Box Nine

Chapter Thirty-Two

St. James Cemetery is on the south side of the city. It lies in a shallow valley off Richer Avenue. It’s a large cemetery, stretches out almost to the city line. It’s bisected, almost perfectly, into two separate areas by the last skinny traces of the Benchley River as it begins to peter out.

The bisection by the river creates a division that seems too beautifully instructional to be coincidental. The section closest to Richer Ave, called the old section, was the whole of the original cemetery. It’s been filled to capacity for decades and holds the remains of the oldest of the Catholic families in Quinsigamond who butt heads with the Yankee founders of the city. When the last available grave in the old section was filled, new ground was broken on the opposite shore of the ten-foot riverbed. The new section was an immigrant neighborhood for the dead. The gravestones became ornate, bordered on the superstitious and maudlin, and the names on the stones were often long and blatantly non-Anglo-European.

At the western edge of both sections lies a stretch of tracks owned by the Providence-Quinsigamond Railroad Company. The tracks are part of a route that, like many in the P&Q system, are no longer operational. Rather than expend the cash to rip up the tracks, the railroad has simply ignored them, let them rust and fall under the cover of ten years’ worth of debris, fallen and dead trees and branches, supermarket carts and old tires. Along with the track, they left several antiquated freight cars, common, cheap rigs for industrial scrap and odds and ends. The cars have been home to squads of derelicts and drifters over the past ten years. About five years back, some old nomad’s body was found in February, dead of exposure, and there was some mayoral talk about petitioning the railroad to remove the public nuisance. But the talk faded and the cars still sit in a mini-forest of scrappy trees and beggar trash.

Lenore sits a quarter mile away in the new section. She’s seated on the frozen ground, inside a newly opened grave. Most likely, the burial is tomorrow and they brought a backhoe in today to carve out a hole for the vault. She’s roughly twelve feet down and she doesn’t know if this is a standard depth these days or if this is a double grave, purchased by someone thinking of the future, making room for the family.

She’s lowered herself down by a black nylon climbing rope tied to a neighboring gravestone, a granite number, a simple greyish rectangle that rises vertical out of the earth and is cut with names and dates. She’s dressed in the requisite black and she’s done all the necessary prep work — planted a mike in the abandoned railroad car labeled “Pachinko Brothers Bale Wire,” oiled and slapped a fresh cartridge in the Uzi, popped a megadose of crank.

Now she’s humming. She’s got her two index fingers extended like drumsticks and she’s flailing away at her knees in perfect syncopation. There isn’t a missed beat, a balked strike. She’s keeping a countertime with both her feet. And her teeth are doing a continual bite, grab, and release, over and over on her upper lip.

Images keep passing through her mind, not thoughts, but random flashes, synaptic snapshots of faces and landscapes, lighting for a millisecond, vanishing, being replaced by the next picture. She can’t really get a fix on any of them, but it’s not like she’s making a legendary attempt. She lets them come and go, tries to grab what she can. It’s like trying to stare at a series of unconnected billboards set on the side of an interstate that she’s burning up in some supercharged Porsche.

Her mother’s face. The whiteness of Woo’s belly. Cortez’s book trunk. Ike’s post office shirt, freshly washed and pressed and draped over a coat hanger suspended from the hinge of his bedroom door. Zarelli’s plate of manicotti the last time they had lunch at Fiorello’s. Her father’s arm, slung awkwardly over his face, blocking his eyes, as he lay on the bed, on top of the covers, for an after-supper nap, 1972. Her own body, naked, reflected back at her from the bathroom mirror, her skin looking suddenly grey, dry to the point of flaking away, dissolving into a granular pile on the cold tiles below her feet.

She brings her hands away from her knees, looks at them, turning them over and over, front to back to front. Then she brings her right hand up to her ear, resecuring the small receiver that never fits very well. She hears a ghostlike undercurrent, not static, but more likely the wind pushing through the cavity of the bugged boxcar.

