The Book of Fate (51 page)

Rogo finally reached two sliding frosted-glass doors that were almost identical to the entrance in front. Stepping onto the pressure mat, he waited for the doors to slide open. They didn’t move.

“Anybody home?” Rogo announced, knocking on the frosted glass, then pressing his face against it, trying to peer inside. Diagonally up on his right, a pinprick of red light revealed a shiny black security camera that was as thin as a calculator with a tiny round lens no bigger than a dime. Rogo turned away, too smart to stare. No way was a doctor’s office spending money on high-end tech like that.

“Don’t look up,” Rogo whispered as Dreidel stepped next to him.

“You sure no one’s—?”

Rogo raised a knuckle to knock again, but before he could tap the glass, the doors slid open, revealing an annoyed security guard with stringy brown hair and a close-cropped mustache.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking at Dreidel, then Rogo, then back at Dreidel.

“Yeah, we’re looking for Dr. Eng,” Rogo said, trying to step inside. The guard stepped in front of him, cutting him off, but Rogo kept going, his short meatball build ducking quickly under the guard’s arm and into the salmon-colored marble lobby.

“Sorry . . . it’s just . . . it’s raining,” Rogo said, pointing outside and flicking excess water from his hands.

The guard didn’t say a word, still staring at Dreidel. Rogo noticed that the guard was armed with a 9mm pistol in his belt.

“Anyway,” Dreidel interrupted, “we’re here to see Dr. Eng.”

“Sorry, he left already,” the guard shot back.

“That’s fine—if we could just see his office assistant.”

“Dr. Eng is gone. His office is closed for the day.”

Up the hallway, Rogo spotted a tenant directory on the wall next to the elevators. “Listen, if we came at a bad time, I apologize, but can I just ask one favor?” Rogo pleaded. “I’ve been driving for over an hour in tear-your-hair-out traffic. We’ll get out of your way—we’ll call Dr. Eng tomorrow—but first, can I
please
just use your bathroom? We’re talking real emergency here.”

The guard stared at him, unmoving.

“Please,” Rogo pleaded, doing an anxious shuffle with his feet. “If I wait any longer—”

“Men’s room is past the elevators on the left-hand side,” the guard said, pointing up the hall.

“My bladder thanks you,” Rogo said, taking off.

Dreidel took a step to follow behind him. The guard shot him a look, and Dreidel stopped.

“We’ll . . . I’ll just wait here,” Dreidel decided.

“Great idea,” the guard said.

Without looking back, Rogo cruised up the hallway, which, like the outside of the building, was worn and weary: cracked marble along the floor, cheap art deco light fixtures overhead, and eighties-era aqua and sea-foam modern art paintings on the wall. Brushing past it all, Rogo focused on the office directory next to the elevators.

“Did I pass it yet?” he called back to the guard as he stopped in front of the directory’s gold metal frame. Skimming the alphabetical list, he saw:

Eng, Dr. Brian——Suite 127

But to Rogo’s surprise, it didn’t list the type of practice or even a business name. Same with every other doctor in the directory. Six in total, but not a single one included their practice.

“Next door down,” the security guard called back. “On the left.”

Waving his thanks, Rogo ducked into the small restroom, which greeted him with the sharp reek of bleach. Knowing he had to take some time before rushing out, he walked to the sink, hit the lever on the dispenser for a few paper towels, and wiped the rest of the rain from his face. He looked in the mirror to make sure he got it all. That’s when he noticed the oak door behind him, just over his shoulder.

Turning back, he studied it carefully. To anyone else, it was nothing more than a storage closet. And to him, on any other day, it would be too. But tonight . . . with everything going on . . . Rogo glanced to his left. There was already a narrow door with the word
Storage
stenciled on it.

Stepping toward the oak door, Rogo gave the doorknob a twist. Locked.

Quick as he could, he glanced around the restroom—the stalls, the urinals, the garbage can in the corner—searching for—
there.

Next to the sink, Rogo rushed for the paper towel dispenser, slamming the lever as hard as he could. A single paper towel stuck its tongue out. Perfect, Rogo decided, pulling the plastic case off the dispenser and leaving just the lever and the exposed paper towels. He hit the gray plastic lever again, but this time, didn’t let go of it, gripping as tight as he could with his fingertips, leaning in with his chest, and putting his full weight against it.

