“Yeah.”

  “Then you ought to know I’m not the guy you want.”

  “That’s where the joke is on you. Pinky. You threw the acid. You blinded me. I don’t see so well no more, Wilson.”

  “Maybe you don’t see. But you can remember, can’t you?”

  Malachi’s mouth twisted. “I can remember. I can’t forget. That’s my hell, Wilson. I can’t forget what you look like, with your simpering, lying face.”

  Henry reached up with his hand, moved his fingers across his own face. He had never known it would be so hard to describe himself. His hand touched his hair line.

  He said, “I’ve got a cowlick, Malachi. Right where my hair should part in front. Did that guy have one?”

  Malachi hesitated. He said. “No, but he was a good liar though.”

  Henry said, “Ask Glory if I’m lying.”

  “He’s got the cowlick,” Glory said. Her voice was flat.

  Sam got nervous. His legs started dancing in front of his chair. “Glory! Where’s his cowlick?”

  “Left side.” Glory said. “In front.”

  Sammy was panting. “All right. What else?”

  Henry’s fingers moved along his nose. “I got my nose broken—in a football game—in high school.”

  Sammy’s voice got shrill. “Glory?”

  Glory said, “Looks like it could be broke. A long time. Got a crooked bridge.”

  Sammy waited, panting. The silence stretched thin in the room.

  Henry said, “My—my ears stick out. I’m not much to look at.”

  “Glory?”

  “His ears stick out.”

  Sammy jumped up. He held the gun at his side. His voice was high-pitched, near the breaking point. “Come here! Come close to me.”

  Henry moved closer. Sammy let the gun fall at his side, forgotten. Henry’s hands came up, involuntarily. He was ready to lunge at Sammy. Glory sat there coldly, that small gun fixed on him. He saw in her eyes that she knew what he’d been about to attempt.

  He let the breath exhale slowly from his chest.

  Sammy laughed. “Don’t take me for a fool, Pinky. That’s been your trouble. Always been your trouble. We’re watching you all the time, Wilson. If I’m not. Glory is. Aren’t you, pet?”

  “I’m here,” Glory said in her flat voice. “Get on with it.”

  Sammy nodded. He shoved the gun in his coat pocket and reached out for Henry’s face.

  Henry caught his breath. One thing was obvious at once. Sammy expected to find a much shorter man.

  “He’s tall,” Glory said. “You got to reach up.”

  At that, Sammy Malachi began to sob in his throat. The life flowed down out of him, leaving him weak and empty. He ran his hands over Henry’s face, touched the broken bridge of his nose, his ears; he felt the way the cowlick grew where Henry should have parted his hair.

  Henry felt his heart ease up a little. Sammy knew. Sammy Malachi realised at last he had the wrong man.

  Henry had never before seen a man crumble up and go to pieces. He saw it now. Sammy drew back his hands and stepped away from Henry. He kept his sightless eye sockets fixed on Henry as though he could see him.

  Malachi’s face twisted into ruts of pain and agony and despair. The running and the searching, the hunting in the night—and none of it was any good. It tore Sam Malachi apart... The friends in the syndicate that he had trusted... the friends who had been as false as the lead they gave him... the loss of whatever life he’d had in San Francisco, the loss of his sight, and the aching loss of the tramp woman Sam Malachi had loved in spite of himself—maybe even still loved... All these terrible hurts twisted up his face. They knotted his body and made the sobs break across his mouth.

  Malachi’s knees crumpled under him and he sank to the floor, sobbing. The sobs tore at him and he couldn’t stop them. He scrubbed his hands against his face and rocked his body and moaned because the last long search had ended like this—and Sam Malachi knew that without his eyes he couldn’t ever find the man who’d crossed him.

  It hurt Henry to look at Malachi like that. Henry knew now what grief like that was, and what it could do to a man. You had to love somebody—love them more than life—and then lose them, to know about the grief that squeezed your inside dry.

  He pulled his gaze away. He looked at Glory, beyond her and then back at her again. She sat there with the gun trained on Henry. She glanced at Malachi every few minutes, but she was cold at the sight of his grief. None of it touched her.

  Henry shivered. He swore there was some perverted kind of pleasure in Glory’s thin face. All she had left was hate. And that encompassed the blind man, too.

