Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,141

face.

“Get out of here!” she yelled, and gave him a shove toward the door. Several healthy kicks from the miners in attendance (who had changed sides as easily as the wind changes directions) helped him along. “And don’t come back! I can smell the weed on your breath, you old cocksucker! Get out and take your gods-cussed stories of old days and young lords with you!”

The old bastard was in such manner conveyed across the room, past the tootling trumpet-player who served as entertainment for the patrons of Hattigan’s (that young bowler-hatted worthy added his own kick in the seat of the old bastard’s dusty trousers without ever missing so much as a single note of “Play, Ladies, Play”), and out through the batwing doors, where he collapsed face-first into the street.

Depape had sauntered after him and helped him up. As he did so, he smelled an acrid odor—not beer—on the old man’s breath, and saw the telltale greenish-gray discolorations at the corners of his lips. Weed, all right. The old bastard was probably just getting started on it (and for the usual reason: devil-grass was free in the hills, unlike the beer and whiskey that was sold in town), but once they started, the finish came quick.

“They got no respect,” the old bastard said thickly. “Nor understanding, either.”

“Aye, so they don’t,” said Depape, who had not yet gotten the accents of the seacoast and the Drop out of his speech.

The old bastard stood swaying, looking up at him, wiping ineffectually at the blood which ran down his wrinkled cheeks from his lacerated scalp. “Son, do you have the price of a drink? Remember the face of your father and give an old soul the price of a drink!”

“I’m not much for charity, old-timer,” Depape said, “but mayhap you could earn yourself the price of a drink. Step on over here, into my office, and let’s us see.”

He’d led the old bastard out of the street and back to the boardwalk, angling well to the left of the black batwings with their golden shafts of light spilling out above and below. He waited for a trio of miners to go by, singing at the top of their lungs (“Woman I love . . . is long and tall . . . she moves her body . . . like a cannonball . . .”), and then, still holding the old bastard by the elbow, had guided him into the alley between Hattigan’s and the undertaking establishment next door. For some people, Depape mused, a visit to Ritzy could damn near amount to one-stop shopping: get your drink, get your bullet, get laid out next door.

“Yer office,” the old bastard cackled as Depape led him down the alley toward the board fence and the heaps of rubbish at the far end. The wind blew, stinging Depape’s nose with odors of sulfur and carbolic from the mines. From their right, the sounds of drunken revelry pounded through the side of Hattigan’s. “Your office, that’s good.”

“Aye, my office.”

The old man gazed at him in the light of the moon, which rode the slot of sky above the alley. “Are you from Mejis? Or Tepachi?”

“Maybe one, maybe t’other, maybe neither.”

“Do I know you?” The old bastard was looking at him even more closely, standing on tiptoe as if hoping for a kiss. Ugh.

Depape pushed him away. “Not so close, dad.” Yet he felt marginally encouraged. He and Jonas and Reynolds had been here before, and if the old man remembered his face, likely he wasn’t talking through his hat about fellows he’d seen much more recently.

“Tell me about the three young lords, old dad.” Depape rapped on the wall of Hattigan’s. “Them in there may not be interested, but I am.”

The old bastard looked at him with a bleary, calculating eye. “Might there be a bit o’ metal in it for me?”

“Yar,” Depape said. “If you tell me what I want to hear, I’ll give you metal.”

“Gold?”

“Tell me, and we’ll see.”

“No, sir. Dicker first, tell second.”

Depape seized him by the arm, whirled him around, and yanked a wrist which felt like a bundle of sticks up to the old bastard’s scrawny shoulderblades. “Fuck with me, dad, and we’ll start by breaking your arm.”

“Let go!” the old bastard screamed breathlessly. “Let go, I’ll trust to your generosity, young sir, for you have a generous face! Yes! Yes indeed!”

Depape let him go. The old bastard eyed him warily, rubbing his shoulder. In the moonlight the blood