The Dark Half

brinnk! — as the blade ran across it, leaving a tiny scar in the gold alloy. The razor cut the other three fingers deeply, sliding as effortlessly into the flesh as a warm knife slides into butter. Tendons cut, the fingers slumped forward like sleepy puppets, leaving only the ring—finger standing upright, as if in his confusion and horror, Donaldson had forgotten which finger you used when you wanted to flip somebody the bird.

  This time when Donaldson opened his mouth he actually howled, and Stark knew he could forget about getting out of this one unheard and unnoticed. He'd had every expectation of doing just that, since he didn't have to save Donaldson long enough to make any telephone calls, but it just wasn't happening. But neither did he intend to let Donaldson live. Once you'd started the wetwork, you didn't quit until either it was done or you were.

    Stark bored in. They had moved down the corridor almost to the next apartment door by now. He flicked the straight-razor casually sideways to clear the blade. A fine spray of droplets splashed the cream-colored wall.

   Farther down the hall a door opened and a man in a blue pajama shirt with his hair in sleepcorkscrews poked his head and shoulders out.

    'What's going on?' he cried in a gruff voice which proclaimed that he didn't care if it was the Pope of Rome out here, the party was over.

  'Murder,' Stark said conversationally, and for just a moment his eyes shifted from the bloody, howling man in front of him to the man in the doorway. Later this man would tell the police that the intruder's eyes were blue. Bright blue. And utterly mad. 'Do you want some?'

  The door shut so fast it might never have been opened at all.

  Panicked though he must be, hurt though he undoubtedly was, Donaldson saw an opportunity when Stark's gaze shifted, even though the diversion was only momentary. He took it. The little bastard really was quick. Stark's admiration grew. The mark's speed and sense of self-preservation were almost enough to outweigh the fucking nuisance he was making of himself.

    Had he leaped forward, grappled with Stark, he might have graduated from the nuisance stage to something approaching a real problem. Instead, Donaldson turned to run.

Perfectly understandable, but a mistake.

    Stark ran after him, big shoes whispering on the carpet, and slashed at the back of the man's neck, confident that this would finally finish it.

  But in the instant of time before the straight—razor should have slashed home, Donaldson simultaneously jerked his head forward and somehow tucked it, like a turtle pulling into its shell. Stark was beginning to think Donaldson was telepathic. This time what was meant to be the killing strike merely split the scalp above the protective bulge of bone at the back of the neck. It was bloody, but far from fatal.

  This was irritating, maddening . . . and edging into the land of the ludicrous.

  Donaldson lurched down the corridor, veering from one side to the other, sometimes even banging off the walls like a pinball striking one of those lighted posts that score the player 100,000 points or a free game or some fucking thing. He screamed as he lurched down the hall. He poured blood on the carpet as he lurched down the hall. He left the occasional gory handprint to mark his progress as he lurched down the hall. But he was not yet dying as he lurched down the hall.

   No other doors opened, but Stark knew that right now in at least half a dozen apartments, half a dozen fingers were punching (or had already punched) 911 on half a dozen phones.

Donaldson lurched and stumbled onward toward the elevators.

  Not angry or frightened, only terribly exasperated, Stark strode after him. Suddenly he thundered: 'Oh why don't you just stop it and BEHAVE!'

   Donaldson's current cry for help turned into a shocked squeak. He tried to look around. His feet tangled in each other and he fell sprawling ten feet from where the hallway opened into the small elevator lobby. Even the most nimble of fellows, Stark had found, eventually ran out of happy thoughts if you cut them enough.

   Donaldson got to his knees. He apparently meant to crawl to the elevator lobby now that his feet had betrayed him. He looked around with his bloody no-face to see where his attacker was, and Stark launched a kick at the red-drenched ridge of his nose. He was wearing brown loafers and he kicked the goddam pest as hard as he could, hands down at his sides and thrust slightly backward to maintain balance, left foot connecting and then rising in an arc as high as his own forehead. Anyone who had ever seen a football game would have inevitably been reminded of a very good, very strong punt.

