Gravewriter (19 page)

“What? Then how did you hide it there in the first place?”

“It was January—I walked on the ice.”

Garrett muttered to himself. He turned right onto Pontiac Avenue, heading north, away from the prison. They passed a twenty-four-hour gas station lighted up brighter than an operating room. “That wasn't here when I went in,” Larry said. He pointed to an on-ramp. “Ooo—take the highway.”

Garrett shot him a hard look in the mirror and then jerked the car onto the ramp. Larry tumbled into Peter, who tumbled into the door. “It's been awhile,” Garrett explained in what seemed like an apology for his driving. He raced onto the highway, steadying the wheel with his knee as he slipped his arms out of the orange jumpsuit.

Larry rolled down his window, leaned against the door, and felt the wind strafe his face. What a rush, to be free. “Now I know why dogs do this,” he said.

“Take Peter,” Garrett ordered. “Get the stash. Meet me the same place I drop you off.”

At an interchange, he swerved onto Route 95, toward Providence, hiding the Olds among a handful of long-distance truckers plowing north at eighty miles per hour.

Larry blanched. To leave Garrett Nickel alone with the wheels? “Won't take long to get the stash,” he pleaded. “Come with us.”

“I got an errand,” Garrett said. He glanced at Larry in the rearview mirror. Something monstrous stirred in Garrett's eyes, and Larry felt a stab of fear in his chest.

Garrett wrenched the car off the highway, cutting off a tractor-trailer in a squeal of tires and a howl of horn on the way to the exit. Larry tumbled again into Peter, who clutched both hands on the door handle. Larry whispered to him, “Sneak past a rifle tower, climb a razor fence, get killed on the fuckin' highway.”

Righting himself, Larry imagined that the windshield was a movie screen and what he saw there just a scary flick.

Garrett rode the bumper of black Nissan up the ramp. “Learn to drive, asshole,” he cursed.

He swerved around the car, plowed through a stop sign, and bounced the Oldsmobile down a narrow and pitted city street. He yanked the car left and right, curb to curb, around the potholes. Outside Larry's window, dangerous objects flew past the car—poles, mailboxes, hydrants, a bungalow. He clung to the door and licked salty sweat off his upper lip.

The Oldsmobile zoomed down another ramp, heading west on a darkened suburban highway divided down the middle by a concrete barrier. Up ahead, the road bordered a dark, forested edge of Roger Williams Park, which looked more like wilderness than picnic grounds.

“When I slow down,” Garrett shouted, “you two jump out and get the stash.”

“Where do we meet you?” Larry cried.

“What do you mean, jump when you
slow down?”
asked Peter.

Garrett checked his left wrist, though he hadn't owned a watch in nine years. “I need a couple hours,” he said. “Get the stash, and then come back and lay in the weeds, right where I leave you. On my way back, I'll tap the horn so you know it's me.”

“What do you mean by ‘slow down'?” Peter repeated.

Larry scrambled up the grassy slope after Peter. At the top, he examined the painful dark spot on his forearm. He licked it. Blood. A scrape the size of a silver dollar.

The Oldsmobile roared down the road, then vanished.

“I think he was going twenty when you pushed me out,” Peter bitched.

“Be thankful—he was about to hit the gas again.” Larry took a moment to look around and get oriented. The woods were silent. “This way—Jesus!”

He grabbed Peter by the arm and dragged him to the ground.

Headlights approached.

“Not a sound,” Larry warned.

Laying flat in the underbrush, the two cons watched a Providence police cruiser slowly motor along a park road. The police took their time—they could have jogged faster. The cops probed the woods on the other side of the street with a white searchlight. Darkness gobbled up the light as they passed.

“Are they looking for us already?” Peter whispered after the cops had gone.

“Doubt it,” Larry said. “The slammer won't miss us for another hour. The park closes at nightfall. They're looking for dope sales and sex orgies. They have them here sometimes.”

“Hmm—how much time do we have?”

