He whirls around again. It's the man with the blood-spot on his forehead. He looks about sixty, but it's hard to tell. He's wearing a garish yellow shirt and a red tie. When his thin lips part in a smile, they reveal teeth that come to points . It's Sayre, Callahan thinks . Sayre, or whoever signed that letter. Whoever thought this little sting up.
"You, however, won't, " he continues.
The low men look at him with a kind of dull avidity: here he is, finally, their lost pooch with the burned paw and the scarred forehead. The vampires are more interested. They almost thrum within their blue auras. And all at once Callahan can hear the chimes. They're faint, somehow damped down, but they're there. Calling him.
Sayre - if that's his name - turns to the vampires. "He's the one," he says in a matter-of-fact tone. "He's killed hundreds of you in a dozen versions of America. My friends" - he gestures to the low men - "were unable to track him down, but of course they seek other, less suspecting prey in the ordinary course of things. In any case, he's here now. Go on, have at him. But don't kill him !"
He turns to Callahan. The hole in his forehead fills and gleams but never drips . It's an eye, Callahan thinks , a bloody eye. What is looking out of it? What is watching, and from where ?
Sayre says, "These particular friends of the King all carry the AIDS virus. You surely know what I mean, don't you ? We'll let that kill you. It will take you out of the game forever, in this world and all the others. This is no game for a fellow like you, anyway. A false priest like you ."
Callahan doesn't hesitate. If he hesitates, he will be lost. It's not AIDS he's afraid of, but of letting them put their filthy lips on him in the first place, to kiss him as the one was kissing Lupe Delgado in the alley. They don't get to win. After all the way he's come, after all the jobs, all the jail cells, after finally getting sober in Kansas , they don't get to win.
He doesn't try to reason with them. There is no palaver. He just sprints down the right side of the conference room's extravagant mahogany table. The man in the yellow shirt, suddenly alarmed, shouts "Get him! Get him!" Hands slap at his jacket - specially bought at Grand River Menswear for this auspicious occasion - but slip off. He has time to think The window won't break, it's made of some tough glass, anti-suicide glass, and it won't break... and he has just time enough to call on God for the first time since Barlow forced him to take of his poisoned blood.
"Help me! Please help me!" Father Callahan cries, and runs shoulder-first into the window. One more hand slaps at his head, tries to tangle itself in his hair, and then it is gone. The window shatters all around him and suddenly he is standing in cold air, surrounded by flurries of snow. He looks down between black shoes which were also specially purchased for this auspicious occasion, and he sees Michigan Avenue, with cars like toys and people like ants .
He has a sense of them - Sayre and the low men and the vampires who were supposed to infect him and take him out of the game forever - clustered at the broken window, staring with disbelief .
He thinks , This does take me out of it forever... doesn't it?
And he thinks, with the wonder of a child : This is the last thought I'll ever have. This is goodbye.
Then he is falling.
SEVENTEEN
Callahan stopped and looked at Jake, almost shyly. "Do you remember it?" He asked. "The actual..." He cleared his throat. "The dying?"
Jake nodded gravely. "You don't?"
"I remember looking at Michigan Avenue from between my new shoes. I remember the sensation of standing there - seeming to, anyway - in the middle of a snow flurry. I remember Sayre behind me, yelling in some other language. Cursing. Words that guttural just about had to be curses. And I remember thinking, He's frightened . That was actually my last thought, that Sayre was frightened. Then there was an interval of darkness. I floated. I could hear the chimes, but they were distant. Then they came closer. As if they were mounted on some engine that was rushing toward me at terrible speed.
"There was light. I saw light in the darkness. I thought I was having the Kubler-Ross death experience, and I went toward it. I didn't care where I came out, as long as it wasn't on Michigan Avenue, all smashed and bleeding, with a crowd standing around me. But I didn't see how that could happen. You don't fall thirty-three stories, then regain consciousness.
"And I wanted to get away from the chimes. They kept getting louder. My eyes started to water. My ears hurt. I was glad I still had eyes and ears, but the chimes made any gratitude I might have felt pretty academic.
"I thought, I have to get into the light , and I lunged for it. I..."
EIGHTEEN