Widow’s Walk

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It was early evening when I left Race’s loft. Darker than it should have been, because it was overcast, with a warm rain falling on A Street. I turned up the collar of my raincoat and walked toward my car, which was parked past the overpass, toward Summer. There was no traffic. In the soft damp hush I thought I heard a car engine idling, but couldn’t tell which one it was. On my left ahead, beneath the underpass, was an iron stairway that led down from the street above.

I paused. I had annoyed a lot of people in the last week or so. If someone wanted to shoot me this would be a dandy spot. Come down the stairs behind me, put a bullet in the back of my head, get into the car waiting at the curb, be out of sight in ten seconds. I stood. Nothing happened. I wasn’t even sure I had heard the engine idling. And even if I did, people sat in cars with engines running all the time. Air conditioner on. Waiting for the wife. Listening to the radio. Calling on the car phone. I was probably overreacting. Other than embarrassment and time wasted, however, there was no down side to overreacting. Underreacting might get me killed.

I took my gun out and held it against my side, and walked under the bridge. The iron stairs were on my left, and as I passed them, I turned suddenly and ran up them. Three steps from the top I collided with a guy coming down. He had a gun in his hand and when I ran into him, it went off over my left shoulder. I shot him. He made a soft grunt and fell backward and down onto the wet iron stairs. I turned and ran down the stairs toward the street. Behind me I could hear the body slide down a couple of stairs.

As I reached the street, headlights caught me and a maroon Chrysler pulled out from the curb behind where mine was parked. I dove flat onto the sidewalk at the foot of the stairway and heard a burble of gunshots rattle against the stone bridge buttresses. Automatic weapon. As the car ripped down A Street, its wheels spinning on the wet surface, I got my feet under me and headed back up the stairs. The car did a screeching U-turn and headed back. I stepped over the body of the guy I had shot. His gun lay two steps above him on the metal stair tread. It was a Glock. Below me the car slowed and someone sprayed the area at the foot of the stairs with gunfire. I went to the edge of the overpass and fired straight down into the roof of the car beneath me. The Chrysler lurched once, then surged forward and headed out of sight toward Congress Street, leaving a smell of burnt rubber and gunpowder to mix with the wet smell of the rain, and the more distant smell of the harbor.

I reloaded my gun and went back down the iron steps and knelt beside the man I’d shot. He’d been a tall, young guy, wearing a green satin warmup jacket with Paddy’s in white lettering across the front, broken between the D’s by the snap front of the jacket. His freckled face was blank now, wet with the rain. His eyes were empty. My bullet had caught him under the chin and plowed up through his brain and out the back of his head. There was a rain-diluted splatter of blood and tissue on the step where he’d fallen. He still wore his Red Sox cap.

In his pants pocket I found a spare magazine for the Glock, and two twenty-dollar bills folded over twice. No wallet. No identification. If anybody in the vicinity of Fort Point Channel had heard the gunfire they had ignored it. There was no activity on the street. No sirens. Just the merciless rain, and me.

I put my gun back in my holster and went down the stairs to my car and called the cops.