"I caught them together again," he said. "I stayed on them and I caught them together."
"Painful," I said. "But not illegal." I stayed away from them. It meant Tommy would have to talk a little louder and Hawk would hear better from the hall.
"Look on that table," Banks said.
There was a canvas mail sack on the table where the coffee machine stood.
"Look in the bag," Banks said.
The bag was full of Baggies and the Baggies, neatly tied with green twistems, contained something that looked like heroin. It also looked like milk sugar but most people didn't bag and transport milk sugar.
"The stuff that dreams are made of," I said.
"They had it," Banks said. "They had that stuff with them."
"That's not legal," I said.
Banks jabbed the gun toward Winston. "Tell him what you're doing," Banks said.
"You're sick," Winston said. "You're sick with jealousy."
Winston looked at me. "Yes, Sherry and I love each other. And I'm sorry that this man has to be hurt. But love does what it will. You know that, Spenser."
"Bullshit," Banks said. His voice hissed out, scraping over his pain. "She doesn't love you. Get her away from you and she'll recover. You're the one that's sick and you made her sick."
Sherry stood very still. Her eyes were wide and her face very small at the motionless center of the storm.
Winston shook his head. He seemed sad. "Tommy," he said. "You can't do this. You can't plant this dope or whatever it is on us and hold us prisoner and try to claim we're guilty of something."
Banks put the gun to Sherry's head, pressing the muzzle against her temple. "Truth," he hissed. "Tell him the truth or I'll kill her."
Winston looked even sadder. "Tommy," he said. "Tommy, don't."
Banks pressed the gun harder against Sherry's temple. She winced.
"Tommy," she said. Her voice was frightened. I eased my hand up toward my jacket pocket.
"Tell him." Tommy's voice was barely human.
"It's the truth," Winston said. "So help me God, I have told the truth."
Banks thumbed the hammer back, I put my hand into my jacket pocket.
"He's lying," Sherry said, and her voice was a soft scream. "He made me help him. He has been dealing drugs for years."
"Paultz worked for him," I said.
"Yes. And when you forced him out, he made me work with him. He drugged me, he . . . he has power."
"You vicious little lying bitch," Winston said. There was something that looked like genuine horror in his face. Banks turned the gun toward him. "She's lying," Winston said. "She's lying. Yes, all right, I helped her. Yes, we were running heroin. But she was the one. It was her operation. I fronted for her."
Sherry said, "Kill him, Tommy, don't let him say those things. He's made me do awful things. Kill him, kill both of them and we'll go away."
I said, "Tommy."
Winston said, "See, she'll use anyone." His voice was up three octaves, it seemed, and it squeaked with terror and rage and franticness. "Don't let her use you. Don't do it for her, Banks. She's . . ." He groped for words. "She's satanic. She's . . ."
Banks shot him. Twice. It was a mistake. He should have shot me first. Sherry wrenched away from him and my bullet hit Tommy in the middle of the chest, and he fell over on his back and lay perfectly still. Winston was on the floor too. He had lurched back against the mirrors and left a long smear of blood on the mirrors as he slid to the floor. Both men were dead. You see enough of it, you know. I put my gun back into my jacket pocket. Sherry went to her knees beside Banks and as I walked toward her she picked up his gun and aimed it at me, holding it in both hands. Her face was puckered and intense. Like a schoolchild doing math.
I said, "Sherry. It's okay. It's over."
"Yes, it is, you motherfucker," she said. Her face still concentrated. "For you it's over."
"Winston was right," I said.
"I'm right," she said. "I'm the only one that knows."
"You wanted me to look for Tommy so you'd know what he was up to."
She smiled at me without losing her intensity.
"You simple tool," she said. "I've used you for anything I wanted to use you for and now I'm going to kill you and take all my money and go away."
"You killed Mickey," I said.
"Of course."
I began to walk toward her.
"Stay," she said.
I kept coming.
"I'm going to kill you," she said.
"So what," I said.
She fired and the slug hit me in the right side of the chest. Everything slowed down. I could feel myself rock back and then right myself and take another step. I watched her finger tighten on the trigger, watched the cylinder begin to rotate counterclockwise, saw the hammer rise and fall and saw the muzzle flash and felt another thump, lower on the right side, still. I could feel my life begin to slither out of me. The hammer started back again when I reached down and grasped the gun by the barrel and slowly pulled it away from her with my left hand. I took hold of her throat with my right and began to raise her from her knees. She was far away from me now, way out at the very end of my extended arm, the hand at the end of that arm tightening with infinite patience on her throat. There was a remote sound and Hawk glided into the room and took her away from my hand and bent liquidly over me. The light in the room was very clear and still. I was greatly distant from it now and everything looked as if it were being viewed at the bottom of a clear lake. Hawk leaned over me. I realized I was on the floor. He pressed his mouth against mine. And breathed. As he breathed he tore away my shirt. He'd be looking for the wound, and when he found it he'd need a compress of some kind. I wondered if it would work. Just curiosity. It didn't matter much. I couldn't see what he was doing anymore. I had slithered out entirely.
CHAPTER 44
The lake was still and crystalline as I crossed it, and then became part of it so that the infinite clarity seemed to radiate from me and I could taste the brilliant stillness. Ahead was darkness. As I moved into it I noticed that there was scrub growth in parts of the oil field. When I was very close I could see them and see how the wind made their shapes contort as their branches moved restively, like animals too long restrained. Then I heard the shots. The sound sat on top of the wind the way a bird sits on a power line. I whirled, looking for a muzzle flash, and spotted some over to my left as more shots rode in on the wind. I ran toward them, my gun out. Two more shots. I banged into the superstructure of one of the pumps and spun around and staggered and kept my feet and kept going toward the spot where the memory of muzzle flash still vibrated in my mind. There was a brief flare of what must have been headlights swinging away, and then only the wind sound and the darkness. The wind had cooled, and there was thunder rolling to the west, and a new smell of rain in the air. I stopped for a moment and listened, staring toward the place where I'd seen the muzzle flashes and the headlights. Then lightning made a jagged flash, and I saw a car parked ahead of me. I moved toward it. I reached the car before the thunder caught up to the lightning.
The car was a five-year-old Plymouth Duster. It was empty. I listened and heard nothing but the wind. The lightning flashed again. In front of the car was a wide, cleared space, maybe for parking. I saw no people. The rain smell was stronger now, and the thunder came closer upon the lightning. The storm was moving fast. I opened the car door and reached in and, crouched behind the open door, I turned on the headlights.
Nothing happened. Nothing moved. I went flat on the ground, it was gravel, and looked underneath the car. Nothing. I got up carefully and moved out from the car in a crouch.