At last the movie was getting exciting. Another man had appeared in the bedroom. The actor and actress were dead. Betty could tell by the way he wrapped them in blankets that covered their faces. He wasn’t a doctor because he didn’t have a black bag. And if he wasn’t a doctor, he must be playing an undertaker. She remembered that word. The man who took you under was the undertaker. There was another word now, a new modern one. She couldn’t remember it, but that was all right. One word for one man was perfectly adequate.

Betty watched the screen intently, but she couldn’t quite make out the undertaker’s face in the dim light. He lifted one bundle and carried it out the door. She wasn’t sure how she knew, since there was nothing on the screen to tell her, but she was sure the door led to a garden. Red and yellow and pink roses. Betty remembered them so vividly, she could almost smell their lovely perfume. Someone had grown roses in this garden. Had she seen this movie before?

There was a way to switch cameras and Betty pushed the proper button. The scene shifted to the garden, where the undertaker was digging a hole. This must be a funeral, but there were no mourners. That was the name for the people who came to watch someone buried. There were no flowers, either, at least not many. The rosebushes looked sad and neglected. Perhaps the woman who’d taken care of them had been in another movie on a different channel.

The undertaker was very strong. Betty watched him dig until the hole was deep, then roll one blanket-wrapped bundle into the grave and go back inside for the other. Betty winced as he rolled the second body right in on top of the first. There was no casket. That must be why this scene was taking place in the middle of the might. The family was ashamed that they couldn’t afford a proper funeral.

As soon as he’d finished with the dead people, the undertaker went to the garden building and came back with a package to throw in the hole. It had a flag on the front, something to do with the men who sailed ships and wore gold hoops in their ears. Then he went inside to bring out three suitcases and the type of bag that was designed to fit under seats in an airplane. Betty laughed as she recognized the bag. The blue folders were inside and they were from the movie she’d watched with her secret friend on forbidden channel zero. This movie must be a sequel, like Rocky II.

The undertaker threw the suitcases into the hole and went back inside to get two parkas and two pairs of boots. These were very strange things to bury. But when the undertaker added two water glasses to the pile in the grave, Betty began to understand. The dead people were playing ancient Egyptians. The pharaohs had buried things for the afterlife in their tombs.

It took a long time for the undertaker to fill in the grave and level the earth next to the sad rosebushes. At last he was finished and he disappeared from the screen. Betty watched for a long time, but nothing else happened. This movie must be over. Since she was wide-awake now, she switched through the forbidden channels to see what else was playing.

Channel nine was showing a movie with two people in bed. All the movies this time of night seemed to star people in bed. Betty smiled as she recognized the cowgirl who shared her in-between name. The foreign actor was sleeping next to her and they were nestled together like two spoons in a drawer. Something about the scene made Betty feel happy and she watched for a long time before she tried another channel.

On eight the doll-lady sat in a living room chair, huddled in a blanket. There were two fuzzy white rabbits wrapped around her feet and she looked as if she’d been crying. She was silent and the rabbits didn’t move a whisker, so Betty turned on the camera in the dollhouse.

Betty gasped as the camera scanned the room. Pieces from the dolls were scattered all over the floor and it was a terrible mess. They must have shot a disaster movie and she’d missed it. Betty loved disaster movies, and she was very disappointed. She’d have to remember to check this channel again in case they reran it.

The forbidden channels weren’t very interesting tonight. Betty had to switch all the way down to three before she found another movie to watch. This one was a detective show. The young actress was searching through a drawer in a desk. She was looking for something, and she was very careful not to make any noise. Betty watched for several minutes, but the actress never found what she was looking for.

Forbidden two was Betty’s favorite channel. She liked the animals and she knew some of their names. One was giraffe and another was bear. There was also a big animal with horns and she frowned as she tried to think of what it was called. Moose, that was it. Alces Americanus, and this one had its head stuck right through the wall. She watched it for a long time, but it never moved at all and since she couldn’t seem to figure out how they’d trained it to do that, she switched to channel one. It was more of the same old thing. Two people sleeping. They didn’t make movies the way they used to. Betty couldn’t find any action at all until she pressed the button for forbidden channel zero.

As soon as she saw the picture on the screen, her face lit up in a smile. She’d finally found something interesting! The actor who’d played the undertaker was pushing the machine on skis across the snow. Betty followed him with the outside camera as he moved it up the steep hill and hid it behind a big pine tree. He stood on top of the hill with a kind of black box for a long time and then he walked back to the garage and came inside.

Betty felt her eyelids droop. There were no interesting movies this time of night. Perhaps there would be better television tomorrow, she thought, as she clicked off the monitor and went back to sleep.

The Caretaker was frowning as he hid the compact shortwave radio under the bed in Jack’s apartment. He’d tried to call the Old Man twice, once from the spa right after they’d found the suitcases and again from the top of the hill where he’d hidden the snowmobile. There must have been some sort of atmospheric disturbance because he’d failed to make contact either time.

Naturally, the Old Man would hit the roof, but this had been an emergency situation. There was no way his soldiers could get through to do the dirty work and they hadn’t done such a great job with Johnny, anyway. Too many loose ends.

The Caretaker’s mouth tightened into a straight line as he thought about Johnny. No loyalty, that was the problem. The Old Man had taken him out of a two-bit lounge in North Vegas and made him into a star as a favor to his father, a pal from the old country. And when Johnny had blown all his money and begged for another chance, the Old Man had set him up in the candy business. Johnny had known that holding out on the Old Man was a capital offense, but he’d tried it anyway and the Caretaker had caught him red-handed.

That was the one and only time the Caretaker had wanted to take care of a contract himself. Looking back on it, he knew he could have done a better job. It was definitely time for the Old Man to recruit some new soldiers. Perhaps they ought to contact the guys they’d hired down in New Orleans two years ago. The Marshalls had been a neat piece of work, especially since the police had written it off as a mugging with no suspects. It was unfortunate that they’d been forced to hit Charlotte Marshall, but she’d come a little too close researching her genealogy of the building and the Old Man hadn’t wanted the chain of ownership to be scrutinized. The land where Deer Creek Condos now stood had been in the Old Man’s hands for years. They’d used the old mine tunnels for storage of booze during the prohibition years and then arms and dope and the bodies of the rats who’d crossed the Old Man. Of course, everything had been cleared out when the condos were built, but the Old Man didn’t want anyone sniffing around.