Grave Designs (29 page)

Kent Charles spun toward Benny and fired his gun. The shot was high and to the right, ricocheting off a pipe.

“Holy shit!” Benny shouted, and dropped the hose.

Kent Charles started down the narrow aisle between the fish tanks toward Benny. The hose was whipping back and forth on the floor, spraying loops of water across the room. I dropped to my knees and tried to pull the gun out of Joe Oliver's cold hand. I couldn't get his thick finger out of the trigger slot. I looked up at Kent, who was now twenty feet away, his back to me, moving in a slow crouch down the aisle after Benny. I raised the gun in Joe's hand, aimed at Kent's back with both hands, and pulled hard on Joe's trigger finger.

The recoil from the gun knocked me backward to the ground. Joe Oliver's handgun slid along the concrete. I scrambled after the gun. When I looked up, Kent was hobbling away from me to where his gun lay on the floor near a large fish tank. He was bleeding from the middle of his right thigh, his hand over the wound. From a sitting position I aimed again—my hands shaking—as Kent slipped on the wet floor just a few feet away from his gun. He reached for the low guardrail in front of a fish tank as I finally forced myself to pull the trigger again. Click. The gun was empty.

With a sob I got to my feet and ran toward Kent, who was reaching for his gun. He turned toward me, holding on to the rail for support. I threw Oliver's gun at him. Kent ducked, raising his arm for protection. Oliver's gun bounced off his arm and plunked into the fish tank.

As I backed away, Benny charged down the aisle, growling. He lowered his shoulder and rammed into Kent just as Kent picked up his gun.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. The force of the blow knocked Kent over the low rail in front of the tank. The gun flew up out of his hand and bounced off the back wall as Kent pitched backward into the water, headfirst.

I ran to the tank and stared down at the churning water. I could barely make out the figure of Kent Charles thrashing underwater. Benny and I stood there waiting for Kent to come back up. Only then did I notice the yellow Danger signs on the guardrail and on the wall behind the tank.

He didn't come back up. Not until the fire department squad pulled his corpse out of the tank an hour later.

As it turned out, there were eyewitnesses in the gallery below: two attorneys from Winston & Strawn. They had been sipping white wine in front of the moray eel tank when Kent Charles plummeted into the water headfirst. According to them, Kent's right hand slid into one of the small caves, apparently startling the inhabitant. The moray eel clamped down on the wrist and held tight. One of Kent's flailing legs struck another moray eel, which grabbed hold of its prize. The third eel joined in the free-for-all and pulled Kent's other arm into its cave up to the elbow. The two attorneys stood horrified as Kent Charles slowly drowned on the other side of the glass, his eyes wide, his arms and legs yanked back and forth in a macabre tug-of-war.

***

Benny had run downstairs to call the police. I stood by the railing above the moray eel tank. Kent had stopped thrashing a while back. He was still upside down in the water, his body jerked occasionally by the eels. Looking down through the water, I could see the crowd of gawkers jostling for position in front of the viewing window below. I thought of poor Bill Williams and how his long overdue moment of glory had been ruined by this grisly disruption.

“Terrific work, Rachel.”

I turned. Paul stood before me with a forced grin. I stared at him. “What the hell were you doing up here?”

“I guess I was one move ahead of you. I saw your notes about Joe Oliver when I was at your apartment. Then I saw that message from Joe in the personals—the one about the videotape. I put it all together, and I kept an eye on Joe downstairs. When he snuck up here, I followed him. I saw the whole thing.” He shook his head. “Boy, I can't believe that my friend Kent—”

“Your friend was going to kill me,” I said.

“I know. I couldn't believe it. I was trying to plan some sort of distraction, when Benny barged in.”

“Kent was going to kill me.” I shook my head. “You didn't do a thing to stop it.”

“Hey. I'm telling you, I was about to do something. Knock over one of those empty aquariums. Something like that. Give you a chance to escape.”

I stared at him. “If Benny hadn't showed up, I'd be dead. And you'd
still
be hiding under that table.”

“No. You've got it all wrong, Rachel.”

“I came up here to save
you,
Paul.”

“I was going to help you. I really was.” Paul tried on another smile. It looked more like a grimace.

I had lost interest in the conversation. “Forget it. Go back to your make-believe thrillers.”

I turned and walked toward the stairway leading down. “Wait a minute,” Paul called as I reached the stairway. “Where are you going?”

I paused at the top stair and then slowly started down. I didn't look back.

Chapter Forty-four

All things considered, the graveside ceremony that Saturday was handled with dignity and restraint. The coffin rested on four cinder blocks spray-painted black. It was at the edge of the open grave, encircled by two thick steel cables. The cables were held taut from above by a large iron hook attached to a long hoisting cable. The hoisting cable rose overhead to the derrick of a diesel-powered crane parked behind the coffin. The derrick towered high over the grave, casting a long cross-hatched shadow through the middle of the large crowd.

