a bag and locked the hatch behind me. I flagged a cab and told him to take me to the airport.
THE SECOND MAN
TEN
On the 747 that took me from Miami to Boston I had plenty of time to think about the man I had killed and the two more I intended to kill. Less than eight hours had passed since I had put a bullet through Stud's head. In that time I had crossed the line that divides the respectable citizen from the outlaw. I, who had devoted so many years to the study of the law, was now forever beyond it. At one point in my career I had worked hard to change the capital punishment laws, taking it as my thesis that the state had no right to demand a life for a life, since that in turn made the state a party to murder.
If I had been right then, I was certainly wrong now. But I was no longer interested in right or wrong. An eye for an eye, read the biblical injunction. And vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. What did all that mean to me now? Nothing and less than nothing. The restrictions of society and my obligation to its laws had died with Stacey at the moment that her body had struck the terrace beneath our hotel window. I had broken the law and was clearly a criminal. Yet I felt no more criminal now than I had when I had killed while wearing the uniform of a marine officer. I had killed Stud out of the same cold necessity, not under orders from my government this time, but rather under strict orders from myself. And I would execute the others the same way. Unemotionally. Perhaps it would have been better if I had felt some passion in the act. The release of passion would have served as an emotional catharsis. Presumably I had now eased my thirst for revenge by one third. But it did not work that way. There was only a void instead of satisfaction.
The clouds fled away beneath us. We-thirty or forty souls committed to sudden togetherness at thirty thousand feet-raced along to our separate destinations. It was a reasonably safe bet to assume that, of them all, I was the only one on his way to a killing.
We touched down in a haze of burning rubber. I picked up my leather briefcase-bulging with the heavy weight of the .38-and made my way out through the terminal to the taxi stand. We took the tunnel in from Logan airport, and I had him drop me off across the street from the Common. It had been a good many years since I had been there, but nothing much had changed-still the swan boats moving in stately procession around the pond and the hundreds of kids sprawled across the grass in the spring sunshine.
There was a crowd in front of the capitol building, and I saw a little girl who could not have been more than five or six carrying a placard bigger than herself, imprinted on it in flaming scarlet words ABORTION NOW! Behind her came a stout woman with the build of a miniature King Kong. She was wearing hot pants and carrying a bullhorn. The occasion, I gathered, had to do with the abortion hearings before the state legislature. When she raised the horn to her mouth, her voice came out like the crack of doom.
"Why the fuck should I be penalized just because my diaphragm slipped?" she bellowed.
The child, tottering under the sign, watched her attentively.
"Let's rap!" continued the voice of the harpie. "Let's rap about fucking!"
The stoned kids in the park never even looked up. Frisbies circled overhead like plastic' birds. There were bikes everywhere. And dogs. A dog to each kid. All happily frolicking. A turned-on generation. It was a new scene. I felt as old as Rip Van Winkle.
On the fringes of the park were the rag-picking Beacon Hill biddies I remembered from my undergraduate days.
Oarsmen sculling on the Charles. In some ways it was still the peaceful scene that Emerson and Thoreau must have known. But the kids were different. Glassy-eyed. The age of the lotus eater with the transistor umbilical attached
THE SECOND MAN
TEN
On the 747 that took me from Miami to Boston I had plenty of time to think about the man I had killed and the two more I intended to kill. Less than eight hours had passed since I had put a bullet through Stud's head. In that time I had crossed the line that divides the respectable citizen from the outlaw. I, who had devoted so many years to the study of the law, was now forever beyond it. At one point in my career I had worked hard to change the capital punishment laws, taking it as my thesis that the state had no right to demand a life for a life, since that in turn made the state a party to murder.
If I had been right then, I was certainly wrong now. But I was no longer interested in right or wrong. An eye for an eye, read the biblical injunction. And vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. What did all that mean to me now? Nothing and less than nothing. The restrictions of society and my obligation to its laws had died with Stacey at the moment that her body had struck the terrace beneath our hotel window. I had broken the law and was clearly a criminal. Yet I felt no more criminal now than I had when I had killed while wearing the uniform of a marine officer. I had killed Stud out of the same cold necessity, not under orders from my government this time, but rather under strict orders from myself. And I would execute the others the same way. Unemotionally. Perhaps it would have been better if I had felt some passion in the act. The release of passion would have served as an emotional catharsis. Presumably I had now eased my thirst for revenge by one third. But it did not work that way. There was only a void instead of satisfaction.
The clouds fled away beneath us. We-thirty or forty souls committed to sudden togetherness at thirty thousand feet-raced along to our separate destinations. It was a reasonably safe bet to assume that, of them all, I was the only one on his way to a killing.
We touched down in a haze of burning rubber. I picked up my leather briefcase-bulging with the heavy weight of the .38-and made my way out through the terminal to the taxi stand. We took the tunnel in from Logan airport, and I had him drop me off across the street from the Common. It had been a good many years since I had been there, but nothing much had changed-still the swan boats moving in stately procession around the pond and the hundreds of kids sprawled across the grass in the spring sunshine.
There was a crowd in front of the capitol building, and I saw a little girl who could not have been more than five or six carrying a placard bigger than herself, imprinted on it in flaming scarlet words ABORTION NOW! Behind her came a stout woman with the build of a miniature King Kong. She was wearing hot pants and carrying a bullhorn. The occasion, I gathered, had to do with the abortion hearings before the state legislature. When she raised the horn to her mouth, her voice came out like the crack of doom.
"Why the fuck should I be penalized just because my diaphragm slipped?" she bellowed.
The child, tottering under the sign, watched her attentively.
"Let's rap!" continued the voice of the harpie. "Let's rap about fucking!"
The stoned kids in the park never even looked up. Frisbies circled overhead like plastic' birds. There were bikes everywhere. And dogs. A dog to each kid. All happily frolicking. A turned-on generation. It was a new scene. I felt as old as Rip Van Winkle.
On the fringes of the park were the rag-picking Beacon Hill biddies I remembered from my undergraduate days.
Oarsmen sculling on the Charles. In some ways it was still the peaceful scene that Emerson and Thoreau must have known. But the kids were different. Glassy-eyed. The age of the lotus eater with the transistor umbilical attached
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