The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower #2) - Page 14

1

Now Jack Mort knew the gunslinger was here. If he had been another person – an Eddie Dean or an Odetta Walker, for instance – Roland would have held palaver with the man, if only to ease his natural panic and confusion at suddenly finding one's self shoved rudely into the passenger seat of the body one's brain had driven one's whole life.

But because Mort was a monster – worse, than Detta Walker ever had been or could be – he made no effort to explain or speak at all. He could hear the man's clamorings – Who are you? What's happening to me? – but disregarded them. The gunslinger concentrated on his short list of necessities, using the man's mind with no compunction at all. The clamorings became screams of terror. The gunslinger went right on disregarding them.

The only way he could remain in the worm-pit which was this man's mind was to regard him as no more than a combination atlas and encyclopedia. Mort had all the information Roland needed. The plan he made was rough, but rough was often better than smooth. When it came to planning, there were no creatures in the universe more different than Roland and Jack Mort.

When you planned rough, you allowed room for improvisation. And improvisation at short notice had always been one of Roland's strong points.

2

A fat man with lenses over his eyes, like the bald man who had poked his head into Mort's office five minutes earlier (it seemed that in Eddie's world many people wore these, which his Mortcypedia identified as "glasses"), got into the elevator with him. He looked at the briefcase in the hand of the man who he believed to be Jack Mort and then at Mort himself.

"Going to see Dorfman, Jack?"

The gunslinger said nothing.

"If you think you can talk him out of sub-leasing, I can tell you it's a waste of time," the fat man said, then blinked as his colleague took a quick step backward. The doors of the little box closed and suddenly they were falling.

He clawed at Mort's mind, ignoring the screams, and found this was all right. The fall was controlled.

"If I spoke out of turn, I'm sorry," the fat man said. The gunslinger thought: This one is afraid, too. "You've handled the jerk better than anyone else in the firm, that's what I think."

The gunslinger said nothing. He waited only to be out of this falling coffin.

"I say so, too," the fat man continued eagerly. "Why, just yesterday I was at lunch with – "

Jack Mort's head turned, and behind Jack Mort's gold-rimmed glasses, eyes that seemed a somehow different shade of blue than Jack's eyes had ever been before stared at the fat man. "Shut up," the gunslinger said tonelessly.

Color fell from the fat man's face and he took two quick steps backward. His flabby buttocks smacked the fake wood panels at the back of the little moving coffin, which suddenly stopped. The doors opened and the gunslinger, wearing Jack Mort's body like a tight-fitting set of clothes, stepped out with no look back. The fat man held his finger on the DOOR OPEN button of the elevator and waited inside until Mort was out of sight. Always did have a screw loose, the fat man thought, but this could be serious. This could be a breakdown.

The fat man found that the idea of Jack Mort tucked safely away in a sanitarium somewhere was very comforting.

The gunslinger wouldn't have been surprised.

3

Somewhere between the echoing room which his Mortcypedia identified as a lobby, to wit, a place of entry and exit from the offices which filled this sky-tower, and the bright sunshine of street (his Mortcypedia identified this street as both 6th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas), the screaming of Roland's host stopped. Mort had not died of fright; the gunslinger felt with a deep instinct which was the same as knowing that if Mort died, their kas would be expelled forever, into that void of possibility which lay beyond all physical worlds. Not dead – fainted. Fainted at the overload of terror and strangeness, as Roland himself had done upon entering the man's mind and discovering its secrets and the crossing of destinies too great to be coincidence.

He was glad Mort had fainted. As long as the man's unconsciousness hadn't affected Roland's access to the man's knowledge and memories – and it hadn't – he was glad to have him out of the way.

The yellow cars were public conveyences called Tack-Sees or Cabs or Hax. The tribes which drove them, the Mortcypedia told him, were two: Spix and Mockies. To make one stop, you held your hand up like a pupil in a classroom.

Roland did this, and after several Tack-Sees which were obviously empty save for their drivers had gone by him, he saw that these had signs which read Off-Duty. Since these were Great Letters, the gunslinger didn't need Mort's help. He waited, then put his hand up again. This time the Tack-See pulled over. The gunslinger got into the back seat. He smelled old smoke, old sweat, old perfume. It smelled like a coach in his own world.

"Where to, my friend?" the driver asked – Roland had no idea if he was of the Spix or Mockies tribe, and had no intention of asking. It might be impolite in this world.

