16

   The last passengers were filing out into the jetway. One of them, a lady of some seventy summers with that exquisite look of confusion which only first-time fliers with too many years or too little English seem capable of wearing, stopped to show Jane Dorning her tickets. "How will I ever find my plane to Montreal ?" she asked. "And what about my bags? Do they do my Customs here or there?"
   "There will be a gate agent at the top of the jetway who can give you all the information you need, ma'am," Jane said.
   "Well, I don't see why you can't give me all the information I need," the old woman said. "That jetway thing is still full of people."
   "Move on, please, madam," Captain McDonald said. "We have a problem."
   "Well, pardon me for living," the old woman said huffily, "I guess I just fell off the hearse!"
   And strode past them, nose tilted like the nose of a dog scenting a fire still some distance away, tote-bag clutched in one hand, ticket-folder (with so many boarding-pass stubs sticking out of it that one might have been tempted to believe the lady had come most of the way around the globe, changing planes at every stop along the way) in the other.
   "There's a lady who may never fly Detta's big jets again," Susy murmured.
   "I don't give a fuck if she flies stuffed down the front of Superman's Jockies," McDonald said. "She the last?"
   Jane darted past them, glanced at the seats in business class, then poked her head into the main cabin. It was deserted.
   She came back and reported the plane empty.
   McDonald turned to the jetway and saw two uniformed Customs agents fighting their way through the crowd, excusing themselves but not bothering to look back at the people they jostled aside. The last of these was the old lady, who dropped her ticket-folder. Papers flew and fluttered everywhere and she shrilled after them like an angry crow.
   "Okay," McDonald said, "you guys stop right there."
   "Sir, we're Federal Customs officers―"
   "That's right, and I requested you, and I'm glad you came so fast. Now you just stand right there because this is my plane and that guy in there is one of my geese. Once he's off the plane and into the jetway, he's your goose and you can cook him any way you want." He nodded to Deere. "I'm going to give the son of a bitch one more chance and then we're going to break the door in."
   "Okay by me," Deere said.
   McDonald whacked on the bathroom door with the heel of his hand and yelled, "Come on out, my friend! I'm done asking!"
   There was no answer.
   "Okay," McDonald said. "Let's do it."

17

   Dimly, Eddie heard an old woman say: "Well, pardon me for living! I guess I just fell off the hearse!"
   He had parted half the strapping tape. When the old woman spoke his hand jerked a little and he saw a trickle of blood run down his belly.
   "Shit," Eddie said.
   "It can't be helped now," the gunslinger said in his hoarse voice. "Finish the job. Or does the sight of blood make you sick?"
   "Only when it's my own," Eddie said. The tape had started just above his belly. The higher he cut the harder it got to see. He got another three inches or so, and almost cut himself again when he heard McDonald speaking to the Customs agents: "Okay, you guys stop right there."
   "I can finish and maybe cut myself wide open or you can try," Eddie said. "I can't see what I'm doing. My fucking chin's in the way."
   The gunslinger took the knife in his left hand. The hand was shaking. Watching that blade, honed to a suicidal sharpness, shaking like that made Eddie extremely nervous.
   "Maybe I better chance it mys―"
   "Wait."
   The gunslinger stared fixedly at his left hand. Eddie didn't exactly disbelieve in telepathy, but he had never exactly believed in it, either. Nevertheless, he felt something now, something as real and palpable as heat baking out of an oven. After a few seconds he realized what it was: the gathering of this strange man's will.
   How the hell can he be dying if I can feel the force of him that strongly?
   The shaking hand began to steady down. Soon it was barely shivering. After no more than ten seconds it was as solid as a rock.
   "Now," the gunslinger said. He took a step forward, raised the knife, and Eddie felt something else baking off him―rancid fever.
   "Are you left-handed?" Eddie asked.
   "No," the gunslinger said.
   "Oh Jesus,'' Eddie said, and decided he might feel better if he closed his eyes for a moment. He heard the harsh whisper of the masking tape parting.
   "There," the gunslinger said, stepping back. "Now pull it off as far as you can. I'll get the back."
   No polite little knocks on the bathroom door now; this was a hammering fist. The passengers are out, Eddie thought. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Oh shit.
   "Come on out, my friend! I'm done asking!"
   "Yank it!" the gunslinger growled.
   Eddie grabbed a thick tab of strapping tape in each hand and yanked as hard as he could. It hurt, hurt like hell. Stop bellyaching, he thought. Things could be worse. You could be hairy-chested, like Henry.
   He looked down and saw a red band of irritated skin about seven inches wide across his sternum. Just above the solar plexus was the place where he had poked himself. Blood welled in a dimple and ran down to his navel in a scarlet runnel. Beneath his armpits, the bags of dope now dangled like badly tied saddlebags.
   "Okay," the muffled voice beyond the bathroom door said to someone else. "Let's d―"
   Eddie lost the rest of it in the unexpected riptide of pain across his back as the gunslinger unceremoniously tore the rest of the girdle from him.
   He bit down against a scream.
   "Put your shirt on," the gunslinger said. His face, which Eddie had thought as pallid as the face of a living man could become, was now the color of ancient ashes. He held the girdle of tape (now sticking to itself in a meaningless tangle, the big bags of white stuff looking like strange cocoons) in his left hand, then tossed it aside. Eddie saw fresh blood seeping through the makeshift bandage on the gunslinger's right hand. "Do it fast."
   There was a thudding sound. This wasn't someone pounding for admittance. Eddie looked up in time to see the bathroom door shudder, to see the lights in there flicker. They were trying to break it in.
   He picked his shirt up with fingers that suddenly seemed too large, too clumsy. The left sleeve was turned inside out. He tried to stuff it back through the hole, got his hand stuck for a moment, then yanked it out so hard he pulled the sleeve back again with it.
   Thud, and the bathroom door shivered again.
   "Gods, how can you be so clumsy?" the gunslinger moaned, and rammed his own fist into the left sleeve of Eddie's shirt. Eddie grabbed the cuff as the gunslinger pulled back. Now the gunslinger held the shirt for him as a butler might hold a coat for his master. Eddie put it on and groped for the lowest button.
   "Not yet!" the gunslinger barked, and tore another piece away from his own diminishing shirt. "Wipe your gut!"
   Eddie did the best he could. The dimple where the knife had actually pierced his skin was still welling blood. The blade was sharp, all right. Sharp enough.
   He dropped the bloody wad of the gunslinger's shirt on the sand and buttoned his shirt.
   Thud. This time the door did more than shudder; it buckled in its frame. Looking through the doorway on the beach, Eddie saw the bottle of liquid soap fall from where it had been standing beside the basin. It landed on his zipper bag.
   He had meant to stuff his shirt, which was now buttoned (and buttoned straight, for a wonder), into his pants. Suddenly a better idea struck him. He unbuckled his belt instead.
   "There's no time for that!" The gunslinger realized he was trying to scream and was unable. "That door's only got one hit left in it!"
   "I know what I'm doing," Eddie said, hoping he did, and stepped back through the doorway between the worlds, unsnapping his jeans and raking the zipper down as he went.
   After one desperate, despairing moment, the gunslinger followed him; physical and full of hot physical ache at one moment, nothing but cool ka in Eddie's head at the next.

