Arnie told the troopers I was a hero.
They allowed it when Marian insisted I ride with her in the ambulance. She told the paramedic and the nurse that she was scared. The two worked on her the whole time. I crouched out of the way, holding her hand. They gave her something for pain but she stayed alert and kept asking, “How's Arnie?”
I kept saying, “He'll make it.” Arnie, in fact, was the less injured of the two, his bullet proof vest having stopped the slugs, which were so heavy the impact had shattered his ribs. The slug that hit Marian, however, had skidded across the fabric and inside of the vest where it had puckered open under her armpit.
“I can't believe she could throw a knife,” the paramedic muttered to the nurse, to which Marian croaked, “It wasn't like I had a choice.”
“Almost there,” said the nurse. “You'll be fine.”
Marian whispered me closer. “I don't want Bruce to see you at the hospital.”
“I'll split. Don't worry.”
“Come here.”
I put my mouth to her ear. The ambulance hit a bump and her lips touched me. “You know,” she said.
“Know what?”
“Don't fuck with me,” she whispered and I realized she was not one bit scared, but raging, and that it was a ploy to get me alone. “Who shot Brian Grose?”
“Angel did it.” I said.
“No he didn't.”
I said, “Angel did it.”
“
No he didn't
!”
“ICE says Angel did it.”
“He didn't, you bastard. Tell me.”
I said, “Homeland Security says Angel did it, now that they've figured out he's their missing gang leader. Your bosses say he did it. And the State's Attorney already has a list of Angel murders from here to Ecuador.”
Marian raked me with a look of cold hatred. Then she closed her eyes and turned away.
***
I waited in the hospital parking lot, avoiding her boy friend. The Major Crime Squad caught up with me there, and we had a long talk about how it went down in the cemetery, and when it was over they shook my hand.
I waited until I learned she was safely out of surgery. Then, suddenly very, very tired, I phoned Pink. “I need a ride.”
“Already here,” said Pink. He'd figured out where I would end up without wheels and was just rolling into the parking lot on his Harley. I rode on back, helmetless and glad of the warm night wind, knowing I had to figure out what was right and what was wrong before I could decide between them.
Next day, I waited until it was after business hours to stop by the Botsford Insurance Agency. Jeannie had gone home. Grace's beautiful wooden office was quiet and peaceful. A regulator clock ticked on the wall and it was a comfortable sound.
I got right to it. Still on my feet, I said, “You and I have caution in common, Grace. We know too much not to. I learned caution in prison. You learned yours selling insurance all these years. You've probably seen every insurance scam known to man.”
“And woman.”
“How people set fires. Fake deaths. Stage car wrecks.”
“Most clients don't,” said Grace.
“Oh I'm sure it's a very small part of the business. But as in any business, the small part represents profit or loss. Miss too many fraudulent claims and there goes your living. Breaking even never pays the bills.”
“Insurance spreads risk, Ben. That's all there is to it.”
“But insurance companies profit by minimizing risk. That's where the money is. That's why they give seminars to their agents on how to recognize fraud, forestall it. Don't they?”
“Actually, you learn as much from experience. Dad used to say, âI've been doing this so long I would not trust my own mother.'”
“Or daughter?”
“He did not worry about his daughter. He was on top of everything until the day he was killed. I could not have pulled any wool over his eyes.”
“But you had learned from a master.”
“What are you driving at, Ben?âSit down, Ben. Sit down. Take that chair.”
She indicated the customer's chair and I sat.
“Somebody set a timer on Brian Grose's mausoleum audio system so loud music would alert everyone at the Notables that there was a dead man inside. Why do you suppose he did that?”
“So that his body would receive a proper Christian burial and not rot alone.”
“Why do you suppose they shot him in the head? Twice.”
“So that he would not suffer a slow death from the wound in his chest.”
“That would be the kind Christian thing to do, but I wonder if they wanted to make absolutely certain that Brian was not alive to tell who shot him in the chest.”
“Minimizing risk?” she asked.
“Your phrase, not mine.”
“No, Ben, minimizing risk was your phrase. I said spread risk.”
“You are very precise, Grace. What we've been calling the chest wound was actually an exit wound. He was shot in the back.”
“I know.”
“I spent a lot of time thinking about that. A shot in the back doesn't jibe with aâI don't know, what would you call it?”
“Call what?”
“Crime of passion? For want of a better phrase. But the crimes of passion I'm familiar with involve face to face confrontation. You're mad at somebody for doing you wrongâbreaking your heartâyou shoot them in front, face to face. Maybe the guy turns and runs, and you shoot him in the back, but there was nowhere to run in the mausoleum. As oversize as it looked compared to ordinary headstones, it was basically just a closet, inside. There really wasn't enough room inside to run from somebody with a gun. Was there?”
She looked back at me with the same quizzical stare as she did from her portrait of her and her father. In fact, had there been a gold frame around her desk, I would have thought I was observing another painting by Andrew Morrison.
“But,” I said, “There is another kind of crime of passion. Not the kind that comes from a broken heart. But the kind that stems from revenge. Revenge in the old legal sense of an eye for an eye. Revenge isn't even the right word.”
