I turned then. Martinson’s eyes on the rear window were green slivers of fright.
“See anything?”
“There’s a car,” he stammered. “I thought I saw it about fifteen minutes ago.”
“What color?”
“Green. Kind of a dull green.”
I spotted it in the rearview. I’d seen it too, then lost it in the city traffic. But it was the same car, and pretty close to us. Thirty feet, I figured. I thought I saw two heads in the twilight.
I swerved onto the Fenway and accelerated. In the failing light the field looked like a miniature Scottish moor. I knew it pretty well-a mile or so of marshy grass, waist high, stuck incongruously between Fenway Park, the Fine Arts Museum, and a handful of colleges. No traffic on the two-lane road. I stomped down harder. We sped past grey-green fens toward the inner city. The Prudential Center loomed in the distance.
But the Fenway was a mistake. The headlights stuck to us as if welded to our bumper.
“Same car?” I wondered.
Martinson’s grip crackled the vinyl. “Yeah.”
The speedometer showed eighty-five. I figured the fens would last another minute, at most. Then I heard a rubbery squeal. Two streaks of light stabbed the other lane, then stained the darkness ahead.
“They’re passing,” Martinson shouted. My left hand on the wheel jumped at his voice. The car did a choppy swerve. Our front beams lit a tree at the side of the road. I lashed the wheel left and we veered back toward the green car, two feet, then one foot apart. The two bumpers scraped. Martinson screamed incoherently. I jerked the wheel right, shielded my face and braked hard. The car pulled to the left, and fish-tailed wildly, tires screaming. Then it shimmied down to twenty, in control.
I peered back over the dashboard. The green car was forty feet ahead now. It stopped with sudden violence, skidding at right angles like a sailboat into a night wind. I jammed the gas pedal to pass on the right. The other car straightened, lurched forward, and raced us abreast. A white face leaned out the rear window of the other car, and one arm hung out. The green car inched forward.
Ahead the road bore right. I saw that, and then a sudden streak cracked the windshield. A bullet hole. Martinson screeched and stabbed at his forehead with a fan of bloody fingers. The wheel jerked from my hands, and we shot left toward the green car. It snapped away in a violent reflex and teetered half-off the road. Then it flipped slow-motion in a clumsy somersault. I turned back to a windshield suddenly full of grey-blue glass ahead. Then the car charged into the fens, plowed an angry furrow, and jolted to a stop. I flew weightless into the steering wheel, smashing ribs and collarbone. The seat belt jerked me back and to the side. I doubled over, shaking.
I looked across. Martinson, red dripping from his mouth and bent from the waist, curled like a fetus. The mouth was mashed into the dashboard in an awful parody of a bite. The dashboard was dappled with scattered specks of blood.
I leaned over to grasp him. He flopped heavily back against the seat, now turned toward me. His forehead was bleeding where the bullet had grazed him and his jaw was canted crazily to one side, broken. He didn’t move or make noise. I felt his pulse, as I had done with Lehman. But Martinson was alive.
I remembered the other car. I wrenched the door open, half-falling. Then I righted myself and rolled out.
I heard no one. I crouched by the car, in the dark. It was as silent as a prairie night. Our beams were gone. Scattered out of earshot were distant lights from offices and row houses. The only near brightness was the green car’s headlights, piercing the gloom like hunter’s lamps. Their car had done a full flip and righted itself precariously over a ditch.
Still no traffic. It seemed that I was the only man on earth, come to visit a dead car. I waited. Then I took a few aching treads toward the green car, half-bent and nauseous. No sound or movement. I edged slowly toward the driver’s side, afraid of what I’d see.
What I saw first was the driver. He slumped, mouth mashed into the steering wheel trickling blood, his staring eyes completely blank. His neck had snapped. His arms hung awkwardly, like a large coat on a small hanger.
I looked up at the night. Then I butted my head in the direction of the car and looked again. He had been a stocky man with a red bulbous nose. My head gave a quick little bob, involuntarily, like a hiccup. I looked away.
But there was the second man. I crossed the front of the car while the dead driver inspected me. I saw a gun, then a leg, then him. His face was raw and scraped open beneath the crew cut and he was sprawled on his back, in the awkward attitude of death. His right hand was stretched carelessly toward the gun, as if he had thrown it away.
The man’s eyes gave me another once-over. I looked back toward the driver. Once they had surely been cold and efficient. Now they were about ninety bucks worth of lab chemicals, counting inflation. Because I had been lucky. I bent, wincing, and carefully picked up the gun.
The whir of a motor broke in. I squinted down the road. The headlights grew larger, coming from the direction we’d taken. I clicked off the safety on the handgun and stepped out to the road.
The car stopped and a middle-aged man stepped out, wearing black tie and a dinner jacket. A woman was in the car. I put the gun in my pocket and walked up.
The man had glasses and a worried moon-face. He peered out at the cars. “What happened?”
“They tried to run us off the road,” I said. “My passenger is badly hurt. What we need is an ambulance and Lieutenant Di Pietro of the Boston police. Homicide.”
“What is this?” he asked warily.
“Look, we need help. Please.”
He thought about it, too long. The panicky fear hit me that Martinson would die, for no reason, to punish my own arrogance. I moved toward the man. “If you let him die-”
He stiffened. “OK, I’ll call when we get to a phone.” He made a tardy effort at good fellowship. “Everyone else all right?”
I pointed wearily to the car. “Except for the dead guys.”
He stared, appalled. Driving cheerfully to a party, and instead to find this. But he got me to repeat Di Pietro’s name, gave some hurried assurances, and drove off.
They got there in about ten minutes, in a fanfare of sirens and flashing lights. A squad car, an ambulance, and two wreckers. What they found was me holding Martinson and sitting by the road, looking like an orphan.
Di Pietro was with two cops. He walked toward me. I pointed silently at the dead men. Di Pietro gave them a quick look. He didn’t need a long one.
The ambulance crew bent over Martinson. He was still out. I stood and let them work. Di Pietro drifted back, wearing his impassive mask. “You all right?” he asked, sounding sheepish.
I handed him the gun. “Just shook up and a little bruised.”
“How did this start?”
The ambulance crew was still kneeling. I pointed in their direction. “That’s Peter Martinson.”
Di Pietro’s eyes followed mine. “You visited the sanitarium,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You know,” he went on quietly, “I should have listened.”
“I won’t argue with you.”
His eyes dismissed the subject. “Give me a rundown.”
I did that, starting with Loring. Di Pietro folded his arms, asking an occasional question. In five minutes he was caught up.
The driver had been scooped on a stretcher. We watched them cart him to the ambulance. “What about him?” Di Pietro asked.
“I don’t know either one of them.”
He looked thoughtfully at the ambulance. “Well,” he finally said, “we’d better get your statement.”
The cops finished cleaning, leaving it just another patch of darkness. Then they took Martinson to the hospital and me to a squad car. The crew-cut man was last. They carried him by on a stretcher, covered with blankets. I didn’t look.