Valediction

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