Within seconds, he could hear the damage. There was a loud plastic pop as the dispenser started to crack. Rogo held on, standing on his tiptoes and lifting one foot off the ground to increase the weight. Another pop pierced the air. Almost there. Rogo didn’t let up, gritting his teeth and breathing hard through his nose. Don’t let go . . . not until . . . With a final short hop, he picked his other foot off the ground. That was it. Plastic shattered with a crack as the boomerang-shaped metal lever snapped free through the bottom of the dispenser. Rogo crashed to the tile floor, and a grin took his face.

As he climbed to his feet, he examined the metal lever, turning the boomerang sideways. Definitely thin enough. Lunging for the oak door, but trying to keep quiet, he slid the boomerang-shaped sliver of metal into the narrow gap between the angled latch and the door’s threshold. His forehead and nose were pressed against the door seam as he peered downward and pulled the boomerang toward his belly. Like a child fishing for coins through a sewer grate, he wiggled his hand, trying to jigger the lever against the door’s latch. Slowly, the latch started to giv—

Click.

With a frantic tug, he pulled the oak door open. Rogo craned his neck to look inside. “Hello?” he whispered.

Inside, it was dark, but as the light from the bathroom flooded forward, it was clear this wasn’t a little storage closet. The room was deep, almost as big as his and Wes’s living room. And as Rogo stepped forward—as he saw what was inside—his eyes widened. It didn’t make sense. Why would they—?

“What the hell you think you’re doing?” a deep voice asked from the bathroom door.

Rogo spun around just in time to see the security guard coming at him.

99

I
know where Boyle’s grave is. I’ve been there before.

The first time was after my sixth and final surgery—the one where they tried to dig the last bits of metal shrapnel from my cheek. Fifteen minutes into it, the doctor decided the pieces were too deep—and far too small, like steel grains of sand—so better to leave them where they are. “Lay it to rest,” Dr. Levy told me.

Taking his advice, I left the hospital and had my mom drive me here, to Woodlawn Cemetery. Seven months after Boyle was buried on national television, I approached his grave with my right hand stuffed deep in my pants pocket, clutching my newest prescription and silently, repetitively apologizing for putting him in the limo that day. I could hear my mother sobbing behind me, mourning me like I wasn’t even there. It was one of the toughest visits of my life. To my own surprise, this one’s tougher.

“Stop thinking about it,” Lisbeth whispers, plowing through the unmowed, shin-high grass that wraps like tiny bullwhips around our ankles. As we approach the chain-link fence behind the back of the cemetery, I try to hold the umbrella over both of us, but she’s already two steps ahead, not even noticing the light rain. I don’t blame her for being excited. Even if she’s not writing the story, the reporter in her can’t wait to get the truth. “Y’hear what I said, Wes?”

When I don’t answer, she stops and spins back to face me. She’s about to say something; most likely,
Calm down . . . take it easy.

“I know it’s hard for you,” she offers. “I’m sorry.”

I nod and thank her with a glimpse of eye contact. “To be honest, I didn’t think it’d—I thought I’d be more eager.”

“It’s okay to be scared, Wes.”

“It’s not scared—believe me, I
want
Boyle’s answers—but just being here . . . where they buried—where they buried whatever they buried. It’s like a—it’s not the best place for me.”

I look up, and she steps toward me, back under the umbrella. “I’m still glad you let me come.”

I smile.

“C’mon, I got a good vibe,” she says, tugging my shoulder as she sprints back out from under the umbrella. Gripping the top of the four-foot-tall chain-link fence, she stabs her toe into one of the openings.

“Don’t bother,” I reply, motioning to a mound of dirt that’s piled so high it buries the fence and leads right inside. Despite the pep talk, I still hesitate. That’s extra dirt from the graves. Lisbeth has no such problem. Ignoring the rain, which is still a light drizzle, she’s up the small mound and over the fence in an instant.

“Careful,” I call out. “If there’s an alarm—”

“It’s a cemetery, Wes. I don’t think they’re worried about people stealing.”