She thinks that there are people, maybe the majority of people, who would be tentative about sitting alone, inside an open grave, in a deserted cemetery, after midnight. Ike, for one. Ike would be going over the edge about now, she thinks. Ike’s nerve would have started slipping as he came through the wrought-iron gates.

But it doesn’t bother Lenore. The fact is, she has a tough time even acknowledging an idea of the supernatural. Stories about ghosts, demons, ghouls, vampires, zombies — they all strike her as stubborn remnants of a more primitive time. Useless, superstitious fear. A throwback that society can’t seem to shake. Generation after generation of people clutching onto memories of these shadowy myths that, like the appendix, we keep being born with, though their use is so far gone we can’t even recall it.

There are things to be frightened of in this life. She’d be the first to acknowledge that. The average person should probably be frightened of a guy like Jimmy Wyatt. No question. A mute sociopath known to veer into rage. A guy who could conceivably come at you across a crowded coffee shop some dull morning and jam his fork into your throat. Jimmy Wyatt is a tangible force. He can be seen, touched, smelled. He has a verifiable history of random violence. There are odds that he could cause you long-lasting trauma. A person should fear a Jimmy Wyatt.

The average person should have a rational fear of cruising Bangkok Park at night. Of finding the lump under the skin. Of the bomb raining down on urban centers across your country. Of the banks bolting their doors and your money long gone. Of losing your ability to control the crank, or the men around you, or your hold on a dicey and cold philosophy that you’ve staked a lot of faith on, that you’ve used as a reason for moving.

For the last half hour, Lenore’s body has been having small seizures of some kind. It’s like her nervous system gets this surge of too much juice, too many signals. Her hands flail out to the side. One foot starts to tick in spasm. A corner of her mouth tugs downward. Her shoulders shoot back like a wave has hit her chest.

She has feared this all along and now it’s finally arrived. She thinks she should be experiencing at least some slight relief that what she’s dreaded is here. The waiting can end. The subconscious, ongoing anxiety can cease. The worst has happened.

She thinks suddenly of Hitler on the last day of his life, deep in the bunker below the Reich Chancellery. She’s read that at the end, the Führer was out of it, heavily sedated by his personal doctor, maybe not even completely aware that the ball game was just about over, the Russians just a quarter mile away, their shells arcing that distance and bursting on the ravaged streets of Berlin above his head.

How different. It’s just the opposite for her. There’s no sedation, but rather a siege of input, a blitzkrieg offense against a tangled, overused system of nerves, so raw from six months of nonstop overload that the nerves are perpetually hyperstimulated, they no longer know any other mode of perception. I don’t need the receiver, she thinks, just my own ear. I don’t need the binoculars, just my given eyes. Take everything in and then take some more. Which is the worse fate, she wonders, the bang or the whimper?

It’s like being in a bunker. Only smaller. The Führer’s digs were a penthouse suite compared to this hole. Looking at the wall of dirt to her left, she can see earthworms frozen in mid-burrow. Something about this strikes her as wrong, a primal violation of some obscure law of nature.

Still, she likes the location. She’s only yards from her parents’ grave and it begins to occur to her that this waiting period is a perfect time to speak with them, to send her thoughts into the ground, a simple straight line through the terra.

Isn’t this funny, folks, I want to say it’s your firstborn. But there was Ike, and though I know one of us had to come first, right now I can’t remember who that was. I’m sure you told us. I’m sure we would have asked. The thing is, this makes me wonder what else I’m destined to forget before I join you guys. The thought doesn’t bother me as much as I’d have expected. Forgetting, I mean. You know, really, there’s a peace to it. Forgetting. There’s a consolation in forgetting.

When you die, do your memories cease? I’m betting they do. I just have this feeling. Do you guys have any memory left? Does it leave you instantly, the brain waves cease and zap, that whole lifetime pool of images is excised? Or is it a gradual thing, a fading, a leakage, until there’s only one image left, one utmost picture? What would the picture be for each of you? Ma? Dad?

