“I never been to California. Some one of these days, you betcha life. ‘Cal-i-forn-ia, here I come/Right back where—’”
“Shut up!”
“Yah, ya brown-nose.”
“What?”
“You’re makin all the noise yourself, ya bum. I saw through you way back in PS One Eighty-four. You were a brown-nose then, and you’re a brown-nose now, and you’ll be—”
Engel turned around and said, “Shut your little face, Willy.”
Willy blinked five or six times and said, “What did I say?”
“You better start listening, that’s what I say.”
“You know what it is? It’s the tension. This place gives me tension, and acidi-diddy. Acid indigestion.”
“Put the tools down. We’re here.”
Willy looked around, open-mouthed. “Oh, yeah?”
“Put them down.”
“Oh, yeah.” Willy stepped out from under the tools, and they hit the ground with a clang.
Engel nodded. “A real beaut,” he said. “Next to you, that car is a magic carpet, next to you.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Spread the blanket out.”
“What the hell for?”
“To put the dirt on.”
“Dirt?”
“That we dig up!”
“On the blanket? You’ll get it dirty!”
“It’s a groundcloth! So there won’t be dirt on the grass to show somebody was digging here.”
“Oohh! By golly, that’s brilliant!”
“Will you spread the cloth? Will you just for Christ’s sake spread the cloth?”
“The blanket, you mean.”
“Spread it.”
“Right, Chief.”
Willy grabbed a corner of the blanket and yanked, to spread it. Tools went clattering this way and that. Willy said, “Woops.””
“Never mind. That’s all right. I don’t even care.”
“You’re a good guy, Engel, you know that? You’re a real pal.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Engel flashed the light around. They hadn’t put the sod down yet, so the brown rectangular outline of the grave showed clearly; that would make the job easier. Engel said, “I’ll hold the flashlight, you dig. Then after a while we’ll switch.”
“Right, Chief.”
“Throw the dirt on the blanket. You got it? On the blanket.”
“On the blanket.”
Engel watched mistrustfully, but Willy threw the first shovelful on the blanket, and the second, and the third. Engel backed up a few steps, sat on a tombstone, and held the light for Willy to dig by.
It took quite a while, longer than Engel had expected. After about twenty minutes he took over on the shovel and Willy held the light. Willy sat on the tombstone and opened his pint and began to cry. “Poor Whatsisname,” he said. “Poor, poor Whatsisname.”
Engel stopped digging and looked at him. “Who?”
“The guy down there. Under the ground. Whatsisname.”
“Charlie Brody.”
“Charlie Brody? You mean Charlie Brody? Old Charlie Brody’s dead?”
“You knew it half an hour ago.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Good old Charlie Brody. Did he owe me any money?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Naah. Nobody owes me any money. What do I get paid for this job?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty. Good old Charlie Brody. Fifty bucks. I’m gonna light a candle for Charlie, that’s what I’m gonna do. Fifty bucks.”
“Flash the light over here, will ya? What are you flashin it over there for?”
“I was drinkin.”
“Is that right? Flash the light over here.”
“OOOHHH, ‘I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night/As alive as you and—’”
“Shut up!”
“Ahhhh, ya brown-nose.”
Engel ignored him this time, and just kept digging. Willy giggled for a while and then cried a while, and then whispered all the verses of “The Bastard King of England.” When he was done, Engel gave him the shovel back, and took the flashlight, and Willy dug a while.
Willy was quieter when he was digging. He started to sing “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest,” but he didn’t have the wind for it while he was digging, so he quit. Engel lit a cigarette, and watched the pile of dirt beside the grave get higher and higher. He was going to have to put all that dirt back himself, without help. Wonderful.
Willy said, “Hey!”
“What?”
“I hit something! A treasure chest or something!”
“You don’t suppose you hit the coffin, do you?”
“Oh, yeah. Look at that, I scratched it.”
“That’s a shame.”
“That’s a real nice wood, too. Look at that wood. Who’d bury nice wood like that? It’s liable to rot.”
Engel went over and looked down. Willy was standing in a hole shoulder-deep, with just a little of the coffin cleared of dirt. Engel said, “Finish getting the dirt off the top while I see can I find where you tossed the crowbar.”
“You don’t suppose I left it on the blanket, do you?”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
Engel looked around, and found the crowbar over near the tombstone he’d been sitting on. He brought it back as Willy was finishing clearing dirt from the coffin. Engel said, “Here. There’s two locks on it. Break them open, and then get me the suit coat.”
Willy gulped and said, “You know what? All of a sudden, I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of? You superstitious?”
“That’s just what I am, I couldn’t think of the word.”
“Just break those two locks. Give me the shovel.”
Willy handed the shovel up to him, then bent reluctantly to break the locks with the crowbar. Engel waited, hefting the shovel, looking at Willy’s head. Willy broke the locks, and then stood there looking bewildered. “How do I open the top? I’m standing on the top.”
“Get over on the edge.”
“What edge? The top overlaps.”
“Oh, hell. Get up here. Lie on the ground up here and reach down with the crowbar and lift the top up.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
It took a while to get Willy up out of the hole. He kept slipping back in, and threatening to drag Engel in with him, but finally Engel got a grip on the seat of his pants and dragged him out. Willy squirmed around, reached the crowbar down into the hole, and began fishing around with the crowbar for a grip on the lid. Engel stood on the other side of the grave, the shovel in one hand and the flashlight in the other.
Willy said, “Got it! Here it comes, here it — Flash your light down here, will ya, I can’t see a thing.”
Engel flashed the light down into the hole. The coffin lid was opened straight up, and inside was aft white plush. Engel stared.
The coffin was empty.
Willy shouted, “Oy! Oy!” He scrambled to his feet, shouting, “Oy! Oy!”
Engel knew he was going to run, he knew the little bum was going to ran. He dropped the flashlight, took a two-handed grip on the shovel, swung wildly, missed the departing Willy by two feet, lost his balance, fell into the hole, landed on the white plush, and the lid slammed down.
5
Nick Rovito was not going to be pleased. Engel sat in the library of Nick Rovito’s town house, surrounded by shelf after shelf of the books the interior decorator had picked out, and told himself Nick Rovito was not going to be pleased at all. In the first place he wouldn’t be pleased because nobody is pleased to be gotten out of bed at four-thirty in the morning, but in the second place he wouldn’t be pleased with what Engel had to tell him.
The last hour and a half had been somewhat hectic. After he’d struggled back out of that damn coffin, and wasted five minutes looking for Willy, he’d forced himself to take the time to fill in the hole again and smooth everything out and make sure there wasn’t any sign left that anybody’d been there. Willy had gone off without his pint, which still contained an ounce or two, and Engel gulped it down gratefully, then tossed the pint in the hole and covered it up. When the grave was filled in again, he rolled the tools into the army blanket, found his way back to the car, and drove back to Manhattan, mostly in first.