The Dark Half(56)

with no memory of bad dreams. But of course the real bad dream was still out there. Somewhere.

Chapter Fourteen

Fools Stuffing

1

The guy with the stupid little pu**y-tickler mustache was a lot quicker than Stark had expected. Stark had been waiting for Michael Donaldson in the ninth-floor hallway of the building where Donaldson lived, just around the comer from Donaldson's apartment door. It all would have been easier if Stark could have gotten into the apartment first, as he had done with the bitch, but a single glance was enough to convince him that these locks, unlike hers, had not been put in by jiminy Cricket. It should have been all right just the same. It was late, and all the rabbits in the warren should have been fast asleep and dreaming of clover. Donaldson himself should have been slow and fuddled - when you came home at quarter of one in the morning, it wasn't from the public library.

Donaldson did seem a trifle fuddled, but he was not slow at all. When Stark stepped around the corner and slashed out with the razor as Donaldson fiddled and diddled with his keyring, he expected to blind the man quickly and efficiently. Then, before he could more than begin a cry, he would open Donaldson's throat, cutting his plumbing at the same time he severed his vocal cords.

Stark did not try to move quietly. He wanted Donaldson to hear him, wanted Donaldson to turn his face toward him. It would make it easier.

Donaldson did what he was supposed to at first. Stark whipped the razor at his face in a short, hard arc. But Donaldson managed to duck a little - not much, but too much for Stark's purposes. Instead of getting his eyes, the straight-razor laid his forehead open to the bone. A flap of skin curled down over Donaldson's eyebrows like a loose strip of wallpaper.

'HELP!' Donaldson blatted in a strangled, sheeplike voice, and there went your no-hitter. Fuck. Stark moved in, holding the straight-razor out in front of his own eyes with the blade slightly, turned up, like a matador saluting the bull before the first corrida. Okay; it didn't go just according to Hoyle every time. He hadn't blinded the stool-pigeon, but blood was pouring out of the cut on his forehead in what looked like pints, and what little Donaldson was seeing would be coming through a sticky red haze.

He slashed at Donaldson's throat and the bastard pulled his head back almost as fast as a rattlesnake recoiling from a strike, amazing speed, and Stark found himself admiring the man a little, ridiculous pu**y-tickler mustache or not.

The blade cut only air a quarter of an inch from the man's throat and he screamed for help again. The rabbits, who never slept deeply in this city, this maggoty old Big Apple, would be waking up. Stark reversed direction and brought the blade back again, at the same time rising on his toes and thrusting his body forward. It was a graceful, balletic movement, and should have finished it. But Donaldson somehow managed to get a hand up in front of his throat; instead of killing him, Stark only administered a series of long, shallow wounds which police pathologists would call defense cuts. Donaldson raised his hand palm out, and the razor passed across the base of all four fingers..He wore a heavy class ring on the third, and so that one sustained no wound. There was a crisp

and minute metallic sound - brinnk! - as the blade ran across it, leaving a tiny scar in the gold alloy. The razor cut the other three fingers deeply, sliding as effortlessly into the flesh as a warm knife slides into butter. Tendons cut, the fingers slumped forward like sleepy puppets, leaving only the ring-finger standing upright, as if in his confusion and horror, Donaldson had forgotten which finger you used when you wanted to flip somebody the bird. This time when Donaldson opened his mouth he actually howled, and Stark knew he could forget about getting out of this one unheard and unnoticed. He'd had every expectation of doing just that, since he didn't have to save Donaldson long enough to make any telephone calls, but it just wasn't happening. But neither did he intend to let Donaldson live. Once you'd started the wetwork, you didn't quit until either it was done or you were.

Stark bored in. They had moved down the corridor almost to the next apartment door by now. He flicked the straight-razor casually sideways to clear the blade. A fine spray of droplets splashed the cream-colored wall.

Farther down the hall a door opened and a man in a blue pajama shirt with his hair in sleepcorkscrews poked his head and shoulders out.

'What's going on?' he cried in a gruff voice which proclaimed that he didn't care if it was the Pope of Rome out here, the party was over.

'Murder,' Stark said conversationally, and for just a moment his eyes shifted from the bloody, howling man in front of him to the man in the doorway. Later this man would tell the police that the intruder's eyes were blue. Bright blue. And utterly mad. 'Do you want some?'

The door shut so fast it might never have been opened at all. Panicked though he must be, hurt though he undoubtedly was, Donaldson saw an opportunity when Stark's gaze shifted, even though the diversion was only momentary. He took it. The little bastard really was quick. Stark's admiration grew. The mark's speed and sense of self-preservation were almost enough to outweigh the f**king nuisance he was making of himself. Had he leaped forward, grappled with Stark, he might have graduated from the nuisance stage to something approaching a real problem. Instead, Donaldson turned to run. Perfectly understandable, but a mistake.

Stark ran after him, big shoes whispering on the carpet, and slashed at the back of the man's neck, confident that this would finally finish it.