it, Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life’s a fiction and the world’s a lie, so put on some Creedence and let’s get high.
None of it was real, it was all just an extraordinarily vivid nodder, so the best thing was
just to ride low and go with the flow.
It sure was a vivid nodder. He was reaching for the zipper—or maybe it would be a velcro
strip—on the man’s “purse” when he saw it was held together by a crisscross pattern of
rawhide thongs, some of which had broken and been carefully reknotted—reknotted small
enough so they would still slide through the grommetted eyelets.
Eddie pulled the drag-knot at the top, spread the bag’s opening, and found the knife
beneath a slightly damp package that was the piece of shirting tied around the bullets. Just
the handle was enough to take his breath away … it was the true mellow gray-white of pure
silver, engraved with a complex series of patterns that caught the eye, drew it—
Pain exploded in his ear, roared across his head, and momentarily puffed a red cloud
across his vision. He fell clumsily over the open purse, struck the sand, and looked up at the
pale man in the cut-down boots. This was no nodder. The blue eyes blazing from that dying
face were the eyes of all truth.
“Admire it later, prisoner,” the gunslinger said. “For now just use it.”
He could feel his ear throbbing, swelling.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Cut the tape,” the gunslinger said grimly. “If they break into yon privy while you’re still over here, I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be here for a very long time. And with a corpse
for company before long.”
Eddie pulled the knife out of the scabbard. Not old; more than old, more than ancient. The
blade, honed almost to the point of invisibility, seemed to be all age caught in metal.
“Yeah, it looks sharp,” he said, and his voice wasn’t steady.
16
The last passengers were filing out into the jetway. One of them, a lady of some seventy summers with that exquisite look of confusion which only first-time fliers with too many
years or too little English seem capable of wearing, stopped to show Jane Doming her
tickets. “How will I ever find my plane to Montreal?” she asked. “And what about my bags?
Do they do my Customs here or there?”
“There will be a gate agent at the top of the jetway who can give you all the information
you need, ma’am,” Jane said.
“Well, I don’t see why you can’t give me all the informa- tion I need,” the old woman said.
“That jetway thing is still full of people.”
“Move on, please, madam,” Captain McDonald said. “We have a problem.”
“Well, pardon me for living,” the old woman said huffily, “I guess I just fell off the hearse!”
And strode past them, nose tilted like the nose of a dog scenting a fire still some distance
away, tote-bag clutched in one hand, ticket-folder (with so many boarding-pass stubs
sticking out of it that one might have been tempted to believe the lady had come most of the
way around the globe, changing planes at every stop along the way) in the other.
“There’s a lady who may never fly Delta’s big jets again,” Susy murmured.
“I don’t give a fuck if she flies stuffed down the front of Superman’s Jockies,” McDonald said. “She the last?”
Jane darted past them, glanced at the seats in business class, then poked her head into the
main cabin. It was deserted.
She came back and reported the plane empty.
McDonald turned to the jetway and saw two uniformed Customs agents fighting their way
through the crowd, excus- ing themselves but not bothering to look back at the people they
jostled aside. The last of these was the old lady, who dropped her ticket-folder. Papers flew
and fluttered every- where and sheshrilled after them like an angry crow.
“Okay,” McDonald said, “you guys stop right there.”
“Sir, we’re Federal Customs officers—”
“That’s right, and I requested you, and I’m glad you came so fast. Now you just stand right
there because this is my plane and that guy in there is one of my geese. Once he’s off the
plane and into the jetway, he’s your goose and you can cook him any way you want.” He nodded to Deere. “I’m going to give the son of a bitch one more chance and then we’re
going to break the door in.”
“Okay by me,” Deere said.
McDonald whacked on the bathroom door with the heel of his hand and yelled, “Come on
out, my friend! I’m done asking!”
There was no answer.
“Okay,” McDonald said. “Let’s do it.”
17
Dimly, Eddie heard an old woman say: “Well, pardon me for living! I guess I just fell off
the hearse!”
He had parted half the strapping tape. When the old woman spoke his hand jerked a little
and he saw a trickle of blood run down his belly.
“Shit,” Eddie said.
“It can’t be helped now,” the gunslinger said in his hoarse voice. “Finish the job. Or does the sight of blood make you sick?”
“Only when it’s my own,” Eddie said. The tape had started just above his belly. The higher he cut the harder it got to see. He got another three inches or so, and almost cut himself
again when he heard McDonald speaking to the Cus- toms agents: “Okay, you guys stop
right there.”
“I can finish and maybe cut myself wide open or you can try,” Eddie said. “I can’t see what I’m doing. My fucking chin’s in the way.”
The gunslinger took the knife in his left hand. The hand was shaking. Watching that blade,
honed to a suicidal sharp- ness, shaking like that made Eddie extremely nervous.
“Maybe I better chance it mys—”
“Wait.”
The gunslinger stared fixedly at his left hand. Eddie didn’t exactly disbelieve in telepathy,
but he had never exactly believed in it, either. Nevertheless, he felt something now, something as real and palpable as heat baking out of an oven. After a few seconds he
realized what it was: the gathering of this strange man’s will.
How the hell can he be dying if I can feel the force of him that strongly?
The shaking hand began to steady down. Soon it was barely shivering. After no more than
ten seconds it was as solid as a rock.
“Now,” the gunslinger said. He took a step forward, raised the knife, and Eddie felt
something else baking off him—rancid fever.
“Are you left-handed?” Eddie asked.
“No,” the gunslinger said.
“Oh Jesus,” Eddie said, and decided he might feel better if he closed his eyes for a moment.
He heard the harsh whisper of the masking tape parting.
“There,” the gunslinger said, stepping back. “Now pull it off as far as you can. I’ll get the back.”
No polite little knocks on the bathroom door now; this was a hammering fist. The
passengers are out, Eddie thought. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Oh shit.
“Come on out, my friend! I’m done asking!”
“Yankit!” the gunslinger growled.
Eddie grabbed a thick tab of strapping tape in each hand and yanked as hard as he could. It
hurt, hurt like hell. Stop bellyaching, he thought. Things could be worse. You could be hairy-chested, like Henry.
He looked down and saw a red band of irritated skin about seven inches wide across his
sternum. Just above the solar plexus was the place where he had poked himself. Blood
welled in a dimple and ran down to his navel in a scarlet runnel. Beneath his armpits, the
bags of dope now dangled like badly tied saddlebags.
“Okay,” the muffled voice beyond the bathroom door said to someone else. “Let’s d—”
Eddie lost the rest of it in the unexpected riptide of pain across his back as the gunslinger
unceremoniously tore the rest of the girdle from him.
He bit down against a scream.
“Put your shirt on,” the gunslinger said. His face, which Eddie had thought as pallid as the
face of a living man could become, was now the color of ancient ashes. He held the girdle of tape (now sticking to itself in a meaningless tangle, the big bags of white stuff looking
like strange cocoons) in his left hand, then tossed it aside. Eddie saw fresh blood seeping
through the makeshift bandage on the gunslinger’s right hand. “Do it fast.”
There was a thudding sound. This wasn’t someone pounding for admittance. Eddie looked
up in time to see the bathroom door shudder, to see the lights in there flicker. They were
trying to break it in.
He picked his shirt up with fingers that suddenly seemed too large, too clumsy. The left
sleeve was turned inside out. He tried to stuff it back through the hole, got his hand stuck