18

   "One more," McDonald said grimly, and Deere nodded. Now that all the passengers were out of the jetway as well as the plane itself, the Customs agents had drawn their weapons.
   "Now!"
   The two men drove forward and hit the door together. It flew open, a chunk of it hanging for a moment from the lock and then dropping to the floor.
   And there sat Mr. 3A, with his pants around his knees and the tails of his faded paisley shirt concealing―barely―his jackhandle. Well, it sure does look like we caught him in the act, Captain McDonald thought wearily. Only trouble is, the act we caught him in wasn't against the law, last I heard. Suddenly he could feel the throb in his shoulder where he had hit the door―what? three times? four?
   Out loud he barked, "What in hell's name are you doing in there, mister?"
   "Well, I was taking a crap, " 3A said, "but if all you guys got a bad problem, I guess I could wipe myself in the terminal―"
   "And I suppose you didn't hear us, smart guy?"
   "Couldn't reach the door." 3A put out his hand to demonstrate, and although the door was now hanging askew against the wall to his left, McDonald could see his point. "I suppose I could have gotten up, but I, like, had a desperate situation on my hands. Except it wasn't exactly on my hands, if you get my drift. Nor did I want it on my hands, if you catch my further drift." 3A smiled a winning, slightly daffy smile which looked to Captain McDonald approximately as real as a nine-dollar bill. Listening to him, you'd think no one had ever taught him the simple trick of leaning forward.
   "Get up," McDonald said.
   "Be happy to. If you could just move the ladies back a little?" 3A smiled charmingly. "I know it's outdated in this day and age, but I can't help it. I'm modest. Fact is, I've got a lot to be modest about." He held up his left hand, thumb and forefinger roughly half an inch apart, and winked at Jane Dorning, who blushed bright red and immediately disappeared up the jetway, closely followed by Susy.
   You don't look modest, Captain McDonald thought. You look like a cat that just got the cream, that's what you look like.
   When the stews were out of sight, 3A stood and pulled up his shorts and jeans. He then reached for the flush button and Captain McDonald promptly knocked his hand away, grabbed his shoulders, and pivoted him back toward the aisle. Deere hooked a restraining hand into the back of his pants.
   "Don't get personal," Eddie said. His voice was light and just right―he thought so, anyway―but inside everything was in free fall. He could feel that other, feel him clearly. He was inside his mind, watching him closely, standing steady, meaning to move in if Eddie fucked up. God, it all had to be a dream, didn't it? Didn't it?
   "Stand still," Deere said.
   Captain McDonald peered into the toilet.
   "No shit," he said, and when the navigator let out a bray of involuntary laughter, McDonald glared at him.
   "Well, you know how it is," Eddie said. "Sometimes you get lucky and it's just a false alarm. I let off a couple of real rippers, though. I mean, we're talking swamp gas. If you'd lit a match in here three minutes ago, you could have roasted a Thanksgiving turkey, you know? It must have been something I ate before I got on the plane, I g―"
   "Get rid of him,'' McDonald said, and Deere, still holding Eddie by the back of the pants, propelled him out of the plane and into the jetway, where each Customs officer took one arm.
   "Hey!" Eddie cried. "I want my bag! And I want my jacket!"
   "Oh, we want you to have all your stuff," one of the officers said. His breath, heavy with the smell of Maalox and stomach acid, puffed against Eddie's face. "We're very interested in your stuff. Now let's go, little buddy."
   Eddie kept telling them to take it easy, mellow out, he could walk just fine, but he thought later the tips of his shoes only touched the floor of the jetway three or four times between the 727's hatch and the exit to the terminal, where three more Customs officers and half a dozen airport security cops stood, the Customs guys waiting for Eddie, the cops holding back a small crowd that stared at him with uneasy, avid interest as he was led away.