It’s so goddamn, excuse me, but so weird what I suddenly flashed on. What the last memory would be for me. What would you guess? Ma? Dad? Listen, it’s not what you’d think. You’d expect something significant, right? Something that changed or shaped a lifetime, some event or moment that altered a course, changed a direction, made an impression so pervasive that you grew into a different person. Something that provoked evolution.

But that’s not it at all. No way. I’m sitting here, in a cold, empty grave in St. James Cemetery, waiting for God knows what to happen to me. To take a life or two. To end my own. But what I’m thinking about, what I’m recalling, picturing, bringing up, so clearly, so unbelievably clear, in my head is our kitchen in the old house. Our museum-piece kitchen, an exhibition out of 1950s American Television Sitcoms: Linoleum greyand-red-checked floor, those four metal-legged chairs with the smooth, cool, dull-white Naugahyde backing, the metal-legged table with matching dull-white Formica top, the overstuffed, paisley-covered rocking chair that was Gramma’s, wasn’t it? And next to it, a little, black, wiry magazine holder stuffed with Life and The Saturday Evening Post. The silver-scrolled radiator in the corner that really pumped out the heat — remember Ike huddling next to it, mornings in the winter? That old white Norge refridge with the heavy pull-out handle. I built my first muscles opening and closing that monster. Mounted on all the walls are those old cream-colored real-wood cabinets with black handles, the inside shelves all lined with left-over wallpaper, that blue and white Colonial design, an early American man and woman sitting at a table having tea. Or I always thought it was tea. And, though I doubt I ever told you, Ma, I always thought the couple was George and Martha Washington.

I see the whole scene in the dim light of a late November evening, like this one. It’s five, five-thirty, and you’re waiting for Dad to get back from the corner market, you’d run out of milk, I think it was. You’d run out in the morning and the milkman wasn’t due for another day. Remember milkmen? Dad comes through the door, whistling, carrying a brown paper bag filled not only with a gallon of milk, glass bottle, but some Corncakes and Old Fashioneds for later on in the night. And as you take the unexpected treat out of the bag, you give him this mock, scolding smile. So endearing. That’s the only word that fits now. Endearing.

Ike’s at one end of the kitchen table, scrunched up in the chair, reading, lost as always, deep into, what was it — yeah, a Hardy Boys book, The Sinister Signpost. And I’m at the other end, supper plate pushed to the side, doing my math homework, printing numbers, with a pencil, on a white, lined piece of paper pulled from a black-marbled-cover spiral notebook, all those confetti-ish scraps running down the left-hand margin.

Dad sits in the old rocker, spreads The Spy open in his lap, the sports page, as you go about the last preparations for dinner. This is what I remember. This would be my last memory to fade at my death: You turn from the stove, casually, whipping potatoes, and ask Dad if he’s heard anything yet on the supervisor job that opened up last month down at the station. He doesn’t look up from the paper, but answers that, yes, they offered it to him, and he turned it down. I look up from my math homework, I instantly launch into a study of your face, Ma. You pause, then nod, your head bobbing for an extended few seconds, in time to the rhythm of the potato-whipping motion that your hand and arm are making. Dad, you add the last comment, one you’d probably said before: No better way for a man to lose his friends than to become their superior.

The words still ring, carried by your changeless voice, always, in my head.

Ma, you served dinner. Meat loaf. Dad, you tossed The Spy on top of the Norge and took a seat. Ike reluctantly, slowly, put aside Frank and Joe Hardy — I always wanted, still want, to ask him why the signpost was sinister. I moved my math text onto the radiator, felt its heat, and put it on the seat of the rocker. We dug into the meal. Warm and delicious as every one you ever served. The night went on.

All three of us, you two and me — Ike, I think, was probably unaware of the exchange — agreed it was the right decision. For Dad. For my father. I still think it was. But I learned something in that moment, seated there at the kitchen table. And I learned it in that way where it never leaves you, it becomes a permanent, central part of your essence. I learned a truth in a moment of epiphany.

And the truth was: There are people who want love. And there are people who want power.

