"How about silly," I said. "That's almost like cute."
"It was pretty silly, I guess."
"Horses," I said. "Horses would have saved it."
It was still raining like it used to in Korea when we went out. On a nice day it would still have been light, but here at 5:15 with the overcast and the rain, cars were snapping on their headlights as we pulled out of the lot. Beyond where my car was parked another car had parked, illegally, half out into the street. Inconsiderate bastard. No need to park in the street. Plenty of spaces open around the lot, now that several of the movies had let out.
Linda took my hand and tapped it lightly against her thigh as we walked. "It's a kind of comic book, isn't it?" she said.
"Yeah, or a pulp magazine."
Why would somebody park like that next to my car? It was live-parked, the wipers were going. The car on the other side of me had the wipers going too.
"Absolutely fearless heroes," Linda said. "Absolutely hideous villains. Monstrous tortures. But no sex."
Why would a car be live-parked on either side of mine? Why would two cars sit with the motors running in a theater parking lot at a shopping mall on a rainy Saturday.
I stopped.
Linda said, "What is it?"
"Something's wrong," I said.
The two cars sat there, boxing mine. The wipers going. The theater neon splashed brightly on the shiny asphalt. The taillights of cars were bright and their headlights made glistening sweeps as they pulled out and backed up and shifted into first and pulled away. Home for maybe a supper of baked beans and corn bread. Get ready to go out on Saturday night.
I edged Linda sideways between two parked cars. We stood still. Linda had her hood up, but the wisps of hair that stuck out in front were plastered to her forehead. The rain ran in a small drizzle off the brim of my hat when I tipped my head forward. The two cars didn't budge.
Linda hunched her shoulders impatiently and squeezed my hand. "What are we doing?" she said.
"There's a car parked on either side of mine, with the motors running. It's making me nervous."
"Why . . ."
I shook my head. "Come on," I said. We went down the row of parked cars and swung out wide around the perimeter of the parking lot. The exodus from the afternoon show was over, the influx for the early evening show had arrived and parked and gone inside. There was little movement in the lot. We crossed the street and moved behind the cars parked on that side, moving along the near end of the shopping mall, parallel to where my car was parked and bookended. We stopped behind a Dodge van with the spare tire mounted on a swingaway rack, and some racy stripes swooshed along its side.
"You think those men are after us?" Linda was whispering.
"No," I said. "Me. I think that Mickey Paultz is trying to hit me."
"Shouldn't we call the police?"
"Yes."
I stared at the cars beside mine. Looking through the rain-splattered windows of the van.
"But we're not going to," Linda said.
"Not yet," I said.
"What are we going to do?"
"We'll wait awhile," I said. "See what they do."
Linda tugged her cape tighter around her, the hood over her head, and pressed against the van. "I'm scared," she said. "I'm so scared I can barely stand up."
"I'm sorry," I said. "But I want to keep you with me."
"Because why?" she whispered.
I shook my head. I remembered another rainy day. In Los Angeles. When I had blundered through an oil field. Looking for Candy Sloan.
Linda's voice became more insistent, and her whisper was louder. "Because why?" she said.
"I'm not going to lose you too," I said.
"My Jesus Christ," Linda whispered. "They don't want me."
I looked at her in the semidark with her cape clutched to her and the hood tightened around her small face. She was shaking.
"Yes," I said. "They're not after you." The car on the outside of mine was a light blue Buick sedan with four doors. As we watched, it slipped into gear and moved away from my car and down the aisle toward the theater.
"He's impatient," I said. "He's going to look."
The Buick went down the aisle, turned at the end, and moved slowly up the next aisle. The other car stayed where it was beside mine. It had a maroon vinyl roof and looked like a Mercury or a Ford.
"Okay," I said. "In a minute I'm going for the car. As soon as I do, you head for the mall. Get in there and mingle. These guys don't want you and don't even know what you look like. Once you're away from me you'll be safe."
"Will you come back for me?"
"Yes, I'll meet you in the bar in the mall, Dapper Dan's it's called. If I'm not there by closing, call the cops. Boston Homicide, ask for Sergeant Belson or Lieutenant Quirk. Talk to either of them and explain what happened. If neither is there, talk to whoever you get."
She nodded. "Sergeant Belson, or Lieutenant Quirk, okay?"
She nodded again.
The Buick was at the near end of the next lane. It turned and headed back down the next one. Crouching as low as I could, my gun in my right hand, the car keys in my teeth, I sprinted across the open road toward my car. I yanked the door open and I was in. And the key was in the ignition. I turned the key and tromped on the accelerator. It started. The window of the inside car started down. I fired at it, shattering my own window on the passenger side. I floored the Subaru and screeched, wheels spinning on the wet pavement, out of the slot and toward the street. A bullet punched through the side window and out through the windshield, sending spiderweb cracks out in a flared radius.
I stuck the gun into my pocket and using both hands headed along the edge of the parked cars, staying close to them for cover, and rammed a right turn and floored it for Mystic Avenue. Behind me the Buick and the other car roared after me. It looked like a Ford.
There was a red light at Mystic Avenue and a Chevy wagon stopped at it. I swung inside it and ran the light, turning right onto Mystic Avenue with the rain driving straight at me. The chase cars behind me parted, one went outside, one went inside the Chevy as they, too, ran the light. There were two more red lights at the complicated intersections of Routes 28 and 93 and Mystic Avenue. I ducked past an oncoming Volvo and heard brakes scream behind me as the two chase cars avoided it. It gave me a fifty-foot longer lead. I U-turned under the sign that said not to under Route 93 and headed back in toward Charlestown. At Somerville Lumber I went up the ramp onto 93 with the Subaru going as fast as it would in every gear. Four cylinders were not many. The car fishtailed on the slippery pavement, but I held its nose in and never let up on the gas. I turned my headlights on. There was maybe a mile of straightaway and the two chase cars were closing the gap with their big engines. Not good. I swung off at the Sullivan Square exit and plunged down into Charlestown. The Buick was hard behind me, coming on my right. The ramp was potholed and the Subaru bounced like an eccentric pony as we careened down the ramp by the Hood milk plant. On the straightaway that ran toward Bunker Hill College the Buick was right up on my tail on the inside and the Ford, if it was a Ford, was only a yard or two back on my left. As we came up on the college I veered left and into the tunnel that led toward City Square. The Buick couldn't make it and screeched past on the surface above me. The Ford went into the tunnel with me at about seventy and when we came back up thirty yards farther on, the Buick was running the light on the surface road but farther back. Ahead was City Square. Ahead also was a traffic jam that backed up from the Charlestown Bridge and the light at the Boston end. I swung up onto the margin of the road; my speed dropped to fifty. I yanked the four-wheel-drive lever up and the car trembled as it went in. To the right was a rotted chain link fence, ahead I knew there was a gate, and a driveway that led into the sand and gravel business located under the elevated structure of Route 93. The fields around it were head-high with weeds, and scrap, and abandoned municipal maintenance buildings. I was gaining on the chase cars. They were skidding and spinning their big wheels in the muddy roadside, lurching half sideways as they came on. I got to the gate. It was open. I wrenched the Subaru into a skidding turn and rammed on into the mud driveway and across it and in among the weeds that were higher than the car. Among the weeds was a pile of steel girders left over from the demolition of the elevated railroad that used to run into City Square. The Subaru hit them with the left headlight and bumper and fender and tore them loose and canted up on one side as the four-wheel drive kept shoving. The car stalled with one wheel two feet off the ground and the whole left front quarter shredded.