CHAPTER 22


Hawk waited until I went in the front door of my place on Marlboro Street before he pulled away. It was an old brownstone and brick townhouse, a block from the Public Garden, which had been turned into condominiums in the early eighties, when condos were high, and the living was easy. The lobby was done in beige marble. The oak stairway turned, in a series of angular landings, up around the open mesh elevator shaft.

Spry as ever, I skipped the elevator and took the stairs. I was wearing my New Balance running shoes with the aquamarine highlights and went up the stairs with very little noise, for a man carrying as much armament as I was. Since my visit from Lonnie and the Dreamers I felt I needed more fire power. I was wearing the Browning.9 mm on my hip with a round in the chamber and 13 in the clip. I also had the.357 butt forward on the left side of my belt with six rounds in the cylinder. I had decided against a blunderbuss.

My place was on the second floor, and as I turned toward my door down the hall past the elevator shaft, I smelled cigarette smoke. I stopped. I sniffed. I checked the elevator shaft. The car was at the top, resting quietly on the sixth floor. My place occupied the whole second floor. The smell of cigarette smoke was from my place. It was a fresh smell, not the stale remnant of a cigarette long since smoked, but the fresh smell of one just lit, drawn in deeply and exhaled. I looked at my door. There was no change in the way light shone through the peep hole. I took the Browning off my hip, and cocked it and walked quietly back down the short hall to the stairwell behind the elevator shaft.

Susan was the only one with a key and she didn't smoke. If someone had Murphied the lock they were good at it, because there was no sign of it on the door jamb. There was a fire escape near my kitchen window, which could have been used for access.

The way they got in was less significant for the moment than the fact that they were in there.

It could, of course, be the tooth fairy copping a quick lungful before slipping a quarter under my pillow, but it was more likely to be a couple of gunnies sent by Lonnie Wu, and if it was, in addition to myself, I wanted one alive.

The stairwell was silent. The elevator remained motionless on the top floor. I was the only one, normally, who used the stairs.

People on the first floor obviously had no need, people from the third floor up always took the elevator. However they had gotten in, there were two ways out. There was the fire escape, which came down into the public alley between Marlboro and Beacon Street. And there was the front door. I could cover the alley from Arlington Street. I could cover the front door from the stairwell.

Backup would have helped.

The sounds of a silent building are always surprising when you are standing quiet and listening hard. There is the tiny creak of the building's constant struggle with gravity and stress, the cycling of heat and ventilation, the faint hint of refrigerators or personal computers, a murmur, almost imaginary, of television sound, and compact discs. From outside come sounds of traffic, and wind, and the audible, celestial hush of the world moving through space.

I knew I could out wait them. I could out wait Enoch Arden if I had to. But it would be nice if, when they finally got sick of waiting, I knew which way they'd exit. I didn't know how long they'd been there. If they were the two kids I'd seen with Lonnie Wu, they wouldn't have much patience. Kids never do, and Lonnie's two jitterbugs probably had a lot less than most. They might be ready to leave now. If I went for backup, I might lose them. And I didn't want to.

There was a skylight at the top of the stairwell, but the late October afternoon had blended with the late October evening and the stairwell was lit only by the dim bulbs near the elevator door on each floor. No light showed through the peep hole in my door.

The evening stretches out against the sky, I thought. Like a patient etherized upon a table. I grinned to my self. Live fast, die young, and have a literate corpse.

On the sixth floor I heard the elevator door slide open slowly.

There was a moment when nothing happened, and then the elevator jerked into life and came slowly down past me. On the first floor the doors slid open. There were footsteps. The front door opened. And closed.

I kept my eyes on the door to my apartment. After fifteen or twenty minutes it becomes harder than you'd think it would be.

But I had spent half my life looking at things for too long a time, and had learned how. The door didn't open. I continued to look at it. I no longer smelled the cigarette smoke. My nose had gotten used to it. If I hadn't quit smoking twenty-five years ago, I'd probably have opened my front door without noticing anything and walked right into a bullet with others following hard upon.

Further argument to confound the Tobacco Institute.

