Mark came sauntering out of the service entrance, smiling and waving at the tow truck with one hand and swinging a small alligator-hide case, like a doctor’s bag, in the other. He settled into the passenger seat, banged the door shut, and through his smiling teeth, said, “Drive.”
Em shifted gears and let Mark know exactly what she thought of his tardiness, using language unfit for her own ears; but then she noticed how gray his skin looked and how his smile had tightened into a grimace.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
Mark carefully shifted to find a more comfortable position in his seat and tucked the alligator-hide bag between his knees. “Some of my friends inside turned out to be not as good friends as I’d thought. Turn left at the Altar of Burnt Offerings—No, no, just go around the cab, we don’t have time for traffic lights.”
Wiping sweat out of his eyes with his tarboosh, Mark spat staccato driving directions at Em, telling her to cut through the parking lot of the Trumpet Tower, race down an alley behind the Samoans Camp, and wind through the garages at the Road of Horse Entry.
Behind them in traffic, Em heard a squeal of tires and horns blaring, coming ever closer. “Those would be your ‘friends’ you mentioned?”
“Some of them. My real friends are right now answering some awkward questions back at the temple.”
“I see,” she said tartly. “So this was an inside job?” Mark smirked, as though he were about to say something glib, but then his fingers touched the alligator-hide bag, and the smirk disappeared, as though it’d been slapped right off his face. His eyes gleamed. “A job like this can only be arranged on the inside. I was just one link in the chain. I was supposed to carry it from Solomon’s to the Fountain and Water Gate, hand if off from there.” He swallowed in pain and told Em to go around the Hippodrome, and for God’s sake, speed up.
“But the plan’s changed,” Em said.
“Not really. I was going to backstab my partners and keep it for myself.”
Em slammed the brakes, skidding to a stop in front of the flashing, spinning neon stars of the Sepulcher of David, and popped open her door.
Mark reached out and gently touched her hand with his dry old fingers. “I can’t drive myself,” he said.
“It’s the
Mark smiled, and it reminded Em so much of her Daddy’s smile when he was drunk and sad and most vulnerable.
He indicated the bag in his lap with a dip of his chin, a gesture that resembled the bow of a penitent. “What right do they have to possess something like this? The ground Solomon’s stands on is sacred to my people, and they took it from us by force, burned our temple, and built their own from the leftover rubble. The thing in the bag was kept safe for hundreds of years before the Templars came along.”
“And what do you plan to do with it?”
“I was going to keep it just as safe.”
Em would have been less angry if he’d said he were going to sell it. “You mean you were going to lock it up in a vault away from human sight,” she said, “like a manacled skeleton in a dungeon, where it can’t do anybody any good. It’s, it’s …”
“Bad showmanship?”
Emily crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the steering wheel. “People have a right to see,” she said, her voice almost as strong as her conviction.
Mark licked his lips. Em heard them crackle, and she searched the floorboards for water but found none.
“It’s not up to me what happens to the thing in the bag any more,” he said. “I think that’s why I found you in the streets of the Holy City, Em. Because you’re going to bring it to a better place.”
Em saw the look in his eyes. “You mean
“I’ll get you out of the city,” he promised. “After that, it’s up to you.”
Em said another word not fit for her ears and slammed the door shut. She pulled back into traffic and let Mark guide her the wrong way down one-way streets. He told her not to interrupt, and in addition to driving directions, he whispered other things to her as well. He told her things he thought might help her once she got out of the city. He told her things about God, some of which was Sunday school stuff to her, and other things from his people’s beliefs, their corrupted faith, as Father Thomas back in Oasis Town would have called it. Mark seemed confused, as if he were trying to work things out for himself but was too tired to do any good thinking. He kept stroking the bag. Em half-hoped and half-dreaded that he would open it up and look inside and that she might catch a glimpse. His speech became more and more interspersed with words of Navajo, until Em could no longer understand what he was saying, but toward the end he asked her in English to bury him before sun-down. Em promised she would.
After he died and the sweat on his skin dried, his face still seemed to shine.