“Whoa—” Larry said. “Did you just make a joke? Congratulations—your first joke. How does it feel?” He didn't wait for an answer.
“There's no time for shooting smack and getting laid. We gotta get to the boathouse, but we can't use the road. And not a fuckin' peep once we get moving. There's no highway noise in the park, so any sound will carry a long way.”

They skittered across the road like two bugs, heading into the woods the cops had just searched, then up a steep slope. Larry winced at every snapping twig. “Do you have clubbed feet or something?” he complained. “Why are you so loud? You might as well be playing the accordion.”

Dropping to their bellies, they wormed their way to the crest of the hill. Below them, the slope eased down through hardwood trees to another park road and then to a lakeshore. The lake at that hour was a dark plain dotted with one clump of trees on one tiny island. The gabled boathouse on the shore looked like a mansion at the edge of outer space. Far in the distance, downtown Providence twinkled white and yellow.

Larry pointed to a light moving along the far lakeshore. “The cops are down by the zoo,” he said. “Let's get to the water.”

They hustled between giant ash, down the hill, across the road, and to the boathouse. Larry led the way around the building, heading to an L-shaped aluminum dock that reached into the lake. Eight plastic paddleboats floated motionless in the water.

“You left your stash here?” Peter whispered.

“Six years ago, before I went inside.”

“A thousand people come here every day.”

Larry clucked his tongue. “Best place to hide shit is right in everybody's face. Wait here a second.” He knelt on the dock, crawled to the end of it, and then scampered back. “The paddleboats are tied down with wire, padlocked to eye hooks in the dock.”

“And?”

“And you need to swim under the dock and loosen one of the hooks so we can take a boat.”

“Think about what you're saying,” Peter said. “We don't have time to shoot smack and get laid, but we have time for paddleboating?”

“Two jokes in one day,” Larry said dryly. “You're on fire.” He pointed to the water. “Get under there.”

“Why can't you?”

“I told you I can't swim. Can't even dog-paddle,” he said, exasperated. “I'll drown, and then you'll have to face Garrett alone—without the stash. Think about
that.”

“Aw, cripes,” Peter said. He shook his fist at nobody in particular and then began to strip.

“Slower, shithead,” Larry whispered. “You're making too much splash.”

“I just want to get there.”

The convicts pedaled the two-person boat away from the boathouse, toward the black stalks of trees on a tiny island.

From across the lake, the angry snarl of a caged tiger slashed the silence. Goose bumps erupted on Larry's arms.

“Jesus, you hear that?” Peter whispered. “Is that from the zoo?”

“Mm-hm.”

“I hope that thing ain't escaping, too.”

“All that time locked up together and
tonight
I find out you're a comedian,” Larry said.

The cat snarled again—a high-pitched ripping noise.

Larry clutched the side of the boat. He was already surrounded by death in the little craft. They had found no life preservers at the boathouse, and Larry swam like a hunk of marble. “I might drown out here,” he said, “but I refuse to be eaten.”

In a few minutes, they approached the teeny island, not much bigger than a whale's back. They aimed into it. The boat's plastic hull ground against sand and roots and became beached. They climbed out
into a grove of skinny pine and silver birch, thick underbrush, and a soft, damp rug of moss. Larry could smell the wet earth under his feet. He reached down, tore up a handful of moss, and stuck his nose in it. “Never smelled anything so good, even when I was free the last time.”

“Where's the stash?” Peter asked. He sounded impatient.

“Other end.”

They fought through underbrush, heading toward the other side of the island. They sank into the wet moss and made suction noises when they lifted their feet.
Plup! Plup!

“In that stump,” Larry said.

The stump was two feet high, half as wide, and was decaying to mush. A determined person could have pulled it apart with his bare hands. The center of the stump had rotted out and had been filled with coarse sand.

Larry began to dig out the filling. He paused to watch the police car and its cone of light as the cops crested a hill across the lake and then dipped out of sight.

Peter stood aside. “Where did you get this stash?” he asked.

“It's a week's worth of productive work. An Exxon station, a nightclub after closing, the lottery drawer of a Seven-Eleven.” He reached deep into the sand and found something. “Heeeeeello! Tell our two contestants what they have won on
Digging for Dollars.”