And it occurs to me now, sitting in this awful open grave, sitting at the same level, in the same ground, where my parents, my flesh and blood, are buried, that the reason this would be the last memory to fade from my brain is that it was the moment when I changed. If you can stand the triteness of this thought: it was the line of demarcation between my innocence and my adulthood.

The standard way to mark that passage, that dividing line, is sexual. Maybe the first menstruation. Maybe the loss of virginity. These were secondary events for me. Because I’d already made a choice. For whatever reason, I was a changed girl. I wanted power. To the exclusion of all else?

You two tell me.

I am so cold right now. I have pushed my body, my nerves, to a point where some kind of collapse seems to be imminent. I don’t know what I feel anymore. And I’ve got neither the energy nor, really, the desire to find out, to find a system that might bring me back, full circle.

A few weeks back, Ike said to me, in his kitchen now, I don’t know what we were talking about, but he quotes some writer he likes. He says—“I believe in the politics of the lamb.” And the stupidity of that statement made me enraged, made me want to leap across the table at Ike, my brother, the last person I have left, and choke him. I can’t even talk to him anymore. Ike. Gentle, mutton-headed Ike.

Remember, Ma, a popular term of my childhood — Crisis of Faith. Capital letters. I don’t believe in anything anymore, except will. And I’m losing the hold on that. Mother. Father. Words. It’s all come to a head. I’m winding down. I’ve got maybe enough muscle and meanness and piss for one last seizure. And there are some fuckers about to be on the receiving end of that idea that took me, that entered me. Of that word: Power.

A sound cracks in her ear. A door being opened. Large, metal. Into a hollow-sounding interior. Obscuring echoes. Her fingers stop drumming. The deal makers have entered the Pachinko Brothers train car.

She hunches herself up a bit in the grave, brings a hand back to the earpiece, brings her teeth together, and listens:

ROURKE: Okay, listen up. The two parties in this transaction should be here any minute. I don’t want any screwups—

WILSON [exasperated]: Billy, please …

ROURKE: Let’s just run it down. The three of you did a walk-through, right? Okay, and Bromberg’s patrolling the new section and Jacobi’s got the old?

WILSON [amused]: Patrolling. For Christ sake, Billy, talk normal.

ROURKE [angry]: Talk normal, I ought to smack your head, talk normal. This is not a goddamn mail route, you little bitch. This is not screwing around. You didn’t see the two gooks he brought to the bar, okay? Where did these fuckers come from? This was not in the plan. We’re his brokers. He was supposed to come alone. Get that goddamn flashlight out of my eyes.

[More sounds of jostled, echoing metal. Feet climbing up into the train car]

ROURKE [mockingly polite]: It’s the chauffeur. Donna, take the man’s lantern. That’s a beauty, that’s like a real railroad job there. Now, give me your hand, there you go. Where’s the boss?

MINGO: Give me the lantern.

ROURKE: I get it. Signal time. Like Paul Revere. Wasn’t that the guy? Paul Revere?

MINGO: Where’s your guy?

ROURKE: Be here any minute. And who do we have … Mr. Cortez. And his associate, Jimmy, isn’t it? Here, let me give you two a hand up.

Graveyard’s full of bodies tonight.

[Rourke’s awkward laughter. Hollow, metal echo]

CORTEZ: Where is he?

ROURKE: Expecting him any minute. Once he gets here this shouldn’t take a second. I assume, I mean, the briefcase—

CORTEZ — is none of your concern at the moment, Mr. Rourke. When I see the product, you will see the money.

ROURKE: Of course, sure, listen, I was thinking, maybe the way to do this, just to make sure there are no mistakes and it’s all handled professionally—

[Laughter]

ROURKE: Why’s he laughing? Why’s your driver there laughing?

CORTEZ: Mingo, please. Go on, Mr. Rourke. [Quiet for a moment. Foot shuffling]

ROURKE: I thought maybe I’d stay in the middle, here, and you and your people could stay to one side, and then, when they get here, him and his people, they could stay on my opposite side. If that’s all right with everyone? We could pass the cases back and forth through me. You know, broker.

