As the young addict tied the rubber tourniquet around his arm, his elbow almost struck Willy in the leg, and yet Willy still stood as quietly as the water tower over them, watching, absorbing, remembering, imagining.
Until the source of this scrutiny reached for the plastic baggy. As he moved it from its resting place, the dim light from the surrounding city glimmered off its surface, and revealed the crude stamped image of a smiling devil.
In one smooth move, as fast and silent as a snake's, Willy reached out with his one hand, pulled the man back from his perch, dropped him onto his back, put a knee into his chest, and shoved his gun up against his nostrils, so that both his crossed eyes could clearly see what was menacing him.
"Be very, very quiet," Willy said, his mouth three inches from the young man's face. "If I even feel you twitch the wrong way, I will pull the trigger. Do you have any doubts about that? Nod yes or no."
The man's eyes were huge and white. But he gave his head a slight shake.
"What's your name?"
"Dewey." His breathing was coming in short, shallow gasps.
"I need to know where you got the Diablo, Dewey. Give me the name of your source."
"Who are you?"
Willy moved slightly, increasing the pressure both on Dewey's chest and against his nose with the gun. Dewey's eyes began to water.
"Wrong answer. I am not someone you can deal with. I will kill you in a heartbeat if you don't make me happy. Where did you get the Diablo?"
Dewey started hyperventilating, his body shaking and his hands slowly stiffening.
Once more with startling speed, Willy put the gun aside, grabbed the other man by his shirtfront, and hauled him in one clean jerk up to the top of the parapet, so that he balanced there on his back, with one arm and one leg dangling over the deserted street far below.
"I'm getting tired of this. You talk, or I push. That simple enough?"
Dewey was raving by now, thrashing and babbling and crying. It was all Willy could do to keep him from falling off on his own. In fact, he was about to dump him back on the roof and abandon him when Dewey suddenly blurted out, "It's Marcus, it's Marcus."
Willy shoved his face up close again. "What's Marcus? He sold you this shit?"
"Yeah, yeah. It was Marcus, man."
"Marcus who? How do I find him?"
Dewey's fear notched up. "I don't know his last name. I swear it. I just know 'Marcus.' That's all. That's what they call him."
"Where's he hang?"
"Around 145th."
Willy made as if he were about to push him over. "Where, Dewey? That's a long street. Give me an address."
"There ain't no address, man. I swear. He's on the street."
"Meaning he doesn't make the stuff. I want to know who makes it, Dewey. You're being stupid here."
"Jesus Christ, man, how the fuck d'I know? I don't give a shit who makes it."
That much rang true, Willy thought. "Describe Marcus to me."
"He's real tall, and skinny."
Willy waited before asking, "That's it?" He shoved him slightly, making the young man flail out in terror. "Stop jerking me around."
"Okay, okay," Dewey stammered. "Let's see. He's… ah… tall. No, no. I mean, hold it. I said that. His hair. He's got spiky hair, and he wears a tight chain around his neck-silver, real shiny. And he's got a real bad scar down his right… no, wait… his left cheek. I think… no…I mean, that's all I can think of." He sounded on the verge of hysteria. "Is that okay? Please?"
Willy placed one foot on Dewey's chest to stabilize him, and leaned over to retrieve the baggy of heroin. He sprinkled its contents into the night air as Dewey softly moaned in consternation. Finally, he dropped the syringe onto the roof and crushed it underfoot.
He stepped back, retrieved his gun, and pocketed it. "A little advice from your fairy godmother. You got a real desire to live, Dewey. Think about that next time you want to shoot up."
Dewey merely covered his eyes with his hand. Twenty minutes later, Willy Kunkle stepped into the small convenience store where he'd first met Nathan Lee. The large man he'd seen at the counter was still there, and gave him a blank-eyed stare as he entered. Willy recalled Lee's calling him Riley.
Willy checked both narrow aisles of the store for patrons. For the time being, they were alone.
"Seen Nate?" Willy asked.
"Nate who?"
Willy sighed. What a routine. New York, Vermont, it didn't seem to matter. Who? What? Don't know what you're talking about. Pain in the ass.
Tired, stressed, longing for some answers, Willy yielded to a fit of impatience, pulling his weapon and circling the counter to shove it into the big man's gut. As he did so, however, he walked right into the working end of a sawed off, double-barreled shotgun, solidly held in one of Riley Cox's meaty hands.
"We don't allow people back here," he said, almost apologetically.
Willy fell apart. He began laughing so hard, he had to put his gun on the counter to wipe the tears from his eyes. He laughed until his stomach hurt, flooded with images of Mary, of Dewey, and of the jungle flashbacks, of himself wedged into a corner of the holding cell, of a thousand images he'd spent years bottling up. Even in the middle of this bizarre and spontaneous release, he knew, as if he were standing outside of himself, that he was close to cracking up.
As if fully aware of this, Riley gently reached out and dropped a newspaper over Willy's exposed gun before stowing his own back under the counter.
He waited until Willy had recovered from the worst of his fit. "You okay?" he asked quietly, his eyes still watchful.
Willy held up a hand. "Yeah, yeah. Been an interesting day. Hell of a few days, for that matter."
Riley pointed at the limp arm. "You get that in country?"
Willy straightened, took a deep breath, and ran his hand across his face. "Nah. Got it later, back where it was safe. I never got a scratch over there."
Riley gave him a half smile. "I can see that."
Willy retrieved his gun and backed out from behind the counter. "Nate tell you about me?"
"Told me you cut him slack when he needed it. I didn't need telling you been in 'Nam."
"You, too, huh?"
Riley's response was a long, drawn-out, "Yeah."
Willy didn't bother going on. He sensed Riley was no more prone than he was to indulging in old stories and secret handshakes. Theirs was a shared nightmare that didn't need resurrecting.
"So, what about Nate? Last I saw him, we were both being busted at some bar."
Riley's expression didn't change. "He told me about that. Why'd they grab you?"
"Resisting." Willy patted his jacket pocket where he kept his gun. "Had to skip upstairs to hide a few things. They just let me out. He get off?"
Riley nodded. "Didn't have nuthin' on him."
Willy smiled. "Straight and narrow. He's probably the only good deed I ever did in my life. I need to finish a conversation we were having."
"That may be," Riley told him, "but I ain't seen him since right after that happened. What'd you tell him to do?"
"I didn't tell him anything. I just asked if he'd check something out for me."
"Like what?"
Willy didn't see what he had to lose, certainly with this man. "My ex-wife OD'd on some junk named Diablo, only she was downtown and that shit comes from up around here. Nate was going to look into why."
Riley looked suddenly very tired. His kind eyes turned old and his gaze dropped to the countertop. "Old Nate musta thought the world of you," he said, almost in a whisper.
A sick feeling rose up from Willy's stomach. Piece by piece, he felt he was losing chunks of himself, one day at a time. "What's happened to him?"
"I don't know, man. But he shoulda been in touch by now. Most of the time, I could set my watch by Nate. I been worried about him all day."
Willy stepped over to the window and absentmindedly looked at the street outside, the passing pedestrians barely registering in his conscious mind.