“Retribution?”
“Yes. Someone kills a member of your family. You kill them. Until the modern state demands the sole right to retribution, we are mired in feuding and tribalism. But state retribution can't always satisfy the desire for retribution. The state introduces subtleties. The stateâthe courtâentertains the possibility of nuances. The state might say: You think that person contributed to the death of your father by making his life hell, but making another person's life hell is not punishable by death according to our laws.”
She started to speak.
I said, “Please, Grace, don't. Don't tell me anything. Just listen to meâ¦Okay?”
She waited, still as stone, for awhile before she nodded.
I said, “But a person who didn't agree to those laws and demanded her own retribution would be a person who commits a crime of passionâlike the heartbroken loverâby shooting the son of a bitch, excuse my language, face to face. Which did not happen in Brian's mausoleumâ¦So why was he shot in the back if it was a crime of passion, and there was no room to run?”
I stood up, stood in front of the portrait of her and her father. “Don't speak. Trust me, please.
“Two part answer: one reason he got shot in the back, it was retributionâreal retribution for a real crime. But far more important is reason two. Not only was there not enough room to run, there was not enough room for the person holding the gun to protect the gun.” I went back to the chair, sat down, and looked at her hands folded on the desk. They were still.
“I'm terrible with handguns myself, but I was taught the basic ruleâthe safe and cautious basic rule is
the lunge line
âthe imaginary line you draw in the air between you and person you are confronting. If they step inside itâif they cross itâyou
must
shoot before they can take the weapon away from you. But in Mr. Grose's mausoleum, there was no room for a lunge line.”
I looked at her. She was still composed, although there was color in her cheek that had not been there before. I found myself wondering if she kept a gun in the desk, and dismissed that thought as beneath us both.
“So with no room to protect the gun the instant he saw it, and with a clear, cool sense of doing the right thing by taking retribution, the only place to shoot him was to wait until he turned aroundâmaybe to put on musicâand shoot him in the back. Or, if the shooter had hidden in one of the casket drawers and popped out gun in hand, shoot him in the back before he could reach the door.”
Again, she started to speak. Again, I said, “Please don't tell me anything.”
“I won't. But I do have a question. How did the person justify her right to retribution?”
“Well, that goes back to the insurance business. You minimize risk by minimizing fraud. You learn the tricks of arsonists, fakers of death, stagers of automobile crashes. Along the way you learn a lot about fires. Disappearances. And car wrecks. Criminals get away with fraud when we accept general premises. Such as: rickety wooden structures burn down; people who disappear on cruise ships fall overboard; ninety-five year old gentlemen fall asleep at the wheel, veer onto the curbing, spin out, hit the curbing again, roll over, and are killed.”
Grace said, calmly, coldly, “The driver who ran my father off the road was not the murderer. He was a monster for hire. The man who hired him was the murderer.”
“I will ask you only one question, Grace. Are you sure that Brian Grose hired that man?”
“Beyond any doubt. Dad stood in the way of taking over the association.”
“You told me that until I told you about the condos, you thought it was about that stupid mausoleum. But you really knew he wanted the land, didn't you?”
“Brian was a simple, ruthless, disappointed man. It was a long time before I understood how disappointed, and by then it was too late. His dream was to become important and wealthy. His idea of importance was to live in a six-thousand-square-foot apartment in Beverly Hills, or on Fifth Avenue in New York City. His idea of wealth was to never have to work. He had had his eye on a Fifth Avenue apartment, but by the time he made his pile and cashed out prices had gone through the roof. The new hedge fund money had inflated two million dollar properties into twenty million properties. He couldn't keep up with men younger than he who were earning hedge fund money. Priced out of New York, priced out of Beverly Hills, he concocted a scheme he thought would work in a small town. My father stood in his way.”
“I am so sorry, Grace. And I don't know what to do.”
“Do nothing,” she said. “It will all work out.”
It was the first time Scooter had put my picture on the front page of the
Newbury Clarion
since I rescued the Meeting House Cat from an elm tree. Aunt Connie was not entirely pleased. “It used to be that this sort of news was reported inside the paper, quietly, with dignity, and there was no need for photographs.”
“Scooter's got to fill space.”
“Well, I suppose that's true. Anyhow, it's a handsome picture. And Grace looks lovely, too.” Connie had spread the
Clarion
on her tea table. The article was below the fold, under a picture of Grace Botsford handing me the gavel with which her father had brought Village Cemetery Association meetings to order since the 1950s.
“And I must tell you again that I am so pleased that you took the position. I'm sure it will be a constant bother, but there are certain obligations a young man of the town should honor. What's your first order of business, Mr. President?”
“I'm going to use that gavel on a couple of trustees. They demand to vote on whether or not Brian Grose can be buried in his mausoleum.”
“Well of course he can!” Connie practically snorted. “He's dead and he owns his plotâI presume his dues were paid?”
I nodded. “Dues are paid and they are not disputing that he is dead. It's the ugliness factor.”
“In a hundred years,” said Connie, “no one will notice.”
