Behind me I heard a yell that was nearly screaming. I knew it was Gerry.

"Richie, you're a dead man! You hear me? We're coming, you motherfucker. We got a tracker, asshole, and we're right behind you."

And then I didn't hear anything.

CHAPTER 24

As l moved into the woods it got thicker and the going got harder. There was still green on the trees, mixed with yellow, and the combination gave a soft dappled effect to the forest. I didn't feel soft and dappled. And as the afternoon dwindled it got darker. After about a mile I limped up a low swale and settled in behind a rock to take stock. Behind me the woods had thinned into some sort of meadow; maybe a fire, maybe a homestead, long since consumed by the slow fire of decay. Whatever it had been caused by, it made an open space where I could see anyone following me.

I was wearing New Balance running shoes, jeans, a blue sweatshirt, now sleeveless, and a leather jacket. I had five rounds in my gun, my car keys, a wristwatch, and Pearl's leash still stuck in my hip pocket. My leg was very sore and the pain pulsed steadily along it from hip to ankle. There was a Buck knife in my jacket pocket, and two packets of matches wrapped in foil to keep them dry. I always carried the gun, the keys, and the watch. The knife and the matches were for when I went west of the Charles River. The minute I noticed that I had no food, I started getting hungry. The sun was setting. That would be west. I could keep going until dark without getting turned around. I'd have to stop at night. The sun I could figure out. I couldn't read the stars to save my ass, which was not, in this case, a metaphor.

I needed a plan. First I had to figure out if Gerry and his troops really were after me. Or Richie, which is who they thought I was. If they weren't

I could simply backtrack to Stockbridge and wait for Pearl. But if they were behind me, between me and Stockbridge, and if any of them knew how to function in the woods, and if they really had a tracker, then I'd need to take the long way home.

The way to find that out was to sit here behind these rocks, while I still had some ammo, and see if they showed up. They'd leave somebody behind to clean up the shooting scene and call Vinnie Morris and get some new tires.

Unless someone came by at the wrong time, or somebody had heard the shoot ing and called the cops, they'd be okay. They had no way to know that

Beaumont had bailed out with Patty and Paul, and that, in a while, Hawk was going to be coming out looking for me.

It didn't figure for Gerry and his posse to blunder around in the woods for several days looking for me. Ordinarily I figured to outrun them even if they did. But my leg wasn't going to improve. And Gerry was crazy. I settled in to wait. The late sun was warm enough on my back, but above me and moving slowly westward was a mass of dark clouds. And as the evening crept in from the east with the clouds,

I could feel the edge of cold that was going to come with darkness.

They could have a tracker. They could have picked up a couple of shooters in Pittsfield. One of them could be a woodsman. Or Gerry could have made it up because he'd heard the word once on television.

The woods through which I'd edged my way, and the ones which stretched out behind me, were mostly hardwoods, oak and maple, with some birch clumps scattered among them, dark-ringed white trunks that gleamed among the drabber trees like hope in the midst of sorrow. Sprinkled among the hardwoods were evergreens-a lot of white pine, now and then a good-looking fir tree. The forest floor was a tangle of roots, and fallen trees, and creeping vines. Many of the vines were thorny and would not only trip, but clutch. There were chokecherry bushes, many of them with caterpillar tents stretched across the more comfortable crotches near the trunk. In a pinch,

I knew you could eat chokecherries, though they were pretty sharp. You could eat acorns too.

The combination of rain clouds and evening fell darkly across the little open space in front of me. In the woods it would be quite dark. There was some wind. I had already zipped my jacket and turned up my collar. It left me out of options for the moment. To my right I heard movement in the woods. 223

quietly I eased the hammer back on the Browning. The movement continued, and then Pearl emerged from the woods, her nose against the ground, her head moving from side to side, her tail erect; she came across the meadow walking very fast, and up the swale, and then raised her head and capered around the rock and began to turn tight circles. I tried to hug her but she was too excited. When she stopped the circles, she sniffed me all over at a great rate. When she sniffed the gun she shied away briefly, and I lowered it beside my thigh, out of sight. She sniffed with special attention at my wounded leg, smelling the blood.

"Nice to see you," I said. She sat intensely and looked at me with her tongue out.

"What are we going to do if I have to shoot again?" I said. "You'll bolt and where will you end up?,

She had no answer. Neither did I. But it was bothersome.

CHAPTER 25

IT was full dark now, no moon, and the rain had begun. Pearl hated the rain and kept looking at me to do something about it. She also had not been fed since morning and was looking at me to do something about that, too.

"You're supposed to be a goddamned hunting dog," I said. "Maybe you should go hunt up something to eat."

She had curled in against the rock, behind me, with her head resting on her rear feet. The leather jacket kept my upper body dry, but my legs were soaked, and my hair, and a trickle of rain was worming down my neck inside the jacket. The bandage felt tight against the wound in my thigh. The leg was swelling.

"It doesn't get much better than this, Pearl."

Pearl's eyes moved toward me when I spoke. The rest of her was motionless.

"We're going to have to find something better," I said. "If Gerry's out there. He won't be chasing me in the rain, at night."

I stood, and Pearl immediately uncurled and stood with me, pushing against my good leg. I started down the swale west toward the woods when I smelled something. I stopped, and with the wind coming from the east driving the rain, I breathed in carefully through my nose, my eyes closed, my head a little forward. What I smelled was woodsmoke. They were in the woods, east of me, and they had hunkered down for the night and gotten a fire going. It meant probably that whether he was a tracker or not, they had someone with them who knew his way in the woods. Gerry couldn't have started a fire in the Public Gardens.

"I could slide over there and pick some of them off," I said.

Pearl pricked her ears and wagged her tail. "But if I do you'll bolt again."

I gazed obliquely off toward the area east, where the wind was bringing the smoke from. I was trying to spot the light of the fire. There had been eight. I had dropped two. At least one guy would have had to stay behind to clean things up at Beaumont's. That meant five people probably. It would need a proper fire to service five people. "I could put on your leash," I said. "But that means dragging you through the woods and holding you while

I shoot and you're bucking and struggling to run, and then ducking through the woods with you still on the leash and several gunnies chasing me. And

I've only got one leg that's really usable." I was staringup, above the treeline, looking for the glow of the fire. And I found it, east and a little south, some distance away. How far was more than I could estimate. Where was Jungle Jim when you really needed him?