I nodded. "It's not enough you gotta go to Sarah Lawrence," I said to Paul, "you have to carry a purse in public."

He adjusted the shoulder bag. "It's to hold my tutu," he said.

At my apartment we had roast duck with fruit stuffing and three bottles of Pinot Noir and at 1:15 Paul and I sat at my kitchen counter drinking brandy with soda. Paige had succ.u.mbed to the wine and gone to bed.

"You've been to see Susan?" Paul said.

"Yes."

"How is it?"

"It's okay," I said. "A little out of sync maybe."

Paul nodded. "She coming home for Christmas?"

"I don't know," I said. "We didn't discuss it."

"You could go down there."

"Sure," I said.

"Paige and I would be fine here. If you want to go down, it's okay."

I nodded.

"You ever think about dating someone else?" Paul said.

I drank some brandy and soda. "Someone else?"

"Sure. That girl you used to go with before Susan. Brenda? You could go out with her."

There were three ice cubes in my gla.s.s, and a shot of brandy and the rest soda, except I had drunk half of it. Part of the top ice cube was above the surface.

"No," I said.

"Why not?"

"I love Susan," I said. "I want to be with her. Other people bore me."

"Never, no one but Susan? You never met anyone else?"

"I liked a woman in L.A. Slept with her once."

"Why don't you go visit her?"

"She's dead," I said.

Paul was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. "That one," he said.

"Yes."

The dishwasher finished its cycle and clicked off. The silence was nearly obtrusive in the aftermath.

"It's more than that, Paul. It's more than finding no one else so interesting."

He nodded. "If you could love somebody else, then what would it say about this great love you've been loving for ten years?"

"The new religion calls all in doubt," I said.

"You pay a very high price, as I said last time, for being what you are."

I nodded.

"It makes you better than other men," Paul said. "If you hadn't been what you are, where would I be? But it also traps you. Machismo's captive. Honor, commitment, absolute fidelity, the whole myth."

"Love," I said. "Love's in there."

"Of course it is, and, if need be, to love pure and chaste from afar. But, d.a.m.n it, I'd like to see you get more back."

"Me too," I said.

"I don't mean from Susan. I mean from life, for crissake. You deserve it. You deserve everything you want. You have a right to it."

I drank the rest of my drink and made another one.

"I am what I am, kid. Not by accident. By effort, a brick at a time. I knew what I wanted to be and I finally am. I won't go back."

"I know," Paul said. "You can't even talk about things like this unless you're drinking."

"I can," I said. "But unless I'm drinking, talking about things like this seems pointless. I can't be what I am and love Susan differently."

"And you won't be something else?" he said.

"I worked too hard to be this," I said.

Paul got up and made himself another drink.

"Maybe the question is can you be what you are if Susan's change of life is permanent," he said.

"The way I feel about her won't change," I said.

"How about the way you feel about yourself?"

"I'm working on that," I said.

Chapter 29.

Paul slept in my bed with Paige. I took the couch. In the morning I got up with a half hangover and an odd sense that somewhere last night I had turned a corner. I looked at my watch. 6:20. A few miles along the Charles and maybe the half hangover would go away.

I went silently into my bedroom, got my running things, and brought them out to the living room, where I dressed. Running with a gun on the hip is jouncy. But running without one when Joe Broz had speculated about dropping you in the harbor is shortsighted. My solution was to take the little.25 automatic that I used for a back-up. I pumped a sh.e.l.l up into the chamber and then eased the hammer back down and carried it in my hand. It was small enough so that my hand concealed it and other joggers would be unlikely to overreact.

The weather was superior for Boston in December. The temperature was nearly forty and the walkways along the esplanade were clear and black. I began to run along the river, westbound. To my left the backs of Beacon Street apartments faced out onto the river. A lot of small balconies, a lot of big picture windows, at ground level, and a narrow alley cleverly named Back Street, with parking s.p.a.ces and occasional garages. Between me and Back Street Storrow Drive was still nearly empty in the slowly developing light. In an hour commuter traffic would fill it, and the air would be thick with hydrocarbons. An MDC police cruiser moved slowly up behind me on the pathway. I stepped aside to let it pa.s.s and it drove slowly on and disappeared as the pathway curved with the river.

Paul understood me in a way that few people did. He was only eighteen but he'd had to rebuild from scratch and understood self-creation. He'd explained to me once about how a dancer has to be physically centered in order to perform properly. He was centered in ways beyond dancing and I understood the effort that had gone into it. Some of the effort had been mine. But I hadn't done it. He had done it.

Ahead of me a man in a beige jogging suit unhooked the leash from a golden retriever and the dog dashed toward the river bank, its nose to the ground. Maybe I should get a dog. Man's best friend.

I was feeling pretty good. It was always easier to feel good when something I was working on was winding up. There was a sense of completion. Especially if the wind-up was orderly. The sun was up now, not very high, but fully above the horizon, and I squinted against it. I hated running in winter. In spring you worked up a good sweat and the muscles rocked easy in vernal heat. But when I didn't run I began to feel angular and stiff, as if I would make a clanking sound when I moved. Runner's high, where are you when I need you?

The way I felt about Susan was not Susan's problem, of course. I loved her not for her sake, but for mine. Loving her was easy, maybe even irresistible. It was also necessary, but it was my necessity, not hers. What the h.e.l.l was she doing so bad? Devoting a lot of time to her work, being caught up in it even. So what, thousands of people cared deeply for their work and were able to love one another. Whether I came first with Susan, or second, I could love her as much as I cared to, or needed to. The trick was to do it with dignity. As I went under the Ma.s.s Ave bridge I saw a pale blue Buick sedan parked there and standing beside it were Ed and his fat friend with the van-d.y.k.e beard. Ed pointed a gun at me. So did Vand.y.k.e. With my hands at my side I thumbed back the hammer on the.25.

