He was thinking of nothing but Dollentz and this bitch on the phone as the gunslinger approached like fated doom, thinking of how wonderful the two of them would look naked save for a coating of honey and staked out over anthills in the burning desert sun. HIS and HERS anthills, wonderful. He was thinking this was the worst it could get, the absolute worst. His father had been so determined that his only son follow in his footsteps that he had refused to pay for anything but a degree in pharmacology, and so he had followed in his father’s footsteps, and God rot his father, for this was surely the lowest moment in a life that had been full of low moments, a life which had made him old before his time.

This was the absolute nadir.

Or so he thought with his eyes closed.

“If you come by, Mrs. Rathbun, I could give you a dozen five milligram Valium. Would that be all right?”

“The man sees reason! Thank God, the man sees reason!” And she hung up. Just like that. Not a word of thanks. But when she saw the walking rectum that called itself a doctor again, she would just about fall down and polish the tips of his Gucci loafers with her nose, she would give him a blowjob, she would—

“Mr. Katz,” his assistant said in a voice that sounded strangely winded. “I think we have a prob—”

There was another scream. It was followed by the crash of a gun, startling him so badly he thought for a moment his heart was simply going to utter one monstrous clap in his chest and then stop forever.

He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of the gunslinger. Katz dropped his gaze and saw the pistol in the man’s fist. He looked left and saw Ralph the guard nursing one hand and staring at the thief with eyes that seemed to be bugging out of his face. Ralph’s own gun, the .38 which he had toted dutifully through eighteen years as a police officer (and which he had only fired from the line of the 23rd Precinct’s basement target range; he said he had drawn it twice in the line of duty . . . but who knew?), was now a wreck in the corner.

“I want Keflex,” the man with the bullshooter eyes said expressionlessly. “I want a lot. Now. And never mind the REX.”

For a moment Katz could only look at him, his mouth open, his heart struggling in his chest, his stomach a sickly boiling pot of acid.

Had he thought he had hit rock bottom?

Had he really?

15

“You don’t understand,” Katz managed at last. His voice sounded strange to himself, and there was really nothing very odd about that, since his mouth felt like a flannel shirt and his tongue like a strip of cotton batting. “There is no cocaine here. It is not a drug which is dispensed under any cir—”