twenty-six
The cemetery began at the gates and stretched for nearly a mile, along ponds and marshlands, small stands of evergreens and white birch. Roads of sun-bleached asphalt the blue-gray color of gunmetal carved through the grass. The development of the cemetery over the decades could be mapped by the sugar maples that lined the roads; the bigger the trees, the older the graves.
The stones closest to the entrance marked family plots laid down in the 1800s. To identify the resting places of entire clans, the eclectic stones were eight, ten, or twelve feet tall, carved with relief figures from the New Testament, adorned with stone crosses, biblical passages, and the wisdom of many lifetimes chiseled forever into the granite:
Joyous is he who bathes himself in The Word …
See always as a child sees …
Books by day, by night, wine …
These huge grave markers reminded Billy of the battle monuments spread over the fields at Gettysburg.
He walked with his hands in his pants pockets. The afternoon was colder than he had expected. Tiny American flags at the graves of veterans flapped in a breeze that chilled. Strips of low clouds spread over the graveyard in a lumpy gray weave. Slivers of blue bled through the clouds here and there. Two cars raced past Billy toward the exit, before the gates were shut to traffic at 4 p.m.
In just a few minutes’ walk, the city faded away, as if it no longer existed beyond the gates. Billy wondered, what was it about cemeteries that seemed to radiate silence, which blotted out the noise around them? He saw no other living person once the gates had closed. People had paid their respects already and had left, though there was still more than an hour of good daylight before dusk. Billy couldn’t decide if being alone in the cemetery was a good thing or a bad thing.
The remoteness was good if he had to force Rhubarb Glanz to talk; but bad if things went wrong, and somebody got the drop on Billy.
No, it’s good, he decided.
He intended to learn the truth about Judge Harmony’s murder, no matter the cost. He walked on.
The rows of stones appeared endless, stretching in straight lines beyond a gentle rise in the land. Tombstones in this part of the cemetery dated to the 1940s; they were smaller than the old family markers, but larger than contemporary headstones. Most were bone white or gray, with a few pink ones scattered among them. Billy came upon a seven-foot white obelisk, on which was mounted an oval locket about the size of his hand. The name on the stone was Manzi. Billy couldn’t help himself. He lifted the locket to see the rugged face of Mr. Manzi in a crisp black-and-white photograph. The picture had been taken when Manzi was a strong young man. He had a wide face, thick neck, ink-black hair, and a droopy walrus mustache. Billy guessed he might have been a blacksmith or a stevedore. Unlike the dour people in many old photographs, Mr. Manzi grinned with joy. He struck Billy as a man who had been fun to know.
“May your bones rest gently,” Billy whispered.
He followed the path to a twenty-foot cross set in a pile of stones at the intersection of two cemetery roads. There he turned left, following directions he had copied earlier that day from the cemetery map in the church hall. Sugar maples two feet thick were spaced every thirty steps along the road. They still held most of their leaves this October, and the wind swished through them. Billy noticed movement from the corner of his eye. A big black crow hopped from the top of one tombstone to the next with one flap of its wings. The bird seemed to be following him. Billy stopped to watch it, and the crow complained five times: Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw.
He smiled at the bird. Okay, let’s keep moving.
He crossed a stone bridge that carried the road over a thick freshwater marsh, with open-water ponds beyond it. Sparrows flitted among the tall reeds and brown grasses. He noted that the wetlands were shaped like an hourglass and that the bridge crossed the narrowest point. That was respectful of nature; Billy liked that. A hardwood forest crowded against the road, and then suddenly fell away to reveal a vast plain of green. This was the newest section of the cemetery. Though the stones were all around the same size, the range of colors was more spectacular than in the cemetery’s older neighborhoods. The stones were black and smooth like opal, light pink, deep red, shimmering blue, and a rainbow of grays. These people were barely dead, and Billy recognized many names from obituaries he had written for the paper. A tombstone was sort of an obituary, he thought, though highly edited. The inscriptions were two-line news stories to provide the bare essentials: name, date of birth, date of death.
