CHAPTER 31


The headlights went off, except the one remaining on my car. It slanted up like a searchlight. I heard car doors open and close. Then my headlight went out and it was nearly dark. There was no attempt at stealth. They knew I knew they were there. How many? Four at least, two in each car. Maybe more. There were traffic sounds all around. Behind me to the right, City Square; about me, Route 93; behind me and to my left, the Charlestown Bridge.

I heard the pump slide back on a shotgun as someone jacked a shell up into the chamber. I knew what it was. It doesn't sound like anything else. Linda was in the shopping mall by now, out of the rain, walking among the shoppers, scared but safe. I wouldn't lose her. They wouldn't kill her on me.

The matter at hand was to see if I could keep them from killing me. I was snuggled into the mud among the weed roots, smelling the harsh weedy smell. I was soaked through, trench coat and all. Still lying in the mud, I shrugged out of the trench coat. It was doing me no good and it slowed me down. Lightcolored as it was, it also improved my visibility. The cowboy hat had long since gone. I didn't remember it falling off. They didn't make them like they used to. Tom Mix never lost his.

Around among the weeds were a number of piles of steel girders, of the kind that had done in the Subaru. I worked backward on my belly toward the pile nearest me, and edged behind it and rose to a crouch. I could see the pursuit moving the weeds as they came on. Mostly I couldn't see them, just the wave of the high vegetation. They seemed to have fanned out and were coming in four, or whatever, abreast.

Behind me maybe ten yards was a dirt road that looped sloppily around along the water to my left, and led eventually past where the bad guys were moving, to the sand and gravel yard five hundred yards beyond. It was hedged with the weeds and I could see only a brief patch of it. I thumbed back the hammer on my gun. It was short.38, not good for much range. I rested my forearm on the top of the steel pile and aimed at the movement on the farthest right, and watched. With my left hand I had to wipe the rain from my eyes. Without losing sight of my target I was trying to keep a peripheral sense of where the others were. They didn't know where I was, so they moved very slowly. But it would not be pleasant if I was staring at the right side of the pursuit and someone from the left side came up and shot me in the head.

I could hear no conversation among the pursuit. There was enough traffic sound to muffle it, but they didn't need to talk. They knew what they were doing, and how it should be done. We were at the verge of the harbor, where the Charles emptied into the Atlantic through a series of locks built into a just-finished dam across the mouth of the river. The wet air was strong with the smell of the salt sea, and the faint echo-y sense of moving water. The movement through the weeds paused, wavered, began again, and for a moment I saw a man with a beard. I fired, aiming just below the beard, squeezing the shot off carefully so as not to jerk the gun. I was running for the road when I heard a grunt from the direction of the bearded man and some movement in the weeds. The bass thump of the shotgun coincided with the clatter of shot off the steel pile I had just left. I was on the dirt road running, now straight up, hidden by the weeds, sprinting along the curve that would take me in behind the bad guys. Someone honked his horn above me on Route 93. Then a considerable number of horns began honking. A nation of sheep.

A hundred yards down the road I ducked off it back into the weeds, cut across to an abandoned storage building, crouched beside it and waited, breathing with my mouth open as quietly as I could. There were four bullets left in the .38. I didn't have extras. Usually I did, but Saturday afternoon at a PG movie I had figured five rounds were enough. No such thing as too much money or too many bullets. Live and learn. I hope.

The loading door to the warehouse was open, four feet off the ground, sagging badly on its hinges, and a bunch of what appeared to be old municipal ledgers was scattered and rainsoaked outside the door. Inside was dim and suggestive of packing cases. I thought about going in. No way out. Once in there and confronted, I was trapped. Better to stay out here. Hit and run, sting like a wasp, run like a rabbit, or something.

It had gotten too dark now for me to see far. I couldn't spot any movement in the weeds. They'd have to get closer before I could see them. Or maybe they'd come along the road. Maybe I'd left tracks. These were city dudes. They wouldn't come loping along single file in the road, reading signs as they came. The tracks they knew horses ran on. But they'd come. And I was patient. I settled in a little tighter against the shed. It was corrugated metal and had once been painted white, but very little paint was left. There were remnants of milk cartons and wine bottles and beer cans and Devil Dog wrappers and other hints of civilized life having passed on. The whole area was an oasis of weeds and refuse in the middle of the city--cars, boats, people, lights, buildings, gestations, and high school kids were all around us, but in here, in the dark ten-acre wasteland-we could have been in a Sumatran rain forest. Hunting. It was getting colder and this close to the harbor the wind had picked up. I shivered a little. If the weather were better, it might have been more fun. Cops and robbers. Capture the flag. There was death involved, but that just made it serious; it didn't spoil the fun. Especially if death had very little sting left. And for me, it had barely any.

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