Gilbert got in the car, slamming his door shut, handing me the pamphlet he carried with him. Since I’d called in advance, the woman in the sales office had provided us with a brochure detailing the charter and development of the memorial park. The pamphlet opened up to show a map of the cemetery with points of interest marked with an X. She’d also supplied a folded sheet of paper that showed a detailed plot map of the particular section we’d be visiting. The Pelissaro gravesite she’d circled in red.
I looked back at Gilbert. “You know, this may not lead to anything,” I said.
“I hope you have a backup plan, in that case.”
My backup plan was to run away real fast.
Ray fired up the engine again. I showed him the route, which the woman had marked in ballpoint pen. The cemetery was laid out in a series of interconnecting circles that from the air would have resembled the wedding ring design on a patchwork quilt. Roads encompassed each section, curving into one another like a succession of roundabouts. We took the first winding road to the left as far as the Three Maidens fountain. At the fork, we veered left, moving up past the lake, and then to the right and around to the old section of the park. The cemetery had been named for its twelve fountains, which loomed unexpectedly, wanton displays of water spewing skyward. In California, the waste of water would be subject to citation, especially in the drought years, which seemed to outnumber the rainy ones.
We passed the Soldier’s Field, where the military dead were buried, their uniform white markers as neatly lined up as a newly planted orchard. The perspective shifted with us, the vanishing point sweeping across the rows of white crosses like the beam from a lighthouse. In the older sections of the cemetery, into which we drove, the mausoleums were impressive: limestone-and-granite structures complete with sloping cornices and Ionic pilasters. The larger sarcophagi were adorned with kneeling children, their heads bowed, stone lambs, urns, stone draperies, and Corinthian columns. There were pyramids, spires, and slender women in contemplative postures, cast-bronze dogs, arches, pillars, sculpted busts of stern-looking gents, and elaborate stone vases, all interspersed with inlaid granite tablets and simple headstones of more modest dimensions. We passed grave after grave, stretching away as far as the eye could see. The headstones represented so many family relationships, the endings to so many stories. The very air felt dark and the ground was saturated with sorrow. Every stone seemed to say, This is a life that mattered, this marks the passing of someone we loved and will miss deeply and forever. Even the mourners were dead now and the mourners who mourned them.
The Pelissaro plot was located in a cul-de-sac. We parked and got out. Gilbert tossed his Stetson in the backseat, and the five of us moved toward the gravesite in ragtag fashion. I held the photograph at eye level, marveling at the scene that was laid out before us exactly as it looked forty years before. The Pelissaro monument, a white marble obelisk, towered over the surrounding graves. Most of the trees in the photograph were still standing, many having grown much larger with the passage of time. As in the picture, the branches were once again barren of leaves, but this time there was no snow and the grass had gone dormant, a patchy brown mixed with dull green. I spotted the same cluster of headstones enclosed with iron fencing, the section of stone wall to the right of us.
Gilbert was already impatient. “What do we do now?” he asked Ray.
Ray and I exchanged a brief look. So far, Gilbert had honored his end of the bargain. He’d showed up with Laura, who was not only alive and well, but looked as if she hadn’t been battered the night before. Ray and I stood there, stalling, knowing we really didn’t have a way to hold up our end. We’d tried to indicate the limits to our understanding, but Gilbert didn’t have any tolerance for ambiguity. Helen waited patiently, bundled up in her coat, attentive to a large monument she probably mistook for one of us.
Gilbert said, “I’m not going to dig up any monuments. Especially this one. Probably weighs a couple tons.”
“Gimme a minute,” Ray said. He surveyed the scene in front of us, his gaze taking in headstones, landscape features, valleys, trees, the ring of hills beyond. I knew what he was doing because I was doing the same thing, searching for the next move in the peculiar board game we were playing. I’d half expected a water tower looming in the distance, some pivotal word painted on its circumference. I’d hoped to see an old gardener’s shed or a signpost, anything to indicate where to go from here. The Pelissaro gravesite had to be important, or why bother to send the photograph? The keys might or might not be relevant, but the monument foreshadowed something, if we could just figure out what.
I could see Ray doing a spot check of names on every marker within range. None of them seemed significant. I did a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, scanning the cul-de-sac behind us, which was ringed by mausoleums. “I got it,” I said. I put a hand on Ray’s arm and pointed.
There were five mausoleums in the circle, gray limestone structures sunk into the rising hill that fanned up and around the cul-de-sac like an upturned shirt collar. Each of the five facades was different. One resembled a miniature cathedral, another a scaled-down version of the Parthenon. Two looked like small bank buildings complete with colonnades and shallow steps leading up to once impressive entrances now sealed shut with blank concrete. On each, the family name was carved above the door in stone. REXROTH. BARTON. HARTFORD. WILLIAMSON. It was the fifth mausoleum that caught my attention. The name above the door was LAWLESS.
Ray snapped his fingers rapidly. “Gimme the keys,” he said to Gilbert, who obliged without argument.
We scrambled down to the road, all of us intent on the sight of the mausoleum. The entrance was protected by an iron gate, with a keyhole visible even from a distance. Through the bars of the gate, a chain had been added, circling the main lock and secured with a padlock. I glanced down at the piece of paper that showed, in detail, the layout of burial plots in the area. The Lawless mausoleum was located in section M, lot 550. The message from Johnny Lee had been sent and received. I couldn’t believe we’d done it, but we’d actually managed to interpret his missive.
Ray moved to the car, which we’d parked in the circle just across from the mausoleum. He opened the trunk and took out a tire iron. “Grab a tool,” he said. Again, Gilbert obeyed without a murmur, arming himself with a shovel. Laura grabbed a hammer and a pickax Ray had found and tossed in the back at the last minute. The five of us crossed the pavement, Helen bringing up the rear with her bat tapping the pavement. We moved up the steps in an irregular grouping and peered through the iron bars of the gate. Inside, there was a paved foyer, maybe ten feet wide and five feet deep. On the back wall, there were spaces for sixteen vaults into which individual caskets could be placed, the vaults themselves arranged four rows high and four rows wide.
We stood back and watched as Ray inserted the small key in the Master padlock, which popped loose at a turn. The chain, once freed, clattered to the pavement. The big iron key turned in the gate lock with effort. The gate shrieked as it swung open, the shrill scraping sound of metal on metal. We went in. Of the sixteen burial slots, all seemed to be filled. Twelve bore engraved stones indicating the name of the deceased, birth and death dates, and sometimes a line of poetry. All of the birth and death dates ranged in years before the turn of the century. The four remaining slots were cemented over with plain concrete and bore no data at all.
Ray seemed reluctant to act at first. This was, after all, a family burial place. “I guess we better get a move on,” he said. Tentatively, he went after the uppermost square of concrete with the tire iron. After the first blow, he began to hack in earnest at the blank face, working with concentration. Gilbert took one of the shovels and used the blade in much the same way, laboring beside Ray. The noise seemed remarkably loud to me, echoing around in the confines of the mausoleum. I’m not sure anyone outside the structure could have heard much. It certainly wouldn’t be easy to pinpoint the source of all the pounding. The concrete was apparently only the barest of shells because the facing began to crack, yielding to sheer force. Once Ray had succeeded in breaking through, Gilbert chipped away at the crumbling material and widened the opening.