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Gonzo’s shrinking down into his chair till I can only see his eyes and that huge ’fro, but I can tell by the redness in his cheeks that he’s holding his breath. The smell is pretty harsh, but I know Gonzo’s probably more afraid that he could catch some rare, untreatable disease just by sharing the same airspace as this guy.
“Here you go, man.” I leave a dollar on the table and he snatches it up.
“Thank you. Thank you. I got burned out of my houseboat and my kid needs an operation on her lungs so I need to get me some coffee and head out to the cemeteries to take care of things. To the cemeteries you just take the Canal Street cable car to the end, all the way to the end of the line, to the end where the angels live, and that’s where you go to bury things.”
My skin’s tingling now, but it has nothing to do with my disease. “What did you say?” I ask the homeless guy, but the cook’s shooing him away.
“Come on, Spanky, leave these people alone, now,” the cook says. He yanks the string to the front window shades and the café is flooded with light.
CHAPTER TWENTY
In Which We Visit a Cemetery and I Receive a Message. Sort of. I Hope.
We take the Canal Street car out to the cemeteries near the interstate. It’s a depressing ride. Sandwiched between the refurbished law offices, used-car lots, and prisonlike schools are tiny little houses that look like they could fall down any minute, all peeling paint and chipped shutters. Some of the wounded doors have red X’s drawn on them like animals marked for slaughter. Abandoned cars peek out from coats of dirt, rust, and leaves. On the corner, there’s a bent ONE-WAY street sign pointing to the ground.
“End of the line,” the guy says, which is pretty funny, considering. All around us are cemeteries—left, right, center.
“Now what?” Gonzo asks as we get off the cable car and cross over the tracks.
“He said I’d know the one,” I say, eyes scanning the miles and miles of gravestones.
Gonzo snorts. “Well, that’s helpful.” He calls out the names of the cemeteries around us. “The Odd Fellow’s Rest? That sounds like your speed, amigo. The Greenwood?”
Gonzo’s waiting for some direction from me, but hell if I know what we’re looking for. Junior Webster’s sunglasses feel heavy in my hands.
“Cypress Grove,” Gonzo says. “Or the …”
“There’s one called Cypress Grove?”
“Yeah. Over there. The small one.”
“This way,” I say. We pass under the wrought-iron arch that spells out Cypress Grove and into the cemetery. A grass and gravel path leads us past limestone mausoleums, pretty little houses for the dead. Set into the ground are raised stone platforms with inscriptions that read OUR BELOVED BROTHER or OUR DARLING BABIES.
“What are we looking for?” Gonzo asks.
“An angel.”
We scan the mausoleums and headstones. In this row alone, I count twenty-seven angel statues.
“Could you be more specific?” Gonzo asks.
“He said I’d know it. Let’s keep looking.”
“Hey, check this out!” Gonzo yells, climbing up onto the platform of a coffee-colored mausoleum. “It’s like a f**king castle. Oh shit. Can you say ‘fuck’ in a graveyard or will that jinx you with the undead?”
I suck in my breath. “Well, it’s too late now.”
Gonzo’s eyes get huge and I can tell he’s heading for a full-on feardown. “Seriously. You don’t think there’s some voodoo action on this place, like hands sticking up through graves and stuff? Dude. For real?”
“Gonzo, no hand is going to break up through a stone mausoleum, okay? Chill out.”
“Yeah, okay,” he says, letting out a deep breath. “This could be zombie heaven, man. Dude, I wish we were making a horror film. That would be mad awesome!”
Gonz snaps a few pics with his cell phone. Weird shit like his hand resting clawlike against a headstone so that it looks like he’s rising from the dead, horror-movie-poster style. These are accompanied by “aargghs” and “aaaahhhs” and various zombie-esque grunts made deep in his throat.
“Funny. Can you stop playing Dawn of the Living Ass-Hat long enough to help me find Junior’s message?”
A few feet away, three blond girls jabber on in German as they snap photos of the decaying headstones. One of the girls asks me in halting English if I’ll take a picture of them together.