"I'm not sure," Roland said.

"This ain't no encounter group, my friend. Time is money."

Tell him to put his flag down, the Mortcypedia told him.

"Put your flag down," Roland said.

"That ain't rolling nothing but time," the driver replied.

Tell him you'll tip him five bux, the Mortcypedia advised.

"I'll tip you five bucks," Roland said.

"Let's see it," the cabbie replied. "Money talks, bullshit walks."

Ask him if he wants the money or if he wants to go fuck himself, the Mortcypedia advised instantly.

"Do you want the money, or do you want to go fuck yourself?" Roland asked in a cold, dead voice.

The cabbie's eyes glanced apprehensively into the rear-view mirror for just a moment, and he said no more.

Roland consulted Jack Mort's accumulated store of knowledge more fully this time. The cabbie glanced up again, quickly, during the fifteen seconds his fare spent simply sitting there with his head slightly lowered and his left hand spread across his brow, as if he had an Excedrin Headache. The cabbie had decided to tell the guy to get out or he'd yell for a cop when the fare looked up and said mildly, "I'd like you to take me to Seventh Avenue and Forty-Ninth street . For this trip I will pay you ten dollars over the fare on your taxi meter, no matter what your tribe."

A weirdo, the driver (a WASP from Vermont trying to break into showbiz) thought, but maybe a rich weirdo. He dropped the cab into gear. "We're there, buddy," he said, and pulling into traffic he added mentally, And the sooner the better.

4

Improvise. That was the word.

The gunslinger saw the blue-and-white parked down the block when he got out, and read Police as Posse without checking Mort's store of knowledge. Two gunslingers inside, drinking something – coffee, maybe – from white paper glasses. Gunslingers, yes – but they looked fat and lax.

He reached into Jack Mort's wallet (except it was much too small to be a real wallet; a real wallet was almost as big as a purse and could carry all of a man's things, if he wasn't travelling too heavy) and gave the driver a bill with the number 20 on it. The cabbie drove away fast. It was easily the biggest tip he'd make that day, but the guy was so freaky he felt he had earned every cent of it.

The gunslinger looked at the sign over the shop.

CLEMENTS GUNS AND SPORTING GOODS, it said. AMMO, FISHING TACKLE, OFFICIAL FACSIMILES.

He didn't understand all of the words, but one look in the window was all it took for him to see Mort had brought him to the right place. There were wristbands on display, badges of rank … and guns. Rifles, mostly, but pistols as well. They were chained, but that didn't matter.

He would know what he needed when – if –  he saw it.

Roland consulted Jack Mort's mind – a mind exactly sly enough to suit his purposes – for more than a minute.

5

One of the cops in the blue-and-white elbowed the other. "Now that," he said, "is a serious comparison shopper."

His partner laughed. "Oh God," he said in an effeminate voice as the man in the business suit and gold-rimmed glasses finished his study of the merchandise on display and went inside. "I think he jutht dethided on the lavender handcuffths."

The first cop choked on a mouthful of lukewarm coffee and sprayed it back into the styrofoam cup in a gust of laughter.

6

A clerk came over almost at once and asked if he could be of help.

"I wonder," the man in the conservative blue suit replied, "if you have a paper …" He paused, appeared to think deeply, and then looked up. "A chart, I mean, which shows pictures of revolver ammunition."

"You mean a caliber chart?" the clerk asked.

The customer paused, then said, "Yes. My brother has a revolver. I have fired it, but it's been a good many years. I think I will know the bullets if I see them."

"Well, you may think so," the clerk replied, "but it can be hard to tell. Was it a .22? A .38? Or maybe – "

"If you have a chart, I'll know," Roland said.

"Just a sec." The clerk looked at the man in the blue suit doubtfully for a moment, then shrugged. Fuck, the customer was always right, even when he was wrong … if he had the dough to pay, that was. Money talked, bullshit walked. "I got a Shooter's Bible. Maybe that's what you ought to look at."

"Yes." He smiled. Shooter's Bible. It was a noble name for a book.

The man rummaged under the counter and brought out a well-thumbed volume as thick as any book the gunslinger had ever seen in his life – and yet this man seemed to handle it as if it were no more valuable than a handful of stones.