Maggie stood by the side of the enormous grave. She wore a black dress, white pearls, and black pumps. Gus presumably was naked inside a pine coffin the size of a Ford van. Two male representatives of the zoo's board flanked the coffin, looking more than a little out of place. Gus's keeper—a young woman in a gray zoo-keeper uniform—stood next to Maggie and occasionally wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.

Maggie delivered the short eulogy into a battery of microphones, mini-cams, and cameras facing her across the open grave. “Heavenly Father,” she recited as the cameras clicked and whirred, “we know that not even a sparrow falls without your knowledge. Comfort the survivors of Gus. Give them reassurance that he is happy with You in Heaven.”

Maggie stepped back and nodded toward the crane operator. The engine started with a deep roar, and the enormous reel began to turn. All eyes were on the coffin. The cables tightened, the wood creaked, and then the coffin was off the ground, swaying slightly two feet in the air. Four workmen, two on each side, guided the coffin over the enormous rectangular hole. One of the men signaled to the operator with his fist. We watched the huge pine box sink slowly into the earth.

Maggie waited until the cables were removed from the coffin and hoisted high above, dangling and twisting against the blue sky. She walked over to the mountain of dark soil at the edge of the hole, picked up the shovel, scooped out some dirt, and tossed it into the hole. The clods of dirt clattered onto the wood below. Maggie handed the shovel to the zookeeper, who scooped some dirt, tossed it into the hole, and handed the shovel to one of the zoo's board members, who looked at the shovel as if it were a dead snake.

Gradually, a line of mourners formed. There were children and men and women of all ages in the line, which wound through the gravel pathways of the cemetery. Some were dressed in black, others in shorts and T-shirts. One by one they stepped forward, took the shovel, and scooped dirt onto the coffin below. One little girl in a white pinafore and black patent-leather shoes dropped a long-stemmed red rose into the hole.

Cindi, Benny, and I waited for Maggie by the chapel. She came walking toward us, followed by a mob of reporters, cameramen, and photographers. The reporters were shouting questions and jabbing microphones at her.

She turned to face them at the chapel door. “Give me five minutes, boys, and then I'll be happy to answer your questions.” She looked at us as she opened the chapel door. “Come inside,” she whispered. “These vultures give me the creeps.”

We walked through the Slumber Room. While the others moved on into Maggie's office at the rear of the chapel, I paused at the little coffin. It was on the wooden bier in the middle of the Slumber Room, where Maggie had placed it that morning after Cindi, Benny, and I had arrived.

The three of us had come early with a sack of doughnuts. Maggie had put on a big pot of coffee when we arrived, three hours before the funeral. As the four of us sat around the table sipping coffee from thick cream-colored mugs, I filled them in on what had come to light in the thirty-six hours since Kent Charles's body had been pulled out of the eel tank.

“The police got a court order and opened Kent's safety deposit box yesterday afternoon,” I explained. “They found all seven videocassettes, plus two more copies of Joe Oliver's tape and the fake one of Ishmael and Cindi.”

“What about the rest of the Canaan network?” Cindi asked.

“There's no more than four others, and probably just two,” I said. “Detective Turelli is going to arrest them one at a time. He'll place a personals message to one each week. Set up a drop point at an el station after midnight, just as if it's business as usual. When Canaan One or Canaan Four or whoever steps off the train and walks over to the man with the package, he's going to discover that the messenger is a police detective.”

“Did Kent finance this Canaan stuff out of his own pocket?” Benny asked.

“I don't think so. Tyrone Henderson has been running some computer searches through the Bottles and Cans disbursements files. He's turned up some oddball expense requests from Kent Charles over the past two years. Ten thousand here, ten thousand there—for payments to nonexistent court reporters and experts and litigation support outfits. It looks like enough money to finance the operation, and yet it was small enough to get lost in the Bottles and Cans expense files.”

“How did Kent find out about the videotapes in my wall safe?” Cindi asked.

“Cal Pemberton told him. The police questioned Cal yesterday. It was Kent who sent Cal to you about a year ago, when Cal complained about problems with his wife. Later, when Kent asked him how it went, Cal told him that Cindi would even keep a videocassette for him if he wanted. After Marshall died, Kent decided to go for the tapes in your apartment. When he found the one of you and Joe, he hatched his blackmail scheme. He saw it as a chance to get even with Joe Oliver.”

“How the hell did Rambo know to come to the rescue?” Maggie asked, gesturing toward Benny.

I smiled at Benny. We had spent most of Thursday night down at police headquarters answering questions. Benny had been furious with me for cutting him out of the investigation. I had come up with an explanation that sounded lame even to me, but I swore to myself that I would never let Benny know that he had once been a suspect.

Benny grinned. “I was thirsty. Rachel was supposed to bring me back a drink. When she didn't come back, I went to find her. I had just come around the corner when she went charging up those stairs. I followed her up there but got lost in all those damned corridors and passageways. By the time I reached her, there was Kent Charles pointing a gun at her. I didn't know what to do. I grabbed that fire hose, unrolled it some, and turned on the water full blast.” Benny smiled and leaned back in his chair. “The rest is history. Face it, girls. You're looking at a stud with the biggest balls this side of the Pecos River.”