CHAPTER 4
THE TOWER

1

   Eddie Dean was sitting in a chair. The chair was in a small white room. It was the only chair in the small white room. The small white room was crowded. The small white room was smoky. Eddie was in his underpants. Eddie wanted a cigarette. The other six―no, seven―men in the small white room were dressed. The other men were standing around him, enclosing him. Three―no, four―of them were smoking cigarettes.
   Eddie wanted to jitter and jive. Eddie wanted to hop and bop.
   Eddie sat still, relaxed, looking at the men around him with amused interest, as if he wasn't going crazy for a fix, as if he wasn't going crazy from simple claustrophobia.
   The other in his mind was the reason why. He had been terrified of the other at first. Now he thanked God the other was there.
   The other might be sick, dying even, but there was enough steel left in his spine for him to have some left to loan this scared twenty-one-year-old junkie.
   "That is a very interesting red mark on your chest," one of the Customs men said. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. There was a pack in his shirt pocket. Eddie felt as if he could take about five of the cigarettes in that pack, line his mouth with them from corner to corner, light them all, inhale deeply, and be easier in his mind. "It looks like a stripe. It looks like you had something taped there, Eddie, and all at once decided it would be a good idea to rip it off and get rid of it."
   "I picked up an allergy in the Bahamas ," Eddie said. "I told you that. I mean, we've been through all of this several times. I'm trying to keep my sense of humor, but it's getting harder all the time."
   "Fuck your sense of humor," another said savagely, and Eddie recognized that tone. It was the way he himself sounded when he'd spent half a night in the cold waiting for the man and the man didn't come. Because these guys were junkies, too. The only difference was guys like him and Henry were their junk.
   "What about that hole in your gut? Where'd that come from, Eddie? Publishers' Clearing House?" A third agent was pointing at the spot where Eddie had poked himself. It had finally stopped dribbling but there was still a dark purple bubble there which looked more than ready to break open at the slightest urging.
   Eddie indicated the red band where the tape had been. "It itches," he said. This was no lie. "I fell asleep on the plane―check the stew if you don't believe me―"
   "Why wouldn't we believe you, Eddie?"
   "I don't know," Eddie said. "Do you usually get big drug smugglers who snooze on their way in?" He paused, gave them a second to think about it, then held out his hands. Some of the nails were ragged. Others were jagged. When you went cool turkey, he had discovered, your nails suddenly became your favorite munchies. "I've been pretty good about not scratching, but I must have dug myself a damned good one while I was sleeping."
   "Or while you were on the nod. That could be a needle-mark." Eddie could see they both knew better. You shot yourself up that close to the solar plexus, which was the nervous system's switchboard, you weren't ever going to shoot yourself up again.
   "Give me a break," Eddie said. "You were in my face so close to look at my pupils I thought you were going to soul-kiss me. You know I wasn't on the nod."
   The third Customs agent looked disgusted. "For an innocent lambikins, you know an awful lot about dope, Eddie."
   "What I didn't pick up on Miami Vice I got from The Readers' Digest. Now tell me the truth―how many times are we going to go through this?"
   A fourth agent held up a small plastic Baggie. In it were several fibers.
   "These are filaments. We'll get lab confirmation, but we know what sort they are. They're filaments of strapping tape."
   "I didn't take a shower before I left the hotel," Eddie said for the fourth time. "I was out by the pool, getting some sun. Trying to get rid of the rash. The allergy rash. I fell asleep. I was damned lucky to make the plane at all. I had to run like hell. The wind was blowing. I don't know what stuck to my skin and what didn't."
   Another reached out and ran a finger up the three inches of flesh from the inner bend of Eddie's left elbow.
   "And these aren't needle tracks."
   Eddie shoved the hand away. "Mosquito bites. I told you. Almost healed. Jesus Christ, you can see that for yourself!"
   They could. This deal hadn't come up overnight. Eddie had stopped arm-popping a month ago. Henry couldn't have done that, and that was one of the reasons it had been Eddie, had to be Eddie. When he absolutely had to fix, he had taken it very high on his upper left thigh, where his left testicle lay against the skin of the leg … as he had the other night, when the sallow thing had finally brought him some stuff that was okay. Mostly he had just snorted, something with which Henry could no longer content himself. This caused feelings Eddie couldn't exactly define … a mixture of pride and shame. If they looked there, if they pushed his testicles aside, he could have some serious problems. A blood-test could cause him problems even more serious, but that was one step further than they could go without some sort of evidence―and evidence was something they just didn't have. They knew everything but could prove nothing. All the difference between world and want, his dear old mother would have said.
   "Mosquito bites."
   "Yes."
   "And the red mark's an allergic reaction."
   "Yes. I had it when I went to the Bahamas ; it just wasn't that bad."
   "He had it when he went down there," one of the men said to another.
   "Uh-huh," the second said. "You believe it?"
   "Sure."
   "You believe in Santa Claus?"
   "Sure. When I was a kid I even had my picture taken with him once." He looked at Eddie. "You got a picture of this famous red mark from before you took your little trip, Eddie?"
   Eddie didn't reply.
   "If you're clean, why won't you take a blood-test?" This was the first guy again, the guy with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It had almost burned down to the filter.
   Eddie was suddenly angry―white-hot angry. He listened inside.
   Okay, the voice responded at once, and Eddie felt more than agreement, he felt a kind of go-to-the-wall approval. It made him feel the way he felt when Henry hugged him, tousled his hair, punched him on the shoulder, and said You done good, kid―don't let it go to your head, but you done good.
   "You know I'm clean." He stood up suddenly―so suddenly they moved back. He looked at the smoker who was closest to him. "And I'll tell you something, babe, if you don't get that coffin-nail out my face I'm going to knock it out."
   The guy recoiled.
   "You guys have emptied the crap-tank on that plane already. God, you've had enough time to have been through it three times. You've been through my stuff. I bent over and let one of you stick the world's longest finger up my ass. If a prostate check is an exam, that was a motherfucking safari. I was scared to look down. I thought I'd see that guy's fingernail sticking out of my cock."
   He glared around at them.
   "You've been up my ass, you've been through my stuff, and I'm sitting here in a pair of Jockies with you guys blowing smoke in my faces. You want a blood-test? Kay. Bring in someone to do it."
   They murmured, looked at each other. Surprised. Uneasy.
   "But if you want to do it without a court order," Eddie said, "whoever does it better bring a lot of extra hypos and vials, because I'll be damned if I'm gonna piss alone. I want a Federal marshal in here, and I want each one of you to take the same goddam test, and I want your names and IDs on each vial, and I want them to go into that Federal marshal's custody. And whatever you test mine for―cocaine, heroin, bennies, pot, whatever―I want those same tests performed on the samples from you guys. And then I want the results turned over to my lawyer."
   "Oh boy, YOUR LAWYER," one of them cried. "That's what it always comes down to with you shitbags, doesn't it, Eddie? You'll hear from MY LAWYER. I'll sic MY LAWYER on you. That crap makes me want to puke!"
   "As a matter of fact I don't currently have one," Eddie said, and this was the truth. "I didn't think I needed one. You guys changed my mind. You got nothing because I have nothing, but the rock and roll just doesn't stop, does it? So you want me to dance? Great. I'll dance. But I'm not gonna do it alone. You guys'll have to dance, too."
   There was a thick, difficult silence.
   "I'd like you to take down your shorts again, please, Mr. Dean," one of them said. This guy was older. This guy looked like he was in charge of things. Eddie thought that maybe―just maybe―this guy had finally realized where the fresh tracks might be. Until now they hadn't checked. His arms, his shoulders, his legs … but not there. They had been too sure they had a bust.
   "I'm through taking things off, taking things down, and eating this shit," Eddie said. "You get someone in here and we'll do a bunch of blood-tests or I'm getting out. Now which do you want?"
   That silence again. And when they started looking at each other, Eddie knew he had won.
   WE won, he amended. What's your name, fella?
   Roland. Yours is Eddie. Eddie Dean.
   You listen good.
   Listen and watch.
   "Give him his clothes," the older man said disgustedly. He looked at Eddie. "I don't know what you had or how you got rid of it, but I want you to know that we're going to find out."
   The old dude surveyed him.
   "So there you sit. There you sit, almost grinning. What you say doesn't make me want to puke. What you are does."
   "I make you want to puke."
   "That's affirmative."
   "Oh boy," Eddie said. "I love it. I'm sitting here in a little room and I've got nothing on but my underwear and there's seven guys around me with guns on their hips and make you want to puke? Man, you have got a problem."
   Eddie took a step toward him. The Customs guy held his ground for a moment, and then something in Eddie's eyes―a crazy color that seemed half-hazel, half-blue―made him step back against his will.
   "I'M NOT CARRYING!" Eddie roared. "QUIT NOW! JUST QUIT! LET ME ALONE!"
   The silence again. Then the older man turned around and yelled at someone, "Didn't you hear me? Get his clothes!"
   And that was that.

