Sixty-Eight

I phoned Mel. “She’s here.”

“Where?”

“Dorothy’s. Get help.”

I hung up the phone, stood on tiptoe, and tried to concoct a plan that would get me across the churning crowd of runners. The Boston Marathon was now a river at full flow as the bell-curve bulge of midspeed runners took the turn into Boston.

Two problems prevented me from getting across and stopping E from finishing her revenge tour.

The first was the police who lined the raceway, a nod to increased security since the bombing years ago. I might get one leg over the fence edging the road, but there’d be a cop on me right away, pulling me back.

The second was the runners themselves. Exhausted, chugging out eight-minute miles with cramping legs and grinding knees, they’d be in no shape to dodge some asshat who tried to run sideways across the race. They’d trip on me, fall, create a pileup. In the end I would not only have shattered their dreams and wasted their months of training, I still wouldn’t get to Dorothy’s house before E’s sword finished the job.

I jogged down Beacon Street in the dripping rain, looking for a gap in the barriers, a spot where a mad dash could get me across before I collided with anyone. Then I saw an enormous gap in the police barrier, a gap filled with ten people who stood with an unobstructed path to the road. These people ran from table to track handing out cups of water in their capacity as Boston Athletic Association volunteers, the yellow-jacketed backbone of the event.

I needed one of those jackets.

The volunteers hustled back and forth between the crush of runners and a stack of green cups filled with water. The runners pelted by as the volunteers matched their stride, handed them the water, and ran back for more. One of the volunteers delivered her water, peeled away from the table, and headed for a blue port-a-potty behind me, giving me an idea. I had one shot at this, but I’d need some social engineering to pull it off.

I turned, entered the port-a-potty, and in a nod to authenticity, unzipped and used the facility, letting the sound of splashing water show that there was, indeed, a man at work inside. Then I waited another moment, undid the latch, and stepped out.

The woman in the BAA jacket waited in front of the john. I stepped down, closed the door behind me, and shook my head at her.

“It’s a disaster in there,” I said.

She crinkled her nose. “Really?”

“It’s gross. I’m glad I didn’t have to touch anything.”

“But I have to go.”

“Yeah, just giving you fair warning.”

The woman fingered her BAA volunteer jacket, clearly thinking about how to avoid soiling it.

“I can hold it for you,” I said.

“But you’ll miss the race.”

“It’s gonna run for a another couple of hours.”

She pulled off the jacket, handed it to me. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“Good luck in there,” I said.

She climbed into the port-a-potty, closed the door, and latched it. I donned her jacket. It pulled across the back but made a fine disguise. I ran back to the water table, ignoring the cop monitoring the entry point, counting on my new yellow jacket to get me to the roadway.

It worked.

I looked across Beacon Street. The art tube holding E’s sword bobbed in front of Pino’s Pizza as she made her way toward Dorothy’s apartment. Dorothy had been safe behind her nickname of “NotAGirl” and the fact that nobody knew where she lived, until I had given E all the information she needed to finish off the last member of PwnSec. I grabbed a cup of water, started running, matched stride with the next runner. A woman wearing an orange and blue checked top with the words Children’s Hospital Boston above her bib number.

I held out the cup. “Water?”

She shook her head and panted, “No thanks.”

I continued running. “You sure?”

“I’ll throw up.”

I dropped back to her teammate, a bald guy sporting a sheen of pate sweat. “Water?”

“No,” he puffed.

“You’re sweating.”

“I know. No water.”

I let him go. Behind him a short thin woman in a crop-top running bra fixed me with a gaze, shook her head.

“You sure?”

She ran on. I reached the end of the open stretch. More runners ran past. I looked toward the port-a-potty. A runner grabbed the cup from my hand when I wasn’t looking. The woman whose jacket I wore had emerged and was searching for me. I turned away before she could make eye contact, and saw E’s art tube winding its way past the deli, the thick crowd slowing her progress.

I ran back to the table, grabbed another cup of water. Matched pace alongside a guy in a white-sheet toga who now understood why marathon runners had been shirtless Greeks instead of togaed Romans. Two rust-colored stains ran down the front of his toga showing that his nipples would never be the same after twenty-some miles of chafing.

I offered the cup. “Water?”

“No, man.”

“You sure?”

“Jesus, it hurts.”

I slipped into the race running behind him, came up on the other side. “You look like you could use it.”

“Should you be on the course?”

“No,” I said. I drank the water, tossed the cup to the ground, and kept going. Looked over my shoulder. I’d have to pick up the pace a bit to get across, so started running harder. Came up on a guy pushing a kid in a wheelchair. Ran past, slid in front of him with plenty of room. Kept running.

Someone in the crowd noticed me. “You can do it, yellow guy!”

“You go, BAA volunteer!”

I ran diagonally away from the wheelchair pair. Ran past a guy with no shirt, wearing red-white-and-blue running shorts, his bib clipped to the front of his shorts. The guy was ripped. Women hooted at him. “You go, hot dude.”

“Go! Go! Go!” the crowd yelled.

Though the cheers weren’t for me, I took them in anyway, letting them fill me with goodwill and energy. I could see how you could do this for twenty-six miles, as long as your knees held up.

Shirtless Guy looked at me. “What are you doing?”

“Crossing the street.”

I veered toward the barriers protecting the race course. Race fans raised hands for high fives. I looked behind me, saw a runner slapping palms, ran away from the barrier to make room, slowed, then stopped in front of the fence and threw a leg over.

“A little help!” I called.

Two guys in BU sweatshirts grabbed me, pulled me over the fence.

One said, “Jesus, dude. You coulda killed someone.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “Emergency.”

The marathon had pushed me downstream. I’d have to get back to Dorothy’s house.

I looked back up Beacon. Saw E’s art tube disappear into Dorothy’s entryway.