    Donaldson's head flew backward, smashed into the wall hard enough to cave the plaster into a shallow bowl-shape at that point, and rebounded.

   'Finally pulled your batteries, didn't I?' Stark murmured, and heard a door open behind him. He turned and saw a woman with tousled black hair and huge dark eyes looking out of an apartment door almost all the way down the hall. 'GET BACK IN THERE, BITCH!' he screamed. The door slammed as if it were on a spring.

    He bent, grabbed Donaldson's tacky, gruesome hair, twisted his head back, and cut his throat. He thought Donaldson had probably been dead even before his head connected with the wall, and almost certainly after, but it was best to be sure. And besides: when you started cutting, you finished cutting.

   He stepped back quickly, but Donaldson did not spurt as the woman had. His pump had already quit or was wheezing to a stop. Stark walked rapidly toward the elevators, folding the straightrazor and sliding it back into his pocket.

An arriving elevator binged softly.

    It might have been a tenant; going-on-one wasn't really late in the big city, even for a Monday night. AU the same, Stark moved rapidly for the large potted plant which occupied the comer of the elevator lobby along with an absolutely useless non-representational painting. He stepped behind the plant. All his radar was pinging loudly. It could be someone returning from a postweekend bout of Disco Fever or the bibulous aftermath of a business dinner, but he didn't believe it would be either. He believed it would be the police. In fact, he knew it.

  A cruiser which fortuitously happened to be in the vicinity of the building when one of the residents of this wing telephoned to say that a murder was being committed in the hallway? Possible, but Stark doubted it. It seemed more likely that Beaumont had raised the roof, sissy had been discovered, and this was Donaldson's police protection arriving. Better belated than never.

  He slid slowly down the wall with his back against it, the bloodstained sport—coat he was wearing making a husky whispering noise. He did not so much hide as submerge like a submarine going to periscope depth, and the concealment the potted plant offered was at best minimal. If they looked around, they would see him. Stark, however, was betting all their attention would be riveted by Exhibit A there, halfway down the hall. For a few moments, anyway — and that would be enough.

   The plant's broad, crisscrossing leaves printed sawtoothed shadows on his face. Stark stared out from between them like a blue-eyed tiger.

    The elevator doors opened. There was a muffled exclamation, holy something-or-other, and two uniformed cops rushed out. They were followed by a black guy in a pair of pegged jeans and big old ditty—bop sneakers with Velcro closures. The black guy also wore a t-shirt with cut-off sleeves. PROPERTY OF THE N.Y. YANKEES was printed on the front. He also wore a pair of wraparound pimp shades, and if he wasn't a detective, Stark was George of the Motherfucking Jungle. When they went undercover, they always went too far . . . and then acted self-conscious about it. It was as if they knew they were going overboard but simply couldn't help it. This was — or had been meant to be, anyhow — Donaldson's protection, then. There wouldn't have been a detective in a passing squad-car. That was just a little too fortuitous. This guy had come along with the door-guards to first question Donaldson and then babysit him.

Sorry, fellows, Stark thought. I think this baby's talking days are over.

   He pushed to his feet and walked around the potted plant. Not a single leaf whispered. His feet were soundless on the carpet. He passed less than three feet behind the detective, who was bent over, pulling a .32 from a shin holster. Stark could have booted him a damned good one in the ass if he'd cared to.

    He slipped into the open elevator car in the last whisker of time before the door began to slide closed. One of the uniformed cops had caught a flicker of movement — perhaps the door, perhaps Stark himself, and it didn't really matter — out of the corner of his eye and raised his head from Donaldson's body. 'Hey — '

    Stark raised one hand and solemnly twiddled his fingers at the cop. Bye—bye. Then the door cut off the hallway tableau.

   The street-level lobby was deserted — except for the doorman, who lay comatose beneath his desk. Stark went out, turned the corner, got into a stolen car, and drove away.

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