Bobby Lee didn?t think twice about the opportunity that had just been presented to him. He flipped open his cell phone and punched redial, the adrenaline pounding in his ears, his heart swelling against his ribs.
?What now?? Liam said.
?The sheriff just made you. He?s headed for your booth. Get the fuck out of there,? he said. Bobby Lee clicked off his cell phone, the chimes ringing in his closed palm. He crossed the road hurriedly in the shadow of a striated mesa, an acrid stench like the smell of a tar pot rising into his face.
AT LEAST EIGHT or nine boys had gotten up at once and headed toward the men?s room, walking ahead of Hackberry, causing him to pause between a booth and a table while a youth minister tried to form the boys into a line. Hackberry glanced back at his booth. Pam had gotten up from the seat and picked up the check and was computing the tip, counting out four dollar bills and some change on the tabletop. She looked pretty, framed against the window, the tips of her hair touched by the late sun, her shoulders muscular inside her khaki shirt, her bottom a little too wide for her jeans, her chrome-plated .357 high up on the right hip. When she realized he was staring at her, her cheeks colored and her expression took on an uncharacteristic vulnerability.
He winked and gave her the thumbs-up sign, but if asked, he couldn?t have explained why.
The events and the images of the next few moments were kaleidoscopic in nature and seemed to lack causality, coherence, or rational sequence. The young boys crowding into the men?s room were still unruly, but in the innocent way that all boys on a cross-country trip were unruly. An apple-cheeked bovine man in a western suit the color of tin was ladling meatballs off a platter onto the plates of his grandchildren. A workingman at the counter wiped beer foam off his chin and asked the waitress to change the television channel. A woman held up her water glass against the light and examined a dead fly floating in it. A minister in a lavender Roman collar was eating a steak, dipping each bite into a pool of ketchup that he had sprinkled with black pepper; his wife was telling him he was eating his food too fast. At the dessert bar, a teenage girl was upset because she had dropped and sunk the dipper in a container of hot fudge.
And Hackberry Holland, walking toward the restroom, squeezing between the diners, saw in the corner of his eye the man in the straw gardener?s hat wrestling open a gym bag by his foot, ripping a thirty-inch-long object loose from a tangle of underwear and shirts and socks. As Hackberry stared in disbelief, as though watching a slow-motion film that had nothing to do with reality, he saw that the object was a cut-down pump shotgun, the hacksawed steel still bright from the cut, loose shotgun shells spilling out of the gym bag onto the floor.
His next thoughts flashed across his mind in under a second, in the way that a BB arches into space and disappears:
Where had he seen the man?s face?
In a photo, maybe.
Except the face in the photo had an orange beard of the kind a Nordic seafarer might have.
Was this how it ended, with a flash from a shotgun muzzle and a burst of light inside the skull before the report ever reached his ears?
Hackberry tilted a table upward, spilling food and plates onto the floor, and flung it at the man in the gardener?s hat, who was raising the shotgun toward Hackberry?s chest. The first discharge blew a shower of splinters and shreds of red-and-white-checkered cloth all over Hackberry?s shoulder and left arm and down the side of his pants.
No one in the room moved. Instead, they looked stunned, shrunken, frozen inside clear plastic, as though a sonic boom had temporarily deafened them. Hackberry got his revolver free of its holster just as he heard the shooter jack another round into the chamber of his weapon. The second blast went high, over the top of the table. Glass caved out of the front window into the parking lot. Only then did people begin screaming, some trying to hide under tables or behind the booths. Someone kicked open a fire exit, setting off an alarm. The boys from the church bus had piled over one another into the men?s room, their faces stretched tight with fear.
Hackberry was crouched behind the table and a wood post, a bent fork or spoon biting through the cloth of his trousers into his knee. He pointed his revolver through a space between the table and the wood post and let off two rounds in the direction of the shooter, the .45?s frame kicking upward in his hand. He fired again and saw stuffing from a booth floating like chicken feathers in the gloom. He heard the shooter work the pump on his twelve-gauge and a spent shell casing clink and roll on a hard surface.
Hackberry hung on to the post and pulled himself erect, a tree of pain blooming in his back. He ran for the cover provided by the last booth in the shooter?s row, letting off one round blindly at the shooter, his boots as loud as stones striking a wood surface.
The room became absolutely quiet, as though the air had been sucked out of it. Hackberry rose in a half-crouch and pointed his revolver at the place where the shooter had been. The gym bag was still on the floor. The shooter and the shotgun shells he had spilled from the bag were gone.
Hackberry straightened his back, his weapon still pointed in front of him, the hammer on full cock, the sight on the tip of the barrel trembling slightly with the tension of his grip on the frame. He glanced over his shoulder. Where was Pam? The window behind her booth was blown out, one vinyl seat of the booth and the wedges of glass protrud ing from the window frame painted with red splatter. Hackberry wiped his mouth with his free hand and widened his eyes and tried to think clearly. What was the formal name for the situation? Barricaded suspect? The clinical language didn?t come close to describing the reality.
?Give it up, partner. Nobody has to die here,? he said.
Except for a cough, the muted crying of a woman, and a sound like somebody prizing open a stuck window, the room remained silent.
?He went in the girls? bathroom,? a burr-headed boy in short pants said from under a table.
A latticework alcove had been built around the entrance to the women?s restroom, obscuring the doorway. Hackberry walked at an angle toward the door, silverware and broken glass crunching under his boots, his eyes locked on the door through the spaces in the latticework.
Had Pam been hit? The second shotgun blast had traveled right across the booth where she had been counting out the tip on the tabletop.
?He?s got a little girl in there. Don?t go in there,? a voice said from behind an overturned chair.
It was the minister in the lavender Roman collar. He was bleeding from his cheek and neck; the heel of one hand sparkled with ground glass. His wife was on her knees beside him, gripping his arm, her body rounded into a ball.
?You saw him?? Hackberry asked.
?He grabbed the girl by the neck and pulled her with him,? the minister said.
?Can you get to the front door?? Hackberry asked.
?Yes, sir,? the minister replied. ?I can.?
?When I start into the women?s room, you stand up and take as many people with you as you can. Can you do that for me, sir??