He pulled out a package wrapped in plastic, slightly bigger than a softball.

“My pistol,” he said casually, rolling it aside. “We may need that.”

He dug some more and pulled out another pack in plastic. He rolled it toward to Peter. “Rip it open and count it,” he said. “I had three packs of two grand and one of three.… Here's another one … and another.” He fished deeper into the stump, growing excited about their chances of actually escaping all the way to Canada, because nothing smoothed problems like cash.

“And Garrett laughed at me for hiding my shit in here,” Larry said, a smack of “I told you so” in his voice. “Hmmmmm … ah, got it.”

He pulled out the last pack of cash, looked at Peter, frowned, and then said flatly, “You fuckin' double-crosser.”

Peter leveled the pistol at Larry's face. “Put the dough down and get behind the stump,” he ordered.

“Garrett should have punctured your lung before we left the room.”

“The money.”

“I should have insisted,” Larry said, “or done it myself.”

Peter motioned with the pistol for Larry to drop the money.

Would he really waste me out here?

Larry didn't know Peter Shadd well enough to be sure. But no altar boy ever got assigned a cell with the Nickel-plated Outlaw, so it had to be
possible
that Peter could pull the trigger.

Larry dropped the money, spat at it, and then moved behind the stump.

Keeping his eyes—and the gun—directed at Larry, Peter gathered up the cash and stuffed the packs in his jumpsuit. Then he backed away, retreating all the way across the island.

“What can you do?” Larry asked, keeping his voice low. “Kill me here? The cops will hear the shot.”

With his foot, Peter pushed the boat free.

Larry stumbled toward him. “I can scream for the cops,” he threatened. “If I scream, they'll be here in two minutes. I'll do it.”

Peter sat on the left side of the boat and pedaled backward from the island. He put the gun away.

Larry stepped into the water. The paddleboat's tiny wake lapped at his knees. The water paralyzed him; it grew so deep so quickly and seemed pleased to suffocate him if he lost his balance. He could go no deeper.

He couldn't yell for the cops, either. Peter had called his bluff—after
smelling the land, Larry could not betray himself by screaming for the police to take them both back to prison.

Peter turned the boat in an arc and headed for shore. With just one man aboard, the craft listed to the port side.

“I'll kill you,” Larry promised, his voice barely above a whisper.

Peter probably couldn't hear him. But he'd know.

T
he café's patio overlooked the cobblestone Riverwalk, which bustled with people moving at two speeds: Half were in a hurry; half had no place to go. Below them, the river followed its man-made canal of granite into a round basin, where Martin's wife had often dragged him to see Shakespeare performed in a Rhode Island accent. Beyond the basin, the river vanished beneath the mall, where Martin's favorite juror had been found dead, his skull broken.

The sky was bright. Sunlight skipped off the river and blinded him. Martin stared down the canal, listening to two voices: one from across the table, the other in his earpiece.

His tenderloin had arrived on a gold plate, presliced and arranged in a fan around a spiral tower of red Bliss mashed potatoes. Martin rarely ate so fancy a meal. A covert hamburger at the Haven Brothers diner, down by City Hall, usually satisfied the inner carnivore he kept secret from his vegan wife.

He liked the view from the patio. He could see the best of the “new” Providence—the river park, the graceful arched bridges, the new office buildings, which combined brick and glass to look modern
and classic at the same time—all built upon the ruins of what the
Los Angeles Times
had once described as “a dreary little mob town.” The view of the new Providence gave Martin hope that he could still puncture Ethan Dillingham's case against Peter Shadd, though he was running out of time.

“Martin?” Carol said. “Are you listening?”

“Mm-hm.” He jiggled the earpiece deeper.

“Want to run away together?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let's invite your wife to a bullfight.”

“Mm-hm.”

She threw an olive at him.

“What?” he cried, indignant, wiping the wet spot on his shirt.

“I knew you weren't listening.”

Martin held up his tiny radio. He said, “It's this asshole from the talk show—Pastor Guy. I don't know why I ever subpoenaed him.”