Bosstown--A Novel by Adam Abramowitz

Author:Adam Abramowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

THIRTY-THREE

My first run sends me downtown into the shaded canyon of the Financial District, the city’s well-dressed foot soldiers providing me with plenty of cover as I make a concerted effort to avoid any roving bike police patrolling for jaywalkers and expired courier tags. For logistical purposes, Martha keeps me downtown, cleaning up the backlog of steady and long-term clients that accumulated while Damien slept off his hangover and I scammed eight hundred dollars from some girl whose next plastic surgery would be to repair blown-out sinus cavities.

Gus’s clients are peppered into the mix, but they’re all scrubbed and corporate—legal writs, notarized forms, ball game tickets—nobody I encounter is cold sweating or sniffling blood into a tissue. If the receptionists and lobby bouncers even realize Gus is missing, they don’t show it, and I’m reminded that in the everyday scheme of things, we’re pretty much interchangeable parts. The delivery’s the thing, and if it’s eye candy they’re looking for, they’ll have to wait until I’m healed. I keep the sunglasses on, make it a point not to sweat on the suits.

Since the first Big Dig shovels hit the streets, downtown traffic’s been an ever-changing mess, construction diverting cars and pedestrians to wayward destinations. A walk around the block can turn into a Himalayan trek through restricted hard-hat zones; nobody gets a direct route to where they want to go. Even a pedestrian change of direction is difficult, bordering on dangerous, as crowds are aggressively herded through orange bucket embankments by uniformed traffic division crossing guards, the more loose-limbed members of their hostile fraternity practically break-dancing in the streets.

I leave them all behind, cutting diagonally across the Boston Commons, the Statehouse dome blinging like a Brahmin rapper’s solid gold tooth. I catch a wave of optimism as I approach a DPW crew patching up a pothole, but on closer inspection, it’s business as usual: five guys in orange vests, two doing all the work, the other three supervising to make sure it’s done poorly so they’ll have to come back tomorrow and do it all over again. White dashes fly beneath my wheels like a string of undotted i’s.

Ah, Beantown.

The same guard is manning the door at 38 Newbury, except today he’s jazzed up the uniform, added a dark blue commando sweater to go with his single-striped navy pants. Something in his demeanor suggests a heightened sense of awareness or anticipation. Then again, maybe he’s just got gas.

“So I happened to be reading the papers this morning…,” he says as I reach for the door.

“Okay,” I say, backtracking.

“That you got hit yesterday?”

I take off my sunglasses, figuring an eyeful of stitches is worth at least a thousand words.

“You weren’t wearing a helmet yesterday,” he observes.

“Nope.”

“And now you are. Isn’t that a little like locking the barn doors after the horses are loose already?”

“Stable,” I say. “Horses are kept in stables.”

“All right, cowboy.”

I take a deep breath, look up to the sky. “Actually, I’m just covering up a bad hair day.”

“You too?” He lifts his blue cap, revealing a shock of corkscrew curls.

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