"I never thought of it that way, Loosh. You're a thinking man, you know, that's what I like about you. I get smarter just by sitting next to you. Man, I can't see for s.h.i.t. Sorry. I mean I can't see much without no lights. That looks like a pile of dirt maybe."

"That is for sure a pile of dirt, and that means there's a big empty hole next to it waiting to be filled. Pull over and grab a shovel."

But the earth at the bottom of the six-foot-deep hole was more resistant to a shovel than Lucian had antic.i.p.ated. And then getting the dirt out of the grave turned out to be a small engineering feat in itself, because flinging a shovelful of dirt over their heads and to one side was easier said than done. After nearly knocking each other senseless with the shovels, they finally worked out a system that was slowed by a couple of boulders. Those had to be dug up and hauled out, a sweaty and exhausting job. And all of this they accomplished by the slowly fading illumination provided by a pair of flashlights. The batteries failed completely just as a brief but heavy rain around four a.m. left the footing in the pit messy and treacherous. It was after six a.m. when a worn and muddy Mackie asked, "Hey, Lucian. How will we know when we're deep enough?"

Lucian thrust the shovel blade into the mud and said flatly, "We're done."

They argued briefly, but without heat, on how best to extricate themselves from a hole now considerably deeper than either of them were tall but after some grunting and hauling, Lucian at last was able to say, "Okay, let's put the box in."

"Can't we rest for a minute?" Mackie groaned. "I got blisters and my back is killing me. And I got to p.i.s.s or go crazy."

A brief respite was agreed on, and while Mackie ambled away to baptize the statue of an angel guarding a lamb, Lucian stretched out on a patch of gra.s.s behind the mounds of dirt. The sun was just coming up in the eastern sky and birds chorused greetings to the day. Just as Lucian was thinking about getting up and finding out where Mackie had got to, he fell asleep.

"Holy f.u.c.k! Lucian, wake up! Wake up!"

Lucian did not feel like waking up and so he swiped his hook in the general direction of Mackie's voice.

"Ow! I said wake the f.u.c.k up. Lucian, man, c'mon. It's almost ten-thirty and we still got to get Frank Murray in the ground. Lucian!"

Instantly Lucian was wide awake, standing up straighter and prouder than his first erection, his face a rictus of panic. His head darted from side to side. His stiffened muscles cried out in pain but he was too scared to listen.

"Anyone around? Any witnesses?" He was breathing deeply, as though he had just run a foot race.

"I think some people were here. I heard voices. That's what woke me up. But I reckon they either left or they went on to the back section."

Adrenaline lent speed and informality to Frank Murray's last rites. Mackie tamped down the last shovelful just as Lucian said, "That ought to do it."

Lucian gave him a hand the hand getting out of the grave, and the two men stood there, mud-daubed and exhausted, leaning on their shovels and admiring their handiwork.

"That was more work than I reckoned," Lucian admitted. "I'm sorry 'bout that."

Mackie nodded, but defended his friend to himself. "But a great idea. I never would have come up with it." He squinted into the morning light. "Just in time, too. Looks like we got company."

A line of cars, each vehicle with a purple flag fluttering from its aerial, wound its way around the road that curved through the cemetery. The lead car was a shiny black hea.r.s.e, a twin to the stolen vehicle Lucian had remembered to move out of sight only minutes earlier.

"Reckon they got a roommate for Frank Murray?" Mackie wondered.

"Could be. Let's back off a few feet and give 'em room."

The hea.r.s.e came to a smooth stop and the erstwhile diggers observed in silence as a glossy white casket containing Frank Murray's new roommate was neatly maneuvered from the vehicle and into place above the grave. Wreathes and baskets of flowers appeared. Mourners exited their cars and straggled to the graveside.

Mackie nudged his partner, who was eyeing some overturned headstones and graffitied crypts off to his left. "Don't that look like Jimmy the Skunk's car? That red Chevy?"

Lucian agreed that it did but added, "Keep still, the priest is about to start."