Everything else was detail.
This section of the cemetery would be where Billy would bury the old man. And where someday Bo would bury Billy.
Unless this plan fails today.
Then Billy might be first into the dirt.
A cellular tower stuck up like a needle in the distance, and he remembered he must call Kit. He fished Martin Smothers’s spare cell phone from his pocket and dialed.
Kit’s phone rang with jungle drums. She pulled the car to the curb about two hundred yards from the cemetery gates and answered.
“Hey, Billy!” Kit said. “Are you in place?”
“Walking there now. You?”
“Perfect timing. I’m going to wait for them here … . Are you nervous?”
“I was just thinking,” Billy said dryly, “that if things go wrong they can bury me where I lay. Save money on renting a hearse. Shit, it’s quiet out here.”
“Better than those old family plots near the highway.”
“Yeah, what a kick in your dead ass—to be laid to rest in a pasture, and then have your great-grandkid sell the land for an interstate.”
A new black Cadillac appeared in Kit’s mirror. She sank in the seat. “Jesus, Billy, they’re here,” she whispered. “They just drove past me.”
“Why are you whispering? They can’t hear you.”
“They’re pulling to the curb in front of the gates … . Now they’re stopping.”
Robbie Glanz popped out the driver’s door. Kit felt a flutter in her gut at the sight of him. That little son of a bitch. She recalled how he had punched her until he was exhausted and neither of them could breathe.
She needed to harness as much hate in her heart as she could muster, to do what she must do.
Robbie walked around the car and opened the back passenger’s door like a chauffeur. He reached a hand inside the Caddy and helped an old man to the sidewalk.
“Kit? Kit?” Billy shouted in her ear.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “My God … is that Rhubarb Glanz? He’s a broken-down old man.”
“He’s sixty-nine years old,” Billy said. “I checked the database at the paper.”
“Lot of miles on those sixty-nine years.”
Robbie brushed dandruff or something from the old man’s black suit jacket, and then reached into the car and withdrew a bundle of red roses. He handed them to his father as gently as he would have a baby. Then he walked with Rhubarb. The gates were locked with a loop of iron chain that allowed them to open about two feet. Robbie held them apart as his father stepped through. The old mobster gave his son a self-conscious little wave, and walked into the cemetery.
“Rhubarb is on the move,” Kit reported.
“Took me ten minutes to walk here,” Billy said.
“It’s going to take him longer than that, so I’ll wait fifteen minutes to be safe.”
Billy cleared his throat. “Kit,” he began.
“Don’t say it, Billy. I am well aware of your concerns.” She gave him her sarcastic, impatient voice. Her adrenaline was already flowing, and Kit didn’t want to waste it on a debate. She would need every drop.
Billy pressed on: “I don’t want to beat a dead horse—”
“That horse is glue by now,” she interrupted.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m fully insured.”
“You don’t have to do this for me.”
“I’m not,” she said sharp
ly.
“I know—you’re doing it for Gil.”
“To hell I am,” Kit corrected. “Robbie Glanz beat the shit out of yours truly. I’m doing this for me.”
He sighed noisily. She heard the wind whip past him and crackle into his telephone. “Be safe,” Billy said gravely.
Kit laughed. “Hardly,” she replied. “Just get what we need to know. By any means.”
They hung up.
Robbie got back into the Cadillac. He powered down his window six inches, checked his wristwatch, and then relaxed with a newspaper.
Kit waited. Her foot bounced by itself, bleeding off tension. Her windshield soon began to fog from her own wet breath, and she cracked her window an inch.
Fifteen minutes ticked off the clock like 2 percent of eternity.
Finally, the time was right.
Rhubarb Glanz would be at least half a mile into the cemetery. Kit took three deep breaths, then dialed 911 on her cell phone.