2

   "You think we're being tailed?" the cabbie asked. He sounded amused.
   Eddie turned forward. "Why do you say that?"
   "You keep looking out the back window."
   "I never thought about being tailed," Eddie said. This was the absolute truth. He had seen the tails the first time he looked around. Tails, not tail. He didn't have to keep looking around to confirm their presence. Outpatients from a sanitarium for the mentally retarded would have trouble losing Eddie's cab on this late May afternoon; traffic on the L.I.E. was sparse. "I'm a student of traffic patterns, that's all."
   "Oh," the cabbie said. In some circles such an odd statement would have prompted questions, but New York cab drivers rarely question; instead they assert, usually in a grand manner. Most of these assertions begin with the phrase This city! as if the words were a religious invocation preceding a sermon … which they usually were. Instead, this one said: "Because if you did think we were being tailed, we're not. I'd know. This city! Jesus! I've tailed plenty of people in my time. You'd be surprised how many people jump into my cab and say 'Follow that car.' I know, sounds like something you only hear in the movies, right? Right. But like they say, art imitates life and life imitates art. It really happens! And as for shaking a tail, it's easy if you know how to set the guy up. You …"
   Eddie tuned the cabbie down to a background drone, listening just enough so he could nod in the right places. When you thought about it, the cabbie's rap was actually quite amusing. One of the tails was a dark blue sedan. Eddie guessed that one belonged to Customs. The other was a panel truck with GINELLI'S PIZZA written on the sides. There was also a picture of a pizza, only the pizza was a smiling boy's face, and the smiling boy was smacking his lips, and written under the picture was the slogan "UMMMMM! It's-a GOOOOD Pizza!" Only some young urban artist with a spray-can and a rudimentary sense of humor had drawn a line through PIZZA and had printed PUSSY above it.
   Ginelli. There was only one Ginelli Eddie knew; he ran a restaurant called Four Fathers. The pizza business was a sideline, a guaranteed stiff, an accountant's angel. Ginelli and Balazar. They went together like hot dogs and mustard.
   According to the original plan, there was to have been a limo waiting outside the terminal with a driver ready to whisk him away to Balazar's place of business, which was a midtown saloon. But of course the original plan hadn't included two hours in a little white room, two hours of steady questioning from one bunch of Customs agents while another bunch first drained and then raked the contents of Flight 901's waste-tanks, looking for the big carry they also suspected, the big carry that would be unflushable, undissolvable.
   When he came out, there was no limo, of course. The driver would have had his instructions: if the mule isn't out of the terminal fifteen minutes or so after the rest of the passengers have come out, drive away fast. The limo driver would know better than to use the car's telephone, which was actually a radio that could easily be monitored. Balazar would call people, find out Eddie had struck trouble, and get ready for trouble of his own. Balazar might have recognized Eddie's steel, but that didn't change the fact that Eddie was a junkie. A junkie could not be relied upon to be a stand-up guy.
   This meant there was a possibility that the pizza truck just might pull up in the lane next to the taxi, someone just might stick an automatic weapon out of the pizza truck's window, and then the back of the cab would become something that looked like a bloody cheese-grater. Eddie would have been more worried about that if they had held him for four hours instead of two, and seriously worried if it had been six hours instead of four. But only two … he thought Balazar would trust him to have hung on to his lip at least that long. He would want to know about his goods.
   The real reason Eddie kept looking back was the door.
   It fascinated him.
   As the Customs agents had half-carried, half-dragged him down the stairs to Kennedy's administration section, he had looked back over his shoulder and there it had been, improbable but indubitably, inarguably real, floating along at a distance of about three feet. He could see the waves rolling steadily in, crashing on the sand; he saw that the day over there was beginning to darken.
   The door was like one of those trick pictures with a hidden image in them, it seemed; you couldn't see that hidden part for the life of you at first, but once you had, you couldn't unsee it, no matter how hard you tried.
   It had disappeared on the two occasions when the gunslinger went back without him, and that had been scary―Eddie had felt like a child whose nightlight has burned out. The first time had been during the customs interrogation.
   Ihave to go, Roland's voice had cut cleanly through whatever question they were currently throwing at him. I'll only be a few moments. Don't be afraid.
   Why? Eddie asked. Why do you have to go?
   "What's wrong?" one of the Customs guys had asked him. "All of a sudden you look scared."
   All of a sudden he had felt scared, but of nothing this yo-yo would understand.
   He looked over his shoulder, and the Customs men had also turned. They saw nothing but a blank white wall covered with white panels drilled with holes to damp sound; Eddie saw the door, its usual three feet away (now it was embedded in the room's wall, an escape hatch none of his interrogators could see). He saw more. He saw things coming out of the waves, things that looked like refugees from a horror movie where the effects are just a little more special than you want them to be, special enough so everything looks real. They looked like a hideous cross-breeding of prawn, lobster, and spider. They were making some weird sound.
   "You getting the jim-jams?" one of the Customs guys had asked. "Seeing a few bugs crawling down the wall, Eddie?"
   That was so close to the truth that Eddie had almost laughed. He understood why the man named Roland had to go back, though; Roland's mind was safe enough―at least for the time being―but the creatures were moving toward his body, and Eddie had a suspicion that if Roland did not soon vacate it from the area it currently occupied, there might not be any body left to go back to.
   Suddenly in his head he heard David Lee Roth bawling: Oh lyyyyy …ain't got no body … and this time he did laugh. He couldn't help it.
   "What's so funny?" the Customs agent who had wanted to know if he was seeing bugs asked him.
   "This whole situation," Eddie had responded. "Only in the sense of peculiar, not hilarious. I mean, if it was a movie it would be more like Fellini than Woody Allen, if you get what I mean."
   You'll be all right? Roland asked.
   Yeah, fine. TCB, man.
   I don't understand.
   Go take care of business.
   Oh. All right. I'll not be long.
   And suddenly that other had been gone. Simply gone. Like a wisp of smoke so thin that the slightest vagary of wind could blow it away. Eddie looked around again, saw nothing but drilled white panels, no door, no ocean, no weird monstrosities, and he felt his gut begin to tighten. There was no question of believing it had all been a hallucination after all; the dope was gone, and that was all the proof Eddie needed. But Roland had … helped, somehow. Made it easier.
   "You want me to hang a picture there?" one of the Customs guys asked.
   "No," Eddie said, and blew out a sigh. "I want you to let me out of here."
   "Soon as you tell us what you did with the skag," another said, "or was it coke?" And so it started again: round and round she goes and where she stops nobody knows.
   Ten minutes later―ten very long minutes―Roland was suddenly back in his mind. One second gone, next second there. Eddie sensed he was deeply exhausted.
   Taken care of? he asked.
   Yes. I'm sorry it took so long. A pause. Ihad to crawl.
   Eddie looked around again. The doorway had returned, but now it offered a slightly different view of that world, and he realized that, as it moved with him here, it moved with Roland there. The thought made him shiver a little. It was like being tied to this other by some weird umbilicus. The gunslinger's body lay collapsed in front of it as before, but now he was looking down a long stretch of beach to the braided high-tide line where the monsters wandered about, growling and buzzing. Each time a wave broke all of them raised their claws. They looked like the audiences in those old documentary films where Hitler's speaking and everyone is throwing that old seig heil! salute like their lives depended on it―which they probably did, when you thought about it. Eddie could see the tortured markings of the gunslinger's progress in the sand.
   As Eddie watched, one of the horrors reached up, lightning quick, and snared a sea-bird which happened to swoop too close to the beach. The thing fell to the sand in two bloody, spraying chunks. The parts were covered by the shelled horrors even before they had stopped twitching. A single white feather drifted up. A claw snatched it down.
   Holy Christ, Eddie thought numbly. Look at thosesnappers.
   "Why do you keep looking back there?" the guy in charge had asked.
   "From time to time I need an antidote," Eddie said.
   "From what?"
   "Your face."

