Brothers and Bones (47 page)

I leaped from the car and hurried quickly through the wrought-iron gate and over to the small chapel just inside the cemetery grounds. I rapped once on the door. It opened and Bonz stepped out. I breathed a big sigh of relief, then gave him an inquisitive look. He nodded in return.

I led Bonz along the winding paths through the cemetery, like I’d led Jessica a few days before, only Bonz and I weren’t holding hands. It was just after noon and the oppressive fog, which had settled over the entire Boston area like a wet down comforter, seemed to have given us the boneyard to ourselves. Of course, we knew that, by now, others had arrived, were already nearby, following, moving as quietly as their Italian-leather shoes would allow them, slipping from grave marker to grave marker, watching us.

As we walked, I said to Bonz in a soft voice, “Did you—?”

He cut me off in a whisper. “Yup. Here.” He handed me an envelope.

“Is this it?”

“That’s it.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“I’ll be damned.” I slid my finger under the sealed flap of the envelope. I figured that the heavy fog would make it impossible for anyone shadowing us to see what I was doing. I took out the pages and unfolded them, reading as I walked. “I’ll be damned,” I said again.

Bonz watched me as I finished reading, then I slipped the pages back into the envelope, the envelope into my back pocket. “You should take this,” he said quietly.

“Huh?” I was lost in a fog of my own for a moment.

“I said, you should take this.”

I looked down at a gun in his hand, the one I’d carried out of Sal’s restaurant. He gave it to me and I slipped it into the pocket of my leather jacket. I thought of the very bad men out there somewhere in the fog and doubted the gun would be what saved me, if anything did.

If I didn’t know the path we were taking so well, the gauze-thick haze might have made it difficult to find our way. As it was, the tombstones and trees twenty feet away looked fuzzy and faint. Those thirty feet away were indistinct masses. Those beyond that were invisible. And I certainly couldn’t see anyone on the path behind us, though I knew they were there.

The heavy air seemed to deaden sound. Our own footsteps sounded muffled to me.

“How did you figure out where the tape is?” Bonz asked.

“It just came to me,” I said. “The church, Saint John’s, that was a red herring I dragged across the trail.” I’d been certain the tape was there, but I was wrong. “I’ve been so focused on the church that my mind might not have been as open as it should have been to other possibilities.”

“Such as?”

“Jake told you to tell me that if I wanted the answers, ‘to take the refuge offered by the Lord’s Prayer,’ right?”

“Right.”

“And what’s the Lord’s Prayer more commonly known as?”

“The Our Father,” Bonz said.

I nodded. The path below our feet dipped for a few moments, then began to rise.

Bonz continued, “So Jake was telling you to look for the answers while taking refuge by the Our Father? I don’t get it.”

“It finally came to me when I heard Siracuse say the words, ‘the Our Father.’ See, he’s got that speech impediment—”

“The tongue thing.”

“Yeah, the tongue thing. So when he said the words, he kind of stumbled over the word ‘the.’ The words ‘the Our Father’ sounded to me like ‘our father.’ And I knew. I just knew.”

Bonz frowned in thought, then said, “Are you saying your brother buried the tape in the ground under your father’s headstone?”

“No, that’s not quite it, I don’t think. In his clue, I think when he said
by
our father, he was using the definition of by that means near. Near our father. He was telling me to look in a place where I’d once taken refuge near our father. He remembered that, the day after my parents were buried, I hid from the world in a mausoleum not far from their newly filled graves.”

Bonz shook his head. “I can’t believe you figured that out. And I can’t believe your brother could think clearly enough, in the shape he was in, to leave that clue.”

“Well, he knew he’d entered dangerous waters with Siracuse, so he’d started to make contingency plans. He’d already been here, left his secret for me. Once they grabbed him, he just had to think of a way to tell me where to look. That way was his clue, and you.”

The path, which had been sloping steadily up, began to level off. Bonz walked beside me, making himself seem at ease. But I knew he was a loaded gun, ready to fire at any second. He walked along casually enough, trying not to draw suspicion, but I could feel intensity crackling off him like tiny bolts of electricity. He kept his head facing forward but his eyes were restless, scanning the soupy fog around us, shifting from hazy shape to hazy shape, from tree to mausoleum to grave marker. He was lined up in someone’s sights at that moment and he knew it. Maybe I was, too. The cold fog started a ripple-wave of gooseflesh rising along my back. At least I told myself it was the fog that did it.

