"Always for Joe," I said.
"I never had nobody else."
"So Gerry will come after me without backup?" I said.
Vinnie shook his head. "Joe'll send him out alone," Vinnie said. "I know
Joe. Because he thinks that's the only way the kid can ever be anything but a sleazy little punk. But he knows he's no good, and he don't want something to happen to him. So he'll come too. He'll trail along behind to protect the kid."
"So if he's right, he'll undercut the kid even if I don't kill him."
"Yeah. Joe loves the kid."
"So he'll either get him killed or he'll take away his victory by not letting him do it alone."
"Yeah."
"Kid would be better off if Joe didn't love him."
"Yeah."
We were quiet. The rain sliding down the front windshield made the traffic lights fluid and impressionistic at the intersection.
"The thing is," Vinnie said, "Joe ain't that good anymore.
I nodded and drank some coffee and took another piece of donut and shared it with Pearl.
"He gets involved," Vinnie said, "and you'll clip him -too."
"If I have to," I said.
"I thought about taking you out for him," Vinnie said.
"Which is why you've been following me."
"Yeah."
"But if you do that," I said, "Joe will never forgive you. Because you ruined it for his kid."
"Yeah."
"Easier, wasn't it," I said, "when some guy gave Joe trouble all you had to do was go round and drill him."
Vinnie drank a little more coffee, staring at the rain. He took another donut, and automatically gave Pearl a piece, and ate the rest.
"I'm getting out," Vinnie said. "I'm quitting Joe."
I stared at `iim. I couldn't think of anything to say.
"You do what you gotta do," Vinnie said. "You have to kill them, you have to kill them. I won't come around asking you about it. I'm out of it."
He drank the last of his coffee. He took the final donut out of the bag and looked at it for a moment, then put the whole donut back for Pearl to take.
Which she did. Vinnie opened the door and put one foot out onto the ground.
I put out my hand. Vinnie took it. We shook hands. Then he got out and closed the door. He turned the collar up on his raincoat and walked back to his car and got in. I saw the wipers start. The headlights went on. And he drove away. From the backseat Pearl nosed at my ear. Her breath smelled of donuts.
CHAPTER 35
WITH a pronounced limp, I was walking Pearl on a leash in the Public Gardens when Gerry made his try. He came across the footbridge over the Swan Boat
Pond with the low morning sun shining on his left, making his shadow splash long and peculiar across the railing toward Beacon Street. He was walking stify, and very slowly, and he held his right hand close in against his right thigh. I stopped near the monumental statue of George Washington and took the Browning out from under my arm.
"You're not going to like this," I said to Pearl, "but there's nothing to be done."
I was surprised at the way he game. I had thought he'd try to shoot me in the back. People on their way to work didn't pay much attention to the fact that there were two men with guns approaching each other in the Public
Gardens. It wasn't quite that they didn't see the guns. It was that, hurrying toward work on a pretty morning, they didn't really record them.
The flower beds had been banked for the winter, and the swan boats stored up on the dock. But the grass was still green from the rainy autumn, and the trees, without leaves now, still arched elegantly. The leafless twigs looked lacy in the morning light.
Pearl was pointing a pigeon near the base of the statue.
Gerry kept coming, mechanical, almost spectral, somehow less than human, a disjointed, clumsy, fantastic figure in the bright new day; driven by things I could guess at but would never know, he came.
And behind him from a big car double-parked on Charles Street his father came, wearing a big loose overcoat, holding something under it, hurrying with his head ducked a little and his shoulders hunched, the way people do when they are trying not to be noticed.
Pearl's pigeon flew away and Pearl glanced around at me, annoyed that I hadn't responded to her point. She saw, or maybe smelled, the gun and her ears flattened, and her tail went down.
"Hang on, babe," I said. "I don't like this either, but it will be over quick."
I made sure the leash was looped over my left wrist. I held the stem of the leash tightly in my left hand. Joe was maybe thirty yards behind Gerry.
Gerry was in range. I should plug Gerry now so I'dhave time to deal with Joe. If I let them both get up on me it was going to be harder.
Gerry kept coming. He moved as if his joints hurt and wouldn't bend properly. He was close enough so I could see his face, shrunk tight, the cords visible in his neck, tension bunching his narrow shoulders.
"Gerry," I said.
He shook his head and kept coming. As he came he raised the gun. It was an automatic, foreign maybe, a Beretta or a Sig Sauer. He held the gun straight out in his right hand as he walked, and hunched his head down a little to squint along the barrel.
For the first time people noticed. They scattered soundlessly. No one spoke, or yelled, or screamed, or sighed. They moved. Behind Gerry, Joe rushed slowly forward. If Gerry could do it, he didn't want to spoil it by interfering. If Gerry didn't do it, he wanted to be able to save him. I had other things to think about, but for a moment I knew how awful this must be for both of them.
Then Gerry fired and missed, as somehow he would have to miss. I'm not sure he even saw me over the gunsight, and I turned sideways and brought the
Browning up carefully. Lurching as he was, trying to shoot while coming at me, Gerry didn't have much chance of hitting me. I sighted with my left eye, along the barrel of the gun, and let the middle of his chest sit on the small white dot on the front sight. I cocked it with my thumb and took a careful breath, and dropped the sight and shot Gerry in the right knee. He went down as if his legs had been scythed.
Behind him his father screamed, "Gerry, Jesus Christ, Gerry!" and flung himself forward on top of his son, shielding him with his body. The sawed-off shotgun he'd been holding under his coat clattered onto the hot-top walkway and skittered maybe six feet.
"My leg," Gerry said in amazement. "My leg, Papa-he shot me in the leg."
"Don't shoot him," Joe was saying, quite softly. "Don't shoot him."
I dropped to one knee, still holding the Browning, and put my arm around
Pearl. She was shaking and trying to run at the same time she was trying to climb into my lap.
"I had to shoot him, Joe," I said. "I won't shoot him again if I don't have to."
Gerry began to cry. It was shock mostly. It was too soon probably for the pain to start. In the distance I could hear a siren. If Gerry were lucky there'd be an ambulance soon and somebody could give him a shot before it got bad. Joe was crouching on the sidewalk beside Gerry, patting his face and smoothing his hair.
"You're going to be okay," he said. "I hear the ambulance. It's going to be okay. You're not bleeding bad."
"Papa, I'm scared."
"You'll be okay," Joe said. "You're going to be okay."
Pearl was quieter, but she leaned very hard against me as I knelt beside her. At what probably seemed to them a safe distance, people had stopped and were gazing back at us. The sirens were louder.
Joe looked at me. We were both kneeling.
"You could have killed him," Joe said.
I nodded.
"It was a hell of a shot with somebody chopping away at you."
"Hard to shoot while you're walking fast, and scared," I said.
Joe nodded and looked down at Gerry. Gerry was sniffling, trying not to cry, shifting as the shock began to wear off and the first hint of pain began to come.