Valediction (13 page)

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.

Linda stood against the wall outside the pub at the Assembly Square Shopping Mall. She had dried out in the time she'd waited and her hair was curlier than usual where it had been rain-soaked. She stood motionless as I approached, and when she saw me her eyes widened but she made no other sign.

"How you doing, babe," I said. "You in town long?"

She stared at me and shook her head. "Come here often?" I said.

"What happened?" she said, her voice soft.

"I thwarted them," I said.

Her soft voice was insistent and there was some color on her cheeks. It wasn't the flush of health, it was two red spots, unnatural and hot looking. "What happened, goddamn you?"

"There were five of them, I think I killed four. One I sent back to his boss with a message."

"You just killed four people? Just now? And then you come here and joke with me? `You in town long?' Jesus Christ."

"They were trying to kill me."

"What was that stuff about losing me too," she said.

I felt very tired, it was hard to concentrate. "I don't know," I said. "What stuff?"

"You said you didn't want to lose me too. Were you talking about Susan?"

I remembered. I remembered other things. Feelings I'd had. I remembered on the locks in the dark rain with the wind off the harbor pulling my words away,
You didn't kill her on me this time.

"I was thinking of a woman in Los Angeles," I said. "I let her get killed."

"Well, I'm not she," Linda said.

"I know. I'll call a cab and get us out of here."

"And then what?" Linda said.

"Cook a couple of steaks," I said. "Drink a little wine? Your place or mine?"

Linda shook her head. "Not tonight. I . . . I can't tonight. I have never . . . I'm exhausted and I need to be alone and to think. I can't just eat and drink and . . . I can't do anything after something like this."

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "Let me get us home anyway."

I found a phone booth in the mall and called a cab, and Linda and I went and waited for it at the main mall entrance, inside, out of the rain. We didn't talk and Linda, normally the most touching of people, kept her hands buried in her pockets and stood a foot away.

The cab dropped us off at Linda's condo. I got out with her. She said, "I can go up all right alone. You better keep the cab."

"No," I said. "I want to see that you get home safely."

She shrugged and we went in. I stood beside her when she unlocked the door. She switched on the light. No one lurked within.

She put her hand on my chest and kissed me lightly on the mouth.

"Good night," she said. "I'm sorry, it's just . . . well, you should understand. I've never . . ."

"I know," I said. "I'll call you soon."

"Yes," she said. "I hope . . . I don't know. This was awful."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry this part had to spill over. I'm sorry it had to splash on you."

"It's not your fault," Linda said. "But I'm sorry, too, that I had to see it, and to know this part of you."

"Part of the package," I said. "Part of the deal."

She nodded, her eyes still very wide and the pupils enormous. "You are a very fine man," she said. And closed the door.

I got five hours sleep.

The doorbell rang at 7:30 in the morning, a steady ring, like someone had placed his thumb against it and leaned. I put on a bathrobe aNd pressed the buzz-in button for downstairs and opened my door and went to the kitchen. I put the water on to boil and got out the coffee and the coffee maker. I had the coffee measured into the pot when Belson came in my open apartment door. There was another cop with him that I didn't know.

I put three coffee cups on the counter. "You look really adorable in the fucking robe, Chickie," Belson said.

"Either of you guys take cream or sugar?"

Belson shook his head. The other cop said, "Just black."

Belson said, "This is Carmine Lizotti."

I nodded at the cop. He said, "How ya doing?"

Belson said, "You wanna guess why we come by this morning?" He looked like he'd been up for some time. His thin face was clean shaven with the faint blue glow of a heavy beard under his tan. He had on a seersucker suit and a straw hat with a wide blue band, and his black loafers gleamed with polish. Lizotti was heavier and a little shorter with a wedge-shaped nose and a prominent chin. He had on a coarse weave summerweight blue blazer with his white shirt collar spread out over the lapels. He smoked a filter-tipped cigarette, holding the filter tip between his teeth when he talked.

"I'm guessing you found a 1980 Subaru hatchback with the left side torn off in the weed yard under Route 93 off City Square in Charlestown. And you checked the registration and found it was mine."

"Car's totaled," Lizotti said, his cigarette bobbing up and down in his teeth. "You oughta be driving an American car anyway."

"Serves me right," I said.

I poured the hot water over the coffee and pressed the plunger down on the pot, squeezing the grounds to the bottom.

"French roast," I said. "That mean you won't drink it?"

"Subaru wasn't the only thing totaled in there," Belson said.

I got some cream out of the refrigerator, and a box of sugar out of the cupboard. "Hope you don't require formal service," I said.

I put a couple of teaspoons on the counter near the cups.

"I got some whole wheat cinnamon and raisin bagels here," I said. "And some all natural cream cheese. No gum or other additives."

"Sure," Belson said. "We'd be fools not to."

Lizotti said, "For crissake, Frank, who is this guy, Julia fucking Child?"

"He's elegant, Liz. Everything just so. An elegant guy."

I put three bagels into the oven to heat, and took a block of cream cheese out of the refrigerator and unwrapped it and put it on a saucer. I got three butter knives out and put them beside the saucer.

"Got to let the coffee steep a little," I said. "And nobody likes a cold bagel."

"We found four fucking stiffs in there," Lizotti said.

"Three shot with a thirty-eight, one with a shotgun," I said.

"Probably," Belson said. "M.E. hasn't got a report yet."

I poured coffee into the three cups, and added some cream from the carton and sugar from the box. The box has one of those little metal fold-out pouring spouts. I stirred my coffee and sipped some.

"Water-decaffeinated," I said. "Mocha almond. You can get it at Bread and Circus in Cambridge."

Belson added sugar, no cream. Lizotti ignored his.

Lizotti said, "You admitting you did it?"

"Yep."

I put my coffee down, went to the bedroom, and got my gun. I brought it back into the kitchen, still in its clip-on holster, with the strap snapped. Lizotti's hand moved under his coat as I came back in. Belson shook his head.

"The weapon in question," I said, and gave it to Belson. He removed it from the holster, opened the cylinder, shook out the fresh load I'd put in before I went to bed, snapped shut the cylinder, and handed me back the holster and the five rounds. He dropped the gun in his coat pocket.

Lizotti said, "Been fired recently?"

I said, "Yes."

Lizotti said, "Give it a sniff, Frank."

Belson grinned at me and had a little more coffee.

"For crissake, Liz. The guy already confessed."

"The slugs you dig out of those guys will match the ones you test-fire from my gun," I said.

"How about the shotgun?" Lizotti said.

"It's in the river by the new locks," I said.

"It belonged to Fat Willie Vance," Belson said. "Spenser took it away from him and shot him with it."