The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [170]
“Put your gun away,” Boyle ordered.
“I said don’t move!” the guard repeated. Turning to his radio, he shouted, “Fellas, I need some help down here!”
Regaining his balance, Rogo couldn’t take his eyes off Boyle. It was just like Wes said. The pointy features . . . the gaunt cheeks . . . but still so much the same.
“R-Ron, are you okay?” Dreidel asked, still in shock.
Before Boyle could answer, his brown and blue eyes locked with Rogo’s. “You’re Wes’s roommate, aren’t you?”
Rogo nodded, his head bobbing slowly. “Why?”
“Is Wes here too?” Boyle asked, his eyes swiftly scanning the lobby.
Confused and completely overwhelmed, Rogo followed Boyle’s glance, searching the lobby, the elevators, the check-in desk, almost half expecting Wes to jump out. “I-I thought he was meeting you.”
“Meeting him?” Dreidel asked.
“Meeting me?” Boyle replied.
“Yeah, no—you,” Rogo shot back. “That note you sent . . . for Wes to meet you . . . seven p.m. Y’know, at the graveyard.”
Staring at Rogo, Boyle shook his head, clearly clueless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, son. Why would I invite Wes to meet me at a graveyard?”
101
It took him six seconds to flick the four pins and pop the rusted old padlock, and that was with an umbrella in his hand. He knew there was no alarm—that was why he’d come by earlier. Indeed, as the lock sprang open, he quietly tugged the rusted metal chain and unthreaded it from the iron front gates of the cemetery without even looking to see if anyone was coming. With a final push, he shoved the gates open just enough for the two of them to squeeze inside.
“This is where you—? Who would possibly meet you here?”
“Just trust me,” the man said, tipping his umbrella back and glancing up at the ornate stone archway that framed the gates. Sandblasted into the stone, in classic block letters, was the one epitaph that had been on the cemetery’s entrance since it was built two hundred years ago: That which is so universal as death must be a blessing. “Wait here,” he said.
“Why? Where’re you going?” his partner asked, shielded under a separate umbrella and carefully hanging back. “You’re not leaving me in a graveyard.”
“What I’m leaving you is out of sight,” the man insisted, knowing that Wes had to be here already. “If you want me to clean up this mess—which I assume you do—I suggest you stay here until I tell you it’s clear.” Leaving his partner behind, he eyed the floodlit flagpole that bathed the main entrance in light, then quickly cut left and plowed across a plot of graves. Ignoring the stone pathways, he strode toward the south end of the cemetery, using the trees for cover.
Behind him, he could hear his partner following, holding back far enough to stay hidden. But still following. Good. That’s what he needed.
Heading toward Wes, he stopped behind a cracked limestone column on the corner of a crypt with a pointed cathedral roof. To his right, across from the crypt, a small gray 1928 headstone for someone named J. G. Anwar was engraved with a Masonic
and a five-pointed star. Hidden in the darkness, he couldn’t help but grin at the irony. How perfect.
Still ignoring his partner creeping twenty feet behind him, he peered around the crypt as the tines of his umbrella scratched against the mushy wet moss that was slowly working its way up the limestone column. Diagonally across the graveyard, at the base of an oversize banyan tree, Wes’s single thin shadow paced back and forth, hunched under his own crooked umbrella.
“That him?” his partner whispered, quickly catching up and staying hidden by the crypt.
“I told you t—”
But before he could get the words out, the shadow by the grave pivoted toward him, and he could immediately tell who it was. The ankles were the giveaway.
The man’s fist tightened on his umbrella handle. His eyes narrowed, and as he leaned forward, the umbrella tines scratched deeper against the mossy crypt. With a burst, he raced forward. That stupid motherf—
“Wait . . . where’re you—?”
“Stay here!