The Drawing of the Three

Keflex.

Maybe sixty dollars' worth of Keflex.

For which he had paid with a $6500 Rolex watch.

'Do?' Katz asked. 'Do? The first thing you do is put that wristwatch under the counter. You never saw it.' He looked at Ralph. 'Neither did you.'

'No sir,' Ralph agreed immediately. 'As long as I get my share when you sell it, I never saw that watch at all.'

'They'll shoot him like a dog in the street,' Katz said with unmistakable satisfaction.

'Keflex! And the guy didn't even seem to have the sniffles!” the aide said wonderingly.

CHAPTER 4 THE DRAWING

1

As the sun's bottom arc first touched the Western Sea in Roland's world, striking bright golden fire across the water to where Eddie lay trussed like a turkey, Officers O'Mearah and Delevan were coming groggily back to consciousness in the world from which Eddie had been taken.

'Let me out of these cuffs, would ya?' Fat Johnny asked in a humble voice.

'Where is he?' O'Mearah asked thickly, and groped for his holster. Gone. Holster, belt, bullets, gun. Gun.

Oh, shit.

He began thinking of the questions that might be asked by the shits in the Department of Internal Affairs, guys who had learned all they knew about the streets from Jack Webb on Dragnet, and the monetary value of his lost gun suddenly became about as important to him as the population of Ireland or the principal mineral deposits of Peru. He looked at Carl and saw Carl had also been stripped of his weapon.

Oh dear Jesus, bring on the clowns, O'Mearah thought miserably, and when Fat Johnny asked again if O'Mearah would use the key on the counter to unlock the handcuffs, O'Mearah said, 'I ought to … 'He paused, because he'd been about to say I ought to shoot you in the guts instead, but he couldn't very well shoot Fat Johnny, could he? The guns here were chained down, and the geek in the gold-rimmed glasses, the geek who had seemed so much like a solid citizen, had taken his and Carl's as easily as O'Mearah himself might take a popgun from a kid.

Instead of finishing, he got the key and unlocked the cuffs. He spotted the .357 Magnum which Roland had kicked into the corner and picked it up. It wouldn't fit in his holster, so he stuffed it in his belt.

'Hey, that's mine!' Fat Johnny bleated.

'Yeah? You want it back?' O'Mearah had to speak slowly. His head really ached. At that moment all he wanted to do was find Mr. Gold-Rimmed Specs and nail him to a handy wall. With dull nails. 'I hear they like fat guys like you up in Attica , Johnny. They got a saying: 'The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin.' You sure you want it back?'

Fat Johnny turned away without a word, but not before O'Mearah had seen the tears welling in his eyes and the wet patch on his pants. He felt no pity.

'Where is he?' Carl Delevan asked in a furry, buzzing voice.

'He left,' Fat Johnny said dully. 'That's all I know. He left. I thought he was gonna kill me.'

Delevan was getting slowly to his feet. He felt tacky wetness on the side of his face and looked at his fingers. Blood. Fuck. He groped for his gun and kept groping, groping and hoping, long after his fingers had assured him his gun and holster were gone. O'Mearah merely had a headache; Delevan felt as if someone had used the inside of his head as a nuclear weapons testing site.

'Guy took my gun,' he said to O'Mearah. His voice was so slurry the words were almost impossible to make out.

'Join the club.'

'He still here?' Delevan took a step toward O'Mearah, tilted to the left as if he were on the deck of a ship in a heavy sea, and then managed to right himself.

'No.'

'How long?' Delevan looked at Fat Johnny, who didn't answer, perhaps because Fat Johnny, whose back was turned, thought Delevan was still talking to his partner. Delevan, not a man noted for even temper and restrained behavior under the best of circumstances, roared at the man, even though it made his head feel like it was going to crack into a thousand pieces: 'I asked you a question, you fat shit! How long has that motherfucker been gone?'

'Five minutes, maybe,' Fat Johnny said dully. 'Took his shells and your guns.' He paused. 'Paid for the shells. I couldn't believe it.'

Five minutes, Delevan thought. The guy had come in a cab. Sitting in their cruiser and drinking coffee, they had seen him get out of it. It was getting close to rush-hour. Cabs were hard to get at this time of day. Maybe—

'Come on,' he said to George O'Mearah. 'We still got a chance to collar him. We'll want a gun from this slut here—'

O'Mearah displayed the Magnum. At first Delevan saw two of them, then the image slowly came together.

'Good.'' Delevan was coming around, not all at once but getting there, like a prizefighter who has taken a damned hard one on the chin. 'You keep it. I'll use the shotgun under the dash.' He started for the door, and this time he did more than reel; he staggered and had to claw the wall to keep his feet.

'You gonna be all right?' O'Mearah asked.

'If we catch him,' Delevan said.

They left. Fat Johnny was not as glad about their departure as he had been about that of the spook in the blue suit, but almost. Almost.

2

Delevan and O'Mearah didn't even have to discuss which direction the perp might have taken when he left the gun-shop. All they had to do was listen to the radio dispatcher.

'Code 19,' she said over and over again. Robbery in progress, shots fired. 'Code 19, Code 19. Location is 395 West 49th, Katz's Drugs, perpetrator tall, sandy-haired, blue suit—'

Shots fired, Delevan thought, his head aching worse than ever. I wonder if they were fired with George's gun or mine? Or both? If that shitbag killed someone, we're fucked. Unless we get him.