He opened it on the counter and turned it around. "Take a look. Although if it's been years, you're shootin' in the dark." He looked surprised, then smiled. "Pardon my pun."

Roland didn't hear. He was bent over the book, studying pictures which seemed almost as real as the things they represented, marvellous pictures the Mortcypedia identified as Fottergraffs.

He turned the pages slowly. No … no … no …

He had almost lost hope when he saw it. He looked up at the clerk with such blazing excitement that the clerk felt a little afraid.

"There!" he said. "There! Right there!"

The photograph he was tapping was one of a Winchester .45 pistol shell. It was not exactly the same as his own shells, because it hadn't been hand-thrown or hand-loaded, but he could see without even consulting the figures (which would have meant almost nothing to him anyway) that it would chamber and fire from his guns.

"Well, all right, I guess you found it," the clerk said, "but don't cream your jeans, fella. I mean, they're just bullets."

"You have them?"

"Sure. How many boxes do you want?"

"How many in a box?"

"Fifty." The clerk began to look at the gunslinger with real suspicion. If the guy was planning to buy shells, he must know he'd have to show a Permit to Carry photo-I.D. No P.C., no ammo, not for handguns; it was the law in the borough of Manhattan . And if this dude had a handgun permit, how come he didn't know how many shells came in a standard box of ammo?

"Fifty!" Now the guy was staring at him with slack-jawed surprise. He was off the wall, all right.

The clerk edged a bit to his left, a bit nearer the cash register … and, not so coincidentally, a bit nearer to his own gun, a .357 Mag which he kept fully loaded in a spring clip under the counter.

"Fifty!" the gunslinger repeated. He had expected five, ten, perhaps as many as a dozen, but this … this …

How much money do you have? he asked the Mortcypedia. The Mortcypedia didn't know, not exactly, but thought there was at least sixty bux in his wallet.

"And how much does a box cost?" It would be more than sixty dollars, he supposed, but the man might be persuaded to sell him part of a box, or –

"Seventeen-fifty," the clerk said. "But, mister – "

Jack Mort was an accountant, and this time there was no waiting; translation and answer came simultaneously.

"Three," the gunslinger said. "Three boxes." He tapped the Fotergraff of the shells with one finger. One hundred and fifty rounds! Ye gods! What a mad storehouse of riches this world was!

The clerk wasn't moving.

"You don't have that many," the gunslinger said. He felt no real surprise. It had been too good to be true. A dream.

"Oh, I got Winchester .45s I got .45s up the kazoo." The clerk took another step to the left, a step closer to the cash register and the gun. If the guy was a nut, something the clerk expected to find out for sure any second now, he was soon going to be a nut with an extremely large hole in his midsection. "I got .45 ammo up the old ying-yang. What I want to know, mister, is if you got the card."

"Card?"

"A handgun permit with a photo. I can't sell you handgun ammo unless you can show me one. If you want to buy ammo without a P.C., you're gonna hafta go up to Westchester ."

The gunslinger stared at the man blankly. This was all gabble to him. He understood none of it. His Mortcypedia had some vague notion of what the man meant, but Mort's ideas were too vague to be trusted in this case. Mort had never owned a gun in his life. He did his nasty work in other ways.

The man sidled another step to the left without taking his eyes from his customer's face and the gunslinger thought: He's got a gun. He expects me to make trouble … or maybe he wants me to make trouble. Wants an excuse to shoot me.

Improvise.

He remembered the gunslingers sitting in their blue and white carriage down the street. Gunslingers, yes, peacekeepers, men charged with keeping the world from moving on. But these had looked – at least on a passing glance – to be nearly as soft and unobservant as everyone else in this world of lotus-eaters; just two men in uniforms and caps, slouched down in the seats of their carriage, drinking coffee. He might have misjudged. He hoped for all their sakes – that he had not.

"Oh! I understand," the gunslinger said, and drew an apologetic smile on Jack Mort's face. "I'm sorry. I guess I haven't kept track of how much the world has moved on – changed – since I last owned a gun."

"No harm done," the clerk said, relaxing minutely. Maybe the guy was all right. Or maybe he was pulling a gag.

"I wonder if I could look at that cleaning kit?" Roland pointed to a shelf behind the clerk.

"Sure." The clerk turned to get it, and when he did, the gunslinger removed the wallet from Mort's inside jacket pocket. He did this with the flickering speed of a fast draw. The clerk's back was to him for less than four seconds, but when he turned back to Mort, the wallet was on the floor.

