Rick Boyer: Billingsgate Shoal

Then I felt the pipe with my foot. I looked down, and wished I hadn't. I wished instead I'd simply waited up on top of the roof for a reasonable period (like three years) until somebody came and took me off. Jim Schilling, that big and brawny bully, was doubled over, compressed against both sides of the cage by the force of the death blow. His knees pointed up, bottoms of feet resting on the ladder rungs and against the wall behind them. His body was bent, as if in Moslem prayer, except he was facing straight up, toward the Pole Star, rather than toward Mecca. His back was pressed tight against the far end of the cage. His head was facing the pipe that had terminated his nasty life. But his face, and the entire front portion of his head, was curious by its absence. The pipe's lip had caught him as he jerked back, plowing down through the skull at midpoint, removing the front half, face, and mandible. What stared at the jammed pipe was a superbly cross-sectioned head, revealing much of the brain stem, soft palate, throat cavity, and larynx.

I placed my instep underneath the pipe and drew it up with all my remaining strength, which wasn't much. I worked the free end of the pipe around until I could once again grab the flange. Then I lifted it up and dropped it to the side of Schilling's body; It rattled around in the cage a bit on the way down, then thunked sideways into the asphalt of the courtyard.

There remained Schilling. Even in death, he would be a pain. It shall spare the gruesome and clinical anatomical details of removing him from his death perch. My feet, and 175 pounds, finally dislodged his corpse from its weird Yoga stance by thumping down on the blood-soaked shoulders until he straightened out enough to slide down the tunnel cage and thump onto the ground with a sound like a sack of wet laundry. I then reached the ground, took a quick look around, and promptly toted myself over to a dark corner of the courtyard where I proceeded to throw up.

Copiously and repeatedly.

As soon as I could stagger upright, I lurched around the corner and stumbled toward O'Shaughnessey. I wanted to pay him my respects, especially since I was the indirect cause of his death. Every part of my body hurt. But the fun and games still weren't over.

I stumbled along until my foot thumped an oil drum. Up ahead of me I heard the metallic clacking of a big hammer being pulled back. God Almighty I was sick of that sound. I fell forward as the big pistol boomed. There was a long, drawn-out whine. The slug had ricocheted off a wall and was now heading over to Duxbury.

"For Christ's sake!" I shouted.

"My Jesus, is it you?" `

"I thought you'd been killed-"

"Hmmmph. Not bloody likely. I was certain you'd been killed. I thought you were Marlowe."

"No. I killed him with a bomb. How are you?"

"Fine," said the Irishman: Then he slid over into a heap on the ground, the revolver clattering after him.

I raised his legs, putting them up on a concrete ledge, then covered him with my sweater. He needed help, and fast. Then I heard the breee-om breee-ow of the first police wagon. I saw I them stop at the outer gate just long enough for one of them to cut through the chain with a pair of giant cable cutters. In two seconds they'd skidded to a stop in front of me, their rack of blue and white lights swirling and winking. I saw a big pair of shiny black boots approaching me as I bent over the fallen man. They, grated and crunched on the gravel that covered the asphalt. The trooper stared down at me, bewildered. He reached down and picked up the big gun that was lying seven feet from me. His partner, gun drawn, was moving in a fast crouch around to my side.

"Get an ambulance here fast," I said. "Do you have an oxygen bottle? If so, get it over here on the double."

They did.

I pointed to the remains of Thug Number Two, the kid who had been so deadly accurate with the pistol, that lay almost invisible in the dark shadows of the wall.

"There's another dead man up in the far courtyard. Seems he went and lost his head. There are at least two more dead people in the big building on the pier. One of them you won't find because she took a dip. Be careful of that building; there may be some nasty people still inside it, though I doubt it highly."

"What happened? Tell us everything," said the older officer. But I didn't have time because just then two more cruisers came in, followed by the ambulance. I helped place O'Shaughnessey on the litter. We got a plasma bottle over him right away., He kept puffing away at the oxygen mask. Still, when I put the cuff on him, his blood pressure wasn't even registering on the gauge. Poor O'Shaughnessey had kept himself going the past hour on adrenaline and Celtic pluck. He certainly had no blood left.

I was hunched over him in the ambulance as we headed for the hospital. As the big van wheeled and started its siren, I looked out the back and could see the police cutting through the inner fence, then barreling through the gate in their cruisers. The blue lights were winking, sweeping along the old dirty buildings.

In the emergency room they typed him as A Positive; I rolled up my sleeve and they pumped a pint of mine into him. Then he got two more bags, and they had a third ready. As soon as he was stabilized he would undergo surgery to close that blood vessel. Then they would set the leg. It would require a steel pin, they told me, because the X-rays had shown a big hunk of femur gone. But I'd guessed as much earlier; that big. 45 slug had walked away with it, and taken the vein too.

An internal specialist looked over my Sport Section and pronounced it reasonably intact, though I still fairly rang with pain down there. My ribs were taped (two were cracked) and they placed a special walking cast on my left heel for the time being. It would be several months-at least-before I could run again. I didn't like that. During all this time the Law had been waiting patiently, unobtrusively, in the background. I had almost forgotten the polite young officer until O'Shaughnessey dozed off and the nurse came in to give him a bath prior to surgery. Then he oozed up into the foreground and requested I accompany him back to Cordage Park, the last place on earth I wanted to go.

We swerved into the complex and I wobbled out of the cruiser. The night's adventures, coupled with the missing pint of blood-now hopefully speeding the Irishman's recovery had done me in. The police had finished photographing Thug Number Two, and now drew a coverlet over him. Poor kid.

"Any idea who he was, Doctor?"

"No. He was an American though. He talked like an American, not from across the water-"

"Thank you. Now if you could just come with us back here…"

Oh no. I had to go and view Schilling's remains again. They had the body covered for obvious reasons. Even the hardened law officers couldn't stand the sight of the Headless Horseman. But three of them were staring into the pipe, transfixed. I bent over. The first thing that caught my eye was a gleam of gold amidst the clots of red tissue. The gold was set on yellow-white. It was one of Schilling's molars, riding on the jawbone that was packed tight into the pipe with the rest of his head. And then I saw a bright white dot amongst the gristle and gore: Schilling's hearing aid. `

It was as if the head had been canned. I found the notion outrageously funny. And then I imagined shopping at the supermarket, throwing things into the cart: can of beans, cling peaches, asparagus, human head, corned beef hash-

A demonic, aching giggle was trying to surface. I knew if I started laughing perhaps I wouldn't stop for days and days.

Watch it! Watch it, Doc… y0u're letting this thing get to you

… you're taking it way too seriously-

I grabbed at my sides and sat down. Faces peered into mine, asking me questions. I told them to leave me alone. They persisted. Then I heard a faint but familiar voice: