The Widening Gyre

Chapter 29

Paul slept in my bed with Paige. I took the couch. In the morning I got up with a half hangover and an odd sense that somewhere last night I had turned a corner. I looked at my watch. 6:20. A few miles along the Charles and maybe the half hangover would go away.

I went silently into my bedroom, got my running things, and brought them out to the living room, where I dressed. Running with a gun on the hip is jouncy. But running without one when Joe Broz had speculated about dropping you in the harbor is shortsighted. My solution was to take the little.25 automatic that I used for a back-up. I pumped a shell up into the chamber and then eased the hammer back down and carried it in my hand. It was small enough so that my hand concealed it and other joggers would be unlikely to overreact.

The weather was superior for Boston in December. The temperature was nearly forty and the walkways along the esplanade were clear and black. I began to run along the river, westbound. To my left the backs of Beacon Street apartments faced out onto the river. A lot of small balconies, a lot of big picture windows, at ground level, and a narrow alley cleverly named Back Street, with parking spaces and occasional garages. Between me and Back Street Storrow Drive was still nearly empty in the slowly developing light. In an hour commuter traffic would fill it, and the air would be thick with hydrocarbons. An MDC police cruiser moved slowly up behind me on the pathway. I stepped aside to let it pass and it drove slowly on and disappeared as the pathway curved with the river.

Paul understood me in a way that few people did. He was only eighteen but he'd had to rebuild from scratch and understood self-creation. He'd explained to me once about how a dancer has to be physically centered in order to perform properly. He was centered in ways beyond dancing and I understood the effort that had gone into it. Some of the effort had been mine. But I hadn't done it. He had done it.

Ahead of me a man in a beige jogging suit unhooked the leash from a golden retriever and the dog dashed toward the river bank, its nose to the ground. Maybe I should get a dog. Man's best friend.

I was feeling pretty good. It was always easier to feel good when something I was working on was winding up. There was a sense of completion. Especially if the wind-up was orderly. The sun was up now, not very high, but fully above the horizon, and I squinted against it. I hated running in winter. In spring you worked up a good sweat and the muscles rocked easy in vernal heat. But when I didn't run I began to feel angular and stiff, as if I would make a clanking sound when I moved. Runner's high, where are you when I need you?

The way I felt about Susan was not Susan's problem, of course. I loved her not for her sake, but for mine. Loving her was easy, maybe even irresistible. It was also necessary, but it was my necessity, not hers. What the hell was she doing so bad? Devoting a lot of time to her work, being caught up in it even. So what, thousands of people cared deeply for their work and were able to love one another. Whether I came first with Susan, or second, I could love her as much as I cared to, or needed to. The trick was to do it with dignity. As I went under the Mass Ave bridge I saw a pale blue Buick sedan parked there and standing beside it were Ed and his fat friend with the van-dyke beard. Ed pointed a gun at me. So did Vandyke. With my hands at my side I thumbed back the hammer on the.25.

"Joe wants you wasted," Ed said.

I shot him in the chest with the.25 and he spun half around and fell on his side. I hit the ground with him. Vandyke shot at me and hit me in the top of my left thigh and I fired three more shots at him. One of them caught him under the right eye and he was probably dead by the time he hit. I rolled over and checked Ed. He was dead too. I looked down at my left leg. The dark blue cotton sweat pants were black with blood. I undid them and looked at the wound. The bullet had entered on the inside of my thigh and gone right through. It didn't hurt much yet, but it would. I put the gun into the pocket of my jacket, stripped off the jacket, took off the white T-shirt I wore underneath, folded it the long way, and wrapped it around my thigh. I held it there with one hand while I pulled Ed's belt off and strapped it tight around the T-shirt. Then I put on my jacket and pulled up my sweat pants and experimented with standing up. I could. The bone in my thigh was probably not broken. The traffic on Storrow was starting to build, but the chances of flagging someone down were slim. The guy with the golden retriever was nowhere in sight. Neither was the dog. Neither was the MDC cruiser that had passed me earlier. Never a cop around when you need him.

My leg still didn't hurt much, but I felt dizzy and sick. Mass General Hospital was a mile or so back. I swayed a little and looked at the Buick. I took a step toward it and almost fell. I steadied, took a sort of hop, and got my hands on its hood. The motor was running. Balancing against it, I edged along past the two dead men and got in. It was an automatic. A clutch would have been difficult. I put the car in gear, took off the emergency, and drove forward; the car bumped over something that I knew was Ed. But I didn't have much strength for maneuvering. Ed wouldn't care.

It was like driving drunk. I could barely keep my eyes open. With both hands on the wheel I stared as hard as I could at the curving black ribbon of the pathway. Back eastbound I went. I didn't dare go fast for fear I'd lose control. The car wavered as I drove. My head kept drooping and jerking back up as I caught myself. A couple of joggers moved out of my way. They probably glared at me, but I didn't have the strength to notice. All of what I had left channeled onto the asphalt ahead of me. Dimly I realized that the radio was on and a morning man was talking brightly about the last record and introducing the traffic reporter. Avoid the esplanade; there's a double homicide and a slow-moving vehicle on the footpath.

The pathway began to waver and the steering wheel got more and more limber. The pathway curved in close to Storrow Drive and the wrought iron fence that separated me from Storrow Drive suddenly surged up in front of me and rammed into the car. The impact made no sound, and as I spiraled down into the dark I could hear clearly the radio still playing: "This is radio eighty-five… eighty-five… eighty-five…"

And I woke up with Martin Quirk leaning over the end of the bed with his hands clasped and his forearms resting on the footboard.