"It's a beaut," the clerk said, smiling, having decided the guy was okay after all. Hell, he knew how lousy you felt when you made a horse's ass of yourself. He had done it in the Marines enough times. "And you don't need a goddam permit to buy a cleaning kit, either. Ain't freedom wonderful?"

"Yes," the gunslinger said seriously, and pretended to look closely at the cleaning kit, although a single glance was enough to show him that it was a shoddy thing in a shoddy box. While he looked, he carefully pushed Mort's wallet under the counter with his foot.

After a moment he pushed it back with a passable show of regret. "I'm afraid I'll have to pass."

"All right," the clerk said, losing interest abruptly. Since the guy wasn't crazy and was obviously a looker, not a buyer, their relationship was at an end. Bullshit walks. "Anything else?" His mouth asked while his eyes told blue-suit to get out.

"No, thank you." The gunslinger walked out without a look back. Mort's wallet was deep under the counter. Roland had set out his own honeypot.

7

Officers Carl Delevan and George O'Mearah had finished their coffee and were about to move on when the man in the blue suit came out of Clements' – which both cops believed to be a powderhorn (police slang for a legal gunshop which sometimes sells guns to independent stick-up men with proven credentials and which does business, sometimes in bulk, to the Mafia), and approached their squad car.

He leaned down and looked in the passenger side window at O'Mearah. O'Mearah expected the guy to sound like a fruit – probably as fruity as his routine about the lavender handcuffths had suggested, but a pouf all the same. Guns aside, Clements' did a lively trade in handcuffs. These were legal in Manhattan , and most of the people buying them weren't amateur Houdinis (the cops didn't like it, but when had what the cops thought on any given subject ever changed things?). The buyers were homos with a little taste for s & m. But the man didn't sound like a fag at all. His voice was flat and expressionless, polite but somehow dead.

"The tradesman in there took my wallet," he said.

"Who?" O'Mearah straightened up fast. They had been itching to bust Justin Clements for a year and a half. If it could be done, maybe the two of them could finally swap these bluesuits for detective's badges. Probably just a pipe-dream – this was too good to be true – but just the same …

"The tradesman. The – " A brief pause. "The clerk."

O'Mearah and Carl Delevan exchanged a glance.

"Black hair?" Delevan asked. "On the stocky side?"

Again there was the briefest pause. "Yes. His eyes were brown. Small scar under one of them."

There was something about the guy … O'Mearah couldn't put his finger on it then, but remembered later on, when there weren't so many other things to think about. The chief of which, of course, was the simple fact that the gold detective's badge didn't matter; it turned out that just holding onto the jobs they had would be a pure brassy-ass miracle.

But years later there was a brief moment of epiphany when O'Mearah took his two sons to the Museum of Science in Boston . They had a machine there – a computer – that played tic-tac-toe, and unless you put your X in the middle square on your first move, the machine fucked you over every time. But there was always a pause as it checked its memory for all possible gambits. He and his boys had been fascinated. But there was something spooky about it … and then he remembered Blue-Suit. He remembered because Blue-Suit had had that some fucking habit. Talking to him had been like talking to a robot.

Delevan had no such feeling, but nine years later, when he took his own son (then eighteen and about to start college) to the movies one night, Delevan would rise unexpectedly to his feet about thirty minutes into the feature and scream, "It's him! That's HIM! That's the guy in the fucking blue suit! The guy who was at Cle – "

Somebody would shout Down in front! but needn't have bothered; Delevan, seventy pounds overweight and a heavy smoker, would be struck by a fatal heart attack before the complainer even got to the second word. The man in the blue suit who approached their cruiser that day and told them about his stolen wallet didn't look like the star of the movie, but the dead delivery of words had been the same; so had been the somehow relentless yet graceful way he moved.

The movie, of course, had been The Terminator.

8

The cops exchanged a glance. The man Blue-Suit was talking about wasn't Clements, but almost as good: "Fat Johnny" Holden, Clements' brother-in-law. But to have done something as totally dumb-ass as simply stealing a guy's wallet would be –

– would be right up that gink's alley, O'Mearah's mind finished, and he had to put a hand to his mouth to cover a momentary little grin.

"Maybe you better tell us exactly what happened," Delevan said. "You can start with your name."

