Apollo brought the mattock down. The adze sank into the dirt, satisfyingly deep, but it sent an electric shock up through Apollo’s arms, right into his shoulders. Hard earth. He’d be tired sooner than he thought. He looked at Patrice and felt so grateful for his friend. This feeling was followed by the desire—the need—to ask Patrice why he started that Facebook page. And why he didn’t tell Apollo.
For a moment he had the worst thought of all: What if Patrice was on Kinder Garten’s side? What if he was one of those ten thousand men? It seemed impossible—he knew Patrice, didn’t he?—but by now he also knew he couldn’t trust his own judgment. Maybe the man driving that car had made plans with Patrice and right now Apollo was digging his own grave. Patrice, or someone else, might just shoot him in the head and leave his body in the hole he’d dug. Nothing for it, though. If Patrice was going to betray him, he’d just have to deal with it then. For now he raised the mattock and brought it down again. Dirt sprayed back up into his face, coating his skin, causing an itch along his neck.
“It’s one in the morning,” Patrice said. “This better be over by five.”
Apollo wiped at his face, scratched his neck, put both hands on the mattock’s handle, and raised it again.
FOUR FEET DOESN’T seem deep, but it took them one and a half hours to clear half that much. Patrice and Apollo had changed places twice already. As one broke up dirt with the mattock, the other, standing outside the hole, used the shovel to clear the soil. Both of them looked as if they’d run a marathon inside a coal chute, dirt on their clothes, on their hands, in their hair, in their ears. Each man alternated between digging with his jacket on until he was so sweaty his shirt stuck to his skin, then slipping the coat off in order to dry out and within minutes getting the shivers all over.
By three in the morning, they were three and a half feet down. Patrice sat on the rim of the grave. Apollo remained in the hole. He couldn’t lift the mattock again, so he dropped it. His stomach shrank with hunger, and his rib cage burned from his heavy breathing.
“I know,” Apollo said. “I know about you and the Baby Brian page.”
Patrice shifted where he sat. Dirt fell from his perch down into the hole. “I told you I joined it when we took the train out to Long Island. I didn’t hide that from you, not on purpose.”
“But you didn’t tell me the rest,” Apollo said, leaning back against the dirt for fear he’d collapse. “You didn’t tell me you’d started the page. Why would you do that? If you’re my boy, why would you?”
“Start it? You mean like I’m the administrator for that shit? I wouldn’t do you like that. I wouldn’t.”
“The day I went out to the island, you left a message on the board. Green Hair Harry, that’s you.”
Patrice opened the iPad, shaking his head as he did it. He opened the Facebook app. Apollo watched him as he tapped his way toward the tribute page.
“Why keep playing?” Apollo asked. “Just say fuck it, let’s have it out.”
Patrice’s eyes scanned left to right. Apollo watched him reading, then a second later Patrice’s eyes grew wider as reading turned to deeper comprehension.
“That’s not me,” Patrice said. “That’s not. When you left our place, me and Dana just sat there in straight-up shock for like half an hour. I couldn’t believe Kim would do you like that. My dude, I’m telling you this, we went straight to bed like we were holing up in a cave or something. Couldn’t fall asleep for hours. And I damn sure didn’t get on the computer to type you messages.”
Patrice looked both angry and panicked. He looked at the screen again.
“Just check out the time when the post went up. It’s like ten minutes after you left. I swear to you, on my moms, I did not get on that computer for the rest of the night.”
Apollo bent and gripped the mattock. He hardly had the strength to stand up again, but somehow he found the power to heft the tool. “Who else could know I was going?”
“This dude knew,” Patrice said, eyes on the mattock’s blade. “William knew.”
“It was you and me and Dana in that basement. He didn’t know I was coming, not for sure, until I showed up in the Bronx.”
Apollo and Patrice remained in this standoff for thirty seconds that felt like three years.
Then Patrice sat up straight as if he’d been stabbed, shut off the iPad, and closed the cover. “What if he was there too?” he said softly.
“How?”
“Titan,” Patrice whispered. “If he hacked Titan, he could turn on my camera, my mic, control all of it remotely if he wanted. He could’ve been watching us the whole time.” He set the iPad down in the dirt and watched it cautiously.
“But how would he do that?” Apollo asked. “How would he even find your computer out of all the computers in the world?”
Patrice pointed at Apollo’s pocket. “He sent you that video of Emma. You sent it to me. I ran it on my computer. It would be that easy for him to hop from your phone to my computer. I gotta warn Dana,” he said, taking out his phone. But before dialing, he froze up and turned it off. He opened the back of the phone and slipped its SIM card out. For good measure, he crushed it with the bottom of the ax.
“My phone and computer are synced,” Patrice said. “He knows exactly where we are right now.”
“He’s not the NSA,” Apollo said.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Patrice said. He gestured for the mattock now and slid into the hole. “I want to get back to my wife. Let’s hurry.”
Apollo climbed out, barely strong enough to make it that far. He pulled the mattock up with him. Patrice clutched the shovel. So little light fell in the open grave that its bottom couldn’t be seen. They might as well have been digging into the underworld.
BY FOUR-THIRTY, APOLLO took over again. Patrice lay by the open grave, so exhausted he looked as if he’d fallen asleep. The dirt was down to inches. Though Patrice offered to switch with Apollo, Apollo didn’t reply. His body hurt so badly, it had gone cold. The aches in his arms and shoulders, his lower back and his knees—he would pay for all of them later, but he’d become exhausted in a way that made him invulnerable. Willpower was all he used to dig now.
Then to Apollo’s great surprise, the sun rose behind him. But it came much too quickly and in the wrong place. From the west a blinding light appeared, so powerful Apollo dropped his shovel and covered his eyes.
Patrice said, “I thought you needed help seeing.”
The beam of brightness came from Patrice’s iPad. The screen glowed like molten gold. Apollo couldn’t even make out Patrice behind the pad, so his voice became disembodied and divine.
“I bring you Daylight,” Patrice said.
Apollo looked back down into the grave. He could see everything now. The shovel had fallen at an angle; his shoes and pants were so matted with dirt, they looked soggy. And below him, he clearly saw a shape, an outline. The casket? Could he really have reached it? He’d started to fear there would be no end to the dig. Apollo went down on one knee and patted the earth.
Then Patrice’s iPad beeped three times, and right after that, the light died out.
“Eats up a lot of battery power,” Patrice said. “Even a full charge only gets you four minutes. It works on tablets and phones.”