Everybody Dies

"And you shot him."

"We shot each other," I said. "His bullet glanced off the vest."

"God, did it save you again? You'll be wearing it to bed after all this."

"I'm getting fond of it," I admitted. "You were the perfect target, with that big white apron"

"Less white now."

"I noticed. They couldn't hit you, could they?"

"It wasn't for lack of trying. They were bad shots, the lot of them. Six of the fuckers, though, good shots or not, and we killed them all."

"And got off without a scratch," I said. "Second sight notwithstanding."

"Ah," he said. "I was waiting for you to bring that up."

"I held off as long as I could."

"'Twas my mother said I had the second sight, and it's not the only thing she was ever wrong about. She never in her life had a decent word for the English, and didn't I tell you how nice they were to me the time I was over there?"

"That's a point."

"I'll give you the straight of it, though. I honestly thought I was going to die."

"I know you did."

"And a damned good thing I was mistaken, with no better priest than yourself to hear my confession. By Jesus, didn't I find a rare lot of bad old things to tell you!"

"You went on for a while."

"I have to say I don't regret it. Oh, there's more than a few of the deeds I regret. A man would have to. But I don't regret telling them all to you.

"I'm glad to hear it."

"And you still stood with me and saw the night through, even after all I said."

"To tell you the truth," I said, "I don't remember very much of what you told me."

"What, were you not paying attention?"

"Close attention. I hung on every word. But they didn't stay with me. They passed through me and I don't know where they went. Wherever such things go, I guess."

"In one ear and out the other."

"Something like that," I agreed. "All I really remember is the first thing you mentioned. About taking out the man's eye and showing it to him."

"Ah," he said. 'Well, that would be a difficult one to forget, wouldn't it?"

Later he said, "I've been thinking of what I might do next."

"I was wondering about that."

"You know, we had a good laugh about the feeling I had."

"The premonition."

He nodded. "It may not have been altogether wrong. There are different ways of dying, and of being reborn. I'm unscratched, but hasn't my whole life gone and died around me? Grogan's in ruins, and the farm in ashes. Ke

"Gone, all of them. And O'Gara and his wife. And the pigs and the chickens, all gone." He smacked the steering wheel. "Gone," he said.

I didn't say anything.

"I was thinking," he said, "that I've no place to go. But it's not true. I have a place to go."

"Where's that?"

"Staten Island."

"The monastery," I said.

"The Thessalonian Brothers. They'll take me in. They do that, you see. You go there and they take you in."

"How long will you stay?"

"As long as they'll have me."

"Do they allow that? Can people stay for a long time?"

"For a lifetime, if you want."

"Oh," I said. "You mean to stay there."

"Isn't that what I said?"

"What'll you do, exactly? Will you become a monk?"

"I don't know that I could do that. I'd be a lay brother, most likely. But 'twill be for them to tell me what I ought to do and when I ought to do it. The first step is to go there, and the second is to get one of them to hear my confession." He smiled. "Now that I've tried it out on you," he said. "Now that I've learned it won't kill me."

"Brother Mick," I said.

As we were crossing the George Washington Bridge I said, "There's something we're forgetting."

"And what would that be?"

"Well, I'm not sure I should mention this to a future servant of God," I said, "but we've got a dead body in the trunk."

"I've been thinking of it," he said, "ever since we got in the car."

"Well, I haven't. It slipped my mind entirely. What the hell are we going to do with him?"

"It would have been best to leave him on the farm. To bury him there. He'd not have lacked for company. Or even to lay him out there on the lawn with the other dead. He threw in with them, he could lie with them, in the bed he made."

"It's too late for that now."

"Ah, it was too late throughout, for how could we carry him through two or three miles of woods? And I didn't want to leave him where we parked the car, and even if we'd found a shovel and buried him there somebody could have come upon the grave. I'll tell you, the man's as difficult to contend with dead as he was alive."

"We have to do something," I said. "We can't just leave him in the trunk."

"Now I was wondering about that. Isn't it his car? And who has more right to be in its trunk than the man himself?"

"I suppose you've got a point."

"I thought of leaving it on the street," he said, "in his beloved Bronx, with the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition. How long do you think it would take before somebody took it for a ride?"

"Not long."

"And they might keep it for a good long while, especially if we took care to leave it with a full tank of gas. Of course if they had a flat tire, and went looking for the spare…"

"God, what a thought."

"Ah, it's a hard old world if you can't laugh, and even if you can. Do you know what I think I'll do? I'll wipe the fucker free of prints, as it's full of mine after all the use I've given it this past week. And then I'll take it over to the piers and run it into the river, with the windows rolled down so it'll sink and stay sunk. Can they get fingerprints off a car hauled out of the water?"

"There was a time when they couldn't," I said, "but they probably can by now. I think they can just about lift them off motes of dust dancing in a beam of light."

"I'll wipe it good," he said, "before I shove it off the edge. Just to be sure."

After a moment I said, "What'll you tell his mother?"

"That he had to go away," he said without hesitation, "on a dangerous mission, and that it might be awhile before she heard from him. That should hold her for the few years she's got left in the world. She has cancer, you know."

"I didn't."

"Poor thing. I'll pray for her, and him too, once they've taught me how."

"Pray for all of us," I said.

I rode up in the elevator, used my key in the lock. By the time I had the door open she was standing in front of me, wearing a black robe I'd bought for her. It had white and yellow flowers on it, and tiny butterflies.

"You're all right," she said. "Thank God."

"I'm fine."

"TJ's sleeping on the couch," she said. "I was going to bring di

"Either way, you're both all right."

"And you're all right, and thank God. It's over, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's over."

"Thank God. And what about Mick? Is Mick all right?"

"He had a premonition," I said, "and that's a story in itself, but it turns out he's got a touch of astigmatism in his third eye, because he's fine. In fact you could say he's never been better."

"And everybody else?"

I said, "Everybody else? Everybody else is dead."

"I'll remind you," Ray Gruliow said, "that Mr. Scudder is here of his own volition, and that he'll answer only those questions I'm willing for him to answer."

"Which means he won't say a goddamn thing," George Wister said.

And that turned out to be pretty close to the truth. There were half a dozen cops in the room, Joe Durkin and George Wister and two guys from Brooklyn Homicide and two others whose function was never explained to me. I didn't much care who they were, because all they could do was sit there while I said essentially nothing.