I hadn't figured out how to get them out of there, and I hadn't figured out what to do if they went out the fire escape. So I stayed with Spenser's crime-stopper tip number 7. When uncertain of what to do, hang around. I leaned on the corner of the elevator shaft and looked at my door. Nothing happened.

I speculated on the sexual potential of an anchorwoman I liked on local television. I decided that it was considerable. As was my own. I considered whether sexual speculation about a prominent female newsperson was sexist and concluded that it was. I wondered if she looked good with her clothes off. I reminded myself that anyone who looked good with clothes on would, of course, look even better with clothes off.

I shrugged my shoulders and bent my neck in an effort to loosen my traps. I did some calf raises. I opened and closed my left hand twenty times and then shifted the Browning into it and opened and closed my right hand twenty times. Then I shifted the Browning back.

Somebody in the building was cooking onions. I was hungry. I had expected to come home, have a drink, and cook myself supper.

I had not expected to find one or more nicotine slaves in my way.

I was going to make myself some shredded pork barbecue out of a pork tenderloin I had in the refrigerator. I was going to serve it with red beans and rice, coleslaw on the side, and some corn bread, which I was going to make from Crutchfield self-rising white corn meal. Instead I was standing out here in the dark trying to keep my extremities from going to sleep and listening to my stomach growl.

Being a hero was not an unencumbered pleasure.

I tried compiling a list of things I liked best dogs, jazz, beer, women, working out, ball games, books, Chinese food, paintings, carpentry. I would have included sex, but everyone included sex, and I didn't want to be common. I thought about my comics hall of fame. Alley Oop, Li'1 Abner, Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, Tank McNamara, of course… I was sick of waiting… I shifted the Browning to my left hand and took the.357 from my belt with my right. I cocked it, and stepped out from behind the elevator shaft, and fired one round from the revolver through my front door. Then I fired three rounds from the Browning and another round from the.357. Then I hot footed it down the front stairs and out the front door. I went down Marlboro Street on the dead run with a gun in each hand, turned the corner on Arlington Street, past one building and into the alley that ran behind my building.

It was dark. I flattened against the wall behind a bulkhead that sheltered some trash barrels. I could hear my heart pumping hard, trying to catch up with my sudden sprint. In the cool October night I could feel the sweat drying on my face. The side of my building caught some moon glow. If it had worked, they should be on the fire escape. I forced myself to look wide-eyed and unfocused at the whole side of my building, rather than trying to concentrate. In the dark you saw better if you did it that way.

Especially movement. Like the movement on the fire escape below my window. Two figures coming down. Ah, Spenser, I thought, you tricky devil, you've done it again! I would have been even more impressed with myself if it hadn't taken me an hour to think of this ploy.

The two figures dropped to the ground and started down the alley toward Arlington Street. One of them was putting his gun away inside his coat. They came quietly down the alley, not running, but moving quickly and staying in the shadows. They passed from the pale moon light into the shadows, and their eyes took a moment to adjust. They passed me in the shadows without any notice. They looked like the two kids who'd come with Lonnie Wu and scared me to death. I stepped out behind them, grabbed one of them by the hair, and jammed the Browning into his ear.

I didn't say anything. They probably didn't speak English. And I didn't know how to say "Stick 'em up" in Chinese. The kid grunted and his buddy turned with his gun out. I kept myself behind my teenybopper so his pal couldn't get a shot at me. The pal began to back down the alley toward Arlington Street, in a crouch, gun forward, held in both hands, looking for a shot at me and not able to get one. I was afraid he'd shoot at me anyway and kill his buddy. These were not stable young men. I took my gun out of the kid's ear and waved it at the other one, making a "beat it" gesture. For a moment, we faced off that way. The kid I had hold of tried to twist out of the way, but I was much too big and strong for him, and I kept him jammed against me, his head yanked back against my chest. In the distance was the sound of a siren.

Somebody in my building had probably objected to gunshots in the stairwell, and called the cops. My neighbors were so traditional.

The kid heard the siren, and for another moment held his crouch despite it. Then he broke, and turned, and ran. At the corner of Arlington Street, he turned toward Boylston Street, and disappeared. I didn't care about him. I had one, which was all I needed.

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