The flashers were on and everything looked kosher—until the door opened and the driver stepped out. He was wearing a blue suit, all right, but not the kind that came with gold buttons and silver badge. His shoes weren’t police issue either, unless Staunton and Weaver had missed a memo notifying officers that duty footwear would henceforth come from Gucci. That didn’t seem likely. What seemed likely was that this was the creep who had hijacked the cops uptown. He got out oblivious to the honkings and cries of protest from the drivers trying to get by him.
“Goddam,” Andy Staunton breathed.
Approach with extreme caution, the dispatcher had said. This man is armed and extremely dangerous. Dispatchers usually sounded like the most bored human beings on earth—for all Andy Staunton knew, they were—and so the almost awed emphasis this one put on the word extremely had stuck to his consciousness like a burr.
He drew his weapon for the first time in his four years on the force, and glanced at Weaver. Weaver had also drawn. The two of them were standing outside a deli about thirty feet from the IRT stairway. They had known each other long enough to be attuned to each other in a way only cops and professional soldiers can be. Without a word between them they stepped back into the doorway of the delicatessen, weapons pointing upward.
“Subway?” Weaver asked.
“Yeah.” Andy took one quick glance at the entrance. Rush hour was in high gear now, and the subway stairs were clogged with people heading for their trains. “We’ve got to take him right now, before he can get close to the crowd.”
“Let’s do it.”
They stepped out of the doorway in perfect tandem, gunslingers Roland would have recognized at once as adversaries much more dangerous than the first two. They were younger, for one thing; and although he didn’t know it, some unknown dispatcher had labelled him extremely dangerous, and to Andy Staunton and Norris Weaver, that made him the equivalent of a rogue tiger. If he doesn’t stop the second I tell him to, he’s dead, Andy thought.
“Hold it!” he screamed, dropping into a crouch with his gun held out before him in both hands. Beside him, Weaver had done the same.
“Police! Get your hands on your he—”
That was as far as he got before the guy ran for the IRT stairway. He moved with a sudden speed that was uncanny. Nevertheless, Andy Staunton was wired, all his dials turned up to the max. He swivelled on his heels, feeling a cloak of emotionless coldness drop over him—Roland would have known this, too. He had felt it many times in similar situations.
Andy led the running figure slightly, then squeezed the trigger of his .38. He saw the man in the blue suit spin around, trying to keep his feet. Then he fell to the pavement as commuters who, only seconds ago, had been concentrating on nothing but surviving another trip home on the subway, screamed and scattered like quail. They had discovered there was more to survive than the uptown train this afternoon.
“Holy fuck, partner,” Norris Wheaton breathed, “you blew him away.”
“I know,” Andy said. His voice didn’t falter. The gunslinger would have admired it. “Let’s go see who he was.”
11
I’m dead! Jack Mort was screaming. I’m dead, you’ve gotten me killed, I’m dead, I’m—
No, the gunslinger responded. Through slitted eyes he saw the cops approaching, guns still out. Younger and faster than the ones who had been parked near the gunshop. Faster. And at least one of them was a hell of a shot. Mort—and Roland along with him—should have been dead, dying, or seriously wounded. Andy Staunton had shot to kill, and his bullet had drilled through the left lapel of Mort’s suitcoat. It had likewise punched through the pocket of Mort’s Arrow shirt—but that was as far as it went. The life of both men, the one inside and the one outside, were saved by Mort’s lighter.
Mort didn’t smoke, but his boss—whose job Mort had confidently expected to have himself by this time next year—did. Accordingly, Mort had bought a two hundred dollar silver lighter at Dunhill’s. He did not light every cigarette Mr. Framingham stuck in his gob when the two of them were together—that would have made him look too much like an ass-kisser. Just once in awhile . . . and usually when someone even higher up was present, someone who could appreciate a） Jack Mort’s quiet courtesy, and b） Jack Mort’s good taste.