Combat Boy

By James Vance Elliott

Recent college grad and jobless outsider Eric McKenna kills the son of a Boston mob boss in self-defense, and escapes into the chaos of 1970's America. Twenty years later he returns home, a tormented but successful businessman with two sons of his own. When the brother of the thug he killed finds out he's back, he plots an insidious revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Vance Elliott
• Release date: Aug 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465719195

James Vance Elliott

James Vance Elliott is a published fiction writer, blogger, photographer, IT consultant, white collar rights activist, DNA genealogist, true crime buff, world traveler and much else. He lives in Massachusetts with his beautiful wife and his feline supermodel cat, spends his days at honest labor like his estimable Irish ancestors, and lucubrates like a demon after the sun goes down, attempting deathless (or at least lively) prose.

Book preview

BOOK ONE

Chapter One

It was February ‘78, and the snow was comin’ down pretty wicked in the Boston bedroom town of Lambchester, Mass. The goddamn white stuff was smothering every house on the block, and rumbling off the rooftops while the folks inside ate their suppers. It muffled everything except for the snow plows in the distance, which snorted and clanked through the streets like Tiger tanks in The Battle of The Bulge.

Rod McKenna, an attorney-at-law still in his shirt and tie from the office, adjusted his glasses and glanced at the window behind him. He shook his head, punched out his cigarette in the remains of his mashed potatoes, and drawled to his wife in the kitchen, Good steak, Marie. What was it? Filet mignon?

Don’t be sarcastic… she said.

Any steak’s better than none, he said, winking at his son Eric beside him. We might be stuck eating each other like the Donner Party if that snow gets any deeper.

Rod had eaten off a tray in the TV room, and now that he was done he pushed the tray aside and sat back in his easy chair to watch the beginning of a repeat of The World At War. The Edvard-Munchian face of some haggard victim of Nazi evil appeared on the screen and Laurence Olivier’s voice began to intone portentously about June 6th 1944.

I was there, Rod told his son.

Eric, a rangy kid of twenty-three with long blond hair parted in the middle, sat in the easy chair next to his father. Rod reached over and tapped the arm of his chair.

I’m talking about D-Day, he said. I was at Utah Beach with the Fourth Division. Your uncle Mack landed at Omaha with the 29th. Second wave. You realize what that means? Do you? He took a machine gun bullet in the arm, and another in the leg. He made it up to the seawall – I mean, that’s all he could do, but I’ll tell you, that was enough - and that’s where your uncle spent the rest of the day.

Yeah, I know, Dad. You told me a million times.

Well, aren’t we blasé? said Rod. You could never do that.

Oh, yeah – I could, said Eric. He hunkered down in his easy chair. If somebody gave me half the chance.

You’ve been out of college for a year and a half and you can’t even find a job. What makes you think you could fight a war?

Eric said nothing.

Marie McKenna came in with the hot apple pie. Rod took his slice quick as a ballpark catch, but Eric turned his down with a smirk.

I’m goin’ out tonight, he said.

Oh, you’re crazy, said his mother, almost under her breath, and she left the room.

Nice if you could earn your own beer money at least, said Rod, and Eric blushed.

Rod and Eric continued to watch black-and-white footage of the Normandy beaches that was as grainy as the snow itself. Finally, the door bell rang.

That’s Bob, said Eric, and he got up.

As his father winced in disapproval, his mouth still full of apple pie, Eric bolted out of the TV room and got his scarf, gloves, knit cap and Army surplus field jacket.

He walked down the hallway to the front door. His mother followed him, and stopped him halfway. She pulled up his jacket collar.

I don’t see why you can’t wear your down parka tonight, she said. It’s snowing, Eric! You shouldn’t be goin’ out at all.

A dozen feet away, his buddy stood on the other side of the front door, his charismatic self reduced to a mere shadow in the snowy light of the porch.

Marie McKenna slipped her son fifteen dollars, and kissed him on the cheek.

Here’s some money for the shovelin’ you did before supper.

