by Стивен Кинг
This was the absolute nadir.
Or so he thought with his eyes closed.
"If you come by, Mrs. Rathbun, I could give you a dozen five milligram Valium. Would that be all right?"
"The man sees reason! Thank God, the man sees reason!" And she hung up. Just like that. Not a word of thanks. But when she saw the walking rectum that called itself a doctor again, she would just about fall down and polish the tips of his Gucci loafers with her nose, she would give him a blowjob, she would—
"Mr. Katz," his assistant said in a voice that sounded strangely winded. "I think we have a prob—"
There was another scream. It was followed by the crash of a gun, startling him so badly he thought for a moment his heart was simply going to utter one monstrous clap in his chest and then stop forever.
He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of the gunslinger. Katz dropped his gaze and saw the pistol in the man's fist. He looked left and saw Ralph the guard nursing one hand and staring at the thief with eyes that seemed to be bugging out of his face. Ralph's own gun, the .38 which he had toted dutifully through eighteen years as a police officer (and which he had only fired from the line of the 23rd Precinct's basement target range; he said he had drawn it twice in the line of duty … but who knew?), was now a wreck in the corner.
"I want Keflex," the man with the bullshooter eyes said expressionlessly. "I want a lot. Now. And never mind the REX."
For a moment Katz could only look at him, his mouth open, his heart struggling in his chest, his stomach a sickly boiling pot of acid.
Had he thought he had hit rock bottom?
Had he really?
15
"You don't understand," Katz managed at last. His voice sounded strange to himself, and there was really nothing very odd about that, since his mouth felt like a flannel shirt and his tongue like a strip of cotton batting. "There is no cocaine here. It is not a drug which is dispensed under any cir—"
"I did not say cocaine," the man in the blue suit and the gold-rimmed glasses said. "I said Keflex."
That's what I thought you said, Katz almost told this crazy momser, and then decided that might provoke him. He had heard of drug stores getting held up for speed, for Bennies, for half a dozen other things (including Mrs. Rathbun's precious Valium), but he thought this might be the first penicillin robbery in history.
The voice of his father (God rot the old bastard) told him to stop dithering and gawping and do something.
But he could think of nothing to do.
The man with the gun supplied him with something.
"Move," the man with the gun said. "I'm in a hurry."
"H-How much do you want?" Katz asked. His eyes flicked momentarily over the robber's shoulder, and he saw something he could hardly believe. Not in this city. But it looked like it was happening, anyway. Good luck? Katz actually has some good luck? That you could put in The Guinness Book of World Records!
"I don't know," the man with the gun said. "As much as you can put in a bag. A big bag." And with no warning at all, he whirled and the gun in his fist crashed again. A man bellowed. Plate glass blew onto the sidewalk and the street in a sparkle of shards and splinters. Several passing pedestrians were cut, but none seriously. Inside Katz's drugstore, women (and not a few men) screamed. The burglar alarm began its own hoarse bellow. The customers panicked and stampeded toward and out the door. The man with the gun turned back to Katz and his expression had not changed at all: his face wore the same look of frightening (but not inexhaustable) patience that it had worn from the first. "Do as I say rapidly. I'm in a hurry."
Katz gulped.
"Yes, sir," he said.
16
The gunslinger had seen and admired the curved mirror in the upper left corner of the shop while he was still halfway to the counter behind which they kept the powerful potions. The creation of such a curved mirror was beyond the ability of any craftsman in his own world as things were now, although there had been a time when such things—and many of the others he saw in Eddie and Odetta's world—might have been made. He had seen the remains of some in the tunnel under the mountains, and he had seen them in other places as well … relics as ancient and mysterious as the Druit stones that sometimes stood in the places where demons came.
He also understood the mirror's purpose.
He had been a bit late seeing the guard's move—he was still discovering how disastrously the lenses Mort wore over his eyes restricted his peripheral vision—but he'd still time to turn and shoot the gun out of the guard's hand. It was a shot Roland thought as nothing more than routine, although he'd needed to hurry a little. The guard, however, had a different opinion. Ralph Lennox would swear to the end of his days that the guy had made an impossible shot … except, maybe, on those old kiddie Western shows like Annie Oakley.
Thanks to the mirror, which had obviously been placed where it was to detect thieves, Roland was quicker dealing with the other one.
He had seen the alchemist's eyes flick up and over his shoulder for a moment, and the gunslinger's own eyes had immediately gone to the mirror. In it he saw a man in a leather jacket moving up the center aisle behind him. There was a long knife in his hand and, no doubt, visions of glory in his head.
The gunslinger turned and fired a single shot, dropping the gun to his hip, aware that he might miss with the first shot because of his unfamiliarity with this weapon, but unwilling to injure any of the customers standing frozen behind the would-be hero. Better to have to shoot twice from the hip, firing slugs that would do the job while travelling on an upward angle that would protect the bystanders than to perhaps kill some lady whose only crime had been picking the wrong day to shop for perfume.
