William Brown - The Undertaker

From the expression on his face, I understood exactly what he was trying to tell me and I knew he was right. So I took the briefcase.

“I'll get the manhunt for you called off in a couple of hours, but remember, Hardin and Tinkerton aren't the only rotten apples in this town, not by a long shot. There are a lot more that need thrown out before it's safe for you two to come back. So you disappear.”

“But where?”

“I don't know and I don't want to know,” came his quick reply. “Like I told you in Chicago, for a couple of bumbling amateurs, you haven't done too bad figuring it out by yourselves. We would never have gotten Tinkerton without you and we would never have gotten Hardin, either.” Parini pointed north at Union Station, sitting flood-lit at the far end of the park. “Take the first train headed out of town and keep going. Hell, you even have some luggage now. And if I know the two of you, you'll do just fine. Now go!”

I took Sandy's hand and we began to walk away as Parini said, “When the time's right, when it really is safe back here, I'll run a classified ad in the New York Times on the first Sunday of the month, in the Personals. It'll say, “Ace: You and Sweet Pea can come on home now, signed Gino.” You got that?”

We looked at each other and nodded, and then we took off running away down the sidewalk. That was the last we ever saw of Gino Parini.

Under the scorching Baja sun…

The scorching yellow sun had finally risen above the row of palm trees on the other side of the courtyard wall. There wasn't a cloud in the high, blue sky, and to the east, the sun sparkled off the iridescent, blue-green water in the bay. The cool morning breeze we had enjoyed was now wilting and the air inside the courtyard would soon become hot and languid. In another hour or two, it would chase us inside the thick, cool, adobe-walled house but not yet. For the moment, the courtyard was still very pleasant.

The mornings down here were my favorite time of the day. I could lie back in my old canvas beach chair, sip a cup of strong, black coffee, and read. The patio was alive with the sweet smell of Bougainvillea, the rich cooking smells from the kitchen, and the sharp, salty tang of the sea. Of the entire week, it was Wednesday mornings I liked best. The Tuesday afternoon mail plane usually delivered some new books for me, some photography magazines and country music CDs for Sandy, and the Sunday edition of the New York Times. It was as thick as an oak log and I could spend all day Wednesday reading it from front to back at my leisure. Sometimes that would take me well into Thursday or even Friday, since time was a commodity we had in abundance now.

A dark shadow passed over me and I put the paper down. “Peter,” Sandy said as she stood blocking out the sun. “Watch the baby for a minute, will you? I've got to help Rosaria with the salad.”

“Right,” I replied as I glanced over at the baby playing happily on a blanket in the shade. Sandy smiled and let her hand pass lightly up my chest. She knew the effect that had on me and we both knew why she did it.

I looked up at her and smiled back. Her raven hair was long and wild now, hanging halfway down her back in a long, single braid. I liked it that way. She had been working-out like a fanatic to get her figure back and I liked that too. If I stayed out in the sun too long, I burned, but she and the baby had tanned to a rich, golden brown. It must be the Italian skin, I thought. But barefoot, in that thin, white cotton top and colorful Indian skirt, it was hard to tell her from the natives.

“Anything in there?” she asked, pointing at the Times.

“No, of course not,” I answered as I reached out and pulled her close, running my hand across her bare stomach. “Do you want there to be?”

“Get real,” she laughed as my hand moved higher under the white cotton top and lightly caressed her breast.

She closed her eyes and let my hand linger there. She didn't push it away. “Hold that thought,” she finally leaned over and whispered.

“Hold that thought?”

“Yeah. After lunch.”

“After lunch?”

“Yeah,” she said as she pulled my hand out and gave my fingers a light kiss. “I have to help Rosaria with the salad. After we put the baby down, maybe you'll get lucky.” She turned and bounced happily away into the house, humming some new country song she'd been playing.

After she had gone, I picked up the paper again. It was the Classified Section of the Sunday New York Times, which I had folded open to page four. At the bottom, I re-read the same small, inconspicuous boxed ad that I had been staring at off and on for most of the past hour. “Ace and Sweet Pea, come on home,” and it was signed “Gino”.

I refolded the section, stuck it in the middle of the tall stack, and walked over to the bin where we kept the kindling we used to start the fire. I dropped the Times inside, where it joined what was left of the last three issues before it.

I walked back to the baby, picked him up, and carried him into the middle of the courtyard where we could both look up at the sky. For the most part, it was a clear blue, except for a handful of soft, white, puffy clouds passing to the east. I stared at them and squinted. The pattern slowly changed and I swore I saw Terri's face up there, but only for an instant. This was the first time in many, many months that I had seen her. She was so far away, but yeah, it was her. It was nice to know she was up there, that she was smiling, and I didn't need to be a “rocket scientist” to figure out why.