Everywhere Parker looked, there was the reflection of a cop with his gun aimed at him. Given enough time, the cop would work his way through the mirrors and find the man. Parker tucked his own gun away in his jacket pocket and moved away, running his hands along the mirrors, finding the narrow channels through the glass. He didn’t have a good enough or a close enough shot at those two over there with the dead man, not when he had only four bullets left.
They were blundering after him now, bumping into mirrors and one another, the cop still plugging away with his service revolver, the other guy shouting names, calling for help.
Parker’s hands pushed against cloth. He stepped through the black-draped doorway into a room with distorting mirrors. There was a clear path through them to a dark doorway on the far side. Parker trotted down the room, flanked by tall Parkers, fat Parkers, long-necked Parkers, dwarf Parkers. He stepped through the doorway as a shout sounded behind him, and then the roar of a gunshot in a confined space. He heard the bullet ricochet off something in front of him, and he bent forward and hurried through the darkness.
The orientation he had given himself was beginning to pay off already. He knew where he was now, he didn’t need light to guide him. He was in a long passage shaped like a giant barrel lying on its side. He had come in one end of the barrel and would go out the other, in the meantime moving with his feet widely spread on the curving floor and his arms stretched out to the sides, his fingertips now and then glancing off the walls.
He reached the end of the barrel and stepped out onto normal flat floor. His hand touched a waist-high chain on his left. He ducked under it, went to one knee beside the barrel opening. He took out his pistol again, while with his other hand he stroked the curved side of the barrel. His hand found a metal box attached to a vertical length of pipe. On the top of the box was a switch. He held his thumbs against the switch, held the pistol ready in his other hand, and waited.
He could faintly hear them, still out in the room with the distorting mirrors. Then suddenly there was silence. He waited, listening to the silence, and became aware of the sound of breathing. It sounded close, far too close.
How had they gotten so close? Had they managed to come in behind him after all? He’d set this up so carefully, there shouldn’t be any way for them to come through from the opposite direction.
Were they in the barrel? Had they started through the barrel without him hearing? How could they do it so silently?
He almost pushed the switch, but something about the sound of the breathing didn’t ring true. There was something strange about it, something artificial. It was too loud, like somebody breathing right into his ear.
Then a soft voice said, “What do you think?”
“If we go through the doorway,” a second voice said, just as soft, “we’re exposed. We got to be careful.”
They were still the other side of the barrel, they had to be, but they sounded as though they were sitting on his shoulders. It had to be the barrel itself doing it, amplifying their voices like a huge megaphone.
Would it do the same thing in the opposite direction? Parker didn’t make a move, didn’t make a sound. He waited, listening.
The first voice said, “What are we gonna do? We stand here, and he gets away.”
“You go through first,” the second voice said. “Stay low, no matter what happens. I’ll cover you.”
“Why you? Why don’t you go in and I cover?”
“Because I’ve been trained for this kind of thing.” That last said with a hint of contempt in the voice. So that would be the cop, and it would be the one in the overcoat who would be coming through.
Unfortunate. It would have been better if they’d both stayed excited, both just run straight ahead. But he’d do what he could, and see what happened.
The first voice was saying, “Okay. But for Christ’s sake, cover me. I don’t want what Cal got.”
“I’ll cover you, don’t worry. I don’t want anybody else dead.”
“Except him.”
“You’re right.”
“Should I go on my hands and knees?”
Parker grimaced. It was getting worse and worse. The only good part of it was hearing them make the plans.
“Go any way you want. But let’s get going.”
“Right.”
Parker heard the small thumps when somebody entered the other end of the barrel. He waited, his thumb straining against the switch. He didn’t want the guy too close to this end, not too close to the other end. In the middle, in the middle.
The small thumps of shoes and swishes of cloth marked the guy’s progress. Parker listened, waited, listened, waited.
Around midpoint.
His thumb pushed the switch, and as the lights came up he rolled under the chain, back out in front of the barrel, looking for his target.
The barrel was rolling. Bands of fluorescent tubes, pink and white and green and yellow, behind thick plate glass inside the barrel, lit up the guy in the overcoat, rolling and tumbling as the barrel lumbered around and around. He looked like a bulky sack of laundry, rolling over the glass protecting the lights.
Parker wanted a sure shot, but the guy was too indistinct, the lighting in there was too crazy, and as he moved his head back and forth, moved the gun back and forth, the cop on the far side shouted, “Stay down! There he is, stay down!” And started shooting through the barrel at Parker.
The guy in the barrel began to squeal like a pig. He curled himself up tight, knees up against his chest, head