3

   The cab driver dropped Eddie at the building in Co-Op City , thanked him for the dollar tip, and drove off. Eddie just stood for a moment, zipper bag in one hand, his jacket hooked over a finger of the other and slung back over his shoulder. Here he shared a two-bedroom apartment with his brother. He stood for a moment looking up at it, a monolith with all the style and taste of a brick Saltines box. The many windows made it look like a prison cellblock to Eddie, and he found the view as depressing as Roland―the other― did amazing.
   Never, even as a child, did I see a building so high, Roland said. And there are so many of them!
   Yeah, Eddie agreed. We live like a bunch of ants in a hill. It may look good to you, but I'll tell you, Roland, it gets old. It gets old in a hurry.
   The blue car cruised by; the pizza truck turned in and approached. Eddie stiffened and felt Roland stiffen inside him. Maybe they intended to blow him away after all.
   The door? Roland asked. Shall we go through? Do you wish it? Eddie sensed Roland was ready―for anything―but the voice was calm.
   Not yet, Eddie said. Could be they only want to talk. But be ready.
   He sensed that was an unnecessary thing to say; he sensed that Roland was readier to move and act in his deepest sleep than Eddie would ever be in his most wide-awake moment.
   The pizza truck with the smiling kid on the side closed in. The passenger window rolled down and Eddie waited outside the entrance to his building with his shadow trailing out long in front of him from the toes of his sneakers, waiting to see which it would be―a face or a gun

4

   The second time Roland left him had been no more than five minutes after the Customs people had finally given up and let Eddie go.
   The gunslinger had eaten, but not enough; he needed to drink; most of all he needed medicine. Eddie couldn't yet help him with the medicine Roland really needed (although he suspected the gunslinger was right and Balazar could … if Balazar wanted to), but simple aspirin might at least knock down the fever that Eddie had felt when the gunslinger stepped close to sever the top part of the tape girdle. He paused in front of the newsstand in the main terminal.
   Do you have aspirin where you come from?
   I have never heard of it. Is it magic or medicine?
   Both, I guess.
   Eddie went into the newsstand and bought a tin of Extra-Strength Anacin. He went over to the snack bar and bought a couple of foot-long dogs and an extra-large Pepsi. He was putting mustard and catsup on the franks (Henry called the foot-longs Godzilla-dogs) when he suddenly remembered this stuff wasn't for him. For all he knew, Roland might not like mustard and catsup. For all he knew, Roland might be a veggie. For all he knew, this crap might kill Roland.
   Well, too late now, Eddie thought. When Roland spoke―when Roland acted― Eddie knew all this was really happening. When he was quiet, that giddy feeling that it must be a dream—an extraordinarily vivid dream he was having as he slept on Detta 901 inbound to Kennedy―insisted on creeping back.
   Roland had told him he could carry the food into his own world. He had already done something similar once, he said, when Eddie was asleep. Eddie found it all but impossible to believe, but Roland assured him it was true.
   Well, we still have to be damned careful, Eddie said. They've got two Customs guys watching me. Us. Whatever the hell I am now.
   I know we have to be careful, Roland returned. There aren't two; there are five. Eddie suddenly felt one of the weirdest sensations of his entire life. He did not move his eyes but felt them moved. Roland moved them.
   A guy in a muscle shirt talking into a telephone.
   A woman sitting on a bench, rooting through her purse.
   A young black guy who would have been spectacularly handsome except for the harelip which surgery had only partially repaired, looking at the tee-shirts in the newsstand Eddie had come from not long since.
   There was nothing wrong about any of them on top, but Eddie recognized them for what they were nonetheless and it was like seeing those hidden images in a child's puzzle, which, once seen, could never be unseen. He felt dull heat in his cheeks, because it had taken the other to point out what he should have seen at once. He had spotted only two. These three were a little better, but not that much; the eyes of the phone-man weren't blank, imagining the person he was talking to but aware, actually looking, and the place where Eddie was … that was the place to which the phone-man's eyes just happened to keep returning. The purse-woman didn't find what she wanted or give up but simply went on rooting endlessly. And the shopper had had a chance to look at every shirt on the spindle-rack at least a dozen times.
   All of a sudden Eddie felt five again, afraid to cross the street without Henry to hold his hand.
   Never mind, Roland said. And don't worry about the food, either. I've eaten bugs while they were still lively enough for some of them to go running down my throat.
   Yeah, Eddie replied, but this isNew York.
   He took the dogs and the soda to the far end of the counter and stood with his back to the terminal's main concourse. Then he glanced up in the left-hand corner. A convex mirror bulged there like a hypertensive eye. He could see all of his followers in it, but none was close enough to see the food and cup of soda, and that was good, because Eddie didn't have the slightest idea what was going to happen to it.
   Put the astin on the meat-things. Then hold everything in your hands.
   Aspirin.
   Good. Call It flutergork if you want, pr …Eddie. Just do it.
   He took the Anacin out of the stapled bag he had stuffed in his pocket, almost put it down on one of the hot-dogs, and suddenly realized that Roland would have problems just getting what Eddie thought of as the poison-proofing―off the tin, let alone opening it.
   He did it himself, shook three of the pills onto one of the napkins, debated, then added three more.
   Three now, three later, he said. Ifthere is a later.
   All right. Thank you.
   Now what?
   Hold all of it.
   Eddie had glanced into the convex mirror again. Two of the agents were strolling casually toward the snack bar, maybe not liking the way Eddie's back was turned, maybe smelling a little prestidigitation in progress and wanting a closer look. If something was going to happen, it better happen quick.
   He put his hands around everything, feeling the heat of the dogs in their soft white rolls, the chill of the Pepsi. In that moment he looked like a guy getting ready to carry a snack back to his kids … and then the stuff started to melt.
   He stared down, eyes widening, widening, until it felt to him that they must soon fall out and dangle by their stalks.
   He could see the hotdogs through the rolls. He could see the Pepsi through the cup, the ice-choked liquid curving to conform to a shape which could no longer be seen.
   Then he could see the red Formica counter through the foot-longs and the white wall through the Pepsi. His hands slid toward each other, the resistance between them growing less and less … and then they closed against each other, palm to palm. The food … the napkins … the Pepsi Cola … the six Anacin … all the things which had been between his hands were gone.
   Jesus jumped up and played the fiddle, Eddie thought numbly. He flicked his eyes up toward the convex mirror.
   The doorway was gone … just as Roland was gone from his mind.
   Eat hearty, my friend, Eddie thought … but was this weird alien presence that called itself Roland his friend? That was far from proved, wasn't it? He had saved Eddie's bacon, true enough, but that didn't mean he was a Boy Scout.
   All the same, he liked Roland. Feared him … but liked him as well.
   Suspected that in time he could love him, as he loved Henry.
   Eat well, stranger, he thought. Eat well, stay alive …and come back.
   Close by were a few mustard-stained napkins left by a previous customer. Eddie balled them up, tossed them in the trash-barrel by the door on his way out, and chewed air as if finishing a last bite of something. He was even able to manufacture a burp as he approached the black guy on his way toward the signs pointing the way to LUGGAGE and GROUND TRANSPORTATION.
   "Couldn't find a shirt you liked?" Eddie asked.
   "I beg your pardon?" the black guy turned from the American Airlines departures monitor he was pretending to study.
   "I thought maybe you were looking for one that said PLEASE FEED ME, I AM A U.S. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE," Eddie said, and walked on.
   As he headed down the stairs he saw the purse-rooter hurriedly snap her purse shut and get to her feet.
   Oh boy, this is gonna be like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
   It had been one fuck of an interesting day, and Eddie didn't think it was over yet.

