Chapter 55

It seemed right that rain started to fall as Danny entered the cemetery. There was no gatehouse or visitor check-in because this was the budget burial place, not the fancy old one on the other side of the tracks with the monogrammed crypts and the statues of angels and saints. Hitting the brakes on the truck, he checked the Kleenex box he’d scribbled the directions on and then went left.

He’d been at Anne’s when he’d gotten the call back, and the gray and yellow tissue box had been the first writeable surface he’d grabbed.

As he wound around the clusters of the dead, there were all kinds of Irish Catholic names and Celtic cross markers, and he deliberately took the long way to the section he was looking for. John Thomas was buried in the northeast corner, along with their parents, and although he was turning over a new leaf with Dr. McAuliffe, he wasn’t ready to head over there quite yet. He did think he’d bring Anne some day.

Seemed right to introduce her to the family. His parents had died way before she’d come into his life, and John Thomas, per departmental policy, had been stationed at another firehouse so he hadn’t really known her.

They would have loved her. Who wouldn’t?

Rounding another corner, he eased off on the gas. Across a mowed lawn of browning grass, beneath a canopy of red and gold leaves, two groundskeepers were pulling a casket out of an unmarked van. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

Moose. God. . . what happened to you, Moose?

His truck rolled onward, carried by a subtle slope in the lane that amplified the engine’s idle. When he hit the brakes by the new gravesite, both of the men looked over at him.

He lifted his hand and got no response. The groundsmen just muscled the coffin over to a hole that obviously had been dug by the mini -dozer sitting off to the side, a union worker taking a contractually required break.

Danny reached for his cigarettes and lit one. He’d sworn that he would stop, but the only thing going through his mind at the moment was Not today, motherfucker.

Getting out, he approached the groundsmen. “Excuse me, but is-”

“You here for Robert Miller?” the one in front asked as the van drove off.

“Yes. Moose is—yeah, I’m here for him.”

“You family?”

“I don’t know.” Used to be, he thought. Kinda. “Do I have to be?”

“We don’t care,” the other guy said.

They both grunted as placed the casket on a mechanized platform that was going to lower it into the grave. As they straightened, they looked like brothers, both stocky and balding, Igors without the humps or the Mad Scientist bosses. Their dark green work uniforms were by the same maker that the firefighters used, their baseball caps with the bended-bough logo of the cemetery above the brim.

“You want a minute before we put him down in there?” the one on the left said.

They were identical twins, Danny thought as he looked back and forth at their weathered faces. Just like him and John Thomas.

“Yeah. If you don’t mind.”

“We gotta go dig another two holes anyway. Take your time.”

One got on the Toro and the other went on foot, and as they disappeared, he wondered if their names matched, too. Jim and Tim. Bob and Rodge. Fred and Ted.

Daniel Michael and John Thomas were an Irish rhyme, his mother had always said. Whatever that meant.

Danny took a drag and exhaled over his shoulder even though there was no one around to offend with second hand smoke.

The coffin was simple, not one of those carved mahogany ones with brass rails and tufted satin interiors, and as sprinkles dappled its black lid, they left glossy prints that were perfectly round. He wondered what Moose was wearing in there. Who had chosen the clothes. Whether the axe blade’s damage had been repaired before the embalming had been done.

The hypothetical answers he considered and discarded were like the speculation about the twin groundskeepers, a way to give his brain a break from the reality that someone he had been close to for years, who he had thought of as a brother, who he had worked along side . . . had been someone he hadn’t really known.

He thought about Anne and her father. Just the other night she had talked about what had happened after Tom, Sr., had died, about the secret that had come out afterward. She had told him all about her frustration with her mother, her anger at her father. The disillusionment and disgust and betrayal.

A hero she had once put her faith into hadn’t proven to be merely human, but a bad guy.

She would understand exactly how he was feeling about Moose, and also how he was recoloring previously positive memories with a dark filter.

Moose had been the genial loser who’d struggled to keep up with the big dogs, a good guy with a heart of gold who never quite made it, but always managed to smile in the midst of his failures.

A Ralph Kramden, first of the frat house, and then later at the apartment and the stationhouse.

The idea Moose could light fires that hurt people and accept money from crooks . . . and try to kill someone, kill Anne, for fuck’s sake, meant that all of that had to have been a lie. Because the man Danny had known and lived with would never have hurt anyone, much less one of their own.

He’d loved Anne.

Or . . . at least he’d seemed to act like it.

“Fuck,” Danny said into the cool fall breeze.

The low growl of a motorcycle brought his head around and he frowned. The black Harley he knew well, but he had not expected to see it or its owner out and about for another three months.

As Mick Roth, his old roommate, killed the engine and dismounted, the guy removed his helmet and put it on the seat. His dark hair had been recently cut and a tan dimmed the colorful tats that wrapped around his throat. Blue jeans had holes in them. Leather jacket was beat to shit.

Eyes were alert, but had black circles under them. “Surprised?”

“Yeah. But glad.”

The guy strode over the cropped grass, sidestepping the grave stones. “So what’s up, Dannyboy?”

The two embraced, and Danny held on hard. “What are you doing out of rehab? I thought you were supposed to be in Alabama another ninety days.”

“Arizona.”

“Sorry.” They stepped back. “Did you walk out on the program?”

“Not exactly. I told them I’d come back after I saw you and made sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Party line, huh.” Mick looked around. “What the fuck are we doing here?”

“I don’t know.” As a blacked out truck came over the rise, Danny shook his head. “And then there were three.”

Jack parked his Ford behind the Harley and got out. He was in SWAT clothes, the black T-shirt with the crest on the pec and the camo pants accessorized by a couple of forties and a hunting knife holstered around his waist.

“You found it okay,” he said to Mick.

“Yeah.” They clapped palms. “Thanks, man.”

And then the three of them just stood around the coffin, staring at the closed lid that had gathered enough rain so that the water dripped off its sides, tears that should have been shed, but could not fall in any other fashion. In the silence, a bird chirping in a golden-leaved tree was louder than it should . . . God, he could still remember meeting Moose during pledge week. The guy had been determined to out-drink anyone who challenged him, as if he’d recognized that consumption was his sole recommendation for the fraternities. Jack, on the other hand, had been recruited for his game with the females. Danny, they’d wanted as a bouncer. And as for Mick?

The frats been scared of what he might do if they turned him down.

“Someone should say something,” Jack muttered.

“Yeah.” Danny took a deep breath. “Shit.”

That about covers it,” Mick said dryly.

Danny put his hand into the pocket of his pants and took out his Marlboros. After offering and lighting one for the other roommates, he put the mostly full pack and his Bic on the top of the coffin and then he hit the gear switch so that the casket lowered into the earth.

Each of them cast a handful of dirt into the grave.

As it turned out, it was the last cigarette he ever smoked.

And he called Anne as soon as he was back in his truck and alone.