The Drawing of the Three

  He never stirred until Detta threw the noose around his neck and pulled it taut.

  5

  He was dragged backward, at first thinking he was still asleep and this was some horrible nightmare of being buried alive or perhaps smothered.

  Then he felt the pain of the noose sinking into his throat, felt warm spit running down his chin as he gagged. This was no dream. He clawed at the rope and tried for his feet.

  She yanked him hard with her strong arms. Eddie fell on his back with a thud. His face was turning purple.

  "Quit on it!" Detta hissed from behind him. "I ain't goan kill you if you quit on it, but if you don't, I'm goan choke you dead."

  Eddie lowered his hands and tried to be still. The running slipknot Odetta had tossed over his neck loosened enough for him to draw a thin, burning breath. All you could say for it was that it was better than not breathing at all.

  When the panicked beating of his heart had slowed a little, he tried to look around. The noose immediately drew tight again.

  "Nev' mind. You jes go on an take in dat ocean view, graymeat. Dat's all you want to be lookin at right now."

  He looked back at the ocean and the knot loosened enough to allow him those miserly burning breaths again. His left hand crept surreptitiously down to the waistband of his pants (but she saw the movement, and although he didn't know it, she was grinning). There was nothing there. She had taken the gun.

  She crept up on you while you were asleep, Eddie. It was the gunslinger's voice, of course. It doesn't do any good to say I told you so now, but . . . I told you so. This is what romance gets you--a noose around your neck and a crazy woman with two guns somewhere behind you.

  But if she was going to kill me, she already would have done it. She would have done it while I was asleep.

  And what is it you think she's going to do, Eddie? Hand you an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Disney World?

  "Listen," he said. "Odetta--"

  The word was barely out of his mouth before the noose pulled savagely tight again.

  "You doan want to be callin me dat. Nex time you be callin me dat be de las time you be callin anyone anythin. My name's Detta Walker, and if you want to keep drawin breaf into yo lungs, you little piece of whitewashed shit, you better member it!"

  Eddie made choking, gagging noises and clawed at the noose. Big black spots of nothing began to explode in front of his eyes like evil flowers.

  At last the choking band around his throat eased again.

  "Got dat, honky?"

  "Yes," he said, but it was only a hoarse choke of sound.

  "Den say it. Say my name."

  "Detta."

  "Say my whole name!" Dangerous hysteria wavered in her voice, and at that moment Eddie was glad he couldn't see her.

  "Detta Walker."

  "Good." The noose eased a little more. "Now you lissen to me, whitebread, and you do it good, if you want to live til sundown. You don't want to be trine to be cute, like I seen you jus trine t'snake down an git dat gun I took off'n you while you was asleep. You don't want to cause Detta, she got the sight. See what you goan try befo you try it. Sho.

  "You don't want to try nuthin cute cause I ain't got no legs, either. I have learned to do a lot of things since I lost em, and now I got both o dat honky mahfah's guns, and dat ought to go for somethin. You think so?"

  "Yeah," Eddie croaked. "I'm not feeling cute."

  "Well, good. Dat's real good." She cackled. "I been one busy bitch while you been sleepin. Got dis bidness all figured out. Here's what I want you to do, whitebread: put yo hands behin you and feel aroun until you find a loop jus like d'one I got roun yo neck. There be three of em. I been braidin while you been sleepin, lazybones!" She cackled again. "When you feel dat loop, you goan put yo wrists right one against t'other an slip em through it.

  "Den you goan feel my hand pullin that runnin knot tight, and when you feel dat, you goan say 'Dis my chance to toin it aroun on disyere nigger bitch. Right here, while she ain't got her good hold on dat jerk-rope.' But--" Here Detta's voice became muffled as well as a Southern darkie caricature. "--you better take a look aroun befo you go doin anythin rash."

  Eddie did. Detta looked more witchlike than ever, a dirty, matted thing that would have struck fear into hearts much stouter than his own. The dress she had been wearing in Macy's when the gunslinger snatched her was now filthy and torn. She'd used the knife she had taken from the gunslinger's purse--the one he and Roland had used to cut the masking tape away--to slash her dress in two other places, creating makeshift holsters just above the swell of her hips. The worn butts of the gunslinger's revolvers protruded from them.

  Her voice was muffled because the end of the rope was clenched in her teeth. A freshly cut end protruded from one side of her grin; the rest of the line, the part which led to the noose around his neck, protruded from the other side. There was something so predatory and barbaric about this image--the rope caught in the grin--that he was frozen, staring at her with a horror that only made her grin widen.

  "You try to be cute while I be takin care of yo hans," she said in her muffled voice, "I goan joik yo win'pipe shut wif my teef, graymeat. And dat time I not be lettin up agin. You understan?"

  He didn't trust himself to speak. He only nodded.

  "Good. Maybe you be livin a little bit longer after all."

  "If I don't," Eddie croaked, "you're never going to have the pleasure of shoplifting in Macy's again, Detta. Because he'll know, and then it'll be everybody out of the pool."

  "Hush up," Detta said . . . almost crooned. "You jes hush up. Leave the thinkin to the folks dat kin do it. All you got to do is be feelin aroun fo dat next loop."

  6

  I been braidin while you been sleepin, she had said, and with disgust and mounting alarm, Eddie discovered she meant exactly what she said. The rope had become a series of three running slipknots. The first she had noosed around his neck as he slept. The second secured his hands behind his back. Then she pushed him roughly over on his side and told him to bring his feet up until his heels touched his butt. He saw where this was leading and balked. She pulled one of Roland's revolvers from the slit in her dress, cocked it, and pressed the muzzle against Eddie's temple.

  "You do it or I do it, graymeat," she said in that crooning voice. "Only if I do it, you goan be dead when I do. I jes kick some san' over de brains dat squoit out d'other side yo haid, cover de hole wit yo hair. He think you be sleepin!" She cackled again.

  Eddie brought his feet up, and she quickly secured the third running slipknot around his ankles.

  "There. Trussed up just as neat as a calf at a ro-day-o."

  That described it as well as anything, Eddie thought. If he tried to bring his feet down from a position which was already growing uncomfortable, he would tighten the slipknot holding his ankles even more. That would tighten the length of rope between his ankles and his wrists, which would in turn tighten that slipknot, and the rope between his wrists and the noose she'd put around his neck, and . . .

  She was dragging him, somehow dragging him down the beach.

  "Hey! What--"

  He tried to pull back and felt everything tighten--including his ability to draw breath. He let himself go as limp as possible (and keep those feet up, don't forget that, asshole, because if you lower your feet enough you're going to strangle) and let her drag him along the rough ground. A jag of rock peeled skin away from his cheek, and he felt warm blood begin to flow. She was panting harshly. The sound of the waves and the boom of surf ramming into the rock tunnel were louder.

  Drown me? Sweet Christ, is that what she means to do?

  No, of course not. He thought he knew what she meant to do even before his face plowed through the twisted kelp which marked the high-tide line, dead salt-stinking stuff as cold as the fingers of drowned sailors.

  He remembered Henry saying once, Sometimes they'd shoot one of our guys. An American, I mean--they knew an ARVN was no good, because wasn't any of u
s that'd go after a gook in the bush. Not unless he was some fresh fish just over from the States. They'd guthole him, leave him screaming, then pick off the guys that tried to save him. They'd keep doing that until the guy died. You know what they called a guy like that, Eddie?

  Eddie had shaken his head, cold with the vision of it.

  They called him a honeypot, Henry had said. Something sweet. Something to draw flies. Or maybe even a bear.

  That's what Detta was doing: using him as a honeypot.

  She left him some seven feet below the high-tide line, left him without a word, left him facing the ocean. It was not the tide coming in to drown him that the gunslinger, looking through the door, was supposed to see, because the tide was on the ebb and wouldn't get up this far again for another six hours. And long before then . . .

  Eddie rolled his eyes up a little and saw the sun striking a long gold track across the ocean. What was it? Four o'clock? About that. Sunset would come around seven.

  It would be dark long before he had to worry about the tide.

  And when dark came, the lobstrosities would come rolling out of the waves; they would crawl their questioning way up the beach to where he lay helplessly trussed, and then they would tear him apart.

  7

  That time stretched out interminably for Eddie Dean. The idea of time itself became a joke. Even his horror of what was going to happen to him when it got dark faded as his legs began to throb with a discomfort which worked its way up the scale of feeling to pain and finally to shrieking agony. He would relax his muscles, all the knots would pull tight, and when he was on the verge of strangling he would manage somehow to pull his ankles up again, releasing the pressure, allowing some breath to return. He was no longer sure he could make it to dark. There might come a time when he would simply be unable to bring his legs back up.

  CHAPTER 3

  Roland Takes His Medicine

  1

  Now Jack Mort knew the gunslinger was here. If he had been another person--an Eddie Dean or an Odetta Walker, for instance--Roland would have held palaver with the man, if only to ease his natural panic and confusion at suddenly finding one's self shoved rudely into the passenger seat of the body one's brain had driven one's whole life.

  But because Mort was a monster--worse than Detta Walker ever had been or could be--he made no effort to explain or speak at all. He could hear the man's clamorings--Who are you? What's happening to me?--but disregarded them. The gunslinger concentrated on his short list of necessities, using the man's mind with no compunction at all. The clamorings became screams of terror. The gunslinger went right on disregarding them.

  The only way he could remain in the worm-pit which was this man's mind was to regard him as no more than a combination atlas and encyclopedia. Mort had all the information Roland needed. The plan he made was rough, but rough was often better than smooth. When it came to planning, there were no creatures in the universe more different than Roland and Jack Mort.

  When you planned rough, you allowed room for improvisation. And improvisation at short notice had always been one of Roland's strong points.

  2

  A fat man with lenses over his eyes, like the bald man who had poked his head into Mort's office five minutes earlier (it seemed that in Eddie's world many people wore these, which his Mortcypedia identified as "glasses"), got into the elevator with him. He looked at the briefcase in the hand of the man who he believed to be Jack Mort and then at Mort himself.

  "Going to see Dorfman, Jack?"

  The gunslinger said nothing.

  "If you think you can talk him out of sub-leasing, I can tell you it's a waste of time," the fat man said, then blinked as his colleague took a quick step backward. The doors of the little box closed and suddenly they were falling.

  He clawed at Mort's mind, ignoring the screams, and found this was all right. The fall was controlled.

  "If I spoke out of turn, I'm sorry," the fat man said. The gunslinger thought: This one is afraid, too. "You've handled the jerk better than anyone else in the firm, that's what I think."

  The gunslinger said nothing. He waited only to be out of this falling coffin.

  "I say so, too," the fat man continued eagerly. "Why, just yesterday I was at lunch with--"

  Jack Mort's head turned, and behind Jack Mort's gold-rimmed glasses, eyes that seemed a somehow different shade of blue than Jack's eyes had ever been before stared at the fat man. "Shut up," the gunslinger said tonelessly.

  Color fell from the fat man's face and he took two quick steps backward. His flabby buttocks smacked the fake wood panels at the back of the little moving coffin, which suddenly stopped. The doors opened and the gunslinger, wearing Jack Mort's body like a tight-fitting set of clothes, stepped out with no look back. The fat man held his finger on the DOOR OPEN button of the elevator and waited inside until Mort was out of sight. Always did have a screw loose, the fat man thought, but this could be serious. This could be a breakdown.

  The fat man found that the idea of Jack Mort tucked safely away in a sanitarium somewhere was very comforting.

  The gunslinger wouldn't have been surprised.

  3

  Somewhere between the echoing room which his Mortcypedia identified as a lobby, to wit, a place of entry and exit from the offices which filled this sky-tower, and the bright sunshine of street (his Mortcypedia identified this street as both 6th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas), the screaming of Roland's host stopped. Mort had not died of fright; the gunslinger felt with a deep instinct which was the same as knowing that if Mort died, their kas would be expelled forever, into that void of possibility which lay beyond all physical worlds. Not dead--fainted. Fainted at the overload of terror and strangeness, as Roland himself had done upon entering the man's mind and discovering its secrets and the crossing of destinies too great to be coincidence.

  He was glad Mort had fainted. As long as the man's unconsciousness hadn't affected Roland's access to the man's knowledge and memories--and it hadn't--he was glad to have him out of the way.

  The yellow cars were public conveyences called Tack-Sees or Cabs or Hax. The tribes which drove them, the Mortcypedia told him, were two: Spix and Mockies. To make one stop, you held your hand up like a pupil in a classroom.

  Roland did this, and after several Tack-Sees which were obviously empty save for their drivers had gone by him, he saw that these had signs which read Off-Duty. Since these were Great Letters, the gunslinger didn't need Mort's help. He waited, then put his hand up again. This time the Tack-See pulled over. The gunslinger got into the back seat. He smelled old smoke, old sweat, old perfume. It smelled like a coach in his own world.

  "Where to, my friend?" the driver asked--Roland had no idea if he was of the Spix or Mockies tribe, and had no intention of asking. It might be impolite in this world.

  "I'm not sure," Roland said.

  "This ain't no encounter group, my friend. Time is money."

  Tell him to put his flag down, the Mortcypedia told him.

  "Put your flag down," Roland said.

  "That ain't rolling nothing but time," the driver replied.

  Tell him you'll tip him five bux, the Mortcypedia advised.

  "I'll tip you five bucks," Roland said.

  "Let's see it," the cabbie replied. "Money talks, bullshit walks."

  Ask him if he wants his money or if he wants to go fuck himself, the Mortcypedia advised instantly.

  "Do you want the money, or do you want to go fuck yourself?" Roland asked in a cold, dead voice.

  The cabbie's eyes glanced apprehensively into the rearview mirror for just a moment, and he said no more.

  Roland consulted Jack Mort's accumulated store of knowledge more fully this time. The cabbie glanced up again, quickly, during the fifteen seconds his fare spent simply sitting there with his head slightly lowered and his left hand spread across his brow, as if he had an Excedrin Headache. The cabbie had decided to tell the guy to get out or he'd yell for a cop when the fare lo
oked up and said mildly, "I'd like you to take me to Seventh Avenue and Forty-Ninth street. For this trip I will pay you ten dollars over the fare on your taxi meter, no matter what your tribe."

  A weirdo, the driver (a WASP from Vermont trying to break into showbiz) thought, but maybe a rich weirdo. He dropped the cab into gear. "We're there, buddy," he said, and pulling into traffic he added mentally, And the sooner the better.

  4

  Improvise. That was the word.

  The gunslinger saw the blue-and-white parked down the block when he got out, and read Police as Posse without checking Mort's store of knowledge. Two gunslingers inside, drinking something--coffee, maybe--from white paper glasses. Gunslingers, yes--but they looked fat and lax.

  He reached into Jack Mort's wallet (except it was much too small to be a real wallet; a real wallet was almost as big as a purse and could carry all of a man's things, if he wasn't travelling too heavy) and gave the driver a bill with the number 20 on it. The cabbie drove away fast. It was easily the biggest tip he'd make that day, but the guy was so freaky he felt he had earned every cent of it.

  The gunslinger looked at the sign over the shop.

  CLEMENTS GUNS AND SPORTING GOODS, it said. AMMO, FISHING TACKLE, OFFICIAL FACSIMILES.

  He didn't understand all of the words, but one look in the window was all it took for him to see Mort had brought him to the right place. There were wristbands on display, badges of rank . . . and guns. Rifles, mostly, but pistols as well. They were chained, but that didn't matter.

  He would know what he needed when--if--he saw it.

  Roland consulted Jack Mort's mind--a mind exactly sly enough to suit his purposes--for more than a minute.

  5

  One of the cops in the blue-and-white elbowed the other. "Now that," he said, "is a serious comparison shopper."

  His partner laughed. "Oh God," he said in an effeminate voice as the man in the business suit and gold-rimmed glasses finished his study of the merchandise on display and went inside. "I think he jutht dethided on the lavender handcuffths."