Valediction

by Robert B. Parker

  I could hear no conversation among the pursuit. There was enough traffic sound to muffle it, but they didn't need to talk. They knew what they were doing, and how it should be done. We were at the verge of the harbor, where the Charles emptied into the Atlantic through a series of locks built into a just-finished dam across the mouth of the river. The wet air was strong with the smell of the salt sea, and the faint echo-y sense of moving water. The movement through the weeds paused, wavered, began again, and for a moment I saw a man with a beard. I fired, aiming just below the beard, squeezing the shot off carefully so as not to jerk the gun. I was running for the road when I heard a grunt from the direction of the bearded man and some movement in the weeds. The bass thump of the shotgun coincided with the clatter of shot off the steel pile I had just left. I was on the dirt road running, now straight up, hidden by the weeds, sprinting along the curve that would take me in behind the bad guys. Someone honked his horn above me on Route 93. Then a considerable number of horns began honking. A nation of sheep.

  A hundred yards down the road I ducked off it back into the weeds, cut across to an abandoned storage building, crouched beside it and waited, breathing with my mouth open as quietly as I could. There were four bullets left in the .38. I didn't have extras. Usually I did, but Saturday afternoon at a PG movie I had figured five rounds were enough. No such thing as too much money or too many bullets. Live and learn. I hope.

  The loading door to the warehouse was open, four feet off the ground, sagging badly on its hinges, and a bunch of what appeared to be old municipal ledgers was scattered and rainsoaked outside the door. Inside was dim and suggestive of packing cases. I thought about going in. No way out. Once in there and confronted, I was trapped. Better to stay out here. Hit and run, sting like a wasp, run like a rabbit, or something.

  It had gotten too dark now for me to see far. I couldn't spot any movement in the weeds. They'd have to get closer before I could see them. Or maybe they'd come along the road. Maybe I'd left tracks. These were city dudes. They wouldn't come loping along single file in the road, reading signs as they came. The tracks they knew horses ran on. But they'd come. And I was patient. I settled in a little tighter against the shed. It was corrugated metal and had once been painted white, but very little paint was left. There were remnants of milk cartons and wine bottles and beer cans and Devil Dog wrappers and other hints of civilized life having passed on. The whole area was an oasis of weeds and refuse in the middle of the city--cars, boats, people, lights, buildings, gestations, and high school kids were all around us, but in here, in the dark ten-acre wasteland-we could have been in a Sumatran rain forest. Hunting. It was getting colder and this close to the harbor the wind had picked up. I shivered a little. If the weather were better, it might have been more fun. Cops and robbers. Capture the flag. There was death involved, but that just made it serious; it didn't spoil the fun. Especially if death had very little sting left. And for me, it had barely any.

  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.

  CHAPTER 33

  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.

  CHAPTER 34

  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 coun
ter. "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?"