The gun had been well cared for. Its aim was true. Remembering the podgy, underexercised looks of the gunslingers he had taken these weapons from, it seemed that they cared better for the weapons they wore than for the weapons they were. It seemed a strange way to behave, but of course this was a strange world and Roland could not judge; had no time to judge, come to that.
The shot was a good one, chopping through the man's knife at the base of the blade, leaving him holding nothing but the hilt.
Roland stared evenly at the man in the leather coat, and something in his gaze must have made the would-be hero remember a pressing appointment elsewhere, for he whirled, dropped the remains of the knife, and joined the general exodus.
Roland turned back and gave the alchemist his orders. Any more fucking around and blood would flow. When the alchemist turned away, Roland tapped his bony shoulder blade with the barrel of the pistol. The man made a strangled "Yeeek!" sound and turned back at once.
"Not you. You stay here. Let your 'prentice do it."
"W-Who?"
"Him." The gunslinger gestured impatiently at the aide.
"What should I do, Mr. Katz?" The remains of the aide's teenage acne stood out brilliantly on his white face.
"Do what he says, you putz! Fill the order! Keflex!"
The aide went to one of the shelves behind the counter and picked up a bottle. "Turn it so I may see the words writ upon it," the gunslinger said.
The aide did. Roland couldn't read it; too many letters were not of his alphabet. He consulted the Mortcypedia. Keflex, it confirmed, and Roland realized even checking had been a stupid waste of time. He knew he couldn't read everything in this world, but these men didn't.
"How many pills in that bottle?"
"Well, they're capsules, actually," the aide said nervously. "If it's a cillin drug in pill form you're interested in—"
"Never mind all that. How many doses?"
"Oh. Uh—" The flustered aide looked at the bottle and almost dropped it. "Two hundred."
Roland felt much as he had when he discovered how much ammunition could be purchased in this world for a trivial sum. There had been nine sample bottles of Keflex in the secret compartment of Enrico Balazar's medicine cabinet, thirty-six doses in all, and he had felt well again. I
f he couldn't kill the infection with two hundred doses, it couldn't be killed.
"Give it to me," the man in the blue suit said.
The aide handed it over.
The gunslinger pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, revealing Jack Mort's Rolex. "I have no money, but this may serve as adequate compensation. I hope so, anyway."
He turned, nodded toward the guard, who was still sitting on the floor by his overturned stool and staring at the gunslinger with wide eyes, and then walked out.
Simple as that.
For five seconds there was no sound in the drugstore but the bray of the alarm, which was loud enough to blank out even the babble of the people on the street.
"God in heaven, Mr. Katz, what do we do now?" the aide whispered.
Katz picked up the watch and hefted it.
Gold. Solid gold.
He couldn't believe it.
He had to believe it.
Some madman walked in off the street, shot a gun out of his guard's hand and a knife out of another's, all in order to obtain the most unlikely drug he could think of.
Keflex.
Maybe sixty dollars' worth of Keflex.
For which he had paid with a $6500 Rolex watch.
"Do?" Katz asked. "Do? The first thing you do is put that wristwatch under the counter. You never saw it." He looked at Ralph. "Neither did you."
"No sir," Ralph agreed immediately. "As long as I get my share when you sell it, I never saw that watch at all."
"They'll shoot him like a dog in the street," Katz said with unmistakable satisfaction.
"Keflex! And the guy didn't even seem to have the sniffles!” the aide said wonderingly.
CHAPTER 4
THE DRAWING
1
As the sun's bottom arc first touched the Western Sea in Roland's world, striking bright golden fire across the water to where Eddie lay trussed like a turkey, Officers O'Mearah and Delevan were coming groggily back to consciousness in the world from which Eddie had been taken.
"Let me out of these cuffs, would ya?" Fat Johnny asked in a humble voice.
"Where is he?" O'Mearah asked thickly, and groped for his holster. Gone. Holster, belt, bullets, gun. Gun.
Oh, shit.
He began thinking of the questions that might be asked by the shits in the Department of Internal Affairs, guys who had learned all they knew about the streets from Jack Webb on Dragnet, and the monetary value of his lost gun suddenly became about as important to him as the population of Ireland or the principal mineral deposits of Peru. He looked at Carl and saw Carl had also been stripped of his weapon.
Oh dear Jesus, bring on the clowns, O'Mearah thought miserably, and when Fat Johnny asked again if O'Mearah would use the key on the counter to unlock the handcuffs, O'Mearah said, "I ought to … "He paused, because he'd been about to say I ought to shoot you in the guts instead, but he couldn't very well shoot Fat Johnny, could he? The guns here were chained down, and the geek in the gold-rimmed glasses, the geek who had seemed so much like a solid citizen, had taken his and Carl's as easily as O'Mearah himself might take a popgun from a kid.
Instead of finishing, he got the key and unlocked the cuffs. He spotted the .357 Magnum which Roland had kicked into the corner and picked it up. It wouldn't fit in his holster, so he stuffed it in his belt.
"Hey, that's mine!" Fat Johnny bleated.
