his left hand still clapped to his forehead, restraining the unruly eyebrow, Bekker turned toward the monitors. Cortese's heart had stopped, blood pressure was plummeting toward zero. Bekker felt the large muscles of his own back and buttocks tighten with the anticipation.
He looked at the EEG, the brain-wave monitor. A jagged, jangled line just seconds before, it began flattening, flattening…
He felt Cortese go: could feel the essence go. He couldn't measure it-not yet-but he could feel it. He bathed in the feeling, clutched at it; fired a half-dozen photos, the motor drives going bzz-whit, bzz-whit behind his head. And finally the magic something slipped away. Bekker jumped to his feet, frantic to hold on. He leaned over Cortese, his eyes four inches from the other's. There was something about death and the eyes…
And then Cortese was gone, beyond Bekker's reach. His body, the shell of his personality, went slack beneath Bekker's hands.
The power of the moment spun Bekker around. Breathing hard, he stared at a reflection of himself in a polished stainless-steel cabinet. He saw himself there a dozen times a day, as he worked: the raw face, the sin face, he called it, the cornrows of reddened flesh where the gunsights had ripped through him. He said in a small, high voice: 'Gone.'
But not quite. Bekker felt the pressure on his back; his spine stiffened, and a finger of fear touched him. He turned, and the dead man's eyes caught him and held him. They were open, of course. Bekker had carefully trimmed away the eyelids to ensure they would remain that way.
'Don't,' he said sharply. Cortese was mute, but the eyes were watching.
'Don't,' Bekker said again, louder, his voice cracking. Cortese was watching him.
Bekker snatched a scalpel from a stainless-steel tray, stepped to the head of the table, leaned over the body and slashed at the eyes. He was expert: it only took a second. He carved the eyes like boiled eggs, and the vitreous aqua leaked down Cortese's dead cheeks like jellied tears.
'Good-bye,' Bekker said dreamily. The ruined eyes were no longer threatening. A gumball dropped, and Bekker went away…
Thick stopped at the curb, rocking on his heels, waiting patiently for the light. Thin snapped a cigarette into the street, where it exploded in a shower of sparks. The cars went by in a torrent, battered Toyotas and clunking Fords, fender-bent Dodges, pickups and vans blocking the view ahead, trucks covered with graffiti, buses stinking up the streets with noxious diesel fumes, all rolling past like iron salmon headed upstream to spawn. Through all of it, the taxis jockeyed for position, signaling their moves with quick taps on their horns, an amber warp to the woof of the street. New York was noise: an underground rumble of trains and steam pipes, a street-level clash of gears and motors and bad mufflers, a million people talking at once, uncounted air conditioners buzzing above it all.
All of it congealed in the heat.
'Too fuckin' hot,' Thick said. And it was; he could feel it on his neck, in his armpits, on the soles of his feet. He glanced at Thin, who'd stopped at the curb beside him. Thin nodded but didn't answer. They were both wearing long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled down to their wrists. Thin was a problem, and Thick didn't quite know what to do about it. Hadn't really known, he thought wryly, for almost forty years now…
The walk sign flashed on and he and Thin crossed the street. A traffic-light pole, splattered with pigeon shit and encrusted with the grime of decades, sat on the corner. At the bottom, and up as high as a hand could reach, it was covered with fading posters. Above that, two street signs were mounted at right angles to each other, a bus-stop sign faced the street, and a temporary traffic-diversion sign pointed an arrow to the left. Above all that, a spar went out to the traffic signal, and another supported a streetlight.
Oughta put one in a fuckin' museum someplace, just like that. Our own fuckin' totem poles…
'Dollar…' The woman on the sidewalk reached up at him, holding a dirty hand-lettered card: 'Help me feed my children.' Thick walked past, thinking that it was impossible that the woman had children. In her forties, perhaps, she was withered as a week-old carrot, her emaciated legs sprawled beneath her, her bare feet covered with open sores. Her eyes had a foggy-white glaze, not cataracts, but something else. She had no teeth at all, only dimples in gray gums, like the vacant spots left by corn kernels popped from a cob.
'I read this book about Shanghai once, the way it was before World War Two,' Thick said as they passed on. Thin looked straight ahead, not responding. 'The thing was, begging was a profession, you know? But an ordinary guy couldn't get any alms. You needed to be special. So they'd take kids and burn their eyes out or smash their arms and legs with hammers. They had to make them pitiful enough to get money in a whole city full of beggars…'
Thin looked up at him, still saying nothing.
'So we're getting there, too,' Thick said, looking back at the woman on the street. 'Who's gonna give money to your average panhandler when you walk by something like that every day?' He half turned to look back at the woman.
'Dollar,' the woman wailed, 'Dollar…'
Thick was worried. Thin was talking about running out. He glanced at his partner. Thin's eyes were angry, fixed straight ahead. Thinking…
Thick was carrying a large, flat, cardboard box. It wasn't particularly heavy, but the shape was awkward, and he slowed to hitch it up under his arm.
'I wouldn't mind…' Thick started, then let it go. He reached up to scratch his face, but he was wearing thin, flesh-colored surgeon's gloves, and he couldn't effectively scratch. They moved along, quickly, to an apartment building across the street from the steak house. Thick had the key in his free hand and opened the door.
Thin said, 'I can't do it.'
'We gotta. Jesus Christ, if we don't we're fuckin' dead, all of us…'
'Listen…'
'Off the street, off the street…'
Inside the door, the hall and landing were dimly lit by a yellow sixty-watt bulb. The stairs were immediately to the right, and Thick started up. Thin, undecided, looked back out at the street, then, reluctantly, because Thick was already moving, followed. At the top of the stairs, they stopped in the hallway for a moment and listened, then went to the front apartment and opened the door with a key. The only light in the apartment came through the yellowed shades on the front windows, from the street. The place smelled of dead air, old coffee grounds, and dry plants. The owners had been in Rome for a week, to see the Pope. They'd go to the Holy Land afterward. The Holy Land in July. They'd burn their brains out, if they had any, which they probably didn't, if they were going to the Holy Land in July.
Thin shut the door behind them and said, 'Listen…'
'If you weren't going to do it, why'd you come this far?'
'Because you got us into it. I don't want you to get fucked up.'
'Jesus…' Thick shook his head and stepped carefully through the dark room to the windows and lifted a shade. 'Get the rifle.'
'I'm not…'
'All right, I'll do it. Jesus, if that's the way you feel about it, go. Get the fuck out,' Thick said, anger riding his voice. He was older than Thin by twenty-three years and two days, his face stamped with the cuts and gullies of a life on the street. He picked up the box he'd carried in. 'Go.'
Thin hesitated, watching. The box was five feet long by three wide, but only eight inches deep. It might have held a mirror, or even a painting, but it didn't-it held a Colt AR-15 with a flash suppressor, a twenty-shot magazine, a two-power light-gathering scope, and a laser sight. The weapon, manufactured as a semiautomatic, had been converted to selectible fire, semiauto or full auto, by a machinist in Providence.
Thick had spent an afternoon in the Adirondacks shooting plastic milk jugs from a perch high on the bank of a gully. The gallon-sized jugs closely simulated the kill zone of a man's chest from any angle. Thick used hand- loaded cartridges, and he was a very good shot. When hit by one of Thick's hot loads, the milk jugs literally exploded.
Thick used a penknife to cut the twine that held the box shut, stripped off a couple of pieces of tape, opened it, and took the weapon out of the sponge-rubber packing. New scope mounts weren't as delicate as those he'd grown up with, but there was no point in taking chances. He hadn't. A fully loaded magazine was packed with the
