Стивен Кинг: The Drawing of the Three

Weaver checked the numbers on the side by the right front headlight. 744. Yes, that was the number they'd gotten from dispatch, all right.

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 a 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 labeled him extremely dangerous, and to Andy Staunton and Norris Weaver, that made him the equi­valent of a rogue tiger. Ifhe 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."

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 suit-coat. 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.

Do-Bees covered all the bases.

This time covering the bases saved his life and Roland's. Staunton's bullet smashed the silver lighter instead of Mort's heart (which was generic; Mort's passion for brand names— good brand names—stopped mercifully at the skin).

He was hurt just the same, of course. When you were hit by a heavy-caliber slug, there was no such thing as a free ride. The lighter was driven against his chest hard enough to create a hollow. It flattened and then smashed apart, digging shallow grooves in Mort's skin; one sliver of shrapnel sliced Mort's left nipple almost in two. The hot slug also ignited the lighter's fluid-soaked batting. Nevertheless, the gunslinger lay still as they approached. The one who had not shot him was telling people to stay back, just stay back, goddammit.

I'm on fire! Mort shrieked. I'm on fire, put it out! Put it out! PUT IT OWWWWWW—

The gunslinger lay still, listening to the grit of the gunslingers' shoes on the pavement, ignoring Mort's shrieks, try­ing to ignore the coal suddenly glowing against his chest and the smell of frying flesh.

A foot slid beneath his ribcage, and when it lifted, the gunslinger allowed himself to roll bonelessly onto his back. Jack Mort's eyes were open. His face was slack. In spite of the shattered, burning remains of the lighter, there was no sign of the man screaming inside.

"God," someone muttered, "did you shoot him with a tracer, man?"

Smoke was rising from the hole in the lapel of Mort's coat in a neat little stream. It was escaping around the edge of the lapel in more untidy blotches. The cops could smell burning flesh as the wadding in the smashed lighter, soaked with Ronson lighter fluid, really began to blaze.

Andy Staunton, who had performed faultlessly thus far, now made his only mistake, one for which Cort would have sent him home with a fat ear in spite of his earlier admirable performance, telling him one mistake was all it took, took to get a man killed most of the time. Staunton had been able to shoot the guy—a thing no cop really knows if he can do until he's faced with a situation where he must find out—but the idea that his bullet had somehow set the guy on fire filled him with unreasoning horror. So he bent forward to put it out without thinking, and the gunslinger's feet smashed into his belly before he had time to do more than register the blaze of awareness in eyes he would have sworn were dead.

Staunton went flailing back into his partner. His pistol flew from his hand. Wheaton held onto his own, but by the time he had gotten clear of Staunton , he heard a shot and his gun was magically gone. The hand it had been in felt numb, as if it had been struck with a very large hammer.

The guy in the blue suit got up, looked at them for a moment and said, "You're good. Better than the others. So let me advise you. Don't follow. This is almost over. I don't want to have to kill you."

Then he whirled and ran for the subway stairs.

The stairs were choked with people who had reversed their downward course when the yelling and shooting started, obsessed with that morbid and somehow unique New Yorkers' curiosity to see how bad, how many, how much blood spilled on the dirty concrete. Yet somehow they still found a way to shrink back from the man in the blue suit who came plunging down the stairs. It wasn't much wonder. He was holding a gun, and another was strapped around his waist.