  Finally, Sam raised his head. His voice was choked. “Glory. I’ve been suckered. Again. He’s beat me again.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I came here. I trusted the men who sent me here. I came running, and I knew I couldn’t be wrong. Even the woman’s name. They said it was the same, and that she had changed it. You know what they’ve done to me, Glory? Do you know?”

  Her voice remained flat, unemotional. “There’s some reason they sent you here. Some reason whey they picked this one man.”

  For a long time Sam stayed there on his knees. He rocked, nursing himself from the grief inside him and not even aware of what she had said. But Henry heard her. It made sense. Some kind of logic showed that the Henry Wilson whom Sam wanted was somewhere in this area. He had to be, or they’d never have picked on him.

  Henry didn’t say anything. He remained tense, feeling Glory’s cold gaze on him.

  At last Sammy looked up towards Glory again.

  “What did you say. Glory?”

  “I said, they sent you here. Whoever sent you here was sure you’d be suckered. Just the way you were.”

  Sam thought on that for a long time. He said, “You—Wilson, are you mixed up with the syndicate in any way? You owe them anything? They hate you for any reason?”

  “I told you. I never had any trouble. Not until you made it for me.”

  Sammy rocked a moment, wringing his hands. “Why should they send me here, then? That’s what I can’t find out, not until I can see!”

  “I can see for you,” Glory said.

  “Yeah... Yeah. But you don’t know what to see. You might pass him in the street. I got to know.” He beat his fists together. “I got to know.”

  A man spoke from the doorway to the foyer.

  “Maybe I can tell you, Sammy.”

  Sam Malachi scrambled up to his feet. Glory stood up beside the piano. Henry turned around, staring.

  Sam wailed. “That voice! That voice! That’s his voice. Shoot him, Glory. Pull that trigger. Shoot him! Now! There’s Pinky. That’s him. That’s the son I’m looking for.”

  The man in the doorway laughed. It was a cold sound, full of contempt, and the threat of sudden death.

  “Yeah. Here I am, Sammy. The guy you been looking for. But I wouldn’t tell Glory to try to shoot me.” His voice had a shrug in it. “Oh, I haven’t got a gun fixed on her. I’m too busy with it. I got it trained right on your navel, Sammy. Glory pulls that trigger, I pull this one. Her little pop gun might do some damage. Maybe not. But nothing like what this .45 will do to you, Sammy— and it’s pointed right at your guts.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Malachi’s voice sounded dead. “Hold it, Glory. Don’t shoot.”

  The fat man in the doorway laughed. He made something evil and unclean of laughter. Henry stared at him, feeling a sinister threat in the fat man.

  “Knew you’d see it my way, Sammy,” the fat man said. “By now, you must know you’re no match for me.”

  Malachi’s voice shook, his sightless head moved. “I decided I don’t want her to kill you. Anybody kills you, I must.”

  The fat man’s voice was contemptuous. “Forgot I have the gun? Tell the woman to drop hers.”

  Now Malachi laughed. A bitter heartbroken sound. “Why don’t you tell her, Pinky.”

  Henry watched the stout man’s face go white. “I’ve told you I’ll kill you, Malachi.”

  Malachi shook his head. “Go ahead. It won’t buy you much. Pull your trigger. Glory still will get you.” His laughter broke suddenly. “It’s up to you, Pinky. You can get one of us. Sure. But only one. And it’ll be the last thing you do on earth.”

  Pinky shifted his coat up on his heavy shoulders. Henry saw him as a dangerous man gone to lard. Pinky wasn’t much taller than his blind enemy. He was somewhere between forty and fifty. He had black, greasy hair. His puffy face would smile at you while he knifed you in the back.

  Henry stirred and Pinky’s gun jerked nervously. Pinky said, “Stand still, chump. I got other troubles right now. I’ll get around to you.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Malachi told him.

  Pinky cursed. “Still think you got a chance against me, blind man?” He rode that description hard and Malachi winced.

  “I got this far,” Malachi said. “I found you, Pinky.”

  Pinky Wilson’s laugh was a fist across Malachi’s mouth. “You found me?” His face twisted. “Listen, stupid. I sent for you.” The fat man glanced at Glory. “Still sorry for him. Glory? Even when you know he was crossing you with Abbey? He was leaving you, Glory, for Abbey. Only she couldn’t take it.”

  “Shut up!” Glory screeched at him.