"Joe wants you wasted," Ed said.

I shot him in the chest with the.25 and he spun half around and fell on his side. I hit the ground with him. Vand.y.k.e shot at me and hit me in the top of my left thigh and I fired three more shots at him. One of them caught him under the right eye and he was probably dead by the time he hit. I rolled over and checked Ed. He was dead too. I looked down at my left leg. The dark blue cotton sweat pants were black with blood. I undid them and looked at the wound. The bullet had entered on the inside of my thigh and gone right through. It didn't hurt much yet, but it would. I put the gun into the pocket of my jacket, stripped off the jacket, took off the white T-shirt I wore underneath, folded it the long way, and wrapped it around my thigh. I held it there with one hand while I pulled Ed's belt off and strapped it tight around the T-shirt. Then I put on my jacket and pulled up my sweat pants and experimented with standing up. I could. The bone in my thigh was probably not broken. The traffic on Storrow was starting to build, but the chances of flagging someone down were slim. The guy with the golden retriever was nowhere in sight. Neither was the dog. Neither was the MDC cruiser that had pa.s.sed me earlier. Never a cop around when you need him.

My leg still didn't hurt much, but I felt dizzy and sick. Ma.s.s General Hospital was a mile or so back. I swayed a little and looked at the Buick. I took a step toward it and almost fell. I steadied, took a sort of hop, and got my hands on its hood. The motor was running. Balancing against it, I edged along past the two dead men and got in. It was an automatic. A clutch would have been difficult. I put the car in gear, took off the emergency, and drove forward; the car b.u.mped over something that I knew was Ed. But I didn't have much strength for maneuvering. Ed wouldn't care.

It was like driving drunk. I could barely keep my eyes open. With both hands on the wheel I stared as hard as I could at the curving black ribbon of the pathway. Back eastbound I went. I didn't dare go fast for fear I'd lose control. The car wavered as I drove. My head kept drooping and jerking back up as I caught myself. A couple of joggers moved out of my way. They probably glared at me, but I didn't have the strength to notice. All of what I had left channeled onto the asphalt ahead of me. Dimly I realized that the radio was on and a morning man was talking brightly about the last record and introducing the traffic reporter. Avoid the esplanade; there's a double homicide and a slow-moving vehicle on the footpath.

The pathway began to waver and the steering wheel got more and more limber. The pathway curved in close to Storrow Drive and the wrought iron fence that separated me from Storrow Drive suddenly surged up in front of me and rammed into the car. The impact made no sound, and as I spiraled down into the dark I could hear clearly the radio still playing: "This is radio eighty-five... eighty-five... eighty-five..."

And I woke up with Martin Quirk leaning over the end of the bed with his hands clasped and his forearms resting on the footboard.

Chapter 30.

Quirk said, "The emergency room people tell me you're not going to die."

"Heartening," I said. My voice seemed a little uncoordinated.

"They say you can probably go home tomorrow," Quirk said.

"I'm going home today." My voice was better. I could feel a connection with it.

Quirk shrugged. An I.V. unit was plugged into the back of my left hand.

"Want to tell me about it?" Quirk said.

"I don't think so," I said.

A small blond-haired nurse with big blue eyes came in and took my pulse.

"Nice to see you awake," she said.

"Nice to be awake," I said. Polite.

She smiled and took my temperature. It was one of those electronic thermometers connected to a small pack on her belt. You didn't even have to shake it down. Where was the fun in that? Quirk was quiet while she took her readings. She noted her results on a small chart and said, "Good."

When she was gone Quirk said, "Up under the Ma.s.s Ave bridge there are two stiffs shot to death with a small-caliber automatic; four ejected sh.e.l.ls are scattered around them. In your jacket pocket the MDC cops found a twenty-five-caliber automatic with four rounds gone. One of the stiffs is Eddie DiBenardi. The car you rammed into the fence is registered to him. The other guy is Roger Francona. He had a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson with a round missing. You have a hole in your leg. They told me downstairs that you're lucky, it missed the bone. Eddie DiBenardi's belt is missing, and one about the right size was wrapped around your leg when they brought you in." Quirk had straightened and walked to the window and was looking out with his hands in his hip pockets. He turned to look at me.

"Some of us are beginning to suspect a connection," he said.

"You suspect me on that kind of flimsy evidence?" I said.

"Sort of."

I nodded. "They jumped me. They didn't say why. I was jogging along, minding my own business."

"Carrying a loaded gun?" Quirk said.

"Carrying a loaded gun, and these two guys attempted to shoot me."

"And succeeded," Quirk said.

"And I returned fire in self-defense," I said.

"You know either one of them?"

"No."

"Eddie is with Joe Broz... Was." Quirk said. "Roger, we don't know yet. We're still looking into him."

I nodded.

"And, small world, you were just recently sitting in my office reading the OCU file on Joe Broz."

I nodded.

"You care to comment on that?" Quirk said.

"No," I said. My leg felt hot and sore. I felt it with my right hand. It was heavily bandaged. The more I woke up, the sorer it felt. Maybe I would wait till tomorrow to go home. Quirk walked across the room and closed the door.

"How come I'm in a private room?" I said.

Quirk pointed at his own chest.

"I tried to get hold of Susan," Quirk said. "But she's not around."