Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"Dry what?"

"It's a guy like me. That means you're shit out of luck."

He lifted himself up on his arms. His abdominal muscles looked as hard as the rollers on a washtub, his chest and shoulders coated with soft strips of monkey fur. Even with the air-conditioning on, the room smelled like an animal's lair or un-buried offal. By the bed was a service table, and in the middle of it a steak knife and ragged pink T-bone rested on a white plate marbled with gravy and blood.

"I got no beef with you, Jack," he said.

"Remember when you woke me up in that motel in Galveston? You touched the muzzle of a nickel-plated automatic to the center of my forehead. You called me 'hoss' and told me I had a lot of luck. I was twenty years old."

"What are you doing with that gun, man?"

I had dumped all six shells from the cylinder into my palm. I inserted one of them into a random chamber and clicked the cylinder back into the revolver's frame. Then I put the hammer on half-cock, spun the chamber, and reset the hammer.

"I'm going to hand you this pistol, Lou. When I do, I want you to point it at me and squeeze the trigger. Maybe you'll punch my ticket. But if not, it will be my turn, and the odds for yo

u will have shrunk appreciably. Are you processing this, Lou?"

"You need to fire your psychiatrist."

"Take it," I said.

"I don't want it."

"This is as good as it's going to get, partner. I advise you to take it."

But he kept his hands at his sides, his face jerking away each time the barrel came close to him. "Take it, you piece of shit," I said.

"No!" he said, teeth clenched.

That's when I lost it. I hooked him in the face with my left, mashed my knee into his chest, and forced the revolver into his hands. "Do it!" I said.

"No!"

"Do it, you motherfucker!"

The muzzle was pointed into my chest, inches from my sternum. I forced his thumb onto the trigger and pressed it back against the trigger guard. I heard the hammer snap on an empty chamber. His eyes were wide with disbelief as they stared up into mine.

"You're crazy," he said, his voice seizing in his throat, like a child who has been crying uncontrollably.

"My turn," I said, pulling the revolver from his hands.

"Just tell me what you want."

"Val Chalons is your son, isn't he?"

"That's what this is about? Are you nuts? You make me pull the trigger on a cop over —"

I clenched my left hand on his throat and jammed the .38 into his mouth with my right, forcing the cylinder over his teeth. He gagged, spittle running from the corners of his mouth. I pulled the trigger and heard the hammer snap again on an empty chamber.

"Oh Jesus," he said, trembling all over when I slid the barrel from his mouth.

"Is Val Chalons your —"

"Yeah, yeah, we found out when the old man needed a kidney donation. He had to get the kidney from the girl."

"Honoria?"

He nodded, blotting the spittle and blood on his mouth with the bedsheet.