CORTEZ: No objection.

[Indiscriminate noise]

ROURKE: Bingo, here they are now. Gentlemen, good to see you.

[Climbing up on metal, movement, coughing, repositioning of bodies]

ROURKE: Beautiful, so we’re all here, tremendous. Mr. Cortez, this is the Paraclete. Mr. W, I’d like you to meet Mr. Cortez.

CORTEZ: A pleasure to finally meet.

PARACLETE: Likewise.

Lenore’s whole body seizes up. The voice enters her ear and it’s like she’s been smashed across the back of the head with a board, a fat, sturdy two-by-four out of nowhere. No preparation, no time to flinch. Just a pure impact against her fragile skull.

It’s Woo’s voice. Absolute certainty. The Paraclete is Woo.

Lenore comes up onto her knees, hugs the Uzi to her chest, starts to rise, and hears:

CORTEZ: Who’s the hostage?

WOO: A visual aid, if you will. I thought you might like to see what my product can do.

CORTEZ: [possibly to Rourke]: I’ve seen. All over my streets lately. There was no talk of this. There was no mention.

WOO: Yes, I understand there was some [pause] confusion concerning the samples that were sent to you—

CORTEZ: Who is he? Untape the man’s mouth. This was not part of the plan.

WOO — but I thought you might like to witness the process, as they say, up close and personal. Our guest for the evening is a former associate of Mr. Rourke. A fellow letter carrier. Mailman, as they say.

She grabs the rope and starts to climb out of the grave, frantic, all panic and no finesse. Back on the surface, she swings the Uzi on its strap around to her back and falls on her stomach. Rourke’s sidekicks are definitely out there somewhere and who knows what kind of backup Cortez or Woo has planted.

She scans the landscape, a full circle, but there’s not much she can see beyond tree-shadow and gravestones. She crawls toward the base of the nearest tree and looks around, then starts a crouched, small-step run toward the train car. She moves less than twenty yards when her left foot plants into a pile of dried leaves and catches on something buried underneath. She falls to her knees, lets her body go all the way to the ground, then rolls on her side, swinging the Uzi around to her front. She stops a second, stays on the ground, takes a breath, and sweeps a cautious half-circle in front of her with the Uzi’s barrel. Then her eyes spot something protruding from the leaf pile and it’s another second before she realizes it’s a human hand. She leans back to the pile and pushes leaves aside until she finds what she’s tripped over.

It’s Charlotte Peirce’s body.

There’s a black hole in the center of her forehead. The diameter is somewhere between a quarter and a half-dollar. There are charred burn marks visible around the outer edge of the hole. The bottom half of the face is obscured by a heavy coating of dried blood. Fat streaks of blood run everywhere down the neck. The bottom lip looks to be missing from the face. Rust-colored, blood-soaked leaves bulge from an uneven gap that was once the mouth.

Lenore spots a small pink and red mound next to the head and avoids looking closely. The odds are good it could be a human tongue.

Though she knows it’s a futile gesture, Lenore reaches to the neck and feels for a pulse. The flesh is cold to the touch, already turning into something else. Lenore retracts her hand. She knows there’s another, much larger hole in the back of her head. And that a lot of blood and skull-bone and brain matter have exited into the dry earth below.

She freezes for a minute, tries again to concentrate on breathing. But words come through the earpiece.

CORTEZ: I’m already a motivated buyer. There’s no need for a display. My time here is limited.

WOO: Duk [finger snapping sound], the tape. [Muffled, shuffling noise] [A voice, high, breathless, possibly hyperventilating]

VOICE: Rourke [gasp] don’t [gasp] let this [garbled speech].

WOO: Put him on his knees.

Lenore’s body starts to shut down. Calculation and strategy run from her brain. Her breathing is inaudible. Her feet feel like stone, like if someone lifted them, they’d break away from her ankle in a soft, granular rain.

They’ve got Ike. Ike is the guinea pig, the demonstration model. The Paraclete is Woo. And he’s got Ike, on his knees, on the floor of an abandoned train car. He wants to stuff Ike full of Lingo and watch the display. He wants to put on a show for a customer.

