earth. He laughed.
Vanessa rolled off me.
“You okay?”
“No breath,” she managed.
“Wind got knocked out of you. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
She nodded, gulping for air, and I took off after the kid.
He’d caught up with the group and they had twenty yards on me, easy, by the time I gave chase. Every ten yards I ran, they clocked an extra five. I was running full out, and I’m pretty fast in the first place, but I was losing ground steadily as they reached a straightaway, no curves, no tunnels.
I dipped my hand as I ran, scooped up a rock, and took another four steps as I zeroed in on the back of the kid with Vanessa’s bag. I threw sidearm, putting my whole body into it, my feet leaving the ground like Ripken throwing from third to first.
The rock hit the kid high on the back between the shoulder blades, and he doubled over like he’d been punched in the stomach. His gangly body canted hard to the left, and one skate left the pavement. His arms pinwheeled, with Vanessa’s bag jerking in his left hand, and then he lost it all at once. He pitched forward, with his head surging for the pavement and his hands coming around too late, the bag swinging out and away, falling to the grass to his left as he performed a triple somersault on asphalt.
His friends gave one shocked glance back over their shoulders and then accelerated. They reached a bend and disappeared just as I caught up with the acrobat.
Even with knee and elbow pads, he looked like he’d been thrown from a plane. His arms, legs, and chin were a raw, pink mess of scrapes and contusions. He rolled over on his back and I was grateful to see that he was older than I’d first guessed-twenty, at least.
I picked up Vanessa’s bag, and the kid said, “I’m bleeding all over, motherfucker.”
I spied a compact, a set of keys, and a box of Altoids on the grass, but otherwise the contents of Vanessa’s bag seemed intact. Bills in a silver money clip and credit cards bound by a rubber band sat at the bottom amid cigarettes, lighter, and makeup.
“You’re bleeding?” I said. “Oh. Whoops.”
The kid tried to sit up, then decided against it and flopped back down.
My cell phone rang.
“That would be him,” the kid said through huffing breaths.
Humid as all hell out here, and my spine turned to dry ice.
“What?”
“The guy who gave us a hundred bucks to take you off. He said he’d be calling.” The kid closed his eyes and hissed at the pain.
I pulled the cell phone from the front pocket of my jeans, looked back up at the bend where I’d left Vanessa. Fuck the kid, I thought. He wouldn’t be able to tell me anything.
And I broke into a run as I put the cell phone to my ear.
“Wesley.”
I heard snorts and liquid chewing close to the receiver, Wesley’s voice echoing in the background like he was in a bathroom.
“Aww, who’s a good doggie? Yeah. That’s it, boy. Good boy. Yeah. Mmm. Chow down, fella.”
“Wesley.”
“Don’t they feed you at home?” Wesley said in the background as Clarence’s greedy chewing continued.
I turned the bend, saw Vanessa getting to her feet, her back to the tunnel 150 yards beyond her, where I could see the dark shapes of a short dog and a tall man bending over him, hand below his snout.
“Wesley!” I shouted.
The man in the tunnel straightened, and Vanessa spun and looked toward the tunnel as Wesley’s voice came directly into the phone.
“Gotta love a dog whistle, Pat. We don’t hear a fucking thing, but those pooches go wild.”
“Wesley, listen to-”
“You’re never sure which thing will make a woman crack like a fucking egg, Pat. The fun lies in trying.”
He broke the connection and the man in the tunnel stepped out the far side and disappeared.
I reached Vanessa, pointed at her wild face as I passed. “Stay here. You hear me?”
She tried to catch up. “Patrick?” She grasped her hip, wincing, kept trying to run.
“Stay here!” I screamed it, could hear the echoes of desperation in my voice as I ran forward with my torso twisted back toward her.
“No. What’re you-”
“Don’t take another fucking step!” I tossed her bag so that it exploded all over the pavement in front of her and she followed the bounce and slide of her money clip. She bent by it and I turned my torso forward, willed myself to run even faster.
I slowed, though, as I neared the tunnel, felt something build in my chest, rise up my esophagus, and catch there, burning, even before I saw him.
Clarence wobbled out of the darkness toward me, his normally sad dog eyes now confused and afraid.
“Here, boy,” I said softly, and dropped to my knees, felt the liquid burning in my throat find my eyes.
He took another four steps on quaking legs and then sat back on his haunches. He stared at me through drooping eyelids. He seemed to be trying to ask me something.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Hey, guy. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
I willed myself not to look away from the bewildered pain in his face, that searching question.
He lowered his head slowly and vomited a stream of pure black.
“Oh, Jesus.” It came out of me in a hoarse whisper.
I crawled over to him, and when I touched his head, I felt the fire there, the scorch of fever. He rolled over and lay on his side and panted. I turned on my side with him and he looked up at me as I caressed his trembling rib cage and sweaty, feverish brow.
“Hey,” I whispered as his eyes rolled up to whites. “Hey, you’re not alone, Clarence. Okay? You’re not alone.”
His mouth opened wide as if he were about to yawn and a racking shudder thrust its way through his body from his back paws to his burning head.
“Goddammit,” I said when he died. “Goddammit.”
28
“I want to burn him alive,” I said to Angie over the cell phone. “I want to kneecap the sick prick.”
“Calm down.”
I sat in the waiting room of the veterinarian’s office where Vanessa had demanded we take Clarence. I’d carried the soft corpse in and laid it on a cold metal table. Then I’d seen a request that I leave in Vanessa’s eyes and I’d followed it back out into the waiting room.
“I want to cut off his fucking head and piss down his neck.”
“Now you sound like Bubba.”
“I feel like Bubba. I want him dead, Ange. I want him gone. I want this to stop now.”
“Then
“He’s a mailman,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s a mailman,” I repeated. “Right here in the city. Back Bay.”
“You’re not kidding,” she said.
“Nope. Wetterau lived in Back Bay. Karen was always at his place, according to her roommate, only came home to pick up clothes and mail.”