Again, the man's response struck O'Mearah as a little wrong, a little off-beat. In this city, where it sometimes seemed that seventy per cent of the population believed Go fuck yourself was American for Have a nice day, he would have expected the guy to say something like, Hey, that S.O.B. took my wallet! Are you going to get it back for me or are we going to stand out here playing Twenty Questions?

But there was the nicely cut suit, the manicured fingernails. A guy maybe used to dealing with bureaucratic bullshit. In truth, George O'Mearah didn't care much. The thought of busting Fat Johnny Holden and using him as a lever on Arnold Clements made O'Mearah's mouth water. For one dizzy moment he even allowed himself to imagine using Holden to get Clements and Clements to get one of the really big guys – that wop Balazar, for instance, or maybe Ginelli. That wouldn't be too tacky. Not too tacky at all.

"My name is Jack Mort," the man said.

Delevan had taken a butt-warped pad from his back pocket. "Address?"

That slight pause. Like the machine, O'Mearah thought again. A moment of silence, then an almost audible click.

" 409 Park Avenue South ."

Delevan jotted it down.

"Social Security number?"

After another slight pause, Mort recited it.

"Want you to understand I gotta ask you these questions for identification purposes. If the guy did take your wallet, it's nice if I can say you told me certain stuff before I take it into my possession. You understand."

"Yes." Now there was the slightest hint of impatience in the man's voice. It made O'Mearah feel a little better about him somehow. "Just don't drag it out any more than you have to. Time passes, and – "

"Things have a way of happening, yeah, I dig."

"Things have a way of happening," the man in the blue suit agreed. "Yes."

"Do you have a photo in your wallet that's distinctive?"

A pause. Then: "A picture of my mother taken in front of the Empire State Building . On the back is written: 'It was a wonderful day and a wonderful view. Love, Mom.' "

Delevan jotted furiously, then snapped his notebook closed. "Okay. That should do it. Only other thing'll be to have you write your signature if we get the wallet back and compare it with the sigs on your driver's license, credit cards, stuff like that. Okay?"

Roland nodded, although part of him understood that, although he could draw on Jack Mort's memories and knowledge of this world as much as he needed, he hadn't a chance in hell of duplicating Mort's signature with Mort's consciousness absent, as it was now.

"Tell us what happened."

"I went in to buy shells for my brother. He has a .45 Winchester revolver. The man asked me if I had a Permit to Carry. I said of course. He asked to see it."

Pause.

"I took out my wallet. I showed him. Only when I turned my wallet around to do that showing, he must have seen there were quite a few – " slight pause " – twenties in there. I am a tax accountant. I have a client named Dorfman who just won a small tax refund after an extended – " pause " – litigation. The sum was only eight hundred dollars, but this man, Dorfman, is – " pause " – the biggest prick we handle." Pause. "Pardon my pun."

O'Mearah ran the man's last few words back through his head and suddenly got it. The biggest prick we handle. Not bad. He laughed. Thoughts of robots and machines that played tic-tac-toe went out of his mind. The guy was real enough, just upset and trying to hide it by being cool.

"Anyway, Dorfman wanted cash. He insisted on cash."

"You think Fat Johnny got a look at your client's dough," Delevan said. He and O'Mearah got out of the blue-and-white.

"Is that what you call the man in the that shop?"

"Oh, we call him worse than that on occasion," Delevan said. "What happened after you showed him your P.C., Mr. Mort?"

"He asked for a closer look. I gave him my wallet but he didn't look at the picture. He dropped it on the floor. I asked him what he did that for. He said that was a stupid question. Then I told him to give me back my wallet. I was mad."

"I bet you were." Although, looking at the man's dead face, Delevan thought you'd never guess this man could get mad.

"He laughed. I started to come around the counter and get it. That was when he pulled the gun."

They had been walking toward the shop. Now they stopped. They looked excited rather than fearful. "Gun?" O'Mearah asked, wanting to be sure he had heard right.

"It was under the counter, by the cash register," the man in the blue suit said. Roland remembered the moment when he had almost junked his original plan and gone for the man's weapon. Now he told these gunslingers why he hadn't. He wanted to use them, not get them killed. "I think it was in a docker's clutch."

"A what?" O'Mearah asked.