CORTEZ [annoyed]: I’m not interested in sideshows, here. I’m on a very rigid schedule.

ROURKE [nervous]: Really, Mr. W—

WOO: Gentlemen, trust me, it is as much for my benefit as your own. I need to believe in a product, to truly get behind it, to know days, weeks, years down the road that I’ve supplied a worthy item. It’s something of a matter of family pride. [Sharp clap of hands] Duk, my case.

IKE [hysterical, wheezing]: Rourke, you can’t, Billy, Donna — [choking sound]

ROURKE [edgy]: This was not part of the—

WOO [to his assistant]: Watch your fingers, Duk. We can’t be too careful these days.

WILSON [pleading]: Billy—

ROURKE [through teeth]: Shut the fuck up.

CORTEZ: With all due respect, sir.

WOO: This will take just a moment.

[Various sounds, possibly including: a zipper pulled open, subdued male or female crying-noise, throat-clearing, whispers]

WOO: Rub the throat, Duk. Just like you’ve done with the dogs. He’ll swallow.

She gets to her feet, lets her fingers find and set the Uzi for use, takes deep breaths. Then she starts running, not a sprint but a serious jog, surefooted, planting and pushing off, rhythmic, no undue danger to the ankles, the whole time calculating timing, when she’ll reach the open door, who she’ll cut down with the first blast. The whole time in her ear there are the sounds of gurgling, gagging, small choking noise.

CORTEZ [quietly]: I don’t believe in showmanship.

WOO [mimicking his tone]: There’s nothing but showmanship.

She pulls the receiver from her ear and lets it fall. She makes the leap from the ground to the train’s interior in the space of a last running stride. Her presence is sounded by the heavy clump of her feet hitting floor. She comes down in the middle of the whole group, parallel to Rourke and his girlfriend, Cortez to her left, Freddy Woo to her right. All the faces are lit only by the yellow gleam of swaying lanterns suspended above their heads on some unseen hook. They all look like they’re badly made up for some shoestring slasher movie. She sees the huge, bald Oriental next to Woo, must be Duk, start to bring his hand around to his back. She pulls in on the Uzi’s trigger like it was made of rubber, like the right kind of touch could flood her with pleasure. It makes a siege of firecracker pops, made odd and loud by the acoustics of the train car. She releases the trigger at once. Duk’s body is knocked back and down, hits the floor with a sound she knows she’ll recall in dreams.

“Spit it out, Ike,” she screams.

Ike’s on all fours now, like he was someone’s father ready to play Bronco. He comes downward in the front, onto his elbows, his back slanting, shoulders practically touching the floor. His face is obscured. She can see only a thick line of saliva arcing from mouth to floor.

“Spit it,” again, screaming.

She pokes at Woo’s chest with the stunted barrel of the gun and says, “You’re a fucking dead man,” then without taking her eyes off him, she takes a step, brings a leg up until she’s straddled across Ike’s back, brings a free hand down and around to his face, and forces a long finger into the mouth and down toward the throat. There’s a fraction of a second of pause and then she feels the heaving start to build in the chest. In a single motion she pulls hand and arm free and dismounts. Ike begins to vomit onto the train floor.

Sounds start to become recognizable. First, there’s the halting whimpering from the girl, Donna, interlaced with small slapping noises from Rourke, trying to silence her.

“Hit her again, asshole,” Lenore says, and Rourke looks up, face all shock and fear, to see the Uzi swing toward him.

No one speaks for a second. Lenore lets the situation sink in, then says, without looking at him, “Here’s your big chance, Freddy. You’ve got people out there. A waiting car. Go ahead.”

Woo says nothing. He looks quickly to Cortez, who stays rigid, arms folded across his chest.

Lenore lets a hand fall down, sweeps Ike’s hair up off his forehead, wipes away sweat with her palm.

Woo’s mouth opens, closes, opens again. “There’s a tremendous amount of money …”

“Oh, Christ,” she says, almost rolling her eyes.