For Chrissake, Mom… cried Eric. Not where Bob can see!

Oh, now – he has a mother, too. She patted his shoulder. If you got to go out, you got to go out - but please, please… She squeezed his shoulder now. Please try to get back by eleven. It’s really, really going to snow tonight!

Yeah, yeah!

He stepped towards the door, then turned back to his mother with a sad look in his eyes.

I’ll pay you back for all this someday, he said, almost in a whisper. I promise.

I know, she said, but he knew she didn’t believe it.

He cracked open the door and let in the cold.

* * *

Bob Leopardi, a year and a half younger than Eric and still the undergraduate libertine, had already left the McKennas’ porch for the warm inside of his rattletrap Dodge Dart. As soon as Eric trudged down the front steps and got in through the passenger’s side, Bob handed him a joint.

Oh, shit, man, said Eric. My fuckin’ mother might be watchin’.

Bob sat there puffed up like an Amazonian curare toad, then exhaled laughing.

I got a mother, too – and she lets me take her Thorazine.

Yeah, yeah, said Eric, and he took the joint.

The heat in the car was pushed way up, almost louder than the music. Chicago or Traffic or some damn thing was on the stereo, sluggish and heavy. Stoned, no doubt also liquored up on Jim Beam, Bobby was in rare form tonight. While Eric was the blond-kid variant of the townie-pretending-to-be-preppie with the turtleneck sweater underneath the plaid flannel shirt and the flared Levi’s, Bobby was Disco Man. Qiana shirt, white pants and a waist-length leather jacket.

You’re gonna freeze in that outfit, Bobby, Eric said. It’s a fuckin’ cold night.

Bobby pulled back his olive-eyed, lean-jawed Italian head and brayed, It’s not gonna be cold where we’re goin’! I found this place… Bobby shook his head and laughed like he just couldn’t hold in the fun of it all. I found this place where the girls are so easy even you could get laid.

Yeah, well, thanks, man, said Eric. You mean a place where the chicks have their own apartments, ‘cause that’s my problem, man. That I’m trapped in that dump… He gave a head toss toward the McKenna house. Then he turned to look at it. A semi-delapidated Victorian with snow piling up on the mansard roof, and his Mom and Dad staring out of its lighted windows like gargoyles with hemorrhoids. He thought to himself, I hope I never see that fuckin’ house again. Then he told Bobby, Let’s boogie. They might think we’re tokin’ up out here or something.

Bobby laughed out loud.

Well, we are!

Step on it, said Eric. We gotta get a move on, man!

When Bobby didn’t do anything in response but smile, Eric pushed his own foot on the accelerator pedal and shouted, "STEP ON IT, MAN!"

He put the car in motion, and it skidded into a snow bank. Bobby took back control of the car without seeming at all fazed by Eric’s aggression, stepped on the gas to back the car out of the snow bank, and steered it down to the bottom of the street.

I think it’s about time you got a car of your own, said Bobby.

"You know how it is – no bucks, no wheels… HEY, LOOK OUT!"

A Volare came into the intersection at the same time they entered it, and both cars had to swerve to avoid hitting each other. Bobby’s car plowed into another snow bank, while the Volare sat on the asphalt free as the Titanic before the iceberg hit it. The guy inside rolled down his window and gave Bobby and Eric the finger.

Son of a bitch… cried Eric, and he exploded out of the car.

ERIC! said Bobby, but it was too late. Eric was already combat bound.

As soon as he got out of the car, he scooped some snow off the street and pounded it into a huge, white whopper. The guy in the Volare, seeing what Eric had in mind, stomped on the gas and started away. He made good time, but it wasn’t quite good enough. Eric flung the snowball like a Patriots’ long bomb, and it went right through the Volare’s window before the guy inside could roll it up.

The Volare skidded to a halt, and you just know the guy inside was pissed.

Bobby pushed open the door, cried out, All right! and reached out to high-five Eric’s snowy glove.

Meanwhile, the Volare started to turn around and come back toward them.

