Valediction

CHAPTER 32

They came out of the weeds, four abreast, spaced, looking carefully right and left, One of them, a tall fat man wearing a red warm-up jacket, carried the shotgun at port arms. The other three had handguns. The guy next to the shotgun carried a big silver flashlight. The kind that takes five D batteries. He was wearing a baseball cap and a brown plaid raincoat. Spiffy. He raised his hand and the four of them stopped. The guy with the flashlight talked with the guy carrying the shotgun. The other two gathered around them. Stupid. Easy to pick them all off, together like that. Except I had a gun that wasn't accurate that far, and only four bullets.

The group split up. Flashlight and Shotgun stayed put. The other two swung in a wide circle around the storage shack. I flattened on the ground. Nobody saw me, the circle they made was too big, trying, probably, to stay out of sight and range of the shack while the guy with the shotgun covered the front. I lost sight of the two circlers. I didn't like that. Then one of them whistled from behind the shack. The two guys in front began to move toward the open door. The big one had the shotgun leveled, his buddy turned on the flashlight and beamed it straight into the shack. I stayed flat. At the door they stopped. I couldn't see them either now. Then I heard someone clamber up into the building. One was in, one was out. No better time.

I came up into a crouch and slid around the corner of the building. Plaid Raincoat was standing on the ground, shining his big flashlight into the shack. Shotgun had gone in. I don't think he heard me. I had on jogging shoes and I was quiet. He must have sensed me coming and turned, bringing his right hand out of the doorway and turning the big automatic he held toward me. I shot him in the face and he went over and I was past him heading back into the weeds. As soon as I was in the weeds I hit the ground and as I did pellets whisked through the wet weeds above me, and the shotgun boomed. As it boomed I was back up and moving, heading to my right toward the river and the dam. I had to slow down. It was dark now and if I ran into a pile of girders or something, it would be a short misery before someone put me out of it. I began to feel my way along. The sound of them crashing through the weeds behind me had softened to a rustle. They must be doing the same thing. As I moved I stepped in something squishy. It was too dark to see what it was. I was glad. I could see headlights and taillights gleaming wetly from the Charles River Bridge. Misted by the rain and enhanced by the wet reflection they were elegant against the darkness. Not bad for a taillight. There was movement in front of me. I dropped to my knees. One of the bastards had gone around by the dirt road. The other two were still behind me. Or were there two in front? No, one would circle, two would chase. The movement continued while I strained into the dark to see him. Then he was there, a vague shape, a faint glint of light from the bridge touched the gun in his hand. Must have been stainless. Blued was better for this work. He was turned a little away from me. I fired at the middle of his body, he grunted and turned toward me. I fired again and he fired, his gun beginning to tilt up as he fell.

Right behind me there was the rush of running in the weeds and I snapped my last shot off toward it. Otherwise they'd be on me. The rush stopped, and I ran for the dam. Around the dam there was a landscaped area and atop the dam a building-in fact, two buildings that housed pumping equipment and offices and the harbor police. A rusty chain link fence maybe six feet high ran along the perimeter of the dam property and I had to go up and over it to get in. I put my gun back into its holster, grabbed hold of the top crossbar, and pulled myself up. I got a leg over, swung the other one up, and dropped on the dam side. The fence ought to be a real problem for the fat guy with the shotgun. He'd have to go around.

The wind was up now and I was on the run toward the locks. There were two locks, spanned by pedestrian walkways that swung open when a boat went through. They weren't big locks. There was no commercial traffic on the Charles. The locks were for pleasure boats. The dam was to keep the ocean from flowing upstream at high tide and leaving a layer of heavy salt water at the bottom of the river to kill all the bottom life.

There were streetlights on the dam property, lining the driveway entrance from City Square. I moved as fast as I could, staying low, trying not to silhouette against the streetlights. The wind was cold and I was soaked and shivering. I crossed a set of railroad tracks that breached the fence and ran across the dam compound and came to an end just short of the base of the Charlestown Bridge. If the fat guy with the shotgun knew about them, he wouldn't have to go around. If he knew about them and came out that way, I'd be a sitting duck in the lighted area with the choice of standing my ground with no gun or running for it across the two sets of locks on the narrow iron footpaths under the are lights. In either case the guy with the shotgun could cut me in two while juggling two pickled eggs.

