under the counter. You pick up your gun here after you pass the first two detection points. The detector in his doorway will be disconnected.'
A miniature youth, passing for an eight-year-old street boy, clicks his heels and bows. 'I am the Disconnector.'
'And you're just a dumb space sailor,' Dimitri tells Audrey, 'looking to pick up a few cartons of smuggled cigarettes.' He glances at Audrey's clothes—blue pullover, seaman's pea jacket, blue pants ... 'And here's your hat. After you do the job on him, you walk out with your cigarettes and go to this Chinese laundry. They'll show you out the back way.'
In the street, Toby's face is an asset. With vacant blue eyes, yellow hair and seaman's clothes, no one could look less like a dedicated and purposeful assassin.
He pauses frequently, looking at a map of the city which he can't figure out how to fold up again, so he fumbles it together and stuffs the protesting paper into his pocket. Just a dumb fucking kid space sailor.
Now he feels the eyes from the lookouts, probing, hate-filled, but not suspicious. Just the contempt of the angle boys for a mark, a crumb who worka for a living. He drops his map and as he bends down to get it, pulls loose a brick from a wall and gets the gun. He can feel the lookout's eyes on his ass.
'Looks like a fucking fruit—takes it up the farter.'
An old Italian hag leans over a balcony: 'Ha ha ha,
The gun is a snub-nosed 38 with cyanide bullets. He looks around, blushing, then opens the door of the shop and goes in.
The man behind the counter looks at him. Audrey fumbles awkwardly and pulls off his hat. The man's eyes spit hate and contempt.
'Whatta you want?'
Audrey holds the cap by the visor, moving it across the counter within two feet of the man's chest. With smooth fluid casual movements, he draws the gun from his waistband and pushes it gently into the cotton lining of the hat.
The vacant face of Toby ages and tightens, the eyes blazing into the Italian's face like a comet as Audrey smiles. Comprehension, then stark ugly fear, flickers into the man's eyes as he knows what is happening and knows it is too late to reach the shotgun.
Audrey shoots three times through the chest—a muffled sound like a backfire in heavy snow. The man crumbles sideways, his eyes flaring out. Audrey reaches across the counter for a carton of cigarettes. He steps outside, looks around uncertainly and walks away.
In the Chinese laundry, and old Chinese is ironing a shirt. He jerks his head towards the rear of the laundry. Audrey walks through into an alley that leads to a sort of mall in sunlight.
A walk to the end
of the world
Audrey was walking on a mall in bright sunlight. Ahead he could see mountains shrouded in mist, brightly colored food stands, tables under umbrellas, waiters in red uniforms. This could be a small resort in Switzerland.
He was passing a huge marble snail, a bronze frog and a beaver. Fourteen-year-old boys lounged on the statues in studied postures, eating ice cream and looking at each other, insulated from the passerby by some invisible barrier.
Farther on, boys in cowboy boots, Stetson hats and jeans posed in front of a clothing store with the same stylized unsmiling nonchalance, engaged in some timeless charade. A boy with white-blond hair sat on a stone bridge dangling his legs.
Audrey turning into a paved courtyard and suddenly the air was oppressive and heavy with tropical heat. Youths in eighteenth-century clothes lounge in cane chairs sipping rum punch. They look cruel and languid as they caress pistol butts in their belts with slow obscene movements.
A private eye is talking to the bartender. 'What were you doing in Bill Gray's