"Yeah? You want it back?" O'Mearah had to speak slowly. His head really ached. At that moment all he wanted to do was find Mr. Gold-Rimmed Specs and nail him to a handy wall. With dull nails. "I hear they like fat guys like you up in Attica , Johnny. They got a saying: 'The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin.' You sure you want it back?"
Fat Johnny turned away without a word, but not before O'Mearah had seen the tears welling in his eyes and the wet patch on his pants. He felt no pity.
"Where is he?" Carl Delevan asked in a furry, buzzing voice.
"He left," Fat Johnny said dully. "That's all I know. He left. I thought he was gonna kill me."
Delevan was getting slowly to his feet. He felt tacky wetness on the side of his face and looked at his fingers. Blood. Fuck. He groped for his gun and kept groping, groping and hoping, long after his fingers had assured him his gun and holster were gone. O'Mearah merely had a headache; Delevan felt as if someone had used the inside of his head as a nuclear weapons testing site.
"Guy took my gun," he said to O'Mearah. His voice was so slurry the words were almost impossible to make out.
"Join the club."
"He still here?" Delevan took a step toward O'Mearah, tilted to the left as if he were on the deck of a ship in a heavy sea, and then managed to right himself.
"No."
"How long?" Delevan looked at Fat Johnny, who didn't answer, perhaps because Fat Johnny, whose back was turned, thought Delevan was still talking to his partner. Delevan, not a man noted for even temper and restrained behavior under the best of circumstances, roared at the man, even though it made his head feel like it was going to crack into a thousand pieces: "I asked you a question, you fat shit! How long has that motherfucker been gone?"
"Five minutes, maybe," Fat Johnny said dully. "Took his shells and your guns." He paused. "Paid for the shells. I couldn't believe it."
Five minutes, Delevan thought. The guy had come in a cab. Sitting in their cruiser and drinking coffee, they had seen him get out of it. It was getting close to rush-hour. Cabs were hard to get at this time of day. Maybe—
"Come on," he said to George O'Mearah. "We still got a chance to collar him. We'll want a gun from this slut here—"
O'Mearah displayed the Magnum. At first Delevan saw two of them, then the image slowly came together.
"Good.'' Delevan was coming around, not all at once but getting there, like a prizefighter who has taken a damned hard one on the chin. "You keep it. I'll use the shotgun under the dash." He started for the door, and this time he did more than reel; he staggered and had to claw the wall to keep his feet.
"You gonna be all right?" O'Mearah asked.
"If we catch him," Delevan said.
They left. Fat Johnny was not as glad about their departure as he had been about that of the spook in the blue suit, but almost. Almost.
2
Delevan and O'Mearah didn't even have to discuss which direction the perp might have taken when he left the gun-shop. All they had to do was listen to the radio dispatcher.
"Code 19," she said over and over again. Robbery in progress, shots fired. "Code 19, Code 19. Location is 395 West 49th, Katz's Drugs, perpetrator tall, sandy-haired, blue suit—"
Shots fired, Delevan thought, his head aching worse than ever. I wonder if they were fired with George's gun or mine? Or both? If that shitbag killed someone, we're fucked. Unless we get him.
"Blast off," he said curtly to O'Mearah, who didn't need to be told twice. He understood the situation as well as Delevan did. He flipped on the lights and the siren and screamed out into traffic. It was knotting up already, rush-hour starting, and so O'Mearah ran the cruiser with two wheels in the gutter and two on the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians like quail. He clipped the rear fender of a produce truck sliding onto Forty-Ninth. Ahead he could see twinkling glass on the sidewalk. They could both hear the strident bray of the alarm. Pedestrians were sheltering in doorways and behind piles of garbage, but residents of the overhead apartments were staring out eagerly, as if this was a particularly good TV show, or a movie you didn't have to pay to see.
The block was devoid of automobile traffic; cabs and commuters alike had scatted.
"I just hope he's still there," Delevan said, and used a key to unlock the short steel bars across the stock and barrel of the pump shotgun under the dashboard. He pulled it out of its clips. "I just hope that rotten-crotch son of a bitch is still, there."
What neither understood was that, when you were dealing with the gunslinger, it was usually better to leave bad enough alone.
3
When Roland ste
pped out of Katz's Drugs, the big bottle of Keflex had joined the cartons of ammo in Jack Mort's coat pockets. He had Carl Delevan's service .38 in his right hand. It felt so damned good to hold a gun in a whole right hand.
He heard the siren and saw the car roaring down the street. Them, he thought. He began to raise the gun and then remembered: they were gunslingers. Gunslingers doing their duty. He turned and went back into the alchemist's shop.
"Hold it, motherfucker!" Delevan screamed. Roland's eyes flew to the convex mirror in time to see one of the gunslingers—the one whose ear had bled—leaning out of the window with a scatter-rifle. As his partner pulled their carriage to a screaming halt that made its rubber wheels smoke on the pavement he jacked a shell into its chamber.
Roland hit the floor.
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.