“No,” Jackman said.
They had reached a neighborhood of small frame houses. Gregor tapped on Jackman’s shoulder.
“We’re here,” he said. “I’ll go on explaining a little later.”
“If you go on explaining, my head will explode,” Jackman said.
He eased the car up against the curb. Gregor started to get out before the car stopped moving. It was a trick he had seen other people make look easy. It nearly got him killed. He caught his balance and stood up. He looked at the number on the house just ahead of him and started walking north.
“Right up here,” he said to Jackman coming up behind him. “Let’s only hope we got here before he did. Because I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but I do know—”
He had gone three houses up and stopped a moment to look at the sagging porch and the thin white lace curtains in the windows. He was not thinking of anything except the fact that the small black car parked up against the curb near the house looked familiar.
“Listen,” he said, turning back to look at Jackman.
That’s when the bullet caught him in the back of his right shoulder.
2
It occurred to him, falling to the ground in what felt like slow motion, that he had never been shot before. Not in the Bureau, not even in the army, although that might not count, since he had never been much of anywhere but the American South while he was in the army. Why was it that so many army bases were in the South, and in the rural South at that? Didn’t it make more sense to protect, say, New York City or Washington, D.C.? Would the hijackers have been able to hit the Pentagon if Fort Bragg had been in Chevy Chase instead of wherever it was, which Gregor could not remember, because he was in an impossible amount of pain. He couldn’t remember ever having hurt this badly in his life. He couldn’t remember ever having felt so disembodied, either. His head was occupying space where his body was not. Or something. Or something. He wanted to scream, but his mind was not connected to his lungs.
He felt himself being pulled along the ground, and that hurt too, but it was a long way away. A moment later, he realized that he was lying next to a car wheel. The big black tire had treads that were much too worn for safety. He ought to leave a note for the owners. He could put it under the windshield, the way you put notes there when you’d dented somebody in a parking lot and couldn’t wait around for however many hours it might be before the somebody got back. He was making no sense at all. He was listening for the sound of another gunshot. He didn’t hear one.
“I can’t be dead,” he said, out loud. “I’m too cold.”
There was movement beside him, and then the sight of a knee, encased in good black wool, far too thin.
“You’re not dead,” Jackman said. “I’m calling everybody on the planet. I’m not armed.”
“Aren’t policemen supposed to be armed?”
“The commissioner usually isn’t.”
Gregor closed his eyes, and then opened them again. It was very unpleasant closing his eyes. It made him want to throw up. Jackman’s phone made those beeping and booping noises cell phones make when they’re dialed, if “dialed” was the word you used for cell phones, when it really meant something that could only be done to a rotary phone, and rotary phones were out of date. He had gone beyond making no sense. He was no longer connected to linear thought.
“Listen,” he said.
“Shut up,” Jackman said. “You’re not going to do yourself any good by wearing yourself out. They’ll bring an ambulance. Bennis is going to kill me.”
“Listen,” Gregor said again. “Don’t let them kill her. The police, when they come. Don’t let them kill her.”
“Armed standoffs are armed standoffs, Gregor, you know that. We don’t kill anybody if we don’t have to, but sometimes we have to.”
“It’s what he wants,” Gregor said. Somewhere down there there was a point. Gregor even knew what it was. He could see it resting at the bottom, the way a cask of treasure rested at the bottom of a murky ocean pool. He just needed to bring it up. “He has to kill her,” he said, “and he can’t do it on his own. Don’t you see that? This isn’t his territory. This isn’t someplace he’s comfortable with and besides, he knows people are watching him. He knows. So he’s got to find a way to kill her, and he wants to get the police to do it for him.”
“That’s quite a speech. When you die from loss of blood, will your ghost come back and protect me from Bennis?”
“Die from loss of blood,” Gregor said. Then he looked down at his body— the body that didn’t feel like his anymore; the body that seemed to be nothing and belong to nobody—and there was blood coming out of his shoulder. He tried to think about that. There might be an artery there somewhere. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t think the bullet had hit it if it was there, because his suit jacket was covered with blood but it wasn’t pumping out of him like a spring. He could not keep himself thinking along any particular path to any particular point. His mind would not do it.