The land was sloping gradually downward, and now the trees were thinning out and the bushes getting larger and thicker and even harder to light through. There was still some greenery on some of the underbrush that was green all year round, and here and there bushes sported hard inedible bright red berries, but the color of the forest was mostly black, accented by the white trunks of the birches. Between the trunks swelled the under brush, sharp and gamy.
Now and again Parker came to clumps of bushes the amateur hadn’t been able to go through at all; he could see the marks where the amateur had fought his way part-way in and had then been forced to back out again and go around.
That slowed the amateur too, and helped Parker gain on him.
From time to time Parker caught glimpses of him through the trees and brush; a bobbing head, a straining back. But they were just moving glimpses, and he made no attempt to hit him from this range, given such a bad target. He’d catch up with him sooner or later. The amateur might be faster on open level ground, but not in here.
Parker was so sure that he even stopped at one point and listened for Negli. The little man would be coming along too, he was positive. Being smaller, following this trail after two men bigger than himself had already forced it open, Negli should be able to make fine time in here.
But there was no sound.
Parker frowned and listened. Off the other way, he could hear the amateur still blundering away through the underbrush like a frightened range cow, but back toward the highway there was silence.
The silence was split open by a gunshot. Something thudded into the tree beside Parker’s head.
That was the second time Negli’s gun had fired off to the right; sooner or later Negli would notice it himself and start compensating.
But he was back there, anyway. Moving more slowly and silently than he had to because he was afraid of being ambushed.
Parker turned and went on after the amateur before Negli had a chance to try for another shot.
He’d lost ground in those few seconds he’d been stopped, but it didn’t matter. The end was inevitable anyway.
His topcoat was an annoyance, snagging branches, slowing him down. He stopped again and transferred the pistols to his trouser pockets and stripped off the topcoat. He threw it over a bush and went on.
Abruptly, trees and underbrush stopped. Along a straight line running from left to right there was a sudden border to the forest as clear and neat as though someone had cut the earth with a scissors and in fixing things again had seamed two mismatched parts together at this spot like getting a jigsaw puzzle wrong.
On one side of the seam was the forest, black and red and green, verticaled with birch and maple, jagged- armed at the top, cluttered with underbrush at the bottom. On the other side of the seam was blasted dirt, dry tan in color, so light as to almost be cream. Moisture had eroded and drained from the soil, a few late autumn frosts had done their work, and the ground now was baked and cracked like the surface of the moon. Zigzag lines ran here and there across the powdery dirt. Nothing grew.
Looking up, Parker saw the explanation. In from of him, maybe sixty yards away, a broad yellow brick building rose up in the middle of the dead plain like a squared-off dinosaur. Marching rows of windows reflected the afternoon sun, giving off a cold yellow light. On the right side of the building the temporary steel framework of a construction company’s external elevator rose up like the crane next to a missile bound for the moon.
Bulldozers had worked this dry miracle with the land. The constructors of that building over there had called in the bulldozers to strip down every inch of the properly they owned before anybody started to work putting up the foundation. Later, when the building was done, landscape architects would come in with fresh earth and seed and hothouse plants and turn this moonscape back into something vaguely like the forest it had been, but with less clutter and liveliness.
The building wasn’t finished, that was obvious, though there didn’t seem to be any workmen on or near it. Parker assumed they were all out on strike.
Whether the building, when it was finished, would be an apartment house or an office building Parker couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Whatever it was going to be, it implied a road or highway or street of some kind over on its far side. If the amateur could make it over to there, over to paved street and a populated neighborhood, he just might get away after all.
But he wasn’t going to make it.
He was halfway to the building, running splayfooted, arms making ragged pinwheels at his sides. He was obviously winded, running on terror now instead of strength or energy. Little puffs of dust rose up around his feet at every pounding step. He half staggered, nearly fell forward, but kept his balance and his momentum and ran on.
Parker half turned so his right side was to the building and the runner. He stretched his right arm out, shoulder high, large hand bunched around the Colt .38 automatic, arm and hand and automatic all pointing at the straining back of the runner.
He fired.
Dust puffed ahead of the runner and to his right.
The runner didn’t dodge, didn’t swerve. He kept running straight ahead, flat out, running along the straight taut string of terror.
Parker compensated, aiming now just a bit to the left, just a bit lower. His first finger squeezed and the automatic bucked just a trifle, and the runner thudded face forward into the ground. Dust billowed up around him and slowly settled down again. There was no wind; the dust settled on the body.
Now for Negli.
A bullet cut Parker’s right earlobe.
Two