“Police,” came the answer after one ring. “What’s your emergency?”
“I’ve had an accident,” Kit reported, trying to sound ragged. “I had to swerve, uh, oh my … to miss a dog.”
“Stay calm, miss. What’s the address?”
Kit gave the address, and added, “Right in front of the cemetery gates.”
“I’m dispatching. Any serious injuries?”
“Hmm, good question,” Kit replied. “I guess it’s too soon to tell. Please hurry.”
She hung up.
Then she checked that her seat belt was clicked. She pulled her ski helmet over her head and buckled the strap under her chin. She took one more deep breath and held it. Then she put the car into gear and rolled toward Robbie’s sparkling new Cadillac.
How fast? she wondered. Twenty-five should be fast enough to inflict enough damage to keep them tied up with the police for an hour.
The legal citations for the laws she was breaking rolled through her head. She ignored them.
As she bore down on Robbie Glanz, she eyed him sitting there in those stupid sunglasses, under that goddamn silly derby hat. Those were the accessories he wore the night he beat her.
What the fuck? Let’s do thirty.
The crows warned Billy that Rhubarb Glanz was coming. The birds flew tree to tree, cawing to each other, following Rhubarb’s slow progress toward the newer section of the cemetery, where Margery Glanz had been buried for nine years. Her stone was pink marble, very shiny, on a black base. A bouquet of roses at the foot of the stone had shriveled. Rhubarb’s stone had already been erected next to his late wife’s. His stone was a mirror image: black on a pink base. His and her tombstones?
Glanz ambled into view. He wore dark sunglasses and a funeral suit, and carried fresh red roses.
Kit was right, Billy thought, he looks used up.
Billy hid among the tombstones. The grizzled crime boss shuffled to his wife’s grave. Glanz was bald but for a few odd clumps of white. His skin was lifeless and chalky, except for reddened cheeks. He had once stood more than six feet tall, but a hunch in his back stole at least six inches, and gave him a buzzardlike quality. His shoulders were smaller than his hips, and his huge feet seemed out of proportion, as if he were a child in his father’s wingtips.
This was the fearsome mobster who had ordered his goons to bury Billy almost to death?
Glanz stood before the grave, blessed himself with the sign of the cross, and patted the bundle of roses. He heard Billy approach, glanced Billy’s way for a moment, then turned back to the stone.
“My son is waiting for me at the gate,” Glanz said, in a high, empty voice. “If I am one minute late he will come looking, and you will not leave those gates alive.”
“Your boy’s busy right now,” Billy said.
Glanz coughed, then cleared his throat and spat in the road. “You waste your time taking me out now.”
“Not here to take anyone out, Mr. Glanz. My name is Povich. I want justice for Judge Harmony.”
The name surprised Glanz. He turned suddenly to Billy. The crows cawed down at them from the trees. Glanz looked up and grinned.
“You have been chasing an interview with me for some time, Mr. Povich,” Glanz said. “You think I paid that kid to kill Gil Harmony.”
“Didn’t you?”
Glanz bent down creakily, grunting and sighing, in painful human origami, and placed one knee on the ground. He laid the roses on his wife’s grave. Then he brushed dust from her stone and seemed to forget that Billy was there.
“You threatened the judge,” Billy said. “His clerk was there. She heard it. Harmony put your son away for life. You told the judge you’d get even, and you did. You persuaded Rackers to accept June Harmony’s diamonds as payment, and then you double-crossed him. You gave Rackers a phony combination for a wall safe that didn’t exist. A great investment for you—you got your revenge, and it didn’t cost you a penny. Then Rackers was killed trying to get away, which saved your goons the trouble of burying him in a sandpit.”
Glanz took a deep breath, put a hand on his knee, and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. “I told Robbie you were not to be killed,” he said. “That you were to be buried feetfirst until you told us what we needed to know.”
He smiled at Billy.
