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 wasnt 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 Id shot. Hed been a tall, young guy, wearing a green satin warmup jacket with Paddys in white lettering across the front, broken between the Ds 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 hed 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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I got through with the cops about 3:30 in the morning. During which time I drank too much coffee. The license plate on the Chrysler had been stolen earlier in the week from a 1986 Chevette, which belonged to an elderly woman in Amesbury. None of the cops recognized the kid Id killed. The ME promised fingerprints by tomorrow night. Belson told me theyd probably need to talk to me some more, but there was nothing wrong with my story, and he couldnt see any charges being brought. I agreed with him.
At 4:15 I was lying on my back in my bed, exhausted and wide awake. I had killed people before, and didnt like it. Id also had too much coffee. The way the kids face had looked with the pleasant summer rain falling on it made me think of Candy Sloans face, lying in the rain among the oil derricks, a long time ago. Susan was right. I had never quite put that away.
It was daylight before I got to sleep. I slept and woke up and slept and woke up until
2:30 in the afternoon, when I dragged out of bed, logy with daytime sleep. I took a shower and put on my pants and went to the kitchen, acidic still with too much really bad coffee. I made myself a fruit smoothie with frozen strawberries and a nectarine. I poured the smoothie into a tall glass and took it with me to the living room and sat in a chair by the window and looked out at Marlborough Street and drank some.
The soft rain of the night before had turned harder. It was dark for midafternoon and everything was gleaming wet. Cars were clean. The leaves on the trees were fat and shiny with rain. Good-looking women, of which the Back Bay was full, moved past now and then, alone, or walking dogs in doggie sweaters, or pushing baby strollers protected by transparent rainproof draping. The women often had bright rain gear on, looking like points of Impressionist paint in the dark wet cityscape. My apartment was quiet. I was quiet. The rain was steady and hard but not noisy, coming straight down, not rattling on the window. I sipped my smoothie. My doorbell rang.