***
The meeting was like herding cats, but I came up with a compromise. No one liked it, of course, but they went along when Grace Botsford said essentially what Connie had said: The man was dead and his dues were paid up. Brian could stay, we agreed, but absolutely no more McTombs would ever be allowed in Newbury's village cemetery. Which, when it became time to bury him, turned out to be an even better idea than we thought, because the Bastion Mausoleum company, which had arranged the funeral as the final act of its full service for rainmakers, had, like England's Victorians, hired actors to be mourners. The actors were dressed in black, but were so happy to have the work that it was hard to believe their expressions of grief, much less their sighs, as they slow-marched behind the casket. One very pretty young woman was a convincingly-copious weeper until she was heard to whisper to a colleague, “This is so cool.”
I watched from nearby. Grace stood with me briefly, before she wandered off to her father's grave. I waited until they slid the casket in and locked the thing up. Then I went up to a middle-aged gentleman who wore his shirt buttoned to the neck. Earlier, I had seen him park his pickup down on the road. I offered my hand. “Chance Grose? I'm Ben Abbott. May I extend my condolences?”
“Thank you, sir. And I thank you for the welcome your town gave my little brother. I'm sure he was mighty happy here.”
What could I say but, “I recognized you from the film they made about Brian.”
“Yes, sure, that nice young lady was a-shootin' up a storm.”
We passed a couple of pleasantries and I said, “You made a long drive. Do you have a place to stay?”
He said he had towed a camper and parked it at the VFW. Then he threw back his head and fixed his gaze on the mausoleum, which was reflecting the sun like neon.
“I do believe that is the finest looking structure I have ever seen.”
“Brian certainly enjoyed it,” I said.
“I hate to leave him here, with strangers. He weren't much for mixing with his own family, but he is kin. But how could you separate a man from something he so obviously admired? Excuse me a moment, Mr. Abbott. Just want to get another look around it.” He circled the fence, head pitched high, moving backwards and forwards for perspective.
Stealthily, I poked at my cell.
Quietly, I spoke into it.
“Pink? I need Albert and Dennis, a heavy lift crane, and a huge truckâ¦Cost? Damn the cost. Bill the Cemetery Association. Attention: The President.”
***
Having arrived in pieces, the blight came apart as easily as Lego blocks.
Lorraine Renner got a fat contract to film the disassembling and loading. The Bastion Mausoleum Company wished to assure restless consumers that “Built for the Ages” wasn't necessarily etched in stone, and eternal rest should never restrict an American's right to mobility. Lorraine was assisted by Sherman Chevalley who was surprisingly fleet-footed on crutches and was heard by more than one disbelieving on-looker to say, “Yes, dear,” more than once.
Brian's casket rode in the back of his brother's pickup.
“Albert,” said Pink. “Dennis. Come here.”
I nudged Lorraine. “You'll want this.”
Sherman, ever sneaky, had mastered eavesdropping with the shotgun mike and would miss not a word as Pink laid a gargantuan arm on each of the brothers and drew them near. “Now, boys,” he said. “You will not screw up this important job.”
“Sure, Pink.”
“Nothing bad will happen to this truck. Nothing bad will happen to the load. You will drop the load in Arkansas, exactly where Mr. Grose wants it.”
“Hey, come on, Pink, what do you think we'reâ”
Pink tightened his grip. Albert and Dennis grew expressions usually seen on an anaconda's dinner.
***
The mausoleum truck and Chance Grose's pickup truck rumbled out the gates. Pink finished loading tools.
“How's the Trans Am running, Miss Botsford?”
“It's making a clunking noise.”
“Yeah, it'll do that,” said Pink and left quickly.
Charlie Cubrero came hustling with a bale of salt hay on his shoulder, a rake under his arm, and a sack of grass seed and a pick ax in his hand. Donny Butler kept a close watch on him as Charlie scrabbled the bare ground the mausoleum had occupied with the pick, raked it smooth, scattered the grass seed and mulched it with the hay. It was his day off from the Kantor farm.
Under ordinary circumstances, Charlie would be moldering in an ICE detention center. Federal law enforcement agencies are not famous for admitting wrong, much less apologizing, but the boys at ICE had discovered that getting sued by Fred and Joyce Kantor was an extraordinary experience best ended by fifty lawyers hammering out an agreement to stop suing in exchange for releasing Charlie Cubrero into Kantor custody with a green card. Which made a happy ending for allâwith four exceptions. Dan Adams, who was going to have to get used to living on a banker's salary instead of developer dreams. The inaptly named Angel, whose long-term future was being settled in humanity's favor in numerous competing jurisdictions. Me, whose special friend Marian refused all my phone calls, emails and text messages. And Grace Botsford, whose promise, “It will all work out,” made me fear that the worst was yet to come.
***
That night, after we sent Brian Grose and his mausoleum home to Arkansas, I slept in my clothes, next to my fire gear, listening for the Plectron.
Hour after hour I heard the living room clock bong. Hour after hour the fire alarm was silent. I couldn't stand it anymore and went for a walk on the dark streets of the town. If the call came, the volunteers' cars and trucks converging with their blue lights flashing would give me ample warning to race home, jump in my gear, and run to the station in time to board the attack pumper.