Delevan jotted furiously, then snapped his notebook closed. “Okay. That should do it. Only other thing’ll be to have you write your signature if we get the wallet back and compare it with the sigs on your driver’s license, credit cards, stuff like that. Okay?”

Roland nodded, although part of him understood that, although he could draw on Jack Mort’s memories and knowledge of this world as much as he needed, he hadn’t a chance in hell of duplicating Mort’s signature with Mort’s consciousness absent, as it was now.

“Tell us what happened.”

“I went in to buy shells for my brother. He has a .45 Winchester revolver. The man asked me if I had a Permit to Carry. I said of course. He asked to see it.”

Pause.

“I took out my wallet. I showed him. Only when I turned my wallet around to do that showing, he must have seen there were quite a few—” slight pause “twenties in there. I am a tax accountant. I have a client named Dorfman who just won a small tax refund after an extended—” pause “—litigation. The sum was only eight hundred dollars, but this man, Dorfman, is—” pause “—the biggest prick we handle.” Pause. “Pardon my pun.”

O’Mearah ran the man’s last few words back through his head and suddenly got it. The biggest prick we handle. Not bad. He laughed. Thoughts of robots and machines that played tic-tac-toe went out of his mind. The guy was real enough, just upset and trying to hide it by being cool.

“Anyway, Dorfman wanted cash. He insisted on cash.”

“You think Fat Johnny got a look at your client’s dough,” Delevan said. He and O’Mearah got out of the blue-and-white.

“Is that what you call the man in that shop?”

“Oh, we call him worse than that on occasion,” Delevan said. “What happened after you showed him your P.C., Mr. Mort?”

“He asked for a closer look. I gave him my wallet but he didn’t look at the picture. He dropped it on the floor. I asked him what he did that for. He said that was a stupid question. Then I told him to give me back my wallet. I was mad.”

“I bet you were.” Although, looking at the man’s dead face, Delevan thought you’d never guess this man could get mad.

“He laughed. I started to come around the counter and get it. That was when he pulled the gun.”

They had been walking toward the shop. Now they stopped. They looked excited rather than fearful. “Gun?” O’Mearah asked, wanting to be sure he had heard right.

“It was under the counter, by the cash register,” the man in the blue suit said. Roland remembered the moment when he had almost junked his original plan and gone for the man’s weapon. Now he told these gunslingers why he hadn’t. He wanted to use them, not get them killed. “I think it was in a docker’s clutch.”

“A what?” O’Mearah asked.