“Maybe not,” I said. “You hear that cough the other day? It sounded like your basic death rattle. And roll.”
“You know what I’m saying,” Spike said. “The game of cat and mouse continues.”
“Eek,” I said.
“Wouldn’t Desmond have known if Albert had been one of Maria’s potential paramours?” Spike said. “And if he’d done more than lust after her from a distance?”
“Paramours?” I said. “I think that expression was old when Nick and Nora were young.”
He toasted me with his coffee cup.
“Look at it this way,” Spike said. “If the shooter did pop Carbone as a way to throw everybody off, maybe you’ve got him on the run and you don’t even know it.”
“Or maybe we’re giving this guy too much credit, and he’s out of control in a controlled sort of way, and capable of anything.”
“Including making another run at you,” Spike said. “Which is why you thought you might have been followed out of Cambridge.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I could stay the night,” Spike said.
“Nah,” I said. “Would make me feel like a girl.”
“Can’t have that.”
“Marry me,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “Who needs sex?”
I laughed and said, “We do!”
“You decide when you’re going to tell Desmond all you know about Maria?”
“No,” I said. “I’m holding back for now. But so is he. I just don’t know what, or how much.”
Spike said he was going to walk home. He’d recently purchased a new condominium in an area on the other side of the Common that used to be called the Combat Zone but had now been gentrified in a pluperfect way over time.
I put on a short leather jacket, grabbed Rosie’s leash off the table along with my .38, and told him I’d walk him as far as Charles Street. Spike leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head.
“This was fun,” he said.
“Best. Wingman. Ever,” I said.
“You’ll figure this out,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Always have,” Spike said.
“Blah, blah, blah,” I said.
“Well,” Spike said, “there’s the old fighting spirit.”
I opened the front door, letting Rosie lead the way. I had the handle of her leash and my keys in my right hand. But as I took my first step outside, I dropped the keys, which fell to the concrete with a clatter that only sounded so loud because the street was so quiet.
“Shit,” I said.
Everything happened at once then, me turning just slightly to look down at where the keys had fallen and Spike saying “I’ll get ’em” in the split-second before we heard the unmistakable crack of a gun firing from somewhere at close range in front of us and the bullet hitting the front door between us.
Forty-Two
Spike rolled over in front of both of us, his gun somehow already cleared.
I held Rosie to me, as low to the ground as I could keep both of us, and could see a man running up River Street in the direction of the Meeting House.
“Stay down,” Spike said. “I’m going after him.”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
I had my gun out of the side pocket of the leather jacket by now, and could see lights going on all around us.
“Go back inside,” Spike said, “and call nine-one-one if somebody hasn’t already.”
He looked like a sprinter coming out of a crouch now. All the times and all the miles we had run the Half Shell, I knew how fast he was, as big as he was, how quickly he could get himself up to full speed when he wanted to show off.
But as he got near the corner of Charles and River, I saw the retreating figure suddenly stop and turn and get into a crouch himself and fire again.
Spike went down.
I heard a scream from up above me as I ran for him, and then another scream, and Rosie barking as she ran behind me, and a screech of tires somewhere up ahead. Then the street was quiet again until I could hear the first sirens in the distance.
Forty-Three
They took Spike by ambulance to the Tufts Medical Center on Washington Street, not terribly far from where he now lived. It turned out to be a flesh wound. The ER doctor said he was lucky. Spike said, “Relative to what?”
“Relative to about a foot closer to the center of your mass,” the doctor said.
They had finished working on him. Frank Belson had arrived and was with us, having badged the nurse working the desk and saying, “Friend of the family.” The doctor had already informed Spike that there was no reason for him to stay the night, even though they’d already established they had a room for him if needed.
The doctor said he was going to get Spike a sling.
“What color?” Spike said.
“Excuse me?”
The doctor was tall, young-looking, spoke with a slight Spanish accent. His name tag said “Ramirez.”
“I just want something that clashes with the fewest of my outfits,” Spike said.
The doctor frowned, said, “I think we go with basic blue here,” and left.
“Cute,” Spike said. “The doctor. Not the color.”
“Really?” Belson said.
“I actually thought he was kind of cute myself, Frank,” I said.
“Talk to me,” he said.
I told him everything that had happened from the time I opened the front door.
“Shooter was waiting out there,” Belson said. “Hard to hang around on your street without somebody noticing.”
“You have a pretty good view of my front door for a pretty good distance up River,” I said.
“Maybe he was moving around, from corner to corner, and then was in the right place to take his shot when we came out,” I said.
“Lucky,” Belson said.
“Well, for him,” Spike said.
Belson said, “We’ll send people over in the morning to canvass the neighborhood.”
“If he was out there a long time,” I said, “he knew Spike was inside with me. If not, he was there to shoot just me. If there had been people on the street, he could have just walked toward the Public Garden, or past our little dog park toward the river.”
“If you hadn’t dropped your keys...” Belson said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s back-shot everybody else so far,” he said. “This is different.”
“Almost more arrogant,” I said.
“And he’s willing to take a shot at him,” Belson said, nodding at Spike, “before he runs off.”
“He tried to scare me off once,” I said.
“Other than the Burkes and me and the Scarlet Pimpernel here,” Belson said, “who knows that you’re still on this?”
“Albert Antonioni,” I said.
“Now somebody comes right to your front door,” Belson said.
“And somehow nobody has yet taken a shot at Desmond Burke,” I said, “around whom this whole thing is supposed to revolve.”
“Curiouser and fucking curiouser,” Frank Belson said.
Forty-Four
Belson sent Spike home in a squad car. He drove me home himself. On the way he asked me for all the information I had previously withheld from him.
“You know pretty much everything I know,” I said.
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Not sure I can even remember every single thing I’ve told you so far,” I said.
“I can,” Belson said.
I honestly couldn’t remember everything I’d told him. So I told him now about all the guns going missing all of a sudden. I told him about Desmond and Albert and about Maria Cataldo, and about her dying in Providence and living in Providence for some period of time before that. I told him about my theory that Albert might have been jealous of Desmond and Maria and waited a very long time to get even with him.