William Brown - The Undertaker

“Engineers. What would you do without me?” She raised the radio to her lips and spoke into the open mike in a sexy, throaty voice. “You boys out there in radio land, ya'll have a nice night now, you hear.” She then set the radio in the bottom of the can. But as she straightened up, she got a good look at her clothes and at mine. “Yuck. Rolling around in that alley wasn't such a good idea, was it? Look at us.” Her new mall clothes from Toledo were covered with mud and food stains and mine weren't much better. Neither were our hands and her arms and legs. “We're not going to get very far looking like this.”

“You're right,” I answered glumly. I looked at my watch. It was almost 9:00 PM and the stores would be closing. I pulled out my street map and opened it up in the small cone of light beneath the ornate Victorian street lamp. They might be cute on a bright summer day when the Public Garden was probably full of tourists, but they weren't worth squat when you needed some light. I didn't like being in a big city park after dark like this, but the walkways through the Common were the shortest route back downtown. Besides, the goon's pals couldn't follow us in here in their cars.

As I tucked the map away, I remembered the goon's automatic. I pulled it out of my belt, carefully wiped my fingerprints off, and dropped it in the nearest storm sewer grate.

“That might have come in handy, you know.”

“No. All it would have done is give them an excuse to shoot. I can't take that risk.”

“You mean with me along now, don't you?”

I made no reply. “Let's keep moving,” was all I said. I took her hand and we crossed Charles Street and entered the Common.

“Why don't we find a place to hide here in Boston? It's a big city. You said you have some friends. It shouldn't be too hard to disappear for a while.”

I thought about it for a moment. “No, not after Tinkerton brought in locals. They know the ground a whole lot better than we do and it will only put more people in danger.”

“Where then?”

“Washington. Hardin. He's the only one who might listen to us, and who has the clout to bring Tinkerton down. But I have a plan B. We pass through New York on the way to Washington. Santorini's lawyer is there, that guy Billingham, remember?”

“B for Billingham? Gee, that's original.”

“This whole thing is about the Witness Protection Program, right? That means the Mafia is still holding the missing pieces. They have all the whys.”

“What makes you think Billingham will talk to you?”

“I don't,” I smiled. “But something tells me they'd like to poke a stick in Tinkerton's eye as much as we would.”

The dark walkways that wound through the Common eventually brought us to Tremont and Park Streets at the far southeast corner of the park, where we saw another of those round, white signs with the big blue “T” on it. We hung back and circled the station, but I saw no one loitering around the front entrance. No two-way radios. No jackets with too many bulges. So we pushed on through the double doors and took the steep flight of stairs down. This was Park Street, one of the T's main line crossings. We slipped into the restrooms and washed off the worst of the mud, then met near the ticket booths in front of a colorful route map of the city.

I studied the big map and ran my finger across the subway routes. “We could take the Red Line to the South Railroad Station and maybe catch the Amtrak to New York.”

“The train? You're becoming a one-trick pony.”

“One trick? I thought you complemented me for my inventiveness.”

“Good one! And, bite my tongue, yes I did, more like a stallion than pony, as I recall,” she smiled. “But your ego aside, we've got to do something about these clothes. I brushed some of the loose mud off, but we can't go anywhere looking like this.”

We continued east through the Common until we reached Tremont, then took the smaller side streets southeast past the Old South Meeting house until we saw the big gray facade of South Station in the distance. It was another of those huge, old granite caverns dating to the 1920's, built for the era of long-distance train travel. From two blocks away, I saw Boston cop cars parked all around the station at odd angles, doors open, with cops standing around smoking and laughing. Other police cars were racing by on Atlantic Avenue with their flashers on.

“Looks like they caught on to our train thing,” Sandy said. “How sad.”

“Yeah, I was looking forward to getting you into the upper bunk this time.”

“The upper? That has a much higher Degree of Difficulty.”

“Yeah, but anybody can get laid in a lower. Been there, done that.”

She looked me up and down and smiled. “I'm liking this. You've been with me three days now, and you're actually developing a budding sense of humor. Not much of one yet, but keep on trying. I have hope for you yet.”

We turned around and found one of the darker side streets, heading north and east and away from the South Station. “Okay, what's the new plan,” she asked.

“I'm putting the final touches on it as we speak.”

“You don't have a clue, do you?”

“Nope, but I will.”

We walked on past the Old State House, trying to blend into the evening crowd around the restaurants, bars, and shops near the Quincy and North Markets and Faneuil Hall. We continued under the elevated I-93 into the North End and on into Little Italy. This was old Boston and residential. We walked up Salem, with her arm around my waist and my arm around her shoulders, wandering the back streets until I saw what I was looking for — a brightly lit self-service laundromat.

“You think we can stand around in our underwear waiting for the clothes to dry?” Sandy poked me. “I'm game if you are, but we might be noticed.”

“Well, I might be.”

“Talbott, you must love bruises, don't you?”

“No offence meant, ma'am.”

“Don't you know, petite women don't like being teased about sizes and physical inadequacies? Especially by someone who took so much delight from them just a few short hours ago,” she said, as her right claw dug a painful inch into my side.

The laundromat was painted stark, institutional white and it was lit as bright as day. The only customer was a dumpy, older woman in a housedress who sat in a chair in front of the washers, knitting. She had three large, empty laundry baskets on the floor, and a half-dozen tall stacks of clothes on the table in front of her. Behind her there was another load thumping around in a drier.

We walked up to the woman arm in arm and I gave her my friendliest, most pathetic smile. “Pardon me; I wonder if you could help us out?”

She looked at us and our clothes and the dried mud smeared on Sandy's legs and probably thought we were homeless. “I ain't got no money, Mister,” she said.

“Money isn't our problem,” Sandy said as she looked down at our muddy clothes. “We were walking in the Common and got chased by some kids, some muggers. We got away, but we took a tumble down a big hill. Look at us,” she laughed. “I am humiliated.”

“Yeah, humiliated. I can see that,” the woman looked at her, still wondering.

“If I take her home like this,” I added. “Her old man will kill me.”

“Yeah, I got girls. I'd kill you too,” the woman said, starting to laugh. “So, what do you want? You want to use a washer?”

I looked at the piles of clothes on the table. “I've got a better idea. That's your kids stuff, right? How old are they?”

The woman frowned. “I got five — three girls and two boys, sixteen to twenty-four, and my husband Theo. You can add him to that list too. But why do you care?”

“Are any of them about our sizes?” Sandy asked.