’Scuse me, said Eric. Seems I got some unfinished business…

Eric picked up some slush right out from under the Dart and started to make an ice ball out of it. Before the Volare got back to them, Eric was done with the making and ready for the delivery. He raised his right arm ready to put the ball in play. Once the guy in the Volare saw this, he stopped with a skid and a screech, then held there for a moment while Eric advanced on him with the ice ball still upraised. Finally, the Volare did a quick K-turn and went slaloming down the Post Road in the opposite direction.

Jesus, said Bobby, once Eric got back inside the car. Enough of the ‘preemptive strikes’ already. Don’t even think of joining the Air Force, man. All the world needs is another crazy-ass mo’fo like you in a missile silo.

That struck Eric as funny – the idea that he’d ever have the fate of the world at his fingertips – and he started laughing. So did Bobby. For a full minute they just sat there totally stoned and hilarious.

After they were done laughing, Bobby said, Why don’t you fuckin’ get out again and push us out of the snow bank? We ought to get on the road, you know, before the cops get curious.

I’m all for that, Eric said, and he opened the door again to get out of the car.

Do your thing then, man, said Bobby. "And we’ll be on our way to gettin’ ourselves… LAAAAAID!"

* * *

Chapter Two

They drove into Boston via Route 93, despite that snow was piling up on the freeway and that snow plows were lumbering past them. Once they got into town, they did the college bars on Beacon Hill, they saw some strippers in the Combat Zone – but it was a slow night for everybody, it seemed, and there weren’t many girls around. None of the places they’d been to yet had been the place Bobby had in mind. That’s because Eric resisted. He wanted to find his own ladies, and didn’t want Bobby to buy him one.

But any boy’s resistance to the notion of the easy lay lasts about as long as it takes for virgin snow to turn to slush. Besides, it was almost 2:00 AM, which was closing time almost everywhere in Boston then – especially considering that it was a weekday night - and they were still revved up and ready to continue. So Eric told Bobby, All right, man. We’ll go there. This is not gonna be some hooker scene in the Combat Zone, is it?

It’s in the North End, said Bobby.It’s kind of an ‘After Hours’ social club.

I guess it’s gonna have to be, isn’t it? said Eric.

’After Hours’ and shit?

Yup.

Bobby was getting a little subdued. There were dark circles under his eyes and his voice had grown hoarse. Bobby was still, technically, a handsome kid – but at times like these he could pass for a forty year old. He drove up Hanover Street, looking for a place to wedge in the Dart. He couldn’t find any parking space, so he settled for angling it up an alley in back of a little shop. The shop had a red-white-and-green sign in cursive Italian hanging above the door that advertised cannolis and biscotti.

My old man says they make great shit when they’re open, Bobby said, as he muscled the car into place sans the benefit of power steering. Then he gave a great big smile.Fortunately for him now, they’re closed.

They got out of the car, rubbing their hands together to keep themselves warm, gave little fighter-ace flips to their scarfs, and began to trek through the alley in the snow. When they got to the other side, they found a trapezoidal space formed by the uneven intersection of five tiny streets. On each street corner, there was a shop that was all closed up, and above that a rowhouse full of cheap apartments where all the lights had gone out. The snow kept falling in the early morning darkness, muffling every footstep.

You know… whispered Eric, impressed by the overarching quietude.Maybe it’s too late for this, man.

Think of Paul Revere.

What?

Paul Revere, said Bobby.You know the Paul Revere House. It’s only about six blocks from here. Think how we’re gonna sound the alarm…

’The Big Dicks Are Coming! cried Eric half-heartedly.The Big Dicks Are Coming! ’

You got it. That’s us. Bobby laughed.We’d like to think so, anyway.

He stopped literally in his tracks to light up a joint. The tiny coal of the ignited Panama Red was the only light in the vicinity, save for a couple of streetlamps. Eric glared at him in amazement.

What the fuck? he said.Lighting a joint on the street? Are you buckin’ for a night in jail, Bobby?

After Bobby exhaled smoke that camouflaged itself instantly as frosty breath, he offered the joint to Eric and said, Like this is really in broad daylight too…

No, thanks. What kind of ‘social club’ is this place anyway? Italian, right?

Essentially, said Bobby, keeping the joint.You got a problem with that?

Oh, Christ, Bob – it’s a Mafia bar, isn’t it? It’s some goddamn Mafia shithole.

Bobby threw the joint into the snow with anger. He grabbed Eric by the chest of his field jacket.

What is it with you, man? asked Bobby.You chicken?

I won’t be accepted there, said Eric, looking away.

What? And you think I will – just ‘cause I happen to be Italian?

Eric peered up slyly at his friend.

I thought you said you had a great-uncle in the Mafia.

Yeah, said Bobby.He was an accountant. He did federal time in Danbury, but it’s not like it runs in the family. My old man went to Harvard Law, for Pete’s sake.

Yeah, yeah… said Eric.

A grotto of orange light and music and guttural laughter opened for an instant in the near distance like some time-warp from Prohibition, and then closed up again. Both of the young men saw it. Bobby turned to Eric, That’s the place. Let’s go.

All right.

The Mad Monk Social Club was subterranean. You entered it by walking down a converted coal chute. The doors were built into a stoop that stretched across the sidewalk. Opening them up and climbing down reminded Eric of a storm cellar, of something you might hide in from a tornado. Or, hey, a blizzard…For all he knew, the real storm might be inside.

Bobby and Eric walked down into a room with walls the garish orange-red of a Chinese restaurant, a stained oak bar built around the center in the shape of a horseshoe and several screened-off private booths. Even in this place though, there weren’t many people. Just the bartender, a handful of guys in their thirties or thereabouts, and three young (or maybe not-so-young) women with hard-looking faces.

I don’t know, man, muttered Eric.

Bobby said, This could be your biggest night of the winter, so don’t be shy.

The bartender hailed Bobby with a big hairy forearm and glowered at him, although in a friendly way, if such a thing as friendly glowering were possible.

Hey, Bobby Leopardi, The College Smoothie… said the bartender. Then he spread his hands towards the three young women, who were all sitting together rigid with alertness.You oughta introduce yourselves to duh ladies here, Bobby…

Thanks, man, said Bobby, and he and Eric walked slowly over to the women.

The bartender wouldn’t let them alone though. He made further introductions. He called out to the cluster of men on the other side of the bar, Hey, paisans! Look who’s here. Bobby Duh Leopard brought his faggot friend.

The men all laughed uproariously.

Eric blushed and gave Bobby an angry look, but Bobby gripped his forearm and whispered, It’s just their way of testing you, like a fraternity hazing, you know? They put me through the same shit first time I came here.

Yeah, sure - like I need to be put through any ‘shit’, said Eric, glaring straight at the bartender, who just ignored him.

Bobby squeezed his arm and said, Sit down, man.

Eric yanked his arm loose with a little touch of offended-macho-man pugnacity, but sat down calmly enough. Bobby joined him, and now they sat like a buffer between the cluster of older guys against the wall and the trio of women near the entrance.

One guy took their position between himself and the women as a challenge, so he got up from his chair and strutted over. As he passed by Eric, he made a kissy-face at him and Eric only got angrier.

The guy who came over wore a black turtleneck with a silver bull’s horn pendant around his neck, and on top of that a gray tweed jacket. Other than that, he looked like Tom Jones with a hangover and a bad toupee. He approached one of the women, this catatonically watchful chick with long, straight, black hair and a heavily made-up face full of acne scars. He gave her something in a rolled-up piece of paper. The paper was white, so both Eric and Bobby knew it wasn’t money. When the girl took it, she slid off the barstool and led the guy by the hand over into one of the screened-off private booths. After they stepped out of sight and closed the door of the booth behind them, Eric could hear the sounds of zippers coming undone and clothes coming off. Seconds later he heard various sniffing and snorting noises, as if taking off their clothes had caused them to catch cold.

Suck me, baby, whispered the Tom Jones guy, finally, inside his private booth.