It seemed to Mackie that the holy man went on far longer than necessary, and it wasn't even all in English. Bored, he chose to people-watch and soon enough he spotted a familiar face.

"Hey, that is Jimmy the Skunk! I never would've believed it, Jimmy the Skunk at a funeral. I ain't never seen him anywhere but on a barstool. See him? Right there next to Mr. McCrea?"

Lucian's stiff muscles got stiffer.

"No s.h.i.t, Lucian, look. It's Mr. McCrea. Guess he'll be glad to know we got this here Frank Murray taken care of. You know, I forgot all about his mom's funeral being today. Guess we should have been there, huh?"

"We are there." Lucian didn't know how he got the words out, as locked as his jaw was. Lucian's gaze was locked, too, right on McCrea who wiped his eyes and looked up, as though he felt the weight of Lucian's attention. The boss wore the tortured expression of a man lost in grief.

Lucian and Mackie watched as McCrea's blank stare of grief slowly tightened and focused directly on Lucian and Mackie. The boss's stare went up and down them, taking in their muddy apparel and responding to the sight with a scowl of disapproval as if to say, "This is not how you dress for a funeral."

Mackie gave a little wave.

McCrea took in the shovels at their feet, appeared confused by the presence of tools. He turned his gaze to his late mother's casket, to the hole below it. Looked up again at Lucian and Mackie. Down again at the grave. In slow motion, his hand fumbled for the gun that was not strapped on because a man did not take guns to his mother's funeral. Then he searched his pockets for the cigar that was not in his mouth because one did not smoke at a graveside service. And he turned a face mottled purple with anger once more to the spot where Mackie and Lucian stood.

Had stood.

"We got to get Frank Murray out of that grave and we got to let Mr. McCrea know we took care of it. And then we got to hope for the best." But Lucian thought any prospects "for the best" were dim at best.

"He ain't going to like it if we dig up his mom's grave," Mackie resisted. "And I ain't shovel-crazy myself. Why don't we not dig up Frank Murray and say we did?"

"And what if he wants proof?"

A pause.

"Think we could get a couple guys to help dig?" Mackie suggested.

"I think you're stupid is what I think. You want the whole world to know about this? Right now the only ones know is you and me and Mr. McCrea. And that's already one person too many."

Mackie mulled that over for a minute, scratched his nose, then said, "You think we should grab McCrea?"

Lucian stared bug-eyed at him. "I think you gone crazy, Mackie, clean out of your tiny f.u.c.king mind. How would we do that, him with bodyguards and all?"

"Yeah, I guess that's out," Mackie agreed with some reluctance. Then his face brightened. "Anyway, if we did grab McCrea, we'd have to dig a grave for him, too, so I guess every cloud has a silver lining. I'm in favor of anything that don't involve shovels."

Lucian took a half-hearted swipe at him with the hook, but he was thinking what to do about the late Frank Murray. "You ever use a backhoe, Mackie?"

Lucian had told a clerk at the Home Depot that he needed to move a big rock in order to plant a tree, and the clerk had very helpfully worked out a system of chains and pulleys powered by a winch. It took three trips for Mackie to steal everything that was needed, and Lucian took care of getting the backhoe. Neither of them had ever used such a machine but they figured out the basics fast enough that they managed to get some sleep before heading out to the cemetery again.

On this night, clear skies revealed a nearly full moon. And careful planning paid off, Lucian noted, because they had both caskets out of the ground in less than two hours. Mackie was delighted to be given a break so soon, and Lucian was delighted after Mackie dug around in the stolen hea.r.s.e and came back with a bucket of KFC and a six-pack. They sat on the edge of the pit, chewing and swallowing, and feeling pretty good about working things out with Mr. McCrea.

That was until Mackie tossed the empties and the chicken bones into the grave, stood up, stretched, and eyed the twin white caskets.

"Okay," he said, "back to work. Boy, these coffins look just alike, don't they? Which one goes back in the ground?"

Lucian stared at the boxes, realized that they were indeed just alike.

