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It was a crow.
The Judge relaxed, a little at a time, and managed a small, shaken smile.
Just a crow.
It sat on the outer sill in the rain, its glossy feathers pasted together in a comic way, its little eyes looking through the dripping pane at one very old lawyer and the world’s oldest amateur spy, lying on a motel bed in western Idaho, wearing nothing but boxer shorts with LOS ANGELES LAKERS printed all over them in ...
Tap, tap, tap.
The crow, tapping the pane of glass with his beak. Tapping as he had tapped before.
The Judge’s smile faltered a bit. There was something in the way the crow was looking at him that he didn’t quite like. It still seemed almost to grin, but he could have sworn it was a contemptuous grin, a kind of sneer.
Tap, tap, tap.
Like the raven that had flown in to roost on the bust of Pallas. When will I find out the things they need to know, back in the Free Zone that seems so far away? Nevermore. Will I get any idea what chinks there might be in the dark man’s armor? Nevermore.
Will I get back safe?
Nevermore.
Tap, tap, tap.
The crow, looking in at him, seeming to grin.
And it came to him with a dreamy, testicle-shriveling certainty that this was the dark man, his soul, his ka somehow projected into this rain-drenched, grinning crow that was looking in at him, checking up on him.
He stared at it, fascinated.
The crow’s eyes seemed to grow larger. They were rimmed with red, he noticed, a darkly rich ruby color. Rainwater dripped and ran, dripped and ran. The crow leaned forward and, very deliberately, tapped on the glass.
The Judge thought: It thinks it’s hypnotizing me. And maybe it is, a little. But maybe I’m too old for such things. And suppose… it’s silly, of course, but suppose it is him. And suppose I could bring that rifle up in one quick snap motion? It’s been four years since I shot any skeet, but I was club champion back in ‘7...
The crow grinned at him. He was now quite sure it was grinning.
With a sudden lunge the Judge sat up, bringing the Garand up to his shoulder in a quick, sure motion—he did it better than he ever would have dreamed. A kind of terror seemed to seize the crow. Its rain-drenched wings fluttered, spraying drops of water. Its eyes seemed to widen in fear. The Judge heard it utter a stran...
“EAT THIS! ” the Judge thundered, and squeezed the trigger.
But the trigger would not depress, because he had left the safety on. A moment later the window was empty except for the rain.
The Judge lowered the Garand to his lap, feeling dull and stupid. He told himself it was just a crow after all, a moment’s diversion to liven up the evening. And if he had blown out the window and let the rain in, he would have had to go to the botheration of changing rooms. Lucky, really.
But he slept poorly that night, and several times he started awake and stared toward the window, convinced that he heard a ghostly tapping sound there. And if the crow happened to land there again, it wouldn’t get away. He left the safety catch off the rifle.
But the crow didn’t come back.
The next morning he had driven west again, his arthritis no worse but certainly no better, and at just past eleven he had stopped at a small café for lunch. And as he finished his sandwich and thermos of coffee, he had seen a large black crow flutter down and land on the telephone wire half a block up the street. ...
He was no longer hungry.
He pushed on. Some days later, at quarter past twelve in the afternoon, now in Oregon and moving west on Highway 86, he drove through the town of Copperfield, not even glancing toward the five-and-dime where Bobby Terry watched him go by, slackjawed with amazement. The Garand was beside him on the seat, the safety stil...
Just on general principles.
“Faster! Can’t you move this fucking thing any faster?”
“You get off my ass, Bobby Terry. Just because you were asleep at the switch is no reason to get on my butt.”
Dave Roberts was behind the wheel of the Willys International that had been parked nose-out in the alley beside the five-and-dime. By the time Bobby Terry had gotten Dave awake and up and dressed, the old geezer in the Scout had gotten a ten-minute start on them. The rain was coming down hard, and visibility was poor. ...
Dave, who was wearing cowboy boots, jeans, a yellow foul-weather slicker, and nothing else, glanced over at him.
“You keep squeezing the trigger of that rifle and you’re going to blow a hole right through your door, Bobby Terry.”
“You just catch him,” Bobby Terry said. He muttered to himself. “The guts. Got to shoot him in the guts. Dasn’t mark the head. Right.”
“Stop talkin to yourself. People who talk to theirselves play with theirselves. That’s what I think.”
“Where is he?” Bobby Terry asked.
“We’ll get him. Unless you dreamed the whole thing. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if you did, brother.”
“I didn’t. It was that Scout. But what if he turns off?”
“Turns off where?” Dave asked. “There’s nothing but farm roads all the way to the Interstate. He couldn’t get fifty feet up a one of them without going into the mud up to his fenders, four-wheel drive and all. Relax, Bobby Terry.”
Bobby Terry said miserably, “I can’t. I keep wonderin how it’d feel to get hung up to dry on some telephone pole out in the desert.”
“Can that!… And lookit there! See im? We’re sniffin up his ass now, by God!”
Ahead of them was a months-old head-on collision between a Chevy and a big heavy Buick. They lay in the rain, blocking the road from one side to the other like the rusted bones of unburied mastodons. To the right, deep fresh tire tracks were printed into the shoulder.
“That’s him,” Dave said. “Those tracks ain’t five minutes old.”
He swung the Willys out and around the smashup, and they bounced wildly along the shoulder. Dave swung back onto the road where the Judge had before him, and they both saw the muddy herringbone pattern of the Scout’s tires on the asphalt. At the top of the next hill, they saw the Scout just disappearing over a knoll so...
“Howdy-doody!” Dave Roberts cried. “Go for broke!”
He floored the accelerator and the Willys crept up to sixty. The windshield was a silvery blur of rain that the wipers could not hope to keep up with. At the top of the knoll they saw the Scout again, closer. Dave yanked out his headlight switch and began to work the dimmer switch with his foot. After a few moments, th...
“All right,” Dave said. “We act friendly. Get him to step out. Don’t you go off half-cocked, Bobby Terry. If we do this right, we’re gonna have a couple of suites at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Fuck it up and we’re gonna get our assholes cored out. So don’t you fuck up. Get him to step out.”
“Oh my God, why couldn’t he have come through Robinette?” Bobby Terry whined. His hands were locked on the Winchester.
Dave whacked at one of them. “You don’t carry that rifle out, either.”
“But—”