Eric turned away, rubbing his face in disgust.

Oh, man… Eric said.

Sssh, said Bobby.We’re gonna be next. Don’t you want to be next?

Oh, mannn…

The act lasted about five minutes. The woman barely made a sound. It was the Tom Jones guy who made all the noise, moaning theatrically like a woman faking an orgasm."ONNNH! he grunted. ONNNNNNH!" Eric could hear him thumping the hard wood floorboards with his pointy Milanese shoes. He was a terrible actor, but his friends seemed to find him riveting. They sat and listened intently, nursing their drinks.

Always the show-off, that Mario is, said one of them, winking conspiratorially toward Bobby and Eric. Always the show-off…

Meanwhile Bobby got a Kentucky bourbon and Eric ordered a gin and tonic. Bobby took big gulps while he listened, really belting the liquor down. Eric, in contrast, sipped his drink slowly through the stirrer, and listened with peeved, narrow eyes and sucked-in cheeks.

Thought you said this wasn’t any hooker scene, he whispered to Bobby.

Dig it for the atmosphere, man, Bobby whispered back.

Occasionally, Eric glanced at the two men left on the other side of the bar. One was very hairy, with lots of rings on his fingers and skin so yellow he looked jaundiced. He was pouring whiskey from his own bottle. The other had slicked down black hair and Elvis sideburns, and kept smoking unfiltered Camels that he held in a gap left by a missing tooth.

Bobby looked at the remaining two women instead. Their complexions and hair styles matched those of the one who was doing the Tom Jones guy, only one was a blonde, the other a redhead. The blonde was long-limbed but moon-faced, and wore so much lip gloss that her lips looked sensual even when she frowned. The redhead was slight and pale and finicky, her eyes focused on the filter of her cigarette like it was the fine print of a contract. Neither of them seemed interested in Bobby.

Yet Bobby was not deterred. Not by the sex inside that laughably private booth, and not by the looks of the women. His libertine’s integrity demanded that he get laid tonight, and his libertine’s charity wanted Eric to join him.

Before the first woman was even done with the Tom Jones guy, Bobby got up and began to walk with a stealthy, narrow-shouldered hunch over to the two women still at the bar. The Mafia goons on the other side of the bar seemed highly amused, concealing their smiles behind the cigarettes in their hands and conferring salaciously with one another. Bobby looked back at Eric, gesturing to him, scrunching up his brow and whispering, Come on! Come on!

Eric waved his hand and shook his head as he continued to sip his drink.

See, said the bartender to the others.What I tell ya? Fag…

A couple of seconds later, the doors opened up overhead and several men came down the steps. They deliberately pounded the steps with their shoes and boots to get off the snow, which made it sound as if giants were arriving.

What the fuck now… said the bartender.More freakin’ College Boys?

The visitors were a mixed crew of strapping men. The first was a nervous guy with eyes like specks of glass and five o’clock shadow even heavier than Bobby’s. The second was a husky Italian stallion all covered up with long hair, mustache, beard stubble and spectacles tinted the color of old cellophane. The third was a young Irishman, six foot two and blue-eyed and not much older than Eric McKenna. He even glanced at McKenna with a kind of annoyed curiosity once he came down from the stairs, but after that he said to the bartender, Hey, Augie. How’s business?

Uh… said the bartender.

Can’t complain?

Well, yeah.

That’s good, that’s good. The young Irish guy was nodding away in this aggressive parody of approval, nodding away so much that you knew he approved of nothing here.

The Tom Jones guy had zipped himself back up by now and had emerged from his private booth. The dark-haired woman he’d been with came out, too - and as soon as she caught sight of the Irish guy she began to hustle off toward the Ladies Room, or whatever passed for one hereabouts.

The Irish guy glanced angrily at the woman as she tried to flee, but he restrained himself. He didn’t act. Not yet. Instead, he turned again to the bartender, who was fingering his bar towel like a rosary. He winced as the Irish guy started to talk again.