"m.u.t.h.af " A dismayed Lucian remembered just in time not to swear in a cemetery. "Which one did we take out last?"

"No idea. Oh, jeez, does this mean we have to open them, Loosh? I'm sick of these people already and I didn't even know 'em."

"Just one," Lucian a.s.sured him. "Then we'll know who's in the other one." He tugged on the lid of one coffin. "It don't want to open. Give me a hand here."

Mackie did, but when it became apparent that the casket was tightly sealed, Mackie got a tire iron from the car and the two men took turns prying and bludgeoning the casket. The dam holding back Lucian's frustration gave way, and he smashed the iron over and over against the steel box, succeeding only in scratching the glossy white finish. When he tired at last, he ceded the futility of that action and used the iron, slippery with sweat, to try prying the lid from the bottom of the casket. He gave a satisfied grunt when at last the lid popped loose with a burp and hiss of air. Peering at the contents, the moonlight revealed the remains of an elderly woman with mean lips and pink-tinted hair. "Shi " He wiped his one hand, now shaky from ebbing adrenaline, across his sweaty features and stood up just as Mackie said, "Lucian?" in the tone of voice Lucian had learned to recognize as one which would not make him happy.

"Now what?"

He turned to see Mackie standing by the other casket, its lid wide open, no sign of damage to the box. The late Frank Murray's head was c.o.c.ked to one side, eyes wide, his fixed expression an open-mouthed sneer.

"Who'd have guessed these things aren't self-sealing?" Mackie said mildly.

McCrea's bodyguards waved the hea.r.s.e into the garage just after sunrise. Mackie and Lucian emerged from the vehicle and both were relieved when they were told to wait. It was understood that McCrea's employees, except for the bodyguards, never entered the house. There were rumors about treasonous or bungling employees being invited into the house, never to leave in the same good health with which they had entered. If they ever left at all.

McCrea appeared in the doorway, a blue terry robe cinched around his belly, a glowing cigar in his hand. Mackie eyed it warily.

"Look who the f.u.c.k's here. f.u.c.kin' Abbott and Costello. Well? What the f.u.c.k have you two f.u.c.ks got to say for your sorry-a.s.s selves?"

Lucian tried to remember the speech he'd been rehearsing, but the words stumbled out.

"We fixed it, boss. We dug we got him out of there. The place, the grave, we left it looking great, like you wouldn't believe. Real sorry about the mix-up. Never meant no disrespect. And now we can take care of that other thing for you. The Frank Murray thing."

"You two clowns can barely dress yourselves. How do I know you got that piece of s.h.i.t out of my mother's grave? How do I know her grave looks okay after you two a.s.sholes been busy for twenty-four hours desecrating it?" The stogie circled just a hair below Lucian's chin. He felt the circle of heat.

Mackie jerked a thumb at the hea.r.s.e. "He's in there. Lucian said you might want proof."

McCrea blew a noxious cloud of smoke into Mackie's face and gestured for the bodyguards to take a look in the hea.r.s.e. Mackie tried to swallow a cough, ended up choking. McCrea laughed and in a surprisingly delicate motion, barely touched his stogie to Mackie's wrist. Mackie jerked, yelped, and choked again. The boss grinned.

McCrea got the nod from the bodyguards.

"Okay, looks like you took care of that particular screw-up, and it's good that you did. Sure, I know you two didn't desecrate my mother's grave on purpose." Lucian tried not to remember that at the very last, in a fit of cussedness, he'd spit on the old lady's grave. Mackie hoped the memory of the beer bottles and chicken bones left in the grave didn't show up on his face.

"I take responsibility for this mess," McCrea spread his arms in a gesture something like a crucifixion. "I should have known better, should've known you're both just natural-born f.u.c.k-up douche bags. I was wrong to think that if I just gave you the opportunity, you two could pull off a simple job without turning it into a f.u.c.king Keystone Kops movie. You ain't bad men. You ain't disloyal. You're just too stupid to live."