“More than you would think.”

“I can’t believe you can’t do better. Mr. Language. Jesus.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Wilson says.

“Help her out,” Lenore says to Rourke, looking at Woo. The girl starts to fall toward the floor, slowly, still in the grasp of Rourke’s awkward arms.

“Excuse,” Cortez says, clearing his throat and motioning toward the graveyard with a slight tilt of his head.

Lenore exhales, then nods back to him. Cortez lightly touches Jimmy Wyatt’s shoulder and the mute picks up the briefcase of money and jumps out of the boxcar.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Woo says, his head hung out past his shoulders, not ready to accept what he knows is about to happen.

Cortez starts to follow Jimmy, then stops for a moment next to Lenore.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Woo repeats, tight-lipped, a tick beginning in his left eye.

Lenore chucks him lightly under the chin with the Uzi barrel. “Learn some new words,” she says slowly, then turns to Cortez. “You get to that cave in the mountains down there, make sure it has two exits.”

Cortez nods, puts a hand on Mingo’s shoulder, and steers him toward the doors.

“Will the Aliens find you?”

Cortez shrugs.

“You want Wyatt to take care of anyone outside?”

She shakes her head no, stops, shakes her head yes.

He pauses as if he had something more to say, then takes an off-balance step and jumps down from the train car, followed by Mingo.

“Pathetic choice,” Woo says to her.

“There was no choice at all, Freddy. I cut no deal. I don’t take dime one out of this.”

He makes a face to indicate how ridiculous this sounds to him.

“Believe what you want. I didn’t know you were the producer — the Paraclete, right? — until five minutes ago.”

Woo holds up his hand in a stop sign and mutters, “Oh, please …”

Lenore cuts him off and says, “You whacked Peirce, you fuck.”

Woo breathes through his nose and holds up a second hand. “You’re making a terrible mistake, Lenore. There are so many things you just don’t know. Your sister detective made some pathetic character judgments. It was her associates who judged her expendable. When all this is over it will look like she was one more dirty cop who made one more stupid decision—”

“A couple things you should know, asshole. That diner you hit. That motorcycle chickenshit drive-by. You killed a friend of mine. And your visual aid here”—she strokes Ike’s forehead—“this is my brother.”

Woo goes still and silent. Across the car, Rourke says a weak, “Oh, shit.”

A small grin finally breaks on Woo’s face and he says, “So now you take me in.”

“Now who’s kidding who?”

“I’ve got people outside. You know that.”

“Great. The Duk-man here will have some company. You can all sit around, play Scrabble in hell. You’ll have a real edge, Freddy.”

“They’ll have heard the gunfire.”

“I’ve got a feeling they were told to expect some gunfire.”

“It doesn’t stop with me, Lenore. I have friends. There’s a great big family. People in position. You know the saying about City Hall.”

“Impress me some more, dickhead.”

Woo takes a breath. “All your talk about will. All your words. It comes down to this, Lenore.”

“You know, Freddy, there’s a reason the Families put the gun barrel in the enemy’s mouth. You know that, right, Freddy?”

“I’m unarmed. Defenseless. A prisoner. You can just execute me? You think so?”

She raises her free hand to his mouth, pinches in the sides like some cliché of an elderly woman admiring a child’s face. She turns his head from side to side.

“Courage of my convictions, Freddy.”

She hears the metal-click sound of a safety being snapped off. She steps back slowly and turns enough to see Rourke, on one knee, one arm extended forward, hand gripping a small revolver.

Woo begins to laugh and says, “Even the mailman carries a gun. I love this country.”

Lenore pivots very slowly as Rourke, caught somewhere between terrified and adrenaline-high, says, “Don’t, do not, just stop.”

“Okay, stupid, just listen. I’ve got a bead on you right now. I’ve got tension on the trigger. You might get a shot off. But I’ll be firing back. My body jerks back, the weapon fires, I swear to you, this will happen.”