"Things oughta be goin’ well, considerin’ how you been fuckin’ CHEATIN’ on my Dad."

"No, Tommy – please!" cried the bartender.

I got to, Augie, said the Irish guy, shaking his head with rich enjoyment as though saying No to people was his favorite luxury.You leave me no choice.

The bartender flung up both hands briefly in the direction of his customers, whether to enlist their aid or to emphasize their presence no one could tell, and then he shouted one last time, "PLEASE, TOMMY!"

While everyone else in the bar looked on in impassive, dream-like disbelief, the Irish guy pulled out an automatic and shot the bartender.

Eric fell off his barstool instantly with a mouth full of vomit.

The other two visitors took out their guns, too, and shot all around the bar. The guy with the gap in his teeth took a bullet through the forehead, and broke his barstool when he fell with a horrendous snap almost as jarring as the gunfire. The one with the yellow face took two hits through the gut and fell forward onto the bar, twitching and foaming at the mouth and sliding along the counter across his own blood and bourbon. Finally, he slid off the bar and fell right next to Eric as he cowered on the floor.

Eric heard a metallic thud, and turned to look at the dead man beside him. He saw a pistol on the floor and instinctively picked it up.

The Irish guy and his men kept firing at everyone.

They got the woman running for the ladies room in the back of the head, blowing out her skull and half her hair along with it.

The blonde got it in the heart before she could even scream, and the redhead died when the nervous man blew out her throat with a shotgun – but not before she had thrown up her hand to guard it, like a burnt-out songstress nursing her voice.

As soon as they were finished, the Irish guy and the big, hairy thug pushed past the dead women, kicking at the remains of their bodies as if they hated them.

Bobby couldn’t stand the sight of what they had done to the women and raised up a barstool and threw it at them.

The Irish guy caught the wooden seat of the barstool on the side of his face, and he cried out, Fuck! He broke my cheekbone!

The hairy guy shot Bobby in the chest, the shoulder and the stomach. Bobby fell on his knees, raising his eyes up to the killers. The nervous guy with the sawed-off stepped forward with long, demonic, coattail-swirling strides and blew off the side of Bobby’s face. The other side remained intact. That was the side that faced Eric. While they were shooting at Bobby, Eric had been frantically trying to unlatch the safety on the pistol, but couldn’t figure out how it worked. He just couldn’t figure it out. Then it clicked into place – or out of place, as the case may be – and he was almost overjoyed that he could now use the pistol. But it was too late. He stared at Bobby’s face, half expecting it to turn toward him with some wiseass remark. And then Bobby fell, sideways toward Eric. Eric saw what remained of his dead friend’s handsome face, and he rose up, pistol in hand and crying, "NO!"

He began firing. The hairy guy went down at once. The nervous guy tried to reload his shotgun, but Eric hooked him with a bullet through the base of his nose. It wrecked his palate, too, and made a dental plate fell out. For a moment, Eric wanted to puke again.

The Irish guy raised his gun to take down Eric, but the Tom Jones guy – after glancing at Eric with something like startled gratitude – pulled out his gun and shot first. He missed the Irish guy, and the Irish guy turned and nailed him. Just pure reflex, like swatting a fly. He did not expect Eric to have reflexes, too. Holding the automatic in both hands, Eric unloaded what was left of the clip into the Irish guy’s chest. When he was done, the Irish guy glanced at Eric with fury and astonishment - but also with the kind of look that Eric had wanted to get for the last two years, but had never gotten – the look that says, I want to hire you. Then the Irish guy fell back dead onto a big oak table, his blood pouring out in all directions.

Eric had attacked the killers almost in a half crouch, feral and tense. Now he stood up and tried to let his muscles relax. His legs felt like he had just climbed a mountain. He looked around the bar. He wouldn’t – he couldn’t – look at Bobby because he was mutilated beyond belief. The others he didn’t know and dared not care about.

He stepped through the blood. On the side near the entrance were the dead killers, the Tom Jones guy, and two of the women. All dead. On the other side were two dead Mafia guys and the woman who had tried to run. Directly behind him – Bobby; and in front of him - the bartender, spread-eagled and bloody inside the horseshoe bar. Dead. All dead – at least so far as he knew.