“I’ve been coming to this spot for nine years,” Glanz said. “Watch this … .” He fished a hand inside his coat pocket, pulled it out, and showed Billy a few kernels of dried yellow corn. He held the kernels to the sky in his open hand, and whistled twice between his teeth.
Then he balanced the kernels on his shoulder. “Don’t move,” he whispered.
Within a few seconds, a crow swooped down to a nearby headstone. It hopped from stone to stone, eyeing Glanz, feinting toward him and then backing away. Then suddenly it flapped to his shoulder, landed there, pecked at the corn for a few seconds, and flapped off. Glanz laughed in delight, dug more corn from his pocket, and spread the kernels over the ground. The seed drew a dozen crows that cawed and pecked at each other in competition for the prize.
“Do you know what a group of crows is called?” Glanz asked.
“A murder.”
“Ah, very good. It’s not a flock, as most people think; it’s a murder of crows. Because crows sometimes gang up and kill a dying cow.” He sighed and rubbed his hands together. “I did not pay that kid to kill Gil Harmony.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Glanz shrugged. “Who cares?”
“Take off your glasses,” Billy ordered.
Glanz hesitated. Then he nodded and pushed the glasses up on his head, and turned pale green eyes to Billy.
“Can you see the truth now in my eyes?” Glanz asked, mocking him. “Can you see what you’re looking for? Or do you see only the crimes of a young man, and the regret and the pain of an old one? Can you see my soul, Povich?”
Billy turned away. “I see nothing.” He dropped to the ground, dejected. “I had expected you wouldn’t see me as a threat, and wouldn’t care enough to lie. I want the truth, even if it can’t stand up in court.”
Glanz rubbed his hands together again in the cold. He folded himself down, sat on the thick bluegrass, and leaned back against his own tombstone. After a few moments, he said to Billy, “This is going to be my eternal view. I can see the marsh from here. I like that. The crows will keep me company. Margery has lain here alone for a long time. But not much longer. I’m dying, Povich.”
“Dying? Dying how?”
“The cancer in me is as malignant as my nightmares.” He smiled sadly at Billy. “Six months, give or take, is the time I have left.”
What to say?
I’m sorry didn’t fit the moment. Billy had just accused him of ordering a murder. He said nothing.
“I’m about to meet the real Judge face-to-face,” Glanz said, casting his eyes skyward, “the one who doesn’t need testimony to know everything you’ve ever done. He has felt every drop of blood I spilt in my life, and will hold those crime
s against me. I did not increase my burden, this close to my judgment, by killing Gil Harmony.”
“But he put your son away. You threatened him.”
Glanz grimaced at a painful thought. He said, “David’s sentence is an agony in my heart, second only to Margery’s death. My greatest regret is that he took after me, and not his mother. But I can’t say the sentence was unjust, and I told Gil Harmony that.”
“What you told him,” Billy corrected, with anger rising, “is that you’d have your revenge.”
“In the restaurant, yes, that’s what I said,” Glanz conceded. “Gil and I had arranged that encounter over the telephone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged and gazed over the marsh. “Who cares?” he said again. But the tone was too soft; it seemed he did care if Billy believed him. “I had to make a show of it to avoid looking weak to my employees. I need their loyalty. Forever. The men I employ must take care of Robbie after I’m gone.”
“And Gil agreed to go along with this?”
“Gil Harmony was a father. He understood what fathers must do.”
What Glanz claimed was outrageous, though in a funny way it made sense. Gil told Kit not to report the threat to the police. The judge had not taken it seriously. All for show, he had told her. Maybe that wasn’t bluster; maybe the judge with the double life had told the truth. All for show.
Glanz stroked his wife’s tombstone. “She could have been canonized, this woman.”
Billy felt a crack in his hatred of Rhubarb Glanz. The mobster had all but admitted being a murderer in his youth, so why lie about killing the judge? Even if he suspected Billy wore a wire, Glanz would be dead from cancer before a trial.
Loot the Moon Page 21
