Gravedigger (20 page)

“It wasn’t true,” Dave said. “He’s all right.”

Azrael said to Dave, “Sit down. You don’t look very well. I don’t want you to get sick; I’ve been waiting for you. I have plans for you. If you carry them out, I won’t kill you. I won’t even kill the pervert, here. If you don’t carry them out, I’ll kill him.” He sat opposite Dave at the table with the lamp on it. “And if you try to bring anybody else here, I’ll kill them too.”

Dave felt sick about the message he’d left for Cecil.

Azrael got up, went out of the circle of lamplight, came back dragging a wooden box the size of a milk crate. He shoved it with his foot to the edge of the circular braided rug that was under the table. The lamplight fell on it. With a muddy shoe, Azrael lifted the loose lid. “Ammo,” he said. “Between us, Serenity and me—we can kill five hundred people before they kill us.” His eyes fixed Dave again. “We can, and we will. Remember that.”

“What are these plans of yours?” Dave said.

“You are going to telephone Mr. Lovejoy”—the scrawny boy sat down again—“at Banner Insurance Company, and tell him that you are in the hands of the Angel Azrael.”

“I didn’t see any phone lines leading up here.”

“Serenity will drive you down to the crossroads, and you’ll use the pay phone in the booth outside the filling station. You won’t try to run away or yell for help. You will deliver the message and come straight back to the car and straight back here. Because I’ll be timing you. And if you’re late, I’ll kill Mr. Westover, the same as I killed Mr. Gaillard. I will put him in the same grave, and the two perverts can rot into each other and be one flesh forever and ever, amen.”

Westover gave a soft moan from the couch.

“What’s the message I give Lovejoy?” Dave said.

“That the Angel Azrael will kill you and bury you in a muddy hole unless Banner Insurance Company pays him one hundred thousand dollars. In cash. New, unmarked bills. At three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. You will pick up the money yourself. From Mr. Lovejoy himself. He will bring it to the beach—Cormorant Cliffs. Nobody ever goes there. He will come alone. After he has put the money in your hands, he will go back where he came from. And you will bring the money here to me. If you don’t, if you are even the least little bit late, I will kill Mr. Westover. If you do, if you come back on time, alone, I won’t do anything to him. I won’t do anything to you.”

“And Serenity?” Dave said.

“Serenity will go away with me forever,” Azrael said.

Serenity crooned, “In a great silver bird in the sky.” Then she said sharply, “Wait.” She ran to the front window. Curtains were drawn across it. She stood with her back against the wall and with a finger made a gap between the edge of the curtain and the window frame. There was the slight rattle of Venetian blinds. Azrael had the rifle again. He was standing, pointing the rifle at the door. “Someone’s out there in the trees,” Serenity said.

Azrael glared at Dave. “Who did you tell?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He ran to the other front window, stood beside it as Serenity stood beside hers, edged the curtain away, squinted out into the dark and rain. “I don’t see anything. Blow out the lamp.”

“I heard a car stop in the road,” Serenity said. “I saw somebody move in the trees.”

Dave stood. He told Westover, “Go into the kitchen.”

Westover simply stared at him. He didn’t move.

Azrael said, “Shut your mouth.” He gestured with the rifle barrel. “Blow out that fucking lamp.”

The lamp was all glass. A lot of kerosene was in the well. Dave picked up the lamp. Steps thumped on the porch. Cecil’s voice called, “Dave?” Dave yelled at Westover, “Run!” and Westover’s eyes opened wide and he jerked alive. He ran for the hall. The Venetian blinds clattered. Serenity had got the machine pistol caught in them. “Dave?” Cecil called outside in the rain. Azrael lunged for the door. “Cecil, hit the deck!” Dave shouted. Azrael tore open the door. With a knee, Dave tipped the table on its side. He slammed the burning lamp down hard into the crate of bullets and threw himself behind the tabletop. The light of the kerosene flared up and made the room bright. Azrael’s rifle went off. Then the bullets in the crate began to go off. Crazily. In every direction. Serenity screamed. Crouched behind the table, Dave felt the thick wood jar and jump from the force of the bullets. “Ah!” Azrael said. “Dave?” Cecil said. Something was wrong with his voice. A river of flame shot across the floor. Bullets shredded the curtains, shattered the frail blinds, the window glass. The couch began to burn, the ragged curtains above the couch. The bullets banged and ricocheted. Empty casings tinkled like rain, spent lead rattled down. There was smoke, and a strong smell of gunpowder.