He heard a siren in the distance. Only one, and it was far away – possibly the only police car available to even try to make it through the snow. He started to gather things up, and as he did he immediately sensed a million different motives and purposes to that gathering. He needed or wanted to gather protection, provisions, mementoes and keepsakes. He took Bobby’s leather jacket. He found three guns out in the open and untouched by human blood. He gathered all those and wrapped them in the leather jacket. He got out Bobby’s car keys – they were in the jacket, too. He put them in his own jacket for now. He debated within himself whether or not to take any drugs. As he thought about this, he saw the open cash register and forgot about drugs entirely. He responded to the sight of dollars as reflexively as he did to the gunplay, and with swift but gingerly care he got behind the bar and stuffed the money into his pockets.

He’d put on his gloves almost as soon as the gunplay was over. It seemed the healthy thing to do, the Howard Hughes response to the bloody mess around him. But now he used the gloves to hide his own presence. He touched nothing without them, wiping clean whatever he’d touched bare-handed – the bar counter, the liquor glass.

The siren was getting closer, making him feel like a criminal. He didn’t want to leave Bobby, but what would he say to the cops? He had killed, too. And who had he killed? Oh, Jesus, mobsters, mobsters, MOBSTERS! He had no chance if he stayed, he had to get away.

Once he was done gathering up the things he wanted to take, he glanced up at the doors of the entrance. Gravity had made them fall shut, but he didn’t want to go out through those. He sensed the police would know where the entrance was just as Bobby had. Besides, he felt a draft coming from the ladies room, a welcome blast of cool air. He walked toward the beckoning coolness, seeking the salvation of being back outside again – of going back in time even, to before he and Bobby had walked down into this hell. There was a little hallway beyond the alcove where the ladies room was. At the end of the hallway, there was a narrow flight of stairs and a door that stood open against the overcast night sky. He climbed the stairs and ran out the door into the snow.

Once outside, he heard the siren better than ever. It was getting closer. He ran in a crouch through the snow, laden with guns and money. He followed a labyrinth of North End alleyways until finally he got back to the alley where they’d parked the car.

By now the siren was in the neighborhood of The Mad Monk Social Club, but an intricate maze of tiny shops and tenements and back streets stood between the social club and Bobby’s car. Eric gambled that the police would neither see nor hear him leave.

The snow plows had been through recently, and the streets didn’t look so bad. But the snow was coming down heavier than ever, a cascade of opaqueness, falling and swirling and blindsiding everything. He’d be a fool to imagine that anyone could see anything through this.

He got into Bobby’s car. He put the guns and the money and the leather jacket on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Then he started up the car, turned on the heat and the windshield wipers, and pulled out onto the street. He’d barely driven since getting his license and hardly knew what he was doing. He forgot to turn on the headlamps, then didn’t turn them on even when he remembered that he had forgotten. Having no lights on would keep him inconspicuous. He drove as slowly as he could, guiding himself by the occasional streetlamp as it scattered its light across the falling flakes.

He found his way back to the Central Artery, and then onto the ramp to 93 South. He put his lights on now. By the time he was on the freeway, the driving became dangerous. Snow piled up in the lanes, even though cars were passing him at fifty or sixty. He continued to drive on with both hands, his body hunched over the wheel and his eyes staring desperately out through the snow. He was totally petrified and prayed that he wouldn’t run out of windshield wiper fluid.

It was only by chance that he got on 93 South. He had meant to go north, to go home, to sleep in his own bed once more. But south was the way his car was facing, and he was too afraid to change direction. Besides, his parents would give him hell if he came home like this and he’d had enough of hell tonight.

* * *

Chapter Three

Jimmy Pallazola was ambidextrous, which’d made him a good sandlot ball player and an even better hit man. He kept his gift a secret and pretended to be right-handed in public, making sure to use it to hold pens or coffee cups whenever