“What about grave rob—?” But as I follow her over the dirt mound, we’re met with nothing but the soft buzz of crickets and the thick black shadows of two-hundred-year-old banyan trees, whose branches and tendrils stretch out like spiderwebs in every direction. Diagonally to our left, the eighteen acres of Woodlawn Cemetery expand in a perfect rectangle that measures over seventeen football fields. The cemetery eventually dead-ends, with no apparent irony, at the back of the Jaguar dealership, which probably wasn’t the intention in the late 1800s when city founder Henry Flagler plowed over seventeen acres of pineapple groves to build West Palm Beach’s oldest and most lavish cemetery.

I take off for the main stone-paved path. Grabbing the umbrella, Lisbeth pulls me back and leads us to our left, behind a tall meatball-shaped shrub just inside the back fence. As we get closer, I spot another huge meatball next to it, then another, then another . . . at least a hundred in total, ten feet tall . . . the row of them lining the entire back length of the graveyard. Her instinct’s perfect. By staying back here, we’re off the main path, meaning we’re out of sight, meaning no one can see us coming. With what we’ve got planned, we’re not taking chances.

As we duck behind the first meatball shrub, we quickly see it’s not a meatball at all. Hollowed out from the back and shaped like a
U
, the shrub hides a collection of empty Gatorade bottles and soda cans scattered along the ground. The shrub next to it contains a folded-up piece of Astroturf that they use to cover open graves.

“Wes, these are perfect for—”

“No question,” I say, finally getting caught up in her excitement. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m putting her at risk. Checking to make sure we’re alone, I turn left, toward the center of the lot, where a glowing white flagpole is lit up by floodlights and serves as the graveyard’s only light source. But from where we are, surrounded by trees in the corner of the far end zone, all its pale glow does is cast angled shadows between the branches and across the path.

“You’re slowing down,” she says, grabbing the umbrella and tugging me forward.

“Lisbeth, maybe you should—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she insists, doubling our pace and glancing to the right, where a skinny bone-white military headstone has a crest that reads:

CPL

TRP E

13 REGT CAV

SP AM WAR

1879-1959

“He’s buried near people from the Spanish-American War?” she whispers. “You sure he’s not in the new section?”

We’d seen it when we first drove up. On our far left, past the floodlit flagpole, past the thousands of silhouetted crosses, crooked headstones, and family crypts, was a wide-open field dotted with flat ceremonial markers. Like most Florida cemeteries, Woodlawn learned the hard way what happens when a hurricane hits a graveyard. Nowadays, the newly dead get only flat markers set flush into the earth. Unless, of course, you know someone big enough to tug some strings.

“Trust me, he’s not in the new section,” I say. The further we go down the path, the more clearly we hear a new sound in the air. A hushed murmur, or a whisper. Dozens of whispers—coming and going—as if they’re all around us.

“No one’s here,” Lisbeth insists. But on our left, behind a 1926 headstone with a marble set of rosary beads dangling from the front, there’s a loud scrape like someone skidding to a stop. I spin to see who’s there. The headstones surround us. The rain continues to dribble down our backs and soak our shoulders, its mossy smell overwhelming the stench of wet dirt. Behind us, the rumble of thunder starts to—no, not thunder.

“Is that . . . ?”

The rumbling gets louder, followed by the deep belch of an air horn. I wheel back toward the meatball shrubs just as the
ding-ding-ding
of the crossing gate pierces the air. Like a glowing bullet through the darkness, a freight train bursts into view, slicing from right to left, parallel with the low fence that runs along the back of the graveyard.

“We should keep going!” Lisbeth yells in my ear, leading us deeper down the path. The train continues to rumble behind us, taking all sound with it, including the rustling and scraping that would let us know someone’s coming.

What about in there?
Lisbeth pantomimes as we pass an aboveground crypt with stained-glass double doors. The crypt is one of the largest here—nearly as big as a dumpster.

“Forget it,” I say, yanking her by the elbow and taking the lead. She doesn’t realize how close we are to our goal. Three graves down from the crypt, the path dead-ends at the trunk of the enormous banyan tree, which, during the day, shields every nearby grave from the battering sun. That alone makes this one of the most select areas in the entire cemetery. President Manning made the call himself and personally secured the double plot of land that now holds the imported Italian black marble headstone with the slightly curved top and the stark white carved letters that read: