4
Katz didn't need any mirror to see what was about to happen. First the crazy man, now the crazy cops. Oy vay.
"Drop!" he screamed to his assistant and to Ralph, the security guard, and then fell to his knees behind the counter without waiting to see if they were doing the same or not.
Then, a split-second before Delevan triggered the shotgun, his assistant dropped on top of him like an eager tackle sacking the quarterback in a football game, driving Katz's head against the floor and breaking his jaw in two places.
Through the sudden pain which went roaring through his head, he heard the shotgun's blast, heard the remaining glass in the windows shatter - along with bottles of aftershave, cologne, perfume, mouthwash, cough syrup, God knew what else. A thousand conflicting smells rose, creating one hell-stench, and before he passed out, Katz again called upon God to rot his father for chaining this curse of a drug store to his ankle in the first place.
5
Roland saw bottles and boxes fly back in a hurricane of shot. A glass case containing time-pieces disintegrated. Most of the watches inside also disintegrated. The pieces flew backwards in a sparkling cloud.
They can't know if there are still innocent people in here or not, he thought. They can't know and yet they used a scatter-rifle just the same!
It was unforgivable. He felt anger and suppressed it. They were gunslingers. Better to believe their brains had been addled by the head-knocking they'd taken than to believe they'd done such a thing knowingly, without a care for whom they might hurt or kill.
They would expect him to either run or shoot.
Instead, he crept forward, keeping low. He lacerated both hands and knees on shards of broken glass. The pain brought Jack Mort back to consciousness. He was glad Mort was back. He would need him. As for Mort's hands and knees, he didn't care. He could stand the pain easily, and the wounds were being inflicted on the body of a monster who deserved no better.
He reached the area just under what remained of the plate-glass window. He was to the right of the door. He crouched there, body coiled. He bolstered the gun which had been in his right hand.
He would not need it.
6
"What are you doing, Carl?" O'Mearah screamed. In his head he suddenly saw a Daily News headline: COP KILLS 4 IN WEST SIDE DRUG STORE SNAFU.
Delevan ignored him and pumped a fresh shell into the shotgun. "Let's go get this shit."
7
It happened exactly as the gunslinger had hoped it would.
Furious at being effortlessly fooled and disarmed by a man who probably looked to them no more dangerous than any of the other lambs on the streets of this seemingly endless city, still groggy from the head-knocking, they rushed in with the idiot who had fired the scatter-rifle in the lead. They ran slightly bent-over, like soldiers charging an enemy position, but that was the only concession they made to the idea that their adversary might still be inside. In their minds, he was already out the back and fleeing down an alley.
So they came crunching over the sidewalk glass, and when the gunslinger with the scatter-rifle pulled open the glassless door and charged in, the gunslinger rose, his hands laced together in a single fist, and brought it down on the nape of Officer Carl Delevan's neck.
While testifying before the investigating committee, Delevan would claim he remembered nothing at all after kneeling down in Clements' and seeing the perp's wallet under the counter. The committee members thought such amnesia was, under the circumstances, pretty damned convenient, and Delevan was lucky to get off with a sixty-day suspension without pay. Roland, however, would have believed, and, under different circumstances (if the fool hadn't discharged a scatter-rifle into a store which might have been full of innocent people, for instance), even sympathized. When you got your skull busted twice in half an hour, a few scrambled brains were to be expected.
As Delevan went down, suddenly as boneless as a sack of oats, Roland took the scatter-rifle from his relaxing hands.
"Hold it!" O'Mearah screamed, his voice a mixture of anger and dismay. He was starting to raise Fat Johnny's Magnum, but it was as Roland had suspected: the gunslingers of this world were pitifully slow. He could have shot O'Mearah three times, but there was no need. He simply swung the scatter-gun in a strong, climbing arc. There was a flat smack as the stock connected with O'Mearah's left cheek, the sound of a baseball bat connecting with a real steamer of a pitch. All at once O'Mearah's entire face from the cheek on down moved two inches to the right. It would take three operations and four steel pegs to put him together again. He stood there for a moment, unbelieving, and then his eyes rolled up the whites. His knees unhinged and he collapsed.
Roland stood in the doorway, oblivious to the approaching sirens. He broke the scatter-rifle, then worked the pump action, ejecting all the fat red cartridges onto Delevan's body. That done, he dropped the gun itself onto Delevan.
"You're a dangerous fool who should be sent west," he told the unconscious man. "You have forgotten the face of your father."
He stepped over the body and walked to the gunslingers' carriage, which was still idling. He climbed in the door on the far side and slid behind the driving wheel.
8
Can you drive this carriage? he asked the screaming, gibbering thing that was Jack Mort.
He got no coherent answer; Mort just went on screaming. The gunslinger recognized this as hysteria, but one which was not entirely genuine. Jack Mort was having hysterics on purpose, as a way of avoiding any conversation with this weird kidnapper.
Listen, the gunslinger told him. Ionly have time to say this - and everything else - once. My time has grown very short. If you don't answer my question, I am going to put your right thumb into your right eye. I'll jam it in as far as it will go, and then I'll pull your eyeball right out of your head and wipe it on the seat of this carriage like a booger. I can get along with one eye just fine. And, after all, it isn't as if it were mine.
He could no more have lied to Mort than Mort could have lied to him; the nature of their relationship was cold and reluctant on both their parts, yet it was much more intimate than the most passionate act of sexual intercourse would have been. This was, after all, not a joining of bodies but the ultimate meeting of minds.
He meant exactly what he said.
And Mort knew it.
The hysterics stopped abruptly. Ican drive it, Mort said. It was the first sensible communication Roland had gotten from Mort since he had arrived inside the man's head.
Then do it.
Where do you want me to go?
Do you know a place called "The Village"?
Yes.
Go there.
Where in the Village?
For now, just drive.
We'll be able to go faster if I use the siren.
Fine. Turn it on. Those flashing lights, too.
For the first time since he had seized control of him, Roland pulled back a little and allowed Mort to take over. When Mort's head turned to inspect the dashboard of Delevan's and O'Mearah's blue-and-white, Roland watched it turn but did not initiate the action. But if he had been a physical being instead of only his own disembodied ka, he would have been standing on the balls of his feet, ready to leap forward and take control again at the slightest sign of mutiny.
There was none, though. This man had killed and maimed God knew how many innocent people, but he had no intention of losing one of his own precious eyes. He flicked switches, pulled a lever, and suddenly they were in motion. The siren whined and the gunslinger saw red pulses of light kicking off the front of the carriage.
Drive fast, the gunslinger commanded grimly.
9
In spite of lights and siren and Jack Mort beating steadily on the horn, it took them twenty minutes to reach Greenwich Village in rush-hour traffic. In the gunslinger's world Eddie Dean's hopes were crumbling like dykes in a downpour. Soon they would collapse altogether.
The sea had eaten half the sun.
Well, Jack Mort said, we're here. He was telling the truth (there was no way he could lie) although to Roland everything here looked just as it had everywhere else: a choke of buildings, people, and carriages. The carriages choked not only the streets but the air itself - with their endless clamor and their noxious fumes. It came, he supposed, from whatever fuel it was they burned. It was a wonder these people could live at all, or the women give birth to children that were not monsters, like the Slow Mutants under the mountains.
Now where do we go? Mort was asking.
This would be the hard part. The gunslinger got ready - as ready as he could, at any rate.
Turn off the siren and the lights. Stop by the sidewalk.
Mort pulled the cruiser up beside a fire hydrant.
There are underground railways in this city, the gunslinger said. Iwant you to take me to a station where these trains stop to let passengers on and off.
Which one? Mort asked. The thought was tinged with the mental color of panic. Mort could hide nothing from Roland, and Roland nothing from Mort - not, at least, for very long.
Some years ago - I don't know how many - you pushed a young woman in front of a train in one of those underground stations. That's the one I want you to take me to.
There ensued a short, violent struggle. The gunslinger won, but it was a surprisingly hard go. In his way, Jack Mort was as divided as Odetta. He was not a schizophrenic as she was; he knew well enough what he did from time to time. But he kept his secret self - the part of him that was The Pusher - as carefully locked away as an embezzler might lock away his secret skim.
Take me there, you bastard, the gunslinger repeated. He slowly raised the thumb toward Mort's right eye again. It was less than half an inch away and still moving when he gave in.
Mort's right hand moved the lever by the wheel again and they rolled toward the Christopher Street station where that fabled A-train had cut off the legs of a woman named Odetta Holmes some three years before.
10
"Well looky there," foot patrolman Andrew Staunton said to his partner, Norris Weaver, as Delevan's and O'Mearah's blue-and-white came to a stop halfway down the block. There were no parking spaces, and the driver made no effort to find one. He simply double-parked and let the clog of traffic behind him inch its laborious way through the loophole remaining, like a trickle of blood trying to serve a heart hopelessly clogged with cholesterol.
Weaver checked the numbers on the side by the right front headlight. 744. Yes, that was the number they'd gotten from dispatch, all right.
The flashers were on and everything looked kosher - until the door opened and the driver stepped out. He was wearing a blue suit, all right, but not the kind that came with gold buttons and a silver badge. His shoes weren't police issue either, unless Staunton and Weaver had missed a memo notifying officers that duty footwear would henceforth come from Gucci. That didn't seem likely. What seemed likely was that this was the creep who had hijacked the cops uptown. He got out oblivious to the honkings and cries of protest from the drivers trying to get by him.
"Goddam," Andy Staunton breathed.
Approach with extreme caution, the dispatcher had said. This man is armed and extremely dangerous. Dispatchers usually sounded like the most bored human beings on earth - for all Andy Staunton knew, they were - and so the almost awed emphasis this one put on the word extremely had stuck to his consciousness like a burr.
He drew his weapon for the first time in his four years on the force, and glanced at Weaver. Weaver had also drawn. The two of them were standing outside a deli about thirty feet from the IRT stairway. They had known each other long enough to be attuned to each other in a way only cops and professional soldiers can be. Without a word between them they stepped back into the doorway of the delicatessen, weapons pointing upward.
"Subway?" Weaver asked.
"Yeah." Andy took one quick glance at the entrance. Rush hour was in high gear now, and the subway stairs were clogged with people heading for their trains. "We've got to take him right now, before he can get close to the crowd."
"Let's do it."
They stepped out of the doorway in perfect tandem, gunslingers Roland would have recognized at once as adversaries much more dangerous than the first two. They were younger, for one thing; and although he didn't know it, some unknown dispatcher had labeled him extremely dangerous, and to Andy Staunton and Norris Weaver, that made him the equivalent of a rogue tiger. Ifhe doesn't stop the second I tell him to, he's dead, Andy thought.
"Hold it!" he screamed, dropping into a crouch with his gun held out before him in both hands. Beside him, Weaver had done the same. "Police! Get your hands on your he - "
That was as far as he got before the guy ran for the IRT stairway. He moved with a sudden speed that was uncanny. Nevertheless, Andy Staunton was wired, all his dials turned up to the max. He swivelled on his heels, feeling a cloak of emotionless coldness drop over him - Roland would have known this, too. He had felt it many times in similar situations.
Andy led the running figure slightly, then squeezed the trigger of his .38. He saw the man in the blue suit spin around, trying to keep his feet. Then he fell to the pavement, as commuters who, only seconds ago, had been concentrating on nothing but surviving another trip home on the subway, screamed and scattered like quail. They had discovered there was more to survive than the uptown train this afternoon.