"A longer pause this time. The man's forehead wrinkled. "I don't know exactly how to say it … a thing you put your gun into. No one can grab it but you unless they know how to push – "

"A spring-clip!" Delevan said. "Holy shit!" Another exchange of glances between the partners. Neither wanted to be the first to tell this guy that Fat Johnny had probably harvested the cash from his wallet already, shucked his buns out the back door, and tossed it over the wall of the alley behind the building … but a gun in a spring-clip … that was different. Robbery was a possible, but all at once a concealed weapons charge looked like a sure thing. Maybe not as good, but a foot in the door.

"What then?" O'Mearah asked.

"Then he told me I didn't have a wallet. He said – '' pause " – that I got my picket pocked – my pocket picked, I mean – on the street and I'd better remember it if I wanted to stay healthy. I remembered seeing a police car parked up the block and I thought you might still be there. So I left."

"Okay," Delevan said. "Me and my partner are going in first, and fast. Give us about a minute – a full minute – just in case there's some trouble. Then come in, but stand by the door. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Let's bust this motherfucker."

The two cops went in. Roland waited thirty seconds and then followed them.

9

"Fat Johnny" Holden was doing more than protesting. He was bellowing.

"Guy's crazy! Guy comes in here, doesn't even know what he wants, then, when he sees it in the Shooter's Bible, he don't know how many comes in a box, how much they cost, and what he says about me wantin' a closer look at his P.C. is the biggest pile of shit I ever heard, because he don't have no Permit to – " Fat Johnny broke off. "There he is! There's the creep! Right there! I see you, buddy! I see your face! Next time you see mine you're gonna be fuckin sorry! I guarantee you that! I fuckin guarantee – "

"You don't have this man's wallet?" O'Mearah asked.

"You know I don't have his wallet!"

"You mind if we take a look behind this display case?" Delevan countered. "Just to be sure?"

"Jesus-fuckin-jumped-up-Christ-on-a-pony! The case is glass! You see any wallets there?"

"No, not there … I meant here," Delevan said, moving toward the register. His voice was a cat's purr. At this point a chrome-steel reinforcing strip almost two feet wide ran down the shelves of the case. Delevan looked back at the man in the blue suit, who nodded.

"I want you guys out of here right now," Fat Johnny said. He had lost some of his color. "You come back with a warrant, that's different. But for now, I want you the fuck out. Still a free fuckin country, you kn – hey! hey! HEY, QUIT THAT!"

O'Mearah was peering over the counter.

"That's illegal!" Fat Johnny was howling. "That's fuckin illegal, the Constitution …my fuckin lawyer …you get back on your side right now or – "

"I just wanted a closer look at the merchandise," O'Mearah said mildly, "on account of the glass in your display case is so fucking dirty. That's why I looked over. Isn't it, Carl?"

"True shit, buddy," Delevan said solemnly.

"And look what I found."

Roland heard a click, and suddenly the gunslinger in the blue uniform was holding an extremely large gun in his hand.

Fat Johnny, who had finally realized he was the only person in the room who would tell a story that differed from the fairy tale just told by the cop who had taken his Mag, turned sullen.

"I got a permit," he said.

"To carry?" Delevan asked.

"Yeah."

"To carry concealed?"

"Yeah."

"This gun registered?" O'Mearah asked. "It is, isn't it?"

"Well … I mighta forgot."

"Might be it's hot, and you forgot that, too."

"Fuck you. I'm calling my lawyer."

Fat Johnny started to turn away. Delevan grabbed him.

"Then there's the question of whether or not you got a permit to conceal a deadly weapon in a spring-clip device," he said in the same soft, purring voice. "That's an interesting question, because so far as I know, the City of New York doesn't issue a permit like that."

The cops were looking at Fat Johnny; Fat Johnny was glaring back at them. So none of them noticed Roland turn the sign hanging in the door from OPEN to CLOSED.

"Maybe we could start to resolve this matter if we could find the gentleman's wallet," O'Mearah said. Satan himself could not have lied with such genial persuasiveness. "Maybe he just dropped it, you know."

"I told you! 1 don't know nothing about the guy's wallet! Guy's out of his mind!"

Roland bent down. "There it is," he remarked. "I can just see it. He's got his foot on it."

This was a lie, but Delevan, whose hand was still on Fat Johnny's shoulder, shoved the man back so rapidly that it was impossible to tell if the man's foot had been there or not.