  Pinky laughed and faced Malachi again, suddenly more at ease. Pinky might be out of the habit of violence, but evil was part of him. And it wasn’t buried very deeply under his tallow hide.

  Henry watched them: the blind man—trailing the crooked Pinky Wilson across the country—too obsessed to quit, no matter how big the odds; the fat Pinky, sick of having the blind man on his tail. By the time Pinky got to Richmont, he must have figured a perfect angle: send for the sightless Malachi and frame some other guy named Henry Wilson.

  Malachi was shaking his head. When he spoke he was not speaking to his old enemy, but to himself. “Men I knew... trusted. My friends... brought me back the lies.”

  The fat man shrugged. “We both had some of the same friends, Malachi.”

  Henry took a backward step. He thought about those friends of Malachi’s and Pinky’s. Who would those “friends” be loyal to? A blind man who had lost everything—with nothing left but a wife and a seeing-eye dog? Or an over-fed man who could be expected to pay off? You didn’t have to be very smart to figure out the answer to that.

  Henry watched Sam Malachi stand there with the truth eating at him like slow acid. What Malachi was thinking showed in his face.

  Pinky stepped forward into the room. He seemed to have forgotten the small gun in Glory’s hand. But Glory hadn’t forgotten him. Henry moved backwards again, watching them. Every step Pinky took. Glory’s gun followed him—as if numbering the last moments on earth of an evil man named Pinky Wilson.

  Malachi said, “If you were so smart, Pinky, you wouldn’t be here now. That ain’t smart. Somebody might have seen you come in.”

  Pinky’s fat-pork shoulders moved. “Neighbourly visit. I’m not Pinky Wilson around here. Just a neighbour. Guy named Edward Slater. Live across the alley on the next street. Why shouldn’t I drop in?”

  Malachi licked his tongue across his mouth. “Why are you here to set this thing up? You were so sure I’d kill this guy thinking he was you.”

  Pinky smiled coldly. “Found out, Sam, that you’d gone nuts. Flipped your lid. Thought you’d only have to have some guy named Henry Wilson shot, you’d go away satisfied. Oh, no. You had to have a big show.”

  Henry saw the reasoning. Malachi’s twisted mind had to see Henry Wilson suffer, grovel in the gutter before he finally killed him. When Pinky learned this, he knew Malachi would take time to check on the chump he was about to kill.

  Pinky said. “Just came over to see the job was done right. Was here when you three arrived. Your mutt just laid on the floor and grinned at me... Your seeing-eye dog is almost as stupid as you are, Sammy.”

  Malachi’s breathing eased. Henry couldn’t see why. To Henry, it seemed the evil Pinky was calmly dealing a pat hand from a cold deck.

  The fat man said. “So now you kill your Henry Wilson, Sam. But in the fight, he kills you and Glory. Sad, Sammy. Sad as all hell. But you can see how it is, can’t you, Sammy?”

  Malachi’s sudden laugh made the flesh quiver along Henry’s spine. He was sure the blind man had lost his last fingerhold on sanity.

  Pinky Wilson stared at Malachi. too.

  “So I got you here,” Malachi said. “No matter how it happened, I couldn’t have planned it better.”

  “You’ve blown your cap,” the fat man whispered.

  Malachi fixed his sightless gaze on Pinky. His rutted face was twisted with his laughter. The crazy sound of it rang in the silent room. Wanly Pinky looked around and Henry took another backward step, this one almost involuntarily.

  Suddenly Malachi spoke. “Guard!”

  The German shepherd appeared as if by magic. He stood, fur bristled along his neck, in the doorway through which the fat man had come.

  Henry stared at the dog. Pinky had boasted that the shepherd had only lain on the floor, grinning at him. The animal was trained. That was the reason. Expertly trained, Henry now saw.

  The dog waited, scruff erect, fangs bared.

  Henry sighed. Another command from Malachi... or just any movement in that room... anybody. The dog was rigid, but Henry saw its legs trembling from the tension. The dog was set to spring.

  The fat man was suddenly sweating. He whispered, “Call him off, Sammy. I’ll shoot him first.”

  Malachi laughed. “Go ahead. You better kill Whim. Looks like the odds are upped against you again. Pinky.

