The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [168]
“Wes, these are perfect for—”
“No question,” I say, finally getting caught up in her excitement. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m putting her at risk. Checking to make sure we’re alone, I turn left, toward the center of the lot, where a glowing white flagpole is lit up by floodlights and serves as the graveyard’s only light source. But from where we are, surrounded by trees in the corner of the far end zone, all its pale glow does is cast angled shadows between the branches and across the path.
“You’re slowing down,” she says, grabbing the umbrella and tugging me forward.
“Lisbeth, maybe you should—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she insists, doubling our pace and glancing to the right, where a skinny bone-white military headstone has a crest that reads:
CPL
TRP E
13 REGT CAV
SP AM WAR
1879-1959
“He’s buried near people from the Spanish-American War?” she whispers. “You sure he’s not in the new section?”
We’d seen it when we first drove up. On our far left, past the floodlit flagpole, past the thousands of silhouetted crosses, crooked headstones, and family crypts, was a wide-open field dotted with flat ceremonial markers. Like most Florida cemeteries, Woodlawn learned the hard way what happens when a hurricane hits a graveyard. Nowadays, the newly dead get only flat markers set flush into the earth. Unless, of course, you know someone big enough to tug some strings.
“Trust me, he’s not in the new section,” I say. The further we go down the path, the more clearly we hear a new sound in the air. A hushed murmur, or a whisper. Dozens of whispers—coming and going—as if they’re all around us.
“No one’s here,” Lisbeth insists. But on our left, behind a 1926 headstone with a marble set of rosary beads dangling from the front, there’s a loud scrape like someone skidding to a stop. I spin to see who’s there. The headstones surround us. The rain continues to dribble down our backs and soak our shoulders, its mossy smell overwhelming the stench of wet dirt. Behind us, the rumble of thunder starts to—no, not thunder.
“Is that . . . ?”
The rumbling gets louder, followed by the deep belch of an air horn. I wheel back toward the meatball shrubs just as the ding-ding-ding of the crossing gate pierces the air. Like a glowing bullet through the darkness, a freight train bursts into view, slicing from right to left, parallel with the low fence that runs along the back of the graveyard.
“We should keep going!” Lisbeth yells in my ear, leading us deeper down the path. The train continues to rumble behind us, taking all sound with it, including the rustling and scraping that would let us know someone’s coming.
What about in there? Lisbeth pantomimes as we pass an aboveground crypt with stained-glass double doors. The crypt is one of the largest here—nearly as big as a dumpster.
“Forget it,” I say, yanking her by the elbow and taking the lead. She doesn’t realize how close we are to our goal. Three graves down from the crypt, the path dead-ends at the trunk of the enormous banyan tree, which, during the day, shields every nearby grave from the battering sun. That alone makes this one of the most select areas in the entire cemetery. President Manning made the call himself and personally secured the double plot of land that now holds the imported Italian black marble headstone with the slightly curved top and the stark white carved letters that read:
RONALD BOYLE
TREASURED HUSBAND, FATHER, SON
WHOSE MAGIC WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US
“This is him?” Lisbeth asks, spotting the name and almost crashing into me from behind.
It was Manning’s last gift to his friend—a final resting place that kept Boyle out of the land of flat markers, and instead put him next to a general from World War II, and across from one of Palm Beach’s most respected judges from the 1920s. It was