Three Sisters (3 page)

Cassandra’s lips are moving, and those viewers who choose to may breathe again. “He’s a middle-aged man,” she murmurs. A long, thoughtful pause. “Reddish brown hair. Overweight.”

As he chewed a mouthful of the dinner special, Smitty muttered: “Effs bess. At cuff be amos hemmygobby.”
Including me.
What our amateur TV critic was attempting to say, and would have, had not the mastication of ground beef and beans impeded his enunciation, was: “Hell’s bells. That could be almost anybody.”
Including me.

Which illustrates why well-mannered diners do not attempt to talk whilst eating.

The pale face on the television screen continued to describe what Cassandra Sees: “I see a man who drives a truck.”

Smitty, who liked to talk back to the tube, snickered. “Well, that sure narrows it down a whole lot.” From the clarity of his speech, it was apparent that he had swallowed his food, for which we may all be grateful. Moreover, he had forgotten the meat loaf, mashed potatoes, Great Northerns, et cetera that remained on his plate. Cassandra, who was hitting on all eight cylinders, had gotten the trucker’s entire attention.

“There is a tattoo on his arm.” The psychic breathed a heavy sigh. “A knife of some sort. And a snake.” She shuddered. “And a horrible
spider.
”

This is not meant as criticism, but Smitty was one of those persons who could not do two things at once. First, his jaw dropped. Then, he glanced down at his hairy left forearm, squinted at the art form the Tenderloin-district artist had adorned it with: a medieval Italian dagger with a spotted viper wrapped around the blade, a hairy-legged tarantula crouched on the hilt. Marveling at this coincidence, he returned his attention to the television image.

Cassandra’s face was frozen, except for the pretty red lips, which moved: “I see a murderer—a brutal, cold-blooded killer!”

The drug pusher shook his head. “I ain’t never killed nobody!” The almost-mute remnant of his conscience begged to disagree. In his defense, he murmured: “That ol’ woman I run over at that railroad crossing don’t count as no murder—I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“I cannot make out the killer’s face,” the psychic whispered. “I can see only the back of his head…and his shoulders.” She caught her breath, stiffened. “But he is about to pull the trigger!”

Smitty, who was not the brightest of his mother’s three sons, still did not get it. “I ain’t about to pull no trigger.”
I couldn’t even if I wanted to. My .45 is locked in the truck, inside the backpack with my Buck knife and brass knuckles and the forty kilos of Mexican crack. So either she’s way off this time or she’s talkin’ about some other guy with a tattoo like mine.
The marked man slapped a ten-dollar bill on the counter and was about to get up when—

In the outer darkness…the hammer fell.

The slug was expelled from a six-inch, stainless steel barrel.

The plump missile drilled a neat round hole through the plate glass window, punched a larger one between Smitty’s shoulder blades, and opened a fist-size wound where it erupted from his shattered sternum. The “biggest doggone TV screen he had ever seen” was shattered into too many fragments to count.

It is clear that the shooter is not your run-of-the-mill stalker-pervert. And we may safely rule out DEA agent; while initiative and spontaneity are valued in that U.S. government service—summary executions are not condoned. Not
officially.
Which narrows it down some.