“That’s the big one, but there are a couple more. She seems alert and that’s the best sign. We’re treating her primarily for concussion. We’ll know a lot more in a couple of days. Were you there when it happened?”
I filled him in. “If that car door hadn’t been open and she hadn’t been leaning out. That blast…”
He just shook his head. “She had something working for her all right. I’ll tell you something else. She had to want to come back just now. You must have been saying the right things.”
I stayed another hour just holding her hand and talking. This time it was two ways. A team of nurses and younger doctors came to do some tests, so I left them alone.
I called Mr. Devlin to give him the news. It was a lift to hear that it really meant something to him. I told him I was coming back to the office and I’d check in with him. One more call to Daddy to let him know she was awake, and I was on my way.
It was dark, and the night air felt so good that I decided to walk. I came up Cambridge Street and took my usual shortcut through Pi Alley. I always loved that little paved pathway. It was actually where the newspaper trade in New England began. Printers used to throw their printing type, called “pi,” into the street, whence the name.
It was dark, but I knew every inch of the rough pavement. Fifty feet into the alley I might have heard something or just sensed that someone was behind me and gaining. I looked back and saw the outline of a man moving directly toward me.
I couldn’t tell if it was paranoia or just good, solid fear, but I picked up the pace anyway. The pace of the footsteps behind me came up, too. It was a good seventy feet to the end of the alley ahead of me. I’d have given next year’s pay for just one more human being in that alley.
I looked up and my prayer was granted double. I could see two figures coming toward me about fifty feet away, and the comfort it brought cannot be overstated. They were clearly men, which, under the circumstances was all to the good, although any form of humanity would have done.
The comfort was short-lived. The steps behind me were beginning to gain speed. I was tempted to call out to the approaching pair, but I had no idea what to say.
In what seemed like a second, the steps behind me were up to a dead run and no more than twenty feet away. The other two were still a good forty feet ahead. Even if I yelled, what could they do? I was tempted to run toward them, but it was too late.
I spun around with both fists ready. A glint of light from above played on the barrel of a gun. I braced for the shot and crouched. What I felt was a kick in the ankles that sent me sprawling. I hit the ground in a gangly lump just as I heard a forced whisper, “Stay down! Stay down!”
The form went flying past me. It stopped and crouched and fired a volley of four shots. I saw the two figures that were coming down the alley drop where they were. The man who fired was standing over them, gun pointed, checking for signs of life.
That same raspy whisper said, “Come up here.”
He still had the gun, so it seemed like a good idea to follow orders. When I was beside him, he pulled out a small flashlight and shone it on the two bodies at our feet. There were two large, running holes in the chest area of both of them, and neither man showed any sign of movement.
The light moved to the area of their arms. Both had forty-five-caliber automatic weapons in hand. Most chilling of all, they were both Chinese, one a little less than Daddy’s size and one about my size.
The voice beside me said, “You better get out of here unless you want to spend the night answering police questions.”
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. I work for someone who works for someone who wants you to stay alive.”
That meant Lex Devlin. Now I knew why he agreed not to call Tom Burns to have me protected. He was going to do it anyway.
“How did you know about these two?”
“I spotted the guns in their hands when they turned into the alley.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“You weren’t looking. You were more worried about me.”
I still had the shakes, but the panic was rapidly turning to anger. Someone had turned the legal battle into all-out terroristic war, with the worst possible casualties so far being Lanny and Red Shoes.
I figured I had two clear choices. The first was to go underground and hide or depend on rescuers for the rest of my life. That was unacceptable. The second might well result in a seriously shortened season, but anything was better than the first. I chose the second, and knew I’d better do it while I was still white-hot angry enough to overcome abject fear.
I searched through the pockets of the two dead Chinese until I found what I was looking for. I turned around to thank the man beside me, but he was nowhere in sight. I ran down to the Washington Street end of Pi Alley and turned right up toward Chinatown.
I was acting on instinct, but without time and proof, it was all I had. At that moment, I’d have bet the pot that the one behind the attacks on me and Red Shoes was that slick dude I first met at the Ming Tree. He was the only one who knew both of us, and he set off alarms the first time I met him.
I ran or jogged most of the way to Tyler Steet. I knew I could never bring off what I had in mind if I were cool and rational. I climbed the steps of the Ming Tree restaurant and walked straight in.
I was just inside the door when I spotted Kip Liu seated at a table at the far end with his back to me. There was no one else in the restaurant. I made a direct line at quick march. He must have heard determined footsteps, because he spun around when I was ten feet away. I hovered over him so that he couldn’t stand if he wanted to.
His first expression told it all. He was looking into the face of an Occidental ghost. I was supposed to be dead-twice.
While he was still off balance, I snapped down on the table in front of him, picture-side up, the two driver’s licenses I had taken from the bodies in the alley. I let him recognize the faces and draw his own conclusions before I grabbed them back. I was not irrational enough to leave the evidence of two homicides in his hands.
I leaned over him to say it directly into his ear.
“Listen to me, you cowardly son of a bitch. The word is out. If one more incident, even an accident, happens to me or anyone close to me you’ll have every cop in the city of Boston and one particular detective on your personal ass. You and that parasitic pack of bastards you run will be hung out to dry. Every one of you. That’s a promise.”
He just stared. I don’t think he’d had a personal threat since the day he was born. It was all bluff, but I was raging enough to carry it off. I had no idea how he’d handle it. I didn’t have to wait long. I turned around and saw two muscular teenagers coming down the aisle with blood in their eyes.
I turned back to him. “You want to test the system? It’s up to you.”
He looked in my eyes, which must have been as cold as the steel I was feeling inside. He made a living trading on the fear he put in others. Now it was his turn. They were five feet away when he waved them back.
I straightened up and looked at the two of them. They were completely blocking the only way to the door. The big shot hesitated just long enough to give me chills from toes to nose. I could only wait. I put every bit of concentration I could muster into holding the bluff. I knew he was weighing the loss of face in front of his men-no small item-against loss of his whole seedy empire if I could pull off what I threatened.
It took five of the longest seconds of my life right then, and probably ten years off the back end of my life, before he made the decision. He finally gave a signal. They stood aside.
I walked between them with every ounce of deliberate cool I could muster. I figured that if I made it alive to the door, we’d have established a stalemate. At least for the moment.
I’ve never smelled or tasted air as sweet as the air I breathed outside the door of the Ming Tree. I caught a cab on Beach Street to get back to room 504 at Mass.. General Hospital.