The dream plays like clockwork, before the birds collect their sheet music for the day, a high ghost moon steeping toward a weak-tea dawn: June in Boston and the living is sleazy as Gus Molten cruises his black Cannondale through the neon gauntlet of Washington Street. Hot for so early in the season, mirage hot, the sledgehammer of another Boston summer falling early, ushering in a new Season of Living Dangerously.
Two fifty-four in the morning, to be exact; the bars almost an hour empty, the short strip of the Combat Zone still bustling like the floor of some illicit stock exchange, trading heavy.
Watchu need, bro? Watchu lookin’ for?
The usual. On each side of the street, thin track stars lope about in two-piece Fila, Adidas, and Gianni Versace running suits, Olympic gold chains looped around their necks, dull dollar signs and the threat of instant violence fixed in glassy predatory eyes. Home Sweet Home as Gus hooks a right onto a deserted LaGrange, the yo-blow-yo-smoke-yo-pussy mantra echoing off the corners, ringing sweet as a lullaby, familiar and warm to his ears.
He glides the Cannondale to the curb, nurses the brakes to a full stop before an outdoor foyer of black iron bars roughly the size of a holding cell; the entrance, as always, reeking of beer and piss, the floor littered with the spill of fast-food containers and shattered green and brown glass, street diamonds glittering in a shaft of sympathetic moonlight. Above the foyer a broken electric sign reads, GO D TIM S, the hours midnight to 2 A.M. shaded on its shattered clockface. A few doors down, the Glass Slipper is quiet except for the schizophrenic wink of its pink neon illuminating the cartoonish figure of a large-breasted blonde clutching the strap of a sparkling stiletto-heeled shoe brick-painted above its entrance.
She looks nothing like Cinderella.
From where he stands, Gus can hear the rumbling of muscle cars—Thunderbirds, Chargers, Camaros—turning the corner off Kneeland, prowling the block for hookers and late-night thrills; watches for a moment as they wheel up Washington; sets his eyes to blank as a two-tone cruiser peels off toward him and passes out the other end onto Tremont, its strobes spinning blue ghouls into the night. He jangles a set of keys from his messenger bag and slips one into the gate’s lock, the bolt giving way with a heavy click like the sound of a hammer on a gun being cocked.
The man comes out of a darkened doorway, walking unsteadily with his head down, his right hand nursing a brown paper bag held close at his side. When Gus turns for his bike the man is right behind him, the bag-hand extended high like he’s offering him a drink.
Strange.
It’s not like Gus to miss someone standing in the doorway like that. Sure, it’s late and dark, but he’s normally cautious about checking the street for anything out of whack, any dangers beside the usual sharks and bottom feeders the neighborhood—if you could call it that—draws. Maybe his carelessness has something to do with that reading in Harvard Square the other day, all that “moon in Venus and Uranus” shit messing with his head. Maybe all the cash he’s pulling making him cocky. Big-Time Hood. Seen too many Scorsese movies. Maybe he’s stoned.
Whatever.
Gus opens his mouth to say something when the first bullet takes out his front teeth, pings off the metal stud in his tongue, and exits out the back of his neck, severing the spinal column. The foyer door swings open as Gus buckles backward, but not before two more flashes catch him, the reports muffled like firecrackers set off under a pillow; not even loud enough to stir the rats from their busywork.
The man’s hand bursts into flame.
Gus slams against the inside door and slides down, blood mixed with piss and little chunks of his last thoughts dripping onto his shoulders.
The cruiser doesn’t stop for a closer look at him until the sun’s wedged itself into the sky. Except for the large pool of deep crimson that seeps from under the bars, over the sidewalk, and into the street, he looks like just another drunk sleeping the hard night away.
They have to torch the gate to collect him; it had been locked with his Kryptonite. Of course by then the Cannondale is gone, as is his pack, leaving only the sidewalk stamped with red footprints that read: Nike, Fila, Reebok, and Adidas.
And one long strip of bicycle tread.