I whispered, “I’m sorry you had to meet me here. I wish there’d been another—”

“It was the only way,” Bonz replied quietly. “Siracuse wants me bad. No deal without me. So I had to be here.”

“It’s such a risk.”

“Ah, what do I really have to lose?”

“Your life?”

“My point exactly.”

Suddenly, the squat, square shape of the Fleetwoods’ mausoleum, closed on three sides, open on one, rose up out of the whiteness in front of us.

“Well, this is it,” I said a little loudly. It was my prearranged signal to Lippincott, who was following fairly close behind in the fog.

Timing would be everything in the next moments. Footsteps sounded on the paved path behind us, and Lippincott stepped out of the fog, dragging Jessica by the arm. She was gagged with a silk scarf. Her hands were tied with another. The skin around her left eye was black and blue where Grossi had hit her. The eyes themselves were terrible to see—those eyes, normally bright and sparkling with intelligence, curiosity, and humor, were almost vacant. As Lippincott pulled her along, she walked in a daze, stumbling a little. Her spirit, as Siracuse had called it, had been crushed by the weight of her ordeal and of the knowledge that her father, whom she had loved and respected so much, had been a part of this all along, and had let this happen to her. Seeing her like that, I was tempted to pull the gun out of my pocket and shoot Lippincott between the eyes.

In his free hand Lippincott carried a briefcase that purportedly had my half million dollars in it, though I had no illusions about whether the money was actually in there. And, frankly, I didn’t care.

“You okay, Jess?” I asked.

My voice brought her around. She looked at me, her face barely registering surprise at my short blond hair, and she nodded.

“How’s the face?” Bonz asked Lippincott. “I clocked you pretty good.”

“I hardly felt it,” Lippincott replied.

Bonz chuckled. “Our money in there?”

“Of course.”

“Okay,” I said, “why don’t we get—”

Suddenly, Bonz’s head snapped to his left. “What was that? Who’s out there? Charlie, you shit, you set me up!”

With that he sprang away from me, once again displaying his incredible speed and agility as he slipped quickly behind the veil of fog. A small piece of granite chipped off the corner of a headstone near where Bonz disappeared and an instant later I heard a soft pop. They shot at him with a silenced weapon. And missed, thank God. But, damn, it was close.

“Charlie,” Lippincott hissed. “You warned him.”

“Like hell I did. He heard one of Siracuse’s men out there. Don’t blame me for their carelessness.”

Lippincott stared at me, trying to decide if I was lying. His eyes traveled from me to the mausoleum behind me. He may have wanted Bonz, but he wanted Jake’s tape even more.

“It’s in there?” he asked.

I nodded. He looked out into the fog for close to a minute. Every few seconds a sound drifted to us, a footfall or a muffled voice.

“They’ll get him,” Lippincott said. “You can count on that. Let’s get the tape.”

“Let her go first.”

Lippincott looked at his daughter, then released her arm.

“Untie her and take that gag off,” I said.

“After I have the tape.”

We faced each other. I considered going to her and removing the scarves myself. Lippincott seemed to be reading my mind, like in the old days.

“I have a gun, of course, Charlie,” he said.

I had one, too, but I wasn’t looking for a shootout. I gave Jessica a reassuring nod, then looked out into the fog. I hadn’t heard any sounds from beyond the pale in the last few seconds. I hoped like hell Bonz had gotten away. His presence had been necessary to complete the charade, to get Lippincott to this point, but he wasn’t needed anymore, not if things worked out like I hoped, and I prayed he’d escape. I turned and walked over to the Fleetwoods’ mausoleum. Lippincott followed close behind.

We entered the stone structure, which I hadn’t been inside in years. It was dark, of course, though enough hazy light drifted in that we could see well enough. The inside was a little smaller than in my memories, maybe twelve feet square, and the ceiling seemed lower. Otherwise it looked as I expected. In each corner stood a deep, four-foot-high decorative metal urn with a lid on top, exactly as I remembered. The only thing that wasn’t there when I’d last been inside was a large bouquet of flowers, now brown and dry, lying on the cold stone floor. I wondered who’d left them, surprised that anyone still cared enough to bring flowers, even a century and a half after the death of the last Fleetwood interred within those walls.