I stopped and moved back along the fence and crouched flat against it, next to the railroad tracks, beside the opening. The two gates were swung all the way back against the fence. A chain dangled from one of the gates, and a broken padlock was hooked through it. So much for security. I looked closer at the chain. It was merely looped through the fence link, the padlock still attached. Someone had cut it with a bolt cutter. God knows why. But vandalism marches to the beat of its own drummer. I took the chain out of the fence. Doubled, with the padlock end swinging free, it made a decent weapon. Not, on the whole, as decent as a shotgun, but better than an empty .38 with a two-inch barrel. The weeds grew right up to the outside of the fence, overgrowing the railroad tracks. On my side it was lawn and I felt the center of attention in the bare lawn with the streetlights shining twenty feet away, but they wouldn't see me until they got through the fence. If they came around, I could duck back through the gate into the weeds again. If they came one from each direction, I was probably going to be shot often.

They came on the railroad tracks. I saw the weed movement and then they were through the opening. First through was Shotgun, nearest me, and half a step behind Shotgun's left was a guy wearing aviator glasses and carrying a long-barreled revolver. I swung the chain down on the wrist that held the shotgun. The fat guy made a gasp, the shotgun fired upward and to the left and fell from his hand. I was shielded from the guy with the glasses by the fat man, who dropped to his knees, pressing his right hand against his chest and groping for the shotgun with his left. As the fat man dropped I hit his buddy across the face with my chain flail. His glasses broke and some of the glass got in his eyes. Blood appeared and he dropped the handgun and put both hands to his face. I shook the chain in a short circle to keep it out and away from him and then drove it down against the back of the fat man's neck. He had gotten the shotgun but was having trouble pumping a round up with his right hand numb and maybe broken. The second time the chain hit him he pitched forward and lay still on top of the gun, the barrel sticking out past his shoulder. His partner ran. With one hand still pressed against his right eye, he sprinted for the pedestrian walkway across the locks. I worried the shotgun out from under the fat man, pumped a round up. Shot the fat man as he lay, and went after his partner, working the pump lever as I ran. The partner was hurt and it slowed him. Pain will do that, even if it's pain elsewhere. The iron walkway zigzags across the locks. Over each lock it is actually on the dam doors that open and shut to let boats through and a sign says that the locks are subject to opening without warning.

By the time we were across the first lock I had closed the gap between us. The walkway was wet with rain and he had on leather-soled shoes. Blood ran down his face, he was running with one eye closed and his hand pressed against the eye. I was five feet behind him when we reached the second lock.

"Freeze," I said, "or I will blow the top half of you off."

He could tell from my voice that I was right behind him. He stopped and put his left hand in the air. His right still pressed against his eye.

"My eye," he said. "There's something bad wrong with my eye."

"Turn around," I said.

He turned, his face was bloody. And the rain drenching down on it made the blood pink and somehow worse looking than if it had been just blood.

"I want you to go tell Mickey Paultz that you couldn't do it. That he sent five guys and it wasn't anywhere near enough. You hear me, scumbag? Tell him next time he better come himself."

"I'm going to lose my fucking eye," he said.

"I hope so," I said. "Now, be sure to tell Mickey what I said."

He stood silently, holding his eye, one hand looking silly sticking up in the air.

"Beat it," I said.

Still he stood, staring at me with one eye. I threw the shotgun in a soft spinning arc into the river. "Beat it," I said. "Or I will throw you in after it."

"My fucking eye," he said. And turned. And ran toward the Boston side.

I trailed after him at a more sedate pace, feeling the beginning fatigue of passion expended and a slowing of the adrenaline pump.

"You didn't kill her on me this time," I said aloud. "Not this time."

Beyond the locks was a parking lot, and beyond that North Station. I went around to the front of North Station and caught a cab back to Assembly Square. I looked like I'd been wrestling alligators and losing. The cabbie didn't appear to notice. A lot of North Station fares looked like that.