“Westover!” Dave shouted. “Run for help.”

If there was an answer, he didn’t hear it. He crouched behind the tabletop. Bullets kept slamming into it. He felt them strike, heard the wood splinter. Smoke swirled. He got smoke in his lungs, convulsed with coughing. When he got over that, he glanced behind him. Azrael and Serenity lay sprawled in front of the open door, the boy across the girl, both facedown. Blood had puddled around them. It shone bright red in the firelight. Dave blinked against the smoke, trying to see out the door. Fire climbed the walls. By its light he made out the soles of long shoes at the edge of the porch in line with the door. As if Cecil had been struck just at the top of the steps and had fallen backward down the steps. Ah, Christ.

The explosions of the bullets stopped. But the rafters were burning now, crackling, spitting down a rain of sparks. And it was hot, too hot for him to stay here any longer. He started to straighten up, and more bullets exploded and he crouched again. He crawled, keeping flat as he could, the side of his face rubbing the floor. His head struck the softness of the children’s bodies. Their blood wetted his face. He tried to push them ahead of him out the door, but they were heavy and he couldn’t get purchase. He lay coughing, bullets whining over him, expecting at any second one of them to drill into him. Then a rafter fell. He didn’t see it. It was behind him. But he heard its roar and felt the jar of its weight through the floor under him.

He lunged over the bodies, struck the porch and rolled, screaming at the pain in his shoulder. He scrambled into the shelter of the cabin wall beside the door and hunched there, coughing, panting. His clothes were sweaty, and in the sudden cold he shivered. The bullets stopped exploding. He waited. There might still be more. There didn’t seem to be more. Now there was only the crackle and roar of the flames inside the cabin. He crept on knees and one hand and, flinching in the fire heat, dragged Azrael onto the porch and across the porch. Westover stood below the porch, staring.

“Take him down into the trees,” Dave said.

Serenity’s hair, jeans, and sweater were burning when he dragged her out. He beat out the small flames with his hand. He dragged her to the porch edge. Westover came for her and carried her away. His feet went out from under him and he sat down in the mud, the girl in her scorched and smoking clothes lying across him. He struggled from under her. Even over the noise of the fire, Dave could hear him sob. Somehow, he staggered to his feet with the girl in his arms and bore her away into the rainy darkness. Dave dropped from the porch to the ground. He swayed for a second with the pain in his shoulder. He saw the shadowy Westover lay the girl down and kneel beside her. Dave knelt beside Cecil. The boy was covered with blood. Dave laid fingers on his neck, under the hinge of his jaw. Flames were licking out the front windows of the cabin. He dragged Cecil away from the cabin, then ran skidding down to Westover. Westover looked up at him, face wet from more than just the rain.

“She’s dead,” he said. He stretched out beside her in the mud, put his arms around her, and laid his head on her breast. “No no,” he said, “no no.”

Back of them, the cabin roof fell in. It gave a hoarse roar. Sparks and flame reached up into the rain, lighting the tall pines and pin oaks with a nightmare orange glow. Dave stepped around Westover and his dead girl and crouched by Azrael. There was no need to feel for a pulse in this boy’s neck. A red ragged hole as big as a fist had opened in his forehead. His strange pale eyes looked straight up into the rain that fell upon them. Dave reached across and shook Westover’s shoulder. Westover raised his head. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing.

“I’m sorry,” Dave said, “but I’ve burned my one good hand. I don’t think I can drive.” He climbed to his feet and, hurting the blistered hand, dug into the pocket of his ruined jacket for his keys. He held them out to Westover, who blinked at them for a few seconds as if he didn’t know what they were, then wiped his runny nose on his sleeve, took the keys, and got up off the ground. Dave said, “One phone call ought to get fire, paramedics, ambulance, the works.”