I stood in the center of the mausoleum. Lippincott stood by Jessica near the entrance. I wished I knew how Bonz was faring out there in all that hazy whiteness. If my guess was correct, there was at least a carful of cold killers hunting him, with that sick bastard Grossi leading the pack.

“Well?” Lippincott said.

“I guess it would have to be in one of these urns,” I replied. I remembered having tested the lids when I was a kid and being surprised that they could actually be removed. “Doesn’t seem to be any other place to hide something. The stones look tightly fitted and sealed well into the wall. Gotta be one of the urns.”

I honestly didn’t know which one to try, but I figured it would probably be one of the ones in the back corners, farther inside. I went to the one on the left and tapped the cold metal, near the bottom, producing a hollow ring. I walked to the other urn back here in the shadows and rapped on it. Then I reached up, grabbed the pine cone–shaped knob protruding from the center of the lid, and pulled hard. The lid lifted, slipped back into place, then, as I yanked again, came off. The urn was nearly three feet across at the top, so the lid was heavy. I took it carefully in my arms and gently lowered it to the mausoleum floor. Then I stood and peered into the darkness at the bottom of the urn.

“Looks like there might be something down there,” I said.

“What is it?” Lippincott asked.

“A briefcase, I think.”

The urn was too tall to simply reach into, so I pulled myself up, choked back a scream as my damaged ribs rested on the urn’s rim, then reached down into the darkness and closed my hand around the handle of the briefcase.

“Got it,” I said, my words ringing metallically in my ears, like I’d spoken with my head inside a church bell.

I straightened up and lowered my feet to the ground. In my hands was an old, battered, black faux-leather briefcase. Lippincott quickly stepped forward and snatched it from me. He fumbled with the latches. I’d seen a side of him throughout our recent experiences together that I never thought I’d see. For instance, the man moved with precision at all times. A week ago I couldn’t have imagined him fumbling with anything.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“Is that surprising?”

“It has numbers on a dial here. Do you know the combination?”

“I know for a fact the combination Jake would have chosen. It had special meaning for us.”

“What is it?”

“Give me Jessica now.”

“Take her,” he said, looking down at the briefcase in his hands.

I moved to her and gently took the scarf from her face.

“You bastard,” she said immediately, her eyes on Lippincott. I was fairly certain she was speaking to him and not to me, but Lippincott didn’t seem to hear her. I took her face in my hands and looked into her eyes. I was pleased to see that some of the fire had returned to them. Other than the shiner, she seemed mostly unhurt. I untied the scarf from her hands and put my arms around her. She rested her head on my shoulder. At that moment, with her in my arms, I simply could not believe I had ever doubted her. I vowed to myself to make it up to her, even though she’d never know of my unforgivable suspicions.

Lippincott interrupted our tender reunion. “What’s the combination?”

I released Jess and turned to him.

“Give me my money.”

He looked down at the briefcase he’d carried with him, which he’d dropped at his feet. He picked it up again and held it under his arm.

“Well, things are different now, Charlie.”

“How so?”

“For one, you won’t be getting any money.”

“Why not?”

“Things have changed.”

“What’s changed?”

“I have the tape in my hands now,” he said.

“I see.” That bastard Siracuse was going to cheat on our deal, which didn’t surprise me in the least. Made me feel better about my own cheating, in fact, though I’m sure that wouldn’t have kept me up at night anyway.

“If I tell you the combination, will you really let us get away?”

“I will. That much of the deal we’ll honor. We don’t need you. Plus, we’ve got that physical evidence tying you to Angel’s murder to keep you honest. And anyway, no one would believe your story, that I’ve been working for years with the head of an organized crime family.”

“But it’s true. Ever since you hired Siracuse to kill your son—”

Jessica’s head snapped around. She stared in horror, first at me, then at her father.

“—you and he have been scratching each other’s backs—he gives you information about rival families obtained through violent means, makes exculpatory witnesses forget their testimony or disappear entirely, all of which has made your professional rise so much easier, while you’ve been tipping him off about wiretaps, searches, impending arrests, the whole nine yards. You rode each other to the top.”