Chapter 21: Nobody's Heir

Six guns lay on the gravel in a loose line.

The sheriff walked along it and picked them up one by one with a handkerchief.

He dropped each into a bucket Winnie had pulled off the flatbed.

"I'll lose the paperwork on these," he said, "if nobody makes me find it."

Nobody made him.

Carmine stood in the middle of the yard in his camel coat and looked at the men who had stopped being his.

He had not raised his voice.

"Pick them up," he said.

The lean man shook his head.

"You will be sorry for this."

"Yes, sir. I think I will."

The lean man took his jacket off and folded it over his arm.

"But I'll know why," he said.

He walked to the third car and got in the driver's seat, and sat there with the door open.

One of the others followed him.

Then another, and then the last three, and the engines started.

The black car at the top of the road was the only one still empty.

Its driver had been standing beside it the whole time.

He looked at Carmine across the gravel.

Then he took the keys out of the ignition and tossed them into the grass.

He began to walk down the cliff road toward the harbor.

I watched the great man of the family watch his driver go.

Eli stepped forward.

"Papa."

"Don't."

"You can go home."

"To what?"

Carmine's voice cracked, just once.

"Your brother's page is on every desk in the city," he said. "Half the table thinks I buried a living son to hide a failure."

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