I'd driven all night mostly over mountain roads, but I wasn't tired or sleepy when I hit Oakland at daylight. I parked the coupe near the Emeryville station, wondering if I'd ever see it again, but not caring. All keyed up, the thought of breakfast made me sickish and I grabbed the first train that came along. I sat on the right side of the first car so I could see the towers of San Francisco climbing up out of the mist. The weight of the .38 pistol in my coat pocket was friendly and comforting when I thought of what I was going to do. I would put the gun right to his belt buckle and shoot downward, and in my mind's eye I saw the bright, hard-jacketed slug spinning through his bladder, his prostate, his entrails, and on into the splintering base of his spine. It traveled very slowly, taking lots and lots of time.

From the station I phoned Helen, and from the way she sounded I woke her up. "Yes, my sister's here, but she don't want to talk to you," Helen said. "You've got gall, Mac, after all you've done. She won't talk to you."

"Judy isn't there. You're just covering up for Judy just like the whole family covers up," I told her. "And you know who she's been with all night, too."

She slammed the receiver. I stood thinking for a minute, then walked down the ramp and hailed a cab. I'd left my coupe across the bay because I didn't want to hunt for parking places in a place I didn't know very well. I'd got a ticket in Red Bluff on the way down and now I wanted no slip-ups. The cab took me up Market, then turned off and after quite a long ride dumped me out at the Turk Street address I'd given. It was a hotel for Elks, or Shriners or something, and he always stayed there when he was in town.

"I want to see Sheriff Dickson from Paloma County," I said to the manager. "I'm a friend." The word stuck in my throat a little.

"The sheriff checked out yesterday, same day he came. Say, did you know that old Kurt was married?" He grinned at me. When I didn't say anything he kept talking. "I've known him for years. A prince. But you could have knocked me down with a feather. They're staying at the D'Orsay Arms, on Sutter."

I took another cab. The D'Orsay was a dinky little place, and except for the room clerk the lobby was empty. On the register was: K.W. Dickson & Wife, Paloma City.

"They're out for breakfast. Want to wait?"

I waited outside, walking back and forth and keeping my gun warm. I hadn't intended it this way, but now I'd get them both. Dickson first. I wouldn't shoot through my coat-pocket because I wanted him to know what was happening to him. Suddenly, there they were! I'd been watching up and down the street and hadn't expected them to come around the corner right beside me. There was Dickson, big and good-looking, in spite of being away past fifty, with his diamonds flashing and wearing that hat with the wide, flat brim like the one you see in photographs of Jack London. I was slow in getting the gun out and he grabbed me.

I was slow because the woman with him was tall, slender and about forty years old. It wasn't Judy. While I was being manhandled she stood there smiling and I thought she would clap her hands. Just glowing with admiration for the brave sheriff who was demonstrating what he could do to a husky young man just half his age. He was powerful, and I'd been too surprised to fight. He'd twisted the pistol from my hand and now he had me on the sidewalk with his knee on my chest. My mind was as flattened as my body because I was remembering something I'd heard years ago, a story that Dickson had a wife who was dying, or was dead, in a tb. sanitarium down south. I knew that here she was, and that she'd saved Dickson's life.

I was crying and cussing his guts at the same time. "All right, I've been playing around with your wife, Mac, and so what," he said, and he split my lip with the fist that was holding the pistol. But a crowd was gathering, and he calmed down. When a cop pushed through he said something to him and showed his badge. At the same time he yanked me to my feet and told me to shut up. "Come on into the hotel. We'll talk this over."

It was a funny thing, that talk. Dickson got out a fifth of rye and poured shots for both of us while he told me that as far as Judy was concerned, sure, he'd only been human but that was past and why didn't I go back to her. I was shaking, and I said I never wanted to see or hear from that little bitch again. The woman listened to everything, not smiling now, and I could notice her make-up more and more as she got whiter beneath it. All at once she reached out and splashed a whole water-tumbler full of whiskey. She gagged on the first swallow, then drank it fast, before Dickson could get to her.

"What the hell, Stella!" he roared out. "The doctors told you, didn't they? What are you trying to do?"

"Celebrating my return to life," she said, and I never saw anybody getting drunk in such a hurry. "Celebrating. You always liked them young, didn't you Kurt? Even twenty years ago you did. Old Faithful Kurt." I didn't know whether she was crying or laughing.

"I'm leaving here," I said, when Dickson grabbed her and began steering her out of the little parlor into the bedroom.

"Damned right you are."

I was halfway down the hall when I heard him calling me. He sounded like a wild man. "Help me for God's sakes, kid! She's having a hemorrhage from the lungs! Get somebody!"

I went back, and on into the bedroom. The sheriff had forgotten all about the phone. I picked it up and called the desk. There wasn't any house physician, the clerk said, so I told him to get an ambulance, a police ambulance if that was faster. But to me it didn't seem to be of much use.

In my mind's eye I could see that bullet, traveling slowly and taking lots and lots of time.

The room was pretty awful. A chair with nylons hanging over the back of it was tipped over, and Dickson was sitting on the ruined bed, holding Stella. He still had that fool Jack London hat on and he was crooning to her like he was out of his mind. I don't know if she heard or not, but I did.

"I wouldn't lie to you now, Stella. Not at a time like this. It's only you and it's only been you, and there was nothing that happened between me and that girl. There couldn't be, and after last night you should know it, too, but I wanted the whole town to think I was as good as ever and a devil of a fellow, and that's how it was, I swear."

There was a coffee shop just around the corner from the hotel and I went in and drank two cups, black, because whiskey on an empty stomach never agrees with me and I was woozy. The waitress had heard the sirens and was curious. I told her there had been a killing, a kind of accident, and a woman had got in the line of fire. Then I went back to the phone booth.

"Helen, I want to talk to Judy," I said. "Please let me talk to Judy. Please...please."

-END-

Copyright © 2010 by Paul S. Powers and Laurie Powers