Westover’s face twisted. “But she’s dead,” he said. “They’re both dead.”

“Not the black boy,” Dave said. “The one who came to the door. He’s alive. And I’d like for him to stay that way. My car is the Jaguar, a little way down the road. Can you hurry, please?”

Westover looked at the keys in his hand. He looked at Dave. Something cleared in his eyes. He nodded, and began to run, slipping in the mud, stumbling over roots, down through the trees and the dark rain toward the road.

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T
HE CREEKBED WAS PAVED
with sloping slabs of concrete and walled by standing slabs of concrete to a height of ten feet. Weeds sprouted from the cracks between the slabs, showing that water seeped underneath, but the slabs were bone dry, bone white, and glared in the morning sun. Seeing them, no one not native here would credit that when the rains came, water would rush muddy, deep, and dangerous under this concrete-slab bridge.

Before the construction of these acres of shacky stucco houses in 1946, the creekbed was shallow, cluttered with boulders from the far-off mountains, shaded by live oaks, and clumpy with brush. He remembered it that way from the 1930s. Then, the only house out here was on a rise. He looked for it out the window of the Jaguar now. There it stood among trees, a white Victorian hulk with cupolas, scalloped shingles, long porches bristly with jigsaw work. The Gifford place. Back then, this flat land by the creek was all that remained of the once vast Gifford Ranch.

Los Angeles had expanded even before World War II. One by one, the upland sections of the ranch were sold off and turned into pleasant suburbs. During the Depression, only the well-off could buy land and build on it. But then the aircraft factories and shipyards put everyone to work. Goods became scarce. People saved. Housing couldn’t be built during the war. Afterward, contractors couldn’t put up houses fast enough. Buyers were waiting. Dave smiled wryly to himself. These places must have gone up in summer, while the creekbed was dry, and been sold in the dry autumn.

With winter came the rains. And the creek flooded, as it always had. And the bright new little houses were up to their windowsills in swirling water. Overnight, mattresses, sofas, armchairs that still smelled fresh from Sears and Montgomery Ward became bloated sponges. The new Philco radios crackled and expired. The new Fords, Chevies, Plymouths everyone had waited years to buy drowned behind the warped doors of garages in the dark. It was a headline scandal. It became a headline scandal winter after winter—until the County at last gouged out the creekbed and lined it with concrete slabs. Much too late.

He swung the Jaguar off the bridge and onto a street that paralleled the creek. The paving was patched and potholed. Cans, bottles, wrappers clogged the dusty gutters. Squat stucco shops lined the street. Many of the signs were old, sun-faded, crackled. A few were new—shallow tin boxes of fluorescent tubes, fronted by crisply lettered white plastic sheets. Stones or bottles had been thrown through some of these—
LAUNDROMAT
,
DISCOUNT APPLIANCES
,
FRIENDLY LEO’S
.
Dave couldn’t make out what Friendly Leo sold. The unwashed windows were empty.

The high white sign that said
LIQUOR
was intact. Under it, brown men in ragged clothes sat on the littered sidewalk with their backs against a storefront in whose windows pyramids of soft-drink cans, beer cans, wine bottles sparkled in the sun. The brims of straw hats were pulled low on the foreheads of the brown men to shield their eyes from the sun. They clutched rumpled brown sacks that appeared to hold beer cans or wine bottles. Some of them smoked. Now and then they spoke, but none of them smiled. They looked sad, aimless, and without strength.

Around a corner of the building, on a bumpy dirt parking lot where no cars waited—it was not yet eight in the morning—teenage boys tilted back their heads and poured soft drinks down their throats from bright cans, or jokily pushed each other, or halfheartedly wrestled, or leaned watching beside bicycles against the liquor store wall, which was spray-painted with graffiti. They were Chicanos. Some wore green jackets stenciled
GIFFORD GARDENS
on the back. Dave halted the Jaguar at a battered stop sign. The boys turned, nudged each other, stared at the car.