Lucian swallowed back a moan, felt Mackie's paw clutch at his sleeve.

"But you ain't worth the trouble of killing either."

Twin gasps of relief, and Lucian's lips twitched with a near-smile before he got himself under control. Mackie felt an urgent need to pee.

"So you're fired, the pair of you. Today I'm Donald f.u.c.king Trump and you're lousy, and I mean lousy, f.u.c.king apprentices. So I got to fire you. Donald wouldn't kill you and neither will I today. But you're fired. You morons got 'til tomorrow to get your lame a.s.ses out of this town. If you ain't gone by then, you'll have made it worth my trouble to spend some lead on you. Are we clear on this? Tomorrow. You're gone. Or you're f.u.c.king gone. Questions from you, Mackie?"

"No, sir. Gone tomorrow. I can do that." His head worked up and down like a bobblehead doll.

"I wonder?" McCrea raised a dubious eyebrow, and rolled the cigar between his fingers. He turned to Lucian. "You understand me? No more second chances."

"You don't want us to get Frank Murray?"

"It's a little late for that. My boys here will take care of that matter. The way you two work, you'd just f.u.c.k it up bad enough to send me to jail. So are we through here?"

"Then Mackie and me'll just get rid of this Frank Murray "

"No! No, I think we've already seen that you two can't even manage something as simple as getting rid of a body. My boys will take care of that, too. Just leave the car."

"Are we supposed to walk?" asked Mackie. "They ain't no buses run out this way."

"You can walk," McCrea said softly, snapping his fingers at one of the bodyguards, who handed him a Baretta. He smiled as he racked the slide. "Or you can run."

Lucian had sore feet, the sulks, and a suitcase in the trunk of his El Dorado, when he went to pick up Mackie that night. Mackie opened the door, his face lit with excitement, and waved Lucian in.

"Loosh, man, Jimmy the Skunk called me, and man, it's all over the news. You shoulda seen it. They had McCrea doing the perp walk and everything. This is unf.u.c.kingbelievable!"

"What the h.e.l.l "

"No s.h.i.t, Loosh. The feds raided McCrea's place right after we left. I don't know they found much but they nailed him on our stolen hea.r.s.e, not to mention a certain corpse who shall be nameless. They busted him, bigger'n s.h.i.t. Are you ready for this? For receiving stolen property and abuse of a corpse." Mackie paused to think over that last phrase. "Does that mean what I think it does?"

Lucian tried to absorb the news. Couldn't. Could only say, "Feds?"

"Yeah, feds. And that ain't the half of it. After we left the cemetery, some a.s.sholes must have dug up McCrea's dear old mother and left her sitting in a lawn chair down by the main gate."

"What?" Lucian was stunned.

"And that ain't the half of it either," said Mackie.

"Well, what the f.u.c.k is the other half of it? Stop dragging it out," snapped Lucian.

The animation vanished from Mackie's face. Lucian thought he even looked a little pale.

"She wasn't wearing nothing but a g-string and pasties," Mackie whispered.

"Mackie, you a.s.shole! How the f.u.c.k "

"Swear to G.o.d it wasn't me, Loosh. I know I said it would be funny, but man, it would make me sick to undress a woman that old. And dead, too. Talk about gross."

Lucian gave Mackie his meanest "you'd best not be f.u.c.king with me" look until he was sure Mackie was telling the truth. Then he sighed and rubbed a weary hand over his face.

"Man, we are in some deep, deep s.h.i.t. McCrea's gon' think we did that to his mother, you know he is."

The phone rang and the two men stared at it. Mackie said, "You think he made bail already?"

They let the phone ring three more times, then Mackie answered gingerly, as if he thought the receiver would explode in his hand. He thought he could smell cigar smoke as a gravelly voice said, "You're dead, you f.u.c.king a.s.swipe. You're so f.u.c.king dead you should fall down right now."

Mackie hung up, wiped a shaky hand on his shirt. "I guess I'm packed," he said. "Where we gonna go, Loosh?"