We all laughed. “One thing I don't understand,” Cindi said. “What was the videotape Joe brought to exchange? There was no real videotape of me and Ishmael.”

“That's my favorite part,” I said, smiling. “Kevin Turelli fished it out of the shark tank yesterday morning. Five years ago Joe Oliver represented the plaintiffs in a giant securities fraud case involving some bonds and notes issued by a Mexican goldmining company. It looked like a sure winner for Oliver, with possibly fifty million dollars in damages. He had a contingent fee arrangement, which meant he might get as much as ten million in fees. Graham Marshall represented the main defendants, and did an incredible job. The jury awarded only three grand in damages. Joe Oliver ended up with almost nothing. When it was all over, Marshall took Oliver and his wife out to dinner and gave him a little memento of the case: a videotape of
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Oliver kept it on a shelf in his office. That was the videotape he brought to the aquarium. The one he tossed into the shark tank before Kent's eyes. The videotape that Kent thought was the mother lode itself.”

We had been interrupted by the crane operator, who had wanted to know when he was supposed to lift Gus's coffin.

And now Gus was buried. The Canaan coffin would be next, after the crowd left. I ran my hand over the smooth coffin lid and moved on to Maggie's office. Benny handed me a plastic champagne glass as I walked in, and then he served champagne to everyone. We all raised our glasses.

“To Gus,” said Benny. “May he rest in peace up there in that big jungle river in the sky.”

They all looked at me. I held my glass a little higher.

“To Cindi, Benny, and Maggie,” I said. “My three buddies.”

***

We buried Canaan late that afternoon. There was no ceremony. Maggie handed the coffin to one of the workers and told him to bury it. She knocked once on the coffin lid and said, “You better stay put this time, boy.” We watched the workers put the coffin into the hole and cover it with dirt.

The Closing

There's a cold wind blowing in off the lake. It shudders the windows in my living room. Ozzie is curled next to me on the couch, sound asleep. The Farmer's Almanac says we're in for a long, bitter winter, and I can believe it. The first frost came in October. We've had snow already, and it's still three weeks to Thanksgiving.

Last month I finally finished my Canaan journal. I sent a copy to Ishmael Richardson, along with my investigation notes and a three-hundred-dollar refund on the retainer. My cover letter stated that the package contained a complete copy of my Canaan file.

It didn't. I still have the three-by-five index card.

Benny left Abbott & Windsor on October first. He starts at DePaul Law School after the first of the year. He sent me a postcard from Puerta Vallarta last week.

Cindi Reynolds landed a job as a model on a WGN game show, and I helped negotiate her employment contract.

Maggie Sullivan remains one of my clients. We're going to trial next spring in a contract dispute with one of her coffin suppliers.

I haven't seen or talked to Paul Mason since the night Kent Charles died. I doubt he wants any reminders of the night. For that matter, neither do I. I suppose he's still entrancing his students with the gutsy exploits of Sam Spade and Lew Archer.

Julia Marshall, Graham's widow, called last week to ask about the final results of my Canaan investigation. I'm going to meet with her tomorrow afternoon.

Ishmael Richardson suggested that I not tell Julia Marshall everything I found. After all, her husband is dead and life goes on. But I think she deserves to hear the full story. And when I tell her, I'll probably give her the three-by-five index card.

It's sitting on my coffee table as I write this. One corner is dog-eared and there's a pinhole near the top of the card.

I found it in a New York City bookstore five weeks ago. I had been down on Wall Street for a deposition that ended at noon on the second day. I took a cab up to Greenwich Village to meet a friend for lunch. I was ten minutes early, so I poked my head into the bookstore next door.

It looked promising: no best-seller tables up front, no cardboard displays, no computer section, no swim-suit calendars. Just floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; long, narrow aisles; three serious browsers; and a coffeepot near the back.

By the coffeepot was a message board crammed with thumbtacked messages—some on scraps of paper, others on index cards, and a few with a row of tear-off tabs with telephone numbers on the bottom. Feeling a surge of nostalgia for my school days, I sipped black coffee from a paper cup and scanned the requests for rides (to Boulder, to Swarthmore, to Santa Fe), the pleas for lost cats, the offers to sell (a brass bed, a Cuisinart, an espresso coffee machine).

The elderly proprietor up front, bent low over a slender volume of Wallace Stevens poetry, had no idea who put the messages on the board and couldn't care less who took them off.

I took one off. None of the browsers noticed. I replaced the thumbtack and put the index card into my purse. On the flight back to Chicago I thought again of how Kent had laughed when I called it Marshall's lottery. He's not the only one, Kent had said.

The message on the index card was printed in black ink in neat block letters:

CANAAN NO. 671
DROP POINT L
2:00 a.m., WEDNESDAY