"Ever wonder why she's in such a hurry?" I said.
"She's not going anywhere."
"She likes to hurry," Susan said.
We crossed Dartmouth Street. Ahead of us at the Exeter Street crossing a car pulled up and two men got out and began to walk toward us. Behind us I heard a car slow and stop on Dartmouth Street. I glanced back; a man got out of the passenger side and began walking behind us.
I said to Susan, "Kiss me good night, and take Pearl and go right across the street here as if you were going home. When you're behind the parked cars crouch down and get the hell away from here."
"What is it?"
"Trouble, I think."
I turned her toward me and kissed her as if there were nothing else to do in the world. As I kissed her I took my gun out from under my coat.
I murmured against her mouth, "When I let you go, move. Don't hurry, but don't linger. Wave to me as you cross the street."
Susan didn't say another word. When we stopped kissing, she touched me on the face once, briefly, and headed across Commonwealth Avenue in the middle of the block; as she and Pearl squeezed between two parked cars she gave me a happy wave.
When she reached the sidewalk, she turned and started back toward Arlington Street. The guys in front of me paid her no mind.
I pretended to look after her. The guy behind me was walking casually, looking around like a late-night tourist. I palmed my gun, so that in the darkness no one could see that I was carrying it. It was the easy-to-carry little Smith & Wesson.38 chambered for five rounds. I always left the chamber empty under the hammer, so I had four. Usually that was enough, and would have to be again.
After all, I had one more bullet than attackers. Though I would have, had I known the agenda, brought the Browning 9mm which had thirteen in the magazine. To my right was a bench. I stopped and put my right foot up on it and pretended to tie my shoe. The two ahead of me were about thirty feet away. The guy behind me was a little closer. I saw one of the guys ahead of me move his hand and caught the flash of a stainless-steel handgun in the light that fused out from the streetlamps. A blued finish is better for being sneaky. I stepped suddenly up onto the bench and went over it and landed in a crouch behind it. There was a shot from in front and a bullet whanged off the cement leg of the bench. Across the street a car alarm began its siren call. I cocked my gun, took a breath, let it out, and drilled the guy with the stainless-steel handgun right in the middle of the chest. He made a huff, not unlike Pearl's huff, and fell over on his back. Another bullet plowed into the bench, hitting the wooden seat this time, and splintering it. I cocked the.38, breathed out again, aimed for the middle of the mass which was coming at me on the run, and shot the guy behind me. He pitched forward, his momentum overcoming the impact of the slug, and sprawled toward the bench on his face. I whirled toward the third guy, who should have been on top of me. He wasn't. He was running back down the mall toward Exeter Street.
The car that had been idling on Dartmouth pulled away and disappeared toward the river, running a red light in the process. I stood, and turned sideways and shot at the running gunman. But the range was too great for the two-inch barrel. He opened the back door, dove in, and the car screamed away from the curb as the door closed behind him.
Behind me the car alarm was whooping and whining. I took some bullets from my coat pocket and reloaded while I looked for Susan. I saw her come out from behind a car with Pearl at the corner of Dartmouth Street. Pearl, gun-shy to the end, was trying to climb into Susan's lap. I put my gun away and knelt beside the man who'd followed me. He was a large man with a beard and a significant belly. He had no pulse. I moved to the front guy, beardless and skinny. He was dead too. I couldn't think much anymore, but I could still shoot.
"You hit?" Susan said.
I put my arm around her.
"No," I said.
"What's with the car alarm."
"I banged into every car along the street," Susan said.
"One was bound to have a motion alarm."
"Smart," I said.
"I have a Ph.D. from Harvard."
"You didn't say stupid stuff when I told you to move," I said.
"You'd be worried about me and Pearl," Susan said.
"I'd have been in the way."
Pearl weaseled her way in between us, and jumped up with her paws on my chest. I patted her head.
"They're dead?" Susan said. She didn't look at them.
"Yes."
"Who were they?" Susan said.
"I don't know."
In the distance, up Commonwealth Ave. from the Kenmore Square end, I could hear a siren above the racket of the car alarm.
There were lights on in many of the windows that had been dark.
"You should take Pearl and go back to my place, otherwise they'll want to talk with you too, and it'll take half the night, and Pearl won't like it."
"No, you'll need a witness."
"Good point," I said.
"I'm glad you're not dead."
"That's so sweet," I said.
The first patrol car swung up over the curb at Dartmouth Street and drove down the middle of the mall toward us. The headlights lit the scene harshly and I could see the blood spreading out on the sidewalk around both the men I'd killed.
The patrol cops got out on each side of the squad car with guns drawn, hatless, keeping the open doors between me and them.
Pearl barked at them. Susan shushed her. I put my hands on top of my head.
"Gun's on my right hip," I said.
"You want me to take it out, or you want to come get it."
"Stay just like you are," the cop on the passenger side said.
"And step away from the lady."
I did as I was told and the cop came out from behind the door with his gun leveled.
"Walk over here, put your hands on the roof."
I did as he told me. I backed away and spread my legs so that my weight rested on my hands and I couldn't move suddenly. The cop on the driver's side kept his gun on me over the roof, while his partner came and took my gun off my hip. He smelled it. Then he patted me down.
"Put your left hand behind your back," he said.
I did and he put a cuff on it.
"Now the other hand."
I had to straighten away from the car to do it. He finished cuffing me.
"You shoot them?" he said.
"Yes."
"With that thing?"
"Yeah."
When the cuffs were on his partner went to the two bodies and felt for pulses.
"They dead?" the first cop said.
"Yeah, both of them."
His partner was young and muscular with his uniform shirt tailored and his hair cut very short. I could hear more sirens in the distance, coming from both ends of Commonwealth and at least one coming down Dartmouth.
"Why'd you shoot them?" the first cop said.
"They tried to shoot me."
"You know who they are?"
"No."
"You see this, lady?"
"Yes," Susan said.
"I'm with him. We were walking Pearl when these two men and another one came at us and tried to kill him."
"Pearl's the dog?"
"Yes."
"Where's the other shooter?"
"He got away in a waiting car," Susan said.
The first cop stepped away from me. He was older than his partner with longish gray hair, wearing the kind of translucent eyeglasses that they used to issue in the army.
"Three guys come to shoot you, two of them get killed and the third one runs away," the older cop said.
"Don't usually happen that way."
"It was exciting," I said.
"I'll bet it was," he said.
"You got a permit for the piece?"
"Yes."
"ID?"
"Yes, in my wallet, left hip pocket."