“Sad. But I’ve been to mountaintops that you and the rest of the world don’t know exist. There’s a certain solace in that.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t, But I knew you knew about me. I’ve had a feeling since I read about you and poor Eddie in the papers back in ’51 that you’d be coming for me someday. When you showed up at my door I wasn’t surprised. I figured you might use Larry as a wedge, so I showed up here early without my car as a precaution.”
Briibaker returned with both hands overflowing with white powder. I tasted the most minute amount I could put on a finger. It was very, very pure.
“I was going to shoot you up, Doc,” I said. “But I haven’t got the heart for it.”
Still holding my gun, I scooped a handful of morphine from Brubaker’s outstretched palms and dug the water bottle out of the paper bag. I uncapped it, and walked up to Harris.
“Eat it,” I said, shoving the morphine at his mouth.
Harris opened his mouth and stoically took death’s communion. I tilted the water bottle to his lips as one last act of mercy. Doc shuddered and smiled. “I don’t want to die like this, Underhill.”
“Tough shit. You’ve got five minutes or so until your heart bursts and you suffocate. Any last words? Any last requests?”
“Just one.” Harris pointed to the ground in back of me. “Will you hand me my knife?” he asked.
I nodded and Brubaker got the knife and handed it to him.
Harris smiled at us. “Goodbye, Larry. Be gracious in victory, Underhill. It’s not your style, but do it anyway. Be as gracious in victory as I am in defeat.”
Harris unbuttoned his shirt and slowly removed it, then took the knife in both hands and slammed it into his abdomen and yanked it upward to his rib cage. He shuddered as blood spurted from his stomach and burst forth from his mouth and nostrils. Then he pitched forward onto the ground, his hands still gripping the knife handle.
We buried him in the spot where he had stored his morphine, jamming him into the deep narrow space he had originally created to hold a huge steamer trunk full of death. We covered him over with rock-strewn dirt and covered the dirt with a spray of dried leaves.
I hauled the trunk over to Brubaker’s car, siphoned gas from his tank, and drove the ear off to a safe distance. Then I lit a match and set the trunk on fire. Brubaker, who had remained silent since the moment of Doc’s death, stared at the flames musingly.
“Have you got a valedictory, Larry?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and quoted Cole Porter: “‘Goodbye now and amen, here’s hoping we meet now and then, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things!’ You like that, baby?”
“No, you’re too hep for me, Larry,” I said, throwing dirt on the charred remains of the trunk. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll drive.”
I took Pacific Coast Highway back. Brubaker was silent, and it troubled me.
“You saved my life,” I said. “Thanks.”
“He was going to kill me, baby. I knew it. He swooped down on me and took me aside and told me you were dead meat, and then things would be copacetic. But I knew he was going to kill me.” Brubaker turned in his seat to face me. “I would have let you die otherwise,” he said.
“I know. You were in love with him, weren’t you?”
“From the moment I met him, baby. From that very moment.” Brubaker started to sob quietly, sticking his head out the window to avoid my watching him. Finally he turned to face me. “But I cared, too, baby. When you and that big Irish cop rousted me years ago I knew you were an okay guy. You just didn’t have too good an idea about what was going on. You dig?”
“I guess so. If it’s any consolation, I used to have a friend, a drunk who was sort of way ahead of his time, who used to say there was a city of the dead, existing right here where we are, but invisible to us. He said that when people go there they carry on exactly the way they did on earth. That’s not much consolation to me, but I think it may be true.”