Wilderness

"How will we know if we don't look?" Hood said. "You have to know everything, Aaron. The layout of everything, where everyone's deployed, all the options." Newman nodded. "Okay," he said.

They got out of the car and strolled down toward the alley that ran between the furniture store and a restaurant.

"There's got to be some reason for an alley," Hood said. "There must be a door or a ventilator, or windows or something. Otherwise they'd just butt the buildings up together." His eyes moved back and forth across the mouth of the alley. He was moving on the balls of his feet and his fingers drummed very gently but steadily against his thighs.

God, doesn't he love this, Newman thought.

There were three rats in the alley; one was on the ground and two were in the trash barrel that sat outside the back door to the restaurant.

The three rats scuttled away as Newman and Hood came down from the street. Besides the trash barrel there was nothing else in the alley.

Opposite the restaurant door was an unmarked fire door with metal facing painted beige. Against the back wall of the alley there was an empty wine bottle leaning, and what might have been human feces in the corner.

Hood reached the blank door into the furniture store. He put one hand quietly on the knob and turned. The door didn't open.

"Locked," Hood said.

Newman felt relief move through him along the nerve tracks. "Okay," he said. "Let's get out of this alley."

Hood was looking up at the alley walls. "Wait a minute now," he said.

"We haven't looked at everything. Maybe a window, a ledge, you don't know. You have to check everything out."

"Why, Chris?" Newman said, "Why do you have to." Newman saw a darkness between him and the alley mouth. He looked at it. It was the enormous man from Karl's office. He stood perhaps three feet inside the alley, blocking it.

Newman said, "Chris."

Hood, his back turned to the man, looked over his shoulder. He said softly, "Yeah, I see. Don't touch your gun." The enormous man said nothing. He moved slowly down the alley toward them.

Hood slid the P-g8 out of his shoulder holster. He was halfway behind Newman and the gesture was screened from the big man. Holding the gun at his side and behind his thigh, he turned. The big man kept coming.

Newman felt weak. He knew he wasn't. He could bench-press more than two hundred pounds. He knew he was big and strong. But he felt the strength go out of him. His legs and arms felt limp, the muscles flaccid. He was tired. He faced toward the big man, his hands feeling awkward and out of place. Should he put them up like a prizefighter?

Hold them waist high and half closed, ready for anything?

The man was upon them. "What are you doing here," he said.

The voice, Newman thought, Jesus what a scary voice. He tried to bunch the muscles in his shoulders to be ready.

Hood stepped half a step forward and brought the Walther out from behind his leg. In a lateral karate-like movement he swung the gun up over the man's shoulder and hit him in the temple with the top of the barrel where the shells eject. It was so quick the big man never moved. The gun made a sound like a mallet hitting a grapefruit, and the man's knees buckled. Hood hit him again on the temple. The sound was squishier. And again. The man began to sag.

Like a Peckinpah movie, for cris sake Newman thought. It was as if the man were too big to fall suddenly. And slowly, as if in slow motion, he went down and sprawled in the alley on his stomach. Blood showed at the temple in a small ooze, there was redness around it.

Hood bent over and took the man's wallet from his left hip pocket. He pulled the man's wristwatch on its expandable bracelet off the nsan's left wrist. Then with a short jabbing motion of his right hand, the gun still in it, he gestured up the alley. "Go," he said.

Newman first with Hood behind him ran up the alley. Newman didn't slow at the alley mouth but kept right on ru

"Drive," Hood said, and Newman got behind the wheel, took the keys from over the visor, and started the car. They turned right on Causeway under the MBTA elevated, and left onto the Charlestown Bridge; in City Square, Newman went up the ramp onto Route 93 and headed north.

"He didn't recognize me," Newman said.

"No. Not without your deaf-mute getup," Hood said. "If he had I'd have killed him."

"You sure he didn't?"

"Yeah. I was watching his eyes; he didn't show any sign of recognizing you."

"Lucky," Newman said.

Hood looked at the contents of the man's wallet. "Not much," Hood said. "Two hundred and twenty-eight dollars, and a Massachusetts driver's license. His name is Tate. Gordon Tate. His address is the same as Karl's. He was born in 1940."

Newman took in a deep breath and blew it out. "That was one of the guys from Karl's office, you know. The same one that tied up Janet." "I know," Hood said. "One thing, Aaron. You shouldn't have run right out of the alley like you did. You come to an alley mouth you stop and see what's out there. Then you move."

Newman was silent as the Bronco rolled through Somerville toward Medford. "I was scared, Chris. I guess I wasn't thinking."

Hood shrugged. Some powerboats rode at anchor in the Mystic River, narrower here by half than it was only a few miles closer to the sea where the bridge arched over it and the cargo ships sailed up it to the pallet docks.

"I wasn't much help to you in the alley, Chris," Newman said.

They went up slightly onto an overpass that crossed the river. "It takes learning, Aaron," Hood said. "You got a little combat experience today, that's all. Wasn't much you needed to do. You spotted him first."

"Why'd you tell me not to touch my gun?"

"Didn't want to spook them if we could help it. Shooting might bring cops, or bad guys with guns. I don't know. Kill that guy and maybe Karl would get nervous and be too hard to hit. I just wanted to get by without the guns if we could."

Newman nodded.

"Guy was too cocky," Hood said. "Big huge guys like that are sometimes. Doesn't occur to them that they can be taken. He got too close. Should have had his gun out. Shouldn't have gone down an alley with two guys if he didn't. We're not his size, but we're not midgets.

He should have noticed that."

"I don't know if not being a midget outside makes any difference," Newman said. "Not if you're a midget inside."

Newman was staring straight ahead as he drove. Hood looked at him and sucked on the inside of his cheeks and said nothing.

CHAPTER 14.

Lieutenant Murray Vincent sat in his office at 1010 Commonwealth Avenue and fingered a thick collection of computer print-out sheets. He sat square in his chair with both feet flat on the floor and the computer sheets on his spare neat desk. As he went through them he moved his eyes methodically down the names on the sheets, turned a sheet, read the names, turned a sheet, read the names. Occasionally he stopped and went back reading more data on a name he recognized. He did this for an hour and eight minutes. Then he yelled through the open door, "Bobby." A uniformed State Trooper appeared in the door. "Corporal Croft is out on a detail, sir. Sheet says he'll be back in about half an hour."

"Send him in when he gets here," Vincent said.

In half an hour Croft came into Vincent's office.

Vincent said, "Close the door, Bobby."

Croft did. Then he sat in a straight chair beside Vincent's desk.

Vincent handed him a multifold print-out sheet, folded over. There was a name marked in blue pencil. "That a familiar name to you?" Vincent said.

Croft read, "Aaron Newman. Sure. He's the guy that saw Karl kill the broad in Smithfield and then got scared off." "It appears," Vincent said, "that Newman has purchased a firearm."