5

   When Roland saw the lobster-things coming out of the waves again (their coming had nothing to do with tide, then; it was the dark that brought them), he left Eddie Dean to move himself before the creatures could find and eat him.
   The pain he had expected and was prepared for. He had lived with pain so long it was almost an old friend. He was appalled, however, by the rapidity with which his fever had increased and his strength decreased. If he had not been dying before, he most assuredly was now. Was there something powerful enough in the prisoner's world to keep that from happening? Perhaps. But if he didn't get some of it within the next six or eight hours, he thought it wouldn't matter. If things went much further, no medicine or magic in that world or any other that would make him well again.
   Walking was impossible. He would have to crawl.
   He was getting ready to start when his eye fixed upon the twisted band of sticky stuff and the bags of devil-powder. If he left the stuff here, the lobstrosities would almost surely tear the bags open. The sea-breeze would scatter the powder to the four winds. Which is where it belongs, the gunslinger thought grimly, but he couldn't allow it. When the time came, Eddie Dean would be in a long tub of trouble if he couldn't produce that powder. It was rarely possible to bluff men of the sort he guessed this Balazar to be. He would want to see what he had paid for, and until he saw it Eddie would have enough guns pointed at him to equip a small army.
   The gunslinger pulled the twisted rope of glue-string over to him and slung it over his neck. Then he began to work his way up the beach.
   He had crawled twenty yards―almost far enough to consider himself safe, he judged―when the horrible (yet cosmically funny) funny realization that he was leaving the doorway behind came to him. What in God's name was he going through this for?
   He turned his head and saw the doorway, not down on the beach, but three feet behind him. For a moment Roland could only stare, and realize what he would have known already, if not for the fever and the sound of the Inquisitors, drumming their ceaseless questions at Eddie, Where did you, how did you, why did you, when did you (questions that seemed to merge eerily with the questions of the scrabbling horrors that came crawling and wriggling out of the waves: Dad-a-chock? Dad-a-chum? Did-a-chick?), as mere delirium. Not so.
   Now I take it with me everywhere I go, he thought, just as he does. It comes with us everywhere now, following like a curse you can never get rid of.
   All of this felt so true as to be unquestionable … and so did one other thing.
   If the door between them should close, it would be closed forever.
   When that happens, Roland thought grimly, he must be on this side. With me.
   What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger! the man in black laughed. He seemed to have taken up permanent residence inside Roland's head. You have killed the boy; that was the sacrifice that enabled you to catch me and, I suppose, to create the door between worlds. Now you intend to draw your three, one by one, and condemn all of them to something you would not have for yourself: a lifetime in an alien world, where they may die as easily as animals in a zoo set free in a wild place.
   The Tower, Roland thought wildly. Once I've gotten to the Tower and done whatever it is I'm supposed to do there, accomplished whatever fundamental act of restoration or redemption for which I was meant, then perhaps they―
   But the shrieking laughter of the man in black, the man who was dead but lived on as the gunslinger's stained conscience, would not let him go on with the thought.
   Neither, however, could the thought of the treachery he contemplated turn him aside from his course.
   He managed another ten yards, looked back, and saw that even the largest of the crawling monsters would venture no further than twenty feet above the high-tide line. He had already managed three times that distance.
   It's well, then.
   Nothing is well, the man in black replied merrily, and you know it.
   Shut up, the gunslinger thought, and for a wonder, the voice actually did.
   Roland pushed the bags of devil-dust into the cleft between two rocks and covered them with handfuls of sparse saw-grass. With that done he rested briefly, head thumping like a hot bag of waters, skin alternately hot and cold, then rolled back through the doorway into that other world, that other body, leaving the increasing deadly infection behind for a little while.

6

   The second time he returned to himself, he entered a body so deeply asleep that he thought for a moment it had entered a comatose state … a state of such lowered bodily function that in moments he would feel his own consciousness start down a long slide into darkness.
   Instead, he forced his body toward wakefulness, punched and pummelled it out of the dark cave into which it had crawled. He made his heart speed up, made his nerves re-accept the pain that sizzled through his skin and woke his flesh to groaning reality.
   It was night now. The stars were out. The popkin-things Eddie had bought him were small bits of warmth in the chill.
   He didn't feel like eating them, but eat them he would. First, though …
   He looked at the white pills in his hand. Astin, Eddie called it. No, that wasn't quite right, but Roland couldn't pronounce the word as the prisoner had said it. Medicine was what it came down to. Medicine from that other world.
   Ifanything from your world is going to do for me, Prisoner, Roland thought grimly, I think it's more apt to be your potions than your popkins.
   Still, he would have to try it. Not the stuff he really needed―or so Eddie believed―but something which might reduce his fever.
   Three now, three later. If there is a later.
   He put three of the pills in his mouth, then pushed the cover―some strange white stuff that was neither paper nor glass but which seemed a bit like both―off the paper cup which held the drink, and washed them down.
   The first swallow amazed him so completely that for a moment he only lay there, propped against a rock, his eyes so wide and still and full of reflected starlight that he would surely have been taken for dead already by anyone who happened to pass by. Then he drank greedily, holding the cup in both hands, the rotted, pulsing hurt in the stumps of his fingers barely noticed in his total absorption with the drink.
   Sweet! Gods, such sweetness! Such sweetness! Such―
   One of the small flat icecubes in the drink caught in his throat. He coughed, pounded his chest, and choked it out. Now there was a new pain in his head: the silvery pain that comes with drinking something too cold too fast.
   He lay still, feeling his heart pumping like a runaway engine, feeling fresh energy surge into his body so fast he felt as if he might actually explode. Without thinking of what he was doing, he tore another piece from his shirt―soon it would be no more than a rag hanging around his neck―and laid it across one leg. When the drink was gone he would pour the ice into the rag and make a pack for his wounded hand. But his mind was elsewhere.
   Sweet! it cried out again and again, trying to get the sense of it, or to convince itself there was sense in it, much as Eddie had tried to convince himself of the other as an actual being and not some mental convulsion that was only another part of himself trying to trick him. Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!
   The dark drink was laced with sugar, even more than Marten―who had been a great glutton behind his grave ascetic's exterior―had put in his coffee in mornings and at 'Downers.
   Sugar …white …powder …
   The gunslinger's eyes wandered to the bags, barely visible under the grass he had tossed over them, and wondered briefly if the stuff in this drink and the stuff in the bags might be one and the same. He knew that Eddie had understood him perfectly over here, where they were two separate physical creatures; he suspected that if he had crossed bodily to Eddie's world (and he understood instinctively it could be done … although if the door should shut while he was there, he would be there forever, as Eddie would be here forever if their positions were reversed), he would have understood the language just as perfectly. He knew from being in Eddie's mind that the languages of the two worlds were similar to begin with. Similar, but not the same. Here a sandwich was a popkin. There to rustle was finding something to eat. So … was it not possible that the drug Eddie called cocaine was, in the gunslinger's world, called sugar?
   Reconsideration made it seem unlikely. Eddie had bought this drink openly, knowing that he was being watched by people who served the Priests of Customs. Further, Roland sensed he had paid comparatively little for it. Less, even, than for the popkins of meat. No, sugar was not cocaine, but Roland could not understand why anyone would want cocaine or any other illegal drug, for that matter, in a world where such a powerful one as sugar was so plentiful and cheap.
   He looked at the meat popkins again, felt the first stirrings of hunger … and realized with amazement and confused thankfulness that he felt better.
   The drink? Was that it? The sugar in the drink?
   That might be part of it―but a small part. Sugar could revive one's strength for awhile when it was flagging; this was something he had known since he was a child. But sugar could not dull pain or damp the fever-fire in your body when some infection had turned it into a furnace. All the same, that was exactly what had happened to him … was still happening.
   The convulsive shuddering had stopped. The sweat was drying on his brow. The fishhooks which had lined his throat seemed to be disappearing. Incredible as it was, it was also an inarguable fact, not just imagination or wishful thinking (in point of fact, the gunslinger had not been capable of such frivolity as the latter in unknown and unknowable decades). His missing fingers and toes still throbbed and roared, but he believed even these pains to be muted.
   Roland put his head back, closed his eyes and thanked God.
   God and Eddie Dean.
   Don't make the mistake of putting your heart near his hand, Roland, a voice from the deeper ranges of his mind spoke―this was not the nervous, tittery-bitchy voice of the man in black or the rough one of Cort; to the gunslinger it sounded like his father. You know that what he's done for you he has done out of his own personal need, just as you know that those men—Inquisitors though they may be―are partly or completely right about him. He is a weak vessel, and the reason they took him was neither false nor base. There is steel in him, I dispute it not. But there is weakness as well. He is like Hax, the cook. Hax poisoned reluctantly …but reluctance has never stilled the screams of the dying as their intestines rupture. And there is yet another reason to beware …
   But Roland needed no voice to tell him what that other reason was. He had seen that in Jake's eyes when the boy finally began to understand his purpose.
   Don't make the mistake of putting your heart near his hand.
   Good advice. You did yourself ill to feel well of those to whom ill must eventually be done.
   Remember your duty, Roland.
   "I've never forgotten it," he husked as the stars shone pitilessly down and the waves grated on the shore and the lobster monstrosities cried their idiot questions. "I'm damned for my duty. And why should the damned turn aside?"
   He began to eat the meat popkins which Eddie called "dogs."
   Roland didn't much care for the idea of eating dog, and these things tasted like gutter-leavings compared to the tooter-fish, but after that marvellous drink, did he have any right to complain? He thought not. Besides, it was late in the game to worry overmuch about such niceties.
   He ate everything and then returned to the place where now Eddie was, in some magical vehicle that rushed along a metal road filled with other such vehicles … dozens, maybe hundreds, and not a horse pulling a single one.

