Back to the other camera and we see Dolmacher giving himself up, two arrows still dangling out of his torso; overwhelmed by trench coats so that there's nothing to see. Then back to the dais and we see Boone staggering around blind with his hands over his face, everyone up there standing with the expressions of developing shock you always see in assassination footage-eyebrows coming up and together, hands rising up from the sides, mouth forming into an O, but the
body still stiff and unreactive. Boone is lost, out of control. Then he shakes his head, leans into the body of a local cop who has just nan up to help him, and asks him for a hanky. He's just been hit in the face by a pellet of red paint and it's hurting his eyes.
30
JIM AND I TURNED TAIL AND RAN . First we ran in a state of terror, but then, when we figured out that we weren't being followed, drew closer together and started to skip and leap through the air, whooping, laughing like loons, like high school kids who've just egged the principal's house. I wasn't thinking, yet, about Dolmacher spending the rest of his life in the booby hatch, out of reach.
Finally, toward the end, we ran very slowly and made moaning and puking noises. And when we found our way back to the trailhead, Boone was waiting for us. In a helicopter.
It was a news chopper from one of the Boston stations. Boone had agreed to trade an exclusive interview for a lift back down to Boston.
"I'm finished," Jim Grandfather said. "I'm all done with this crap."
He went over to his pickup, leaned against it and breathed. I stood with my hands on my knees and did the same.
"You know, for ten seconds," I said, "I was sure you had saved my life."
"So was I."
"Let's just say you did."
"I don't care."
"I have a question for you," I said. "If you'd been carrying a real arrow-a big-game arrow-would you have used it?"
Jim stood up straight and shrugged. His big coat fell off his shoulders and his quiver tumbled out of it. All the fishing arrows had been used, but there were three in there with wide, razor-sharp heads. "No," he said. "Too dangerous."
I laughed because I thought he was joking, but he wasn't.
"You've drawn my bow. If I used one of these, it would go all the way through Dolmacher's body, out the other side and kill one or two other people."
"Well, I'm glad."
"Yeah. Considering that he was shooting blanks, I'd have felt like kind of a prick."
Jim and I hugged for a while, something I never do with another man, then Boone came out and they shook hands. Jim got in his truck and drove away. The copter's engine started to rev up, so Boone and I had a few private moments while we walked back through the rotor wash.
"What did you know," I asked, "and when did you know it?"
Boone gaped at me for a second, then laughed. "Shit. You don't think I'd step between Fleshy and a bullet, do you?"
We both laughed. I wasn't really sure. I wasn't convinced that he could recognize Dolmacher's gun that quickly.
"I always wanted to be a Secret Service agent," he confessed. "Because then you're the only person in the world who can knock down the president and get away with it."
We climbed into the chopper and Boone started giving a prolonged, monosyllabic, "aw shucks" interview about why he had put another man's life before his own. He was claiming to be a Boston environmentalist named Daniel Winchester. I seized upon a catnap; it wasn't that far back to Boston. I was hoping they'd swing over the yacht club, because I wanted to look down into our slip and see if Wes had gotten out the other Zodiac yet. If so, I'd probably be ripping it off sometime soon. I was in luck; they took us back to Logan itself.
That was fine, since the Blue Line took us right in to the Aquarium stop. I was still too recognizable around the yacht club, so I had Boone saunter by there while I loitered at a McDonalds. I had one of those milkshakes that's made from sweetened Wonder Bread dough extruded by a pneumatic machine. This, perhaps, would serve as a buffer against the toxic waste inside my system.
When Boone emerged from traffic he wore a grin. The ' Zodiac was there, all right, but with a wimpy ten-horse motor, and even that was missing a few strategic parts. So before we did anything else, we prepared ourselves. At a marine supply place out on one of the piers we bought ourselves a fuel line, spark plugs and other small important items that Wes might have removed to make the Zodiac unstealable. Boone flaunted his stack of credit cards.
We rode the Green Line to Kenmore Square and hopped a bus out to Watertown Square. Then it was a two-mile walk to Kelvin's. My pant legs had turned into stiff tubes from being saturated with mud and then drying out, and at one point I had to climb down an embankment into some dead shrubs and broken glass and take a quick squat on the ground. While I was there I looked through my wallet and realized that all my credit cards belonged to a dead man. My transformation into a derelict was almost complete. Jim had been supporting me through that bad week in New Hampshire, but now I was back in Boston, with nothing except a wicked case of diarrhea.
"You should bow out too," I said. "Shit, you've got your opportunity now. You're a national hero. You can rehabilitate yourself, tell your story."
"I've been thinking about doing that," Boone confessed.
"Well don't be shy. I can get along without you."
"I know. But this is more interesting."
"Whatever." This was a useful word I'd picked up from Bart.
"I'll stick with it a little longer and see what's happening."
"Whatever."
I'd been going through a lot of laxatives, trying to flush out my colon. It seemed to be working, because the nausea and cramps had subsided. Maybe I could ease off a little, get
a Big Mac or something. Or if we could get to Hoa's, I could eat some steamed rice.
We got to Kelvin's just about twelve hours after our first, midnight visit. Since it was daylight, we came in the front door and got the full family welcome: dogs poking their muzzles into our balls, kids showing us their new toys, Kelvin's wife, Charlotte, fetching big tumblers of cranraz. All the kids were running around either naked or in diapers and pretty soon I joined them as Charlotte wouldn't let me out of the foyer without removing my pants. All I managed to hang on to was my colored jockey shorts and my t-shirt. Boone had to give up his socks and his shirt. All of it went into the laundry. We wandered half-naked down into the basement.
Charlotte's sister had decorated Kelvin's third-floor office just the way he wanted it-ergonomic furniture, a couple extra speakers wired into the main stereo, coffee maker, warm paneling. He went up there about an hour a week to write letters to his mother and balance the family checkbook. Then he spent about a hundred hours a week down here in this dank, dark, junk-filled basement. There was a workbench in the corner where he made stuff. There was a pool table in the middle where he relaxed. An old concrete laundry tub against one wall which he used as a urinal. He'd covered two entire walls with old blackboards he'd bought at flea markets. That was the only way he could think: on a blackboard, standing up. Sometimes it was long, gory strings of algebra, sometimes it was flowcharts from computer programs. Today there were a lot of hexagons and pentagons. Kelvin was doing organic chemistry, diagramming a lot of polycyclic stuff. Probably trying to figure out the energy balance of these bugs.