"Holy f**k, partner," Norris Wheaton breathed, "you blew him away."
"I know," Andy said. His voice didn't falter. The gunslinger would have admired it. "Let's go see who he was."
11
I'm dead! Jack Mort was screaming. I'm dead, you've gotten me killed, I'm dead, I'm -
No, the gunslinger responded. Through slitted eyes he saw the cops approaching, guns still out. Younger and faster than the ones who had been parked near the gunshop. Faster. And at least one of them was a hell of a shot. Mort - and Roland along with him - should have been dead, dying, or seriously wounded. Andy Staunton had shot to kill, and his bullet had drilled through the left lapel of Mort's suit-coat. It had likewise punched through the pocket of Mort's Arrow shirt - but that was as far as it went. The life of both men, the one inside and the one outside, were saved by Mort's lighter.
Mort didn't smoke, but his boss - whose job Mort had confidently expected to have himself by this time next year - did. Accordingly, Mort had bought a two hundred dollar silver lighter at Dunhill's. He did not light every cigarette Mr. Framingham stuck in his gob when the two of them were together - that would have made him look too much like an ass-kisser. Just once in awhile ... and usually when someone even higher up was present, someone who could appreciate a.) Jack Mort's quiet courtesy, and b.) Jack Mort's good taste.
Do-Bees covered all the bases.
This time covering the bases saved his life and Roland's. Staunton's bullet smashed the silver lighter instead of Mort's heart (which was generic; Mort's passion for brand names - good brand names - stopped mercifully at the skin).
He was hurt just the same, of course. When you were hit by a heavy-caliber slug, there was no such thing as a free ride. The lighter was driven against his chest hard enough to create a hollow. It flattened and then smashed apart, digging shallow grooves in Mort's skin; one sliver of shrapnel sliced Mort's left nipple almost in two. The hot slug also ignited the lighter's fluid-soaked batting. Nevertheless, the gunslinger lay still as they approached. The one who had not shot him was telling people to stay back, just stay back, goddammit.
I'm on fire! Mort shrieked. I'm on fire, put it out! Put it out! PUT IT OWWWWWW -
The gunslinger lay still, listening to the grit of the gunslingers' shoes on the pavement, ignoring Mort's shrieks, trying to ignore the coal suddenly glowing against his chest and the smell of frying flesh.
A foot slid beneath his ribcage, and when it lifted, the gunslinger allowed himself to roll bonelessly onto his back. Jack Mort's eyes were open. His face was slack. In spite of the shattered, burning remains of the lighter, there was no sign of the man screaming inside.
"God," someone muttered, "did you shoot him with a tracer, man?"
Smoke was rising from the hole in the lapel of Mort's coat in a neat little stream. It was escaping around the edge of the lapel in more untidy blotches. The cops could smell burning flesh as the wadding in the smashed lighter, soaked with Ronson lighter fluid, really began to blaze.
Andy Staunton, who had performed faultlessly thus far, now made his only mistake, one for which Cort would have sent him home with a fat ear in spite of his earlier admirable performance, telling him one mistake was all it took, took to get a man killed most of the time. Staunton had been able to shoot the guy - a thing no cop really knows if he can do until he's faced with a situation where he must find out - but the idea that his bullet had somehow set the guy on fire filled him with unreasoning horror. So he bent forward to put it out without thinking, and the gunslinger's feet smashed into his belly before he had time to do more than register the blaze of awareness in eyes he would have sworn were dead.
Staunton went flailing back into his partner. His pistol flew from his hand. Wheaton held onto his own, but by the time he had gotten clear of Staunton , he heard a shot and his gun was magically gone. The hand it had been in felt numb, as if it had been struck with a very large hammer.
The guy in the blue suit got up, looked at them for a moment and said, "You're good. Better than the others. So let me advise you. Don't follow. This is almost over. I don't want to have to kill you."
Then he whirled and ran for the subway stairs.