counter on the clerk’s side. Fat Johnny jumped and shrieked like a goosey girl who spies a
mouse. His ass actually did lose contact with the wall for a moment, but the gunslinger
over- looked it. He had no intention of putting a bullet in this man. He would throw the gun
at him and poleaxe him with it before firing a shot. A gun as absurdly big as this would
probably bring half the neighborhood.
“Pick it up,” the gunslinger said. “Slowly.”
Fat Johnny reached down, and as he grasped the wallet, he farted loudly and screamed.
With faint amusement the gunslinger realized he had mistaken the sound of his own fart for
a gunshot and his time of dying had come.
When Fat Johnny stood up, he was blushing furiously. There was a large wet patch on the
front of his pants.
“Put the purse on the counter. Wallet, I mean.”
Fat Johnny did it.
“Now the shells. Winchester .45s. And I want to see your hands every second.”
“I have to reach into my pocket. For my keys.”
Roland nodded.
As Fat Johnny first unlocked and then slid open the case with the stacked cartons of bullets
inside, Roland cogitated.
“Give me four boxes,” he said at last. He could not imagine needing so many shells, but the temptation to have them was not to be denied.
Fat Johnny put the boxes on the counter. Roland slid one of them open, still hardly able to
believe it wasn’t a joke or a sham. But they were bullets, all right, clean, shining,
un- marked, never fired, never reloaded. He held one up to the light for a moment, then put
it back in the box.
“Now take out a pair of those wristbands.”
“Wristbands—?”
The gunslinger consulted the Mortcypedia. “Handcuffs.”
“Mister, I dunno what you want. The cash register’s—”
“Do what I say. Now.”
Christ, this ain’tnever gonna to end, Fat Johnny’s mind moaned. He opened another section of the counter and brought out a pair of cuffs.
“Key?” Roland asked.
Fat Johnny put the key to the cuffs on the counter. It made a small click. One of the
unconscious cops made an abrupt snoring sound and Johnny uttered a wee screech.
“Turn around,” the gunslinger said.
“You ain’t gonna shoot me, are you? Say you ain’t!”
“Ain’t,” Roland said tonelessly. “As long as you turn around right now. If you don’t do that, I will.”
Fat Johnny turned around, beginning to blubber. Of course the guy said he wasn’t going to,
but the smell of mob hit was getting too strong to ignore. He hadn’t even been skim- ming
that much. His blubbers became choked wails.
“Please, mister, for my mother’s sake don’t shoot me. My mother’s old. She’s blind.
She’s—”
“She’s cursed with a yellowgut son,” the gunslinger said dourly. “Wrists together.”
Mewling, wet pants sticking to his crotch, Fat Johnny put them together. In a trice the steel
bracelets were locked in place. He had no idea how the spook had gotten over or around the
counter so quickly. Nor did he want to know.
“Stand there and look at the wall until I tell you it’s all right to turn around. If you turn around before then, I’ll kill you.”
Hope lighted Fat Johnny’s mind. Maybe the guy didn’t mean to hit him after all. Maybe the
guy wasn’t crazy, just insane.
“I won’t. Swear to God. Swear before all of His saints. Swear before all His angels. Swear
before all His arch—”
“Iswear if you don’t shut up I’ll put a slug through your neck,” the spook said.
Fat Johnny shut up. It seemed to him that he stood facing the wall for an eternity. In truth,
it was about twenty seconds.
The gunslinger knelt, put the clerk’s gun on the floor, took a quick look to make sure the
maggot was being good, then rolled the other two onto their backs. Both were good and out,
but not dangerously hurt, Roland judged. They were both breathing regularly. A little
blood trickled from the ear of the one called Delevan, but that was all.
He took another quick glance at the clerk, then unbuckled the gunslingers’ gunbelts and
stripped them off. Then he took off Mort’s blue suitcoat and buckled the belts on himself.
They were the wrong guns, but it still felt good to be packing iron again. Damned good.
Better than he would have believed.
Two guns. One for Eddie, and one for Odetta . . . when and if Odetta was ready for a gun.
He put on Jack Mort’s coat again, dropped two boxes of shells into the right pocket and two
into the left. The coat, formerly impeccable, now bulged out of shape. He picked up the
clerk’s .357 Mag and put the shells in his pants pocket. Then he tossed the gun across the
room. When it hit the floor Fat Johnny jumped, uttered another wee shriek, and squirted a little more warm water in his pants.
The gunslinger stood up and told Fat Johnny to turn around.
10
When Fat Johnny got another look at the geek in the blue suit and the gold-rimmed glasses,
his mouth fell open. For a moment he felt an overwhelming certainty that the man who had
come in here had become a ghost when Fat Johnny’s back was turned. It seemed to Fat
Johnny that through the man he could see a figure much more real, one of those legendary
gunfighters they used to make movies and TV shows about when he was a kid: Wyatt Earp,
Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy, one of those guys.
Then his vision cleared and he realized what the crazy nut had done: taken the cops’ guns
and strapped them around his waist. With the suit and tie the effect should have been
ludi- crous, but somehow it wasn’t.
“The key to the wristbands is on the counter. When the possemen wake up they’ll free
you.”
He took the wallet, opened it, and, incredibly, laid four twenty dollar bills on the glass
before stuffing the wallet back into his pocket.
“For the ammunition,” Roland said. “I’ve taken the bullets from your own gun. I intend to throw them away when I leave your store. I think that, with an unloaded gun and no wallet,
they may find it difficult to charge you with a crime.”
Fat Johnny gulped. For one of the few times in his life he was speechless.
“Now where is the nearest—” Pause.”—nearest drug- store?”
Fat Johnny suddenly understood—or thought he under- stood—everything. The guy was a
junkball, of course. That was the answer. No wonder he was so weird. Probably hopped up
to the eyeballs.
“There’s one around the corner. Half a block down Forty-Ninth.”
“If you’re lying, I’ll come back and put a bullet in your brain.”
“I’m not lying!” Fat Johnny cried. “I swear before God the Father! I swear before all the Saints! I swear on my mother’s—”
But then the door was swinging shut. Fat Johnny stood for a moment in utter silence; unable to believe the nut was gone.
Then he walked as rapidly as he could around the counter and to the door. He turned his
back to it and fumbled around until he was able to grasp and turn the lock. He fumbled
some more until he had managed to shoot the bolt as well.
Only then did he allow himself to slide slowly into a sitting position, gasping and moaning
and swearing to God and all His saints and angels that he would go to St. Anthony’s this
very afternoon, as soon as one of those pigs woke up and let him out of these cuffs, as a
matter of fact. He was going to make confession, do an act of contrition, and take
com- munion.
Fat Johnny Holden wanted to get right with God.
This had just been too fucking close.
11
The setting sun became an arc over the Western Sea. It narrowed to a single bright line
which seared Eddie’s eyes. Looking at such a light for long could put a permanent burn on
your retinas. This was just one of the many interesting facts you learned in school, facts
that helped you get a fulfilling job like part-time bartender and an interesting hobby like the
full-time search for street-skag and the bucks with which to buy it. Eddie didn’t stop
looking. He didn’t think it was going to matter much longer if he got eye-burned or not.
He didn’t beg the witch-woman behind him. First, it wouldn’t help. Second, begging would
degrade him. He had lived a degrading life; he discovered that he had no wish to degrade
himself further in the last few minutes of it. Minutes were all he had left now. That’s all
there would be before that bright line disappeared and the time of the lobstrosities came.
He had ceased hoping that a miraculous change would bring Odetta back at the last