7

   Eddie stood ready as the pizza truck pulled up; Roland stood even more ready inside of him.
   Just another version of Diana's Dream, Roland thought. What was in the box? The golden bowl or the biter-snake? And just as she turns the key and puts her hands upon the lid she hears her mother calling "Wake up, Diana! It's time to milk!"
   Okay, Eddie thought. Which is it gonna be? The lady or the tiger?
   A man with a pale, pimply face and big buck teeth looked out of the pizza truck's passenger window. It was a face Eddie knew.
   "Hi, Col ," Eddie said without much enthusiasm. Beyond Col Vincent, sitting behind the wheel, was Old Double-Ugly, which was what Henry called Jack Andolini.
   But Henry never called him that to his face, Eddie thought. No, of course not. Calling Jack something like that to his face would be a wonderful way to get yourself killed. He was a huge man with a bulging caveman's forehead and a prothagonous jaw to match. He was related to Enrico Balazar by marriage … a niece, a cousin, some fucking thing. His gigantic hands clung to the wheel of the delivery truck like the hands of a monkey clinging to a branch. Coarse sprouts of hair grew from his ears. Eddie could only see one of those ears now because Jack Andolini remained in profile, never looking around.
   Old Double-Ugly. But not even Henry (who, Eddie had to admit, was not always the most perceptive guy in the world) had ever made the mistake of calling him Old Double-Stupid. Colin Vincent was no more than a glorified gofer. Jack, however, had enough smarts behind that Neanderthal brow to be Balazar's number one lieutenant. Eddie didn't like the fact that Balazar had sent a man of such importance. He didn't like it at all.
   "Hi, Eddie," Col said. "Heard you had some trouble."
   "Nothing I couldn't handle," Eddie said. He realized he was scratching first one arm then the other, one of the typical junkie moves he had tried so hard to keep away from while they had him in custody. He made himself stop. But Col was smiling, and Eddie felt an urge to slam a fist all the way through that smile and out the other side. He might have done it, too … except for Jack. Jack was still staring straight ahead, a man who seemed to be thinking his own rudimentary thoughts as he observed the world in the simple primary colors and elementary motions which were all a man of such intellect (or so you'd think, looking at him) could perceive. Yet Eddie thought Jack saw more in a single day than Col Vincent would in his whole life.
   "Well, good," Col said. "That's good."
   Silence. Col looked at Eddie, smiling, waiting for Eddie to start the Junkie Shuffle again, scratching, shifting from foot to foot like a kid who needs to go to the bathroom, waiting mostly for Eddie to ask what was up, and by the way, did they just happen to have any stuff on them?
   Eddie only looked back at him, not scratching now, not moving at all.
   A faint breeze blew a Ring-Ding wrapper across the parking lot. The scratchy sound of its skittering passage and the wheezy thump of the pizza truck's loose valves were the only sounds.
   Col 's knowing grin began to falter.
   "Hop in, Eddie," Jack said without looking around. "Let's take a ride."
   "Where?" Eddie asked, knowing.
   "Balazar's." Jack didn't look around. He flexed his hands on the wheel once. A large ring, solid gold except for the onyx stone which bulged from it like the eye of a giant insect, glittered on the third finger of his right as he did it. "He wants to know about his goods."
   "I have his goods. They're safe."
   "Fine. Then nobody has anything to worry about," Jack Andolini said, and did not look around.
   "I think I want to go upstairs first," Eddie said. "I want to change my clothes, talk to Henry―"
   "And get fixed up, don't forget that," Col said, and grinned his big yellow-toothed grin. "Except you got nothing to fix with, little chum."
   Dad-a-chum? the gunslinger thought in Eddie's mind, and both of them shuddered a little.
   Col observed the shudder and his smile widened. Oh, here it is after all, that smile said. The good old Junkie Shuffle. Had me worried there for a minute, Eddie. The teeth revealed by the smile's expansion were not an improvement on those previously seen.
   "Why's that?"
   "Mr. Balazar thought it would be better to make sure youguys had a clean place," Jack said without looking around. He went on observing the world an observer would have believed it impossible for such a man to observe. "In case anyone showed up."
   "People with a Federal search warrant, for instance," Col said. His face hung and leered. Now Eddie could feel Roland also wanting to drive a fist through the rotted teeth that made that grin so reprehensible, so somehow irredeemable. The unanimity of feeling cheered him up a little. "He sent in a cleaning service to wash the walls and vacuum the carpets and he ain't going to charge you a red cent for it, Eddie!"
   Now you'll ask what I've got, Col 's grin said. Oh yeah, now you'll ask, Eddie my boy. Because you may not love the candy-man, but you do love the candy, don't you? And now that you know Balazar's made sure your own private stash is gone―
   A sudden thought, both ugly and frightening, flashed through his mind. If the stash was gone―
   "Where's Henry?" he said suddenly, so harshly that Col drew back, surprised.
   Jack Andolini finally turned his head. He did so slowly, as if it was an act he performed only rarely, and at great personal cost. You almost expected to hear old oilless hinges creaking inside the thickness of his neck.
   "Safe," he said, and then turned his head back to its original position again, just as slowly.
   Eddie stood beside the pizza truck, fighting the panic trying to rise in his mind and drown coherent thought. Suddenly the need to fix, which he had been holding at bay pretty well, was overpowering. He had to fix. With a fix he could think, get himself under control―
   Quit it! Roland roared inside his head, so loud Eddie winced (and Col , mistaking Eddie's grimace of pain and surprise for another little step in the Junkie Shuffle, began to grin again). Quit it! I'll be all the goddamned control you need!
   You don't understand! He's my brother! He's my fucking brother! Balazar's got my brother!
   You speak as if it was a word I'd never heard before. Do you fear for him?
   Yes! Christ, yes!
   Then do what they expect. Cry. Pule and beg. Ask for this fix of yours. I'm sure they expect you to, and I'm sure they have it. Do all those things, make them sure of you, and you can be sure all your fears will be justified.
   I don't understand what you m―
   I mean if you show a yellow gut, you will go far toward getting your precious brother killed. Is that what you want?
   All right. I'll be cool. It may not sound that way, but I'll be cool.
   Is that what you call it? All right, then. Yes. Be cool.
   "This isn't the way the deal was supposed to go down," Eddie said, speaking past Col and directly at Jack Andolini's tufted ear. "This isn't why I took care of Balazar's goods and hung onto my lip while some other guy would have been puking out five names for every year off on the plea-bargain."
   "Balazar thought your brother would be safer with him," Jack said, not looking around. "He took him into protective custody."
   "Well good," