mercy, chopped him in the throat, too, which cut off the scream, then
hit him along the right temple, hit him again, hard, harder, and a third
shot rang out, deafening, so Ben chopped him once more, harder still,
then the gun fell out of Vincent’s suddenly limp hand, and gaspingly Ben
said, “Lights on!”
Instantly the room brightened.
Vincent was out cold, making a slight wet rattling noise as slow
inhalations and exhalations passed through his injured throat.
The air stank of gunpowder and hot metal.
Ben rolled off the unconscious man and crawled to the Combat Magnum,
taking possession of it with more than a little relief.
Rachael had ventured from behind the desk. Stooping, she picked up her
thirty-two pistol, which Vincent had also dropped. The look she gave
Ben was part shock, part astonishment, part disbelief.
He crawled back to Vincent and examined him.
Thumbed up one eyelid and then the other, checking for the uneven
dilation that might indicate a severe concussion or other brain injury.
Gently inspected the man’s right temple, where two edgeoftheThand chops
had landed. Felt his throat. Made sure his breathing, though hampered,
was not too badly obstructed. Took his wrist, located his pulse, timed
it.
He sighed and said, “He won’t die, thank God.
SometimeS it’s hard to judge how much force is enough… or too much.
But he won’t die. He’ll be out for a while, and when he comes around
he’ll need medical attention, but he’ll be able to get to a doctor on
his own.
Speechless Rachael stared at him.
He took a cushion from a chair and used it to prop up Vincent’s head,
which would help keep the trachea open if there was some bleeding in the
throat.
He quickly searched Vincent but did not find the Wildcard file. “He
must have come here with others.
They opened the safe, took the contents, while he stayed behind to wait
for us.
She put a hand on his shoulder, and he raised his head to meet her eyes.
She said, “Benny, for God’ ssake, you’re just a real-estate salesman.
“Yeah,” he said, as if he didn’t understand the implied question, “and
I’m a damn good one, too.”
“But… the way you handled him. .. the way you.. . so fast.. .
violent. so sure of yourself.
With satisfaction so intense it almost hurt, he watched her as she
grappled with the realization that she was not the only one with
secrets.
Showing her no more mercy than she’d thus far shown him, letting her
stew in her curiosity, he said, “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of
here before someone else shows up. I’m good at these nasty little
games, but I don’t particularly enjoy them.”
“Yeah. And even if he saw anything important, he wouldn’t know what it
meant, and he won’t remember it anyway.”
Lieutenant Verdad said nothing. As an immigrant born and raised in a
far less fortunate and less just country than that to which he now
willingly pledged his allegiance, he had little patience and no
understanding for lost cases like Percy. Born with the priceless
advantage of United States citizenship, how could a man turn from all
the opportunities around him and choose degradation and squalor? Julio
knew he ought to have more compassion for self-made outcasts like Percy.
He knew this ruined man might have suffered, might have endured tragedy,
been broken by fate or by cruel parents. A graduate of the police
department’s awareness programs, Julio was well versed in the psychology
and sociology of the outcast-as-victim philosophy. But he would have
had less trouble understanding the alien thought processes of a man from
Mars than he had trying to get a handle on wasted men like this one. He
just sighed wearily, tugged on the cuffs of his white silk shirt, and
adjusted his pearl cuff links, first the right one, then the left.
Hagerstrom said, “You know, sometimes it seems like a law of nature that
any potential witness to a homicide in this town has got to be drunk and
about three weeks away from his last bath.”
“If the job was easy,” Verdad said, “we wouldn’t like it so much, would