  If you don’t shoot Whim, he gets you. Look. See how he’s waiting? One word. Know what it is. Pinky? Got any idea? Any minute I’ll say it. You better shoot him.”

  “Call him off.”

  Pinky talked tough, but Henry saw him hesitate. There was a reason. Pinky was faced away from Whim. If he moved, the dog would attack. Pinky had to be ready to shoot the instant he turned.

  “Why don’t you shoot him?” Malachi taunted. “Pull the trigger, smart man. You had it all figured, all fixed. So pull the trigger. Only I better tell you one thing. When you shoot, Glory shoots...” His mouth trembled. “You got just one shot.” He stopped talking and the laughter poured out of him. “Take your pick. Pinky. Me. Glory. Or the dog. You can’t get us all. You can get just one. So here’s your gamble. Pinky. Time to place your bets. And this time, you got to be right.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  “Take!” Malachi shouted.

  It was the word the crouching dog had been awaiting. It turned him into a slavering, ravenous wolf. For a split second, the dog settled on his haunches, and then there was a blur of grey.

  Henry stepped back. He was drawn taut all over, and he felt the quivering start in his stomach. He watched the dog streak past him, eyes fixed on the fat Pinky.

  Henry caught his breath, held it, forgetting to breathe. He watched Pinky spin around to face the dog. In that snap of time, Henry’s gaze raked across Malachi and Glory. They were watching coldly. Glory still held her gun, safety off, ready to fire.

  Then Henry realised another truth. He and the dog were the only excited creatures in the room. The others were cold and unemotional, even Pinky Wilson—especially Pinky.

  Henry stared. He stood rooted to the floor in the closed, musty room. The opened door behind him was forgotten. He was watching death and seeing it as a business. For these people, death was a business. They were coldly unmoved by it, even when their own demise was involved.

  Now that the dog was attacking, the fat Pinky was ready. He spread his legs, setting himself as the dog lunged at his wrist, fangs bared, snarl filling the room. Henry watched Pinky get set for the huge dog. If Pinky was afraid any more, it didn’t show in his face. Sam Malachi had played his ace. Pinky was about to trump it.

  As the dog leaped for Pinky’s wrist, the pudgy man feinted with his left. It was enough, just enough to turn the dog’s fangs. The dog twisted its head, snapping at Pinky’s left wrist. Pinky struck downward with the heavy gun.

  The dog was still following Pinky’s moving left arm. There was a sound like crunching egg shells. The snarling died in the dog’s throat and ended on a whine. The dog went forward for a moment, but only for a moment. When its body struck the floor, it didn’t even move.

  Glory whimpered. “Whim.”

  Malachi had no way to see what had happened, but he must have known, as well as Glory or Henry. Only he didn’t need to hesitate, staring at the unconscious dog the way Henry and Glory did, even as Pinky did. For that second, Pinky was off guard.

  Before Pinky could turn back, Malachi leaped on his shoulders. Malachi’s weight drove them against a heavy club chair. It tipped on its side, teetered for a moment with the two men scrambling on top of it. Then it toppled over with a crash that shook the room and echoed through the empty house.

  Malachi gouged his hands into Pinky’s neck and face. His fingers were claws that were trying to strangle the fat man. They rolled off the chair to the floor, landing with Pinky on the bottom. He grunted when the air was blasted from his lungs.

  He wasn’t bothering to fight Malachi off. Henry had never seen men who let their emotions control them so little. Pinky still had his gun. That was his implement of trade and he clung to it with Malachi beating at him. Pinky tried to twist enough so that he could either put a bullet into Malachi, or stun him with the gun butt as he had done the dog.

  Malachi didn’t seem to know or care that Wilson had the gun. This was the man that Malachi had killed a thousand times in his dreams. This was the man who had laughed at him in his nightmares. Here was the man who’d robbed Malachi, blinded him, stolen his mistress, and run.

  Finally he had caught up with the man he’d trailed for three thousand miles and untold months. Malachi no longer cared what happened to himself. He wanted one thing: to kill the fat man.

  Henry glanced over his shoulder towards the side porch. Freedom was beyond it. The hell with them, he thought. Let them kill each other. He wanted something, too. He wanted out of here. He took a quick gander at Glory, at the pink hair stringing wildly about her face. The gun was fixed on the writhing men on the floor. The gun snout moved, jerked, following them, still poised on every move Pinky made.