ten-to-twenty.”

Hardin saw his world crashing down around him and he panicked. His eyes darted back and forth between Parini, the flash drives, and the briefcase looking for some way out, but there was none. Suddenly he lunged for Tinkerton's pistol. A Hardin's fingers found the grip of the Glock, Parini shot him twice in the face. The bullets snapped Hardin's head back and his lifeless body crumpled on the grass next to Tinkerton.

I stood and looked at Hardin, then at Parini. “You wanted him to go for the Glock, didn't you, Gino? That's why you left it lying there and why you kept taunting him.”

“It was his play and that was fine with me. If Hardin had been a more competent lawyer than he was a crook, he'd know that a briefcase full of cash doesn't mean squat. Truth is, we'd have had a hell of a time proving anything against him. Now we don't have to.”

Parini slipped the pistol back inside his jacket and looked down at the two bodies. “Will you look at this!” he made a dramatic gesture toward the two bodies. “A U. S. Senator and a former ‘High Ranking Justice Department Official,’ cut down in the prime of their lives. Another ‘senseless act of urban violence’, a tragedy, that's what I'd call it, a real tragedy.”

“Like the tragedy in the basement of the funeral home in Columbus?” I asked him. “You waited back there in the bushes to see how things would shake out before you made your move?”

“They shook out fine,” he answered with cold, dead eyes.

“Well it's a damn good thing you didn't wait any longer,” Sandy barked at him.

“Don't worry, Sweat Pea, I wouldn't have let them touch a hair on your pretty little head, he said, reverting to the old Newark accent. “Hell, if I wasn't married with four kids, I'd run off with you myself and start makin’ a bunch ‘a little Italian babies. But him?” he looked over at me with disdain. “Him, I'd have let them have.”

“We're a “we” now,” she told him as she scampered over and threw her arms around my waist.

“So I see.” Parini scowled. “But if this dumb mope ever causes you any grief, you let me know and I'll break his freekin’ legs. You hear me Ace!” His face broke into a big smile as he slipped the flash drives into his jacket pocket and handed me Hardin's briefcase.

“I don't want this,” I told him.

“Oh, yes you do,” Parini quickly answered. “He said there's seven-and-a-half million in there that belong to no one. It can get the two of you out of here and buy you a fresh start some place else. In a couple of years, maybe three or four, this whole business should finally be over. Jimmy Santorini will realize he isn't getting out of Marion, Rico Patillo should be sitting in the cell next to him, and no one will remember the two of you,” he said as his eyes locked on mine. “Do you understand me?”

From the expression on his face, I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me and I knew he was right. So I took the briefcase.

“I'll get the manhunt for you called off in a couple of hours, but remember, Hardin and Tinkerton aren't the only rotten apples in this town, not by a long shot. There are a lot more that need thrown out before it's safe for you two to come back. So you disappear.”

“But where?”

“I don't know and I don't want to know,” came his quick reply. “Like I told you in Chicago, for a couple of bumbling amateurs, you haven't done too bad figuring it out by yourselves. We would never have gotten Tinkerton without you and we would never have gotten Hardin, either.” Parini pointed north at Union Station, sitting flood-lit at the far end of the park. “Take the first train headed out of town and keep going. Hell, you even have some luggage now. And if I know the two of you, you'll do just fine. Now go!”

I took Sandy's hand and we began to walk away as Parini said, “When the time's right, when it really is safe back here, I'll run a classified ad in the New York Times on the first Sunday of the month, in the Personals. It'll say, “Ace: You and Sweet Pea can come on home now, signed Gino.” You got that?”

We looked at each other and nodded, and then we took off running away down the sidewalk. That was the last we ever saw of Gino Parini.

EPILOGUE

Under the scorching Baja sun…

The scorching yellow sun had finally risen above the row of palm trees on the other side of the courtyard wall. There wasn't a cloud in the high, blue sky, and to the east, the sun sparkled off the iridescent, blue-green water in the bay. The cool morning breeze we had enjoyed was now wilting and the air inside the courtyard would soon become hot and languid. In another hour or two, it would chase us inside the thick, cool, adobe-walled house but not yet. For the moment, the courtyard was still very pleasant.

The mornings down here were my favorite time of the day. I could lie back in my old canvas beach chair, sip a cup of strong, black coffee, and read. The patio was alive with the sweet smell of Bougainvillea, the rich cooking smells from the kitchen, and the sharp, salty tang of the sea. Of the entire week, it was Wednesday mornings I liked best. The Tuesday afternoon mail plane usually delivered some new books for me, some photography magazines and country music CDs for Sandy, and the Sunday edition of the New York Times. It was as thick as an oak log and I could spend all day Wednesday reading it from front to back at my leisure. Sometimes that would take me well into Thursday or even Friday, since time was a commodity we had in abundance now.

A dark shadow passed over me and I put the paper down. “Peter,” Sandy said as she stood blocking out the sun. “Watch the baby for a minute, will you? I've got to help Rosaria with the salad.”

“Right,” I replied as I glanced over at the baby playing happily on a blanket in the shade. Sandy smiled and let her hand pass lightly up my chest. She knew the effect that had on me and we both knew why she did it.

I looked up at her and smiled back. Her raven hair was long and wild now, hanging halfway down her back in a long, single braid. I liked it that way. She had been working-out like a fanatic to get her figure back and I liked that too. If I stayed out in the sun too long, I burned, but she and the baby had tanned to a rich, golden brown. It must be the Italian skin, I thought. But barefoot, in that thin, white cotton top and colorful Indian skirt, it was hard to tell her from the natives.

“Anything in there?” she asked, pointing at the Times.

“No, of course not,” I answered as I reached out and pulled her close, running my hand across her bare stomach. “Do you want there to be?”

“Get real,” she laughed as my hand moved higher under the white cotton top and lightly caressed her breast.

She closed her eyes and let my hand linger there. She didn't push it away. “Hold that thought,” she finally leaned over and whispered.

“Hold that thought?”

“Yeah. After lunch.”

“After lunch?”

“Yeah,” she said as she pulled my hand out and gave my fingers a light kiss. “I have to help Rosaria with the salad. After we put the baby down, maybe you'll get lucky.” She turned and bounced happily away into the house, humming some new country song she'd been playing.

After she had gone, I picked up the paper again. It was the Classified Section of the Sunday New York Times, which I had folded open to page four. At the bottom, I re-read the same small,