Woo makes his move. It happens in seconds. He goes down and up into her, his shoulder coming under her, knocking the Uzi upward toward the ceiling. A small burst of gunfire sounds and stops. Lenore loses balance, falls backward, hugging the gun into her chest to maintain position. Woo is on top of her, one hand pushing the weapon down against her so she can’t get control, another struggling to pull something from the inside of his coat.

Then it’s out, an open razor. A long straight razor, a barber’s tool from a generation past. Woo manages to get a grip on her throat. He makes a sweep that passes near the end of her nose. The miss charges him up and he pushes harder on her neck, brings the razor up more slowly this time. And his intention becomes clear. The thought gels in Lenore’s brain: He wants to cut up my mouth, he wants to cut out my tongue.

Now he makes a jab motion instead of a sweep. The blade slides into Lenore’s upper lip and at once a rush of blood flows down over her mouth. There’s no pain, but the shock of the action gives Lenore enough of a jolt to throw him to the side. He pulls the blade across the back of her hand as he passes. Blood spurts and runs, and she tries to keep a hold on her weapon. Woo gains balance and begins to come at her again, backhand, a wide arc.

There’s a round of gunfire, a series of low-caliber pops. She turns to see Cortez, outside the train car, bent in a practiced shooter’s stance. The bullets enter Woo’s body chest-level. For an instant he makes the helpless, jerking, seizurelike spasms of a man in an electric chair. The body erupting in short, violent twitches. Then he pitches forward and his head lands facedown in Lenore’s abdomen.

She rolls to the side, angles the Uzi toward Rourke. But Ike is in the line of fire, a knee planted on Rourke’s chest, hands around the throat, coming downward with his head, cracking the bridge of his forehead into Rourke’s nose, eyes, skull. The revolver is a few feet away from them. Lenore slides out from under Woo’s head and it thumps to the floor. She crawls toward her brother, picks up Rourke’s gun, then pulls Ike off him.

She turns back to see Cortez climbing into the car. She watches him toe Woo’s limp head until he’s satisfied the man is dead. Then he bends down and picks up the briefcase full of Lingo.

“I forgot something,” he says.

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“The deal,” he says, “was left very vague.”

“I need it. To explain.”

“You’ll find another explanation,” he says, and she realizes his gun is casually pointed toward her. “That’s one of your strengths, Lenore. You’re so good with words.”

“Don’t,” she says, tensing muscles.

“I’m leaving now, Lenore. Wyatt and Mingo are waiting for me.”

He starts to back toward the door. They stare at each other until he turns and jumps to the ground.

The girl, Wilson, is curled up, weeping, gagging, trying to breathe, in a far corner of the train car.

Ike sways under his sister’s hand, falls off Rourke, whose face is a lumpy puddle of blood, torn skin, visible bone.

They sit, their bodies fall into one another. The only sound is Wilson’s choppy, eerie, infant-noises and their own attempts at regulating their breathing. The train car is already starting to fill up with a smell, something heavy, primal. Something without a specific word attached to it.

Lenore pulls in some air and tries to speak, but the sounds are unintelligible. Ike looks up at her, crunches up his eyes and mouth, brings his hand up to her lips in a useless effort to stop the bleeding. They both know, at once, it’s more a sign of concern than something pragmatic.

Ike takes his hand away, dabs at his pants leg, then reaches around to a back pocket and produces a white handkerchief. Lenore takes it from him, presses it up over her mouth. She knows it will be saturated in a minute.

They manage to pull Wilson down from the car, and the three of them huddle into one another for the walk to the Barracuda. Lenore lets herself scan the graveyard just once. It’s possible she spots two or three bodies, lying prone, refuse left by Jimmy Wyatt. It’s just as possible the figures in the distance are piles of clumped leaves that will blow into different formations by morning.

She distracts herself from studying the landscape further. She looks down at her feet as she walks. She tries to keep her tongue tucked in a far corner of her mouth. But her resolve is gone. And the tongue roams on its own, dipping into the mess of blood and open flesh, tasting, against her own better judgment, the flavor of her own juice.