Bobby glanced at me, something unreadable in his black eyes.
“Dad suffocated them in their sleep,” Yarnell said. “That night. Then we carried them down here, to the tunnels under the hotel, and put them in the wall. The next day Dad ordered the tunnels sealed and closed the freight elevator. It would have worked if Dad and Win hadn’t gotten at each other’s throats about the gambling and the art collection. If he,” Yarnell pointed at me, “hadn’t found the tunnels.”
He paused and swallowed hard enough that I could watch the saliva fall down his sweaty throat. “…If he hadn’t found my goddamned pocket watch.”
Yarnell looked around the bleak room, looked into the tunnel, as if for the first time. We all stopped and stared at him. The hard man brought low by unaccustomed pain and fear. Even the goon with both his knees gone stopped whimpering.
Yarnell added in a whisper, “They didn’t suffer.”
Chapter Forty-three
Christmas week. I stayed at Gretchen’s apartment with my foot up, listening to Handel’s Messiah on the CD player, foolishly mixing Macallan and painkillers, reading Burckhardt’s classic The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. I had missed it in college. Now, it was pure enjoyment. It made me want to write and teach history again. I was glad to be alive.
Gretchen checked in on me from time to time, amazing me with what a man with only one good leg can accomplish. Peralta sorted out the Yarnell case, only making me write a few dozen pages of reports and statements. James Yarnell was under arrest for very current offenses: assault on a police officer, conspiracy to commit murder, giving a false report. Peralta’s detectives were working on other charges. Peralta was outraged to be in Bobby Hamid’s debt, and kept threatening to indict him for assault with a deadly weapon. Bobby would beat the charge, just like he had all the others. He could take care of himself, as I had chillingly learned. For a moment, the enemy of my enemy had been my savior. It made me feel strange.
The city settled into serious holiday business: the run-up to the Fiesta Bowl, high season at world-class resorts, packed five-star restaurants, a big golf tournament. The days were brightly sunny and the nights cold, magical. The smog wasn’t too bad. The twentieth century ticked out its last days. In Willo, the winter lawns gleamed as if every blade of grass was lit up by electricity, and the neighborhood put out luminarias along all the sidewalks. Gretchen and I had our own celebration, two or three times a night.
***
The bricks were set in place one at a time. It was done by a man’s hand, a thick hand with copious hair on top, an ape’s hand really. He ladled on the mortar and it ran off the sides like pancake batter. And I could only watch. It was dark and for a long time I watched with interest. So this was how bricks were laid. The hand moved very precisely. Every brick lined up perfectly. But I was inside, inside a tiny opening, so small I couldn’t move. The wound on my foot seemed better, but my legs were inert. My hands were dead at my sides. And by the time I realized what was happening, every brick took away a little more air, and the hand kept laying them in place, and the mortar kept running like batter, and I couldn’t breathe. I could only scream.
“David! Wake up, baby. Wake up. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
Gretchen was next to me, stroking my face. “You were having a nightmare. It must have been awful.”
I took big breaths and surveyed her large bedroom with relief. “I know, don’t tell a dream or it might come true.”
She held me close. “I have dreams about you and me, and I want those to come true, David. Oh, baby, you’ve been through so much. But you’re safe with Gretchen. This awful thing is over. James is in jail. They killed that kid who stabbed Max with the petrified wood. It’s over.”
I let her rock me to sleep, my face nuzzling her russet-colored hair.
Then I came awake. I just stared into the dark for a long time.
***
“David? Couldn’t you go back to sleep? The holidays are so hard.” She leaned over and kissed me, holding a hand against my forehead. “You feel clammy.”
She got out of bed and brought me a glass of water. She looked more beautiful than ever: the ambient light playing off her hair; the shadows accenting the lovely planes and curves of her face, her robe open and revealing.
“What is it? You’re upset.”
I didn’t want to speak, didn’t want words or a voice to say them.
A wave of nausea just kept washing across me, again and again. But then I was letting her reach under the covers. It was a nice feeling.
“I know just what the patient needs,” she said. I was hard as a twenty-five-year-old.
Grandfather used to say that corruption ultimately wasn’t about payments under the table or anything so prosaic. It wasn’t even about evil, at least at first. It was about what happened inside when a person got comfortable with what he knew was wrong.
“No,” I said, pushing her away. She flashed those rich brown eyes and drew back.
I swallowed some acid saliva down my sandpaper throat and said, “How did you know Max had been killed with petrified wood?”
“David, what are you talking about?”
“We held back that information. Nobody knew how Max was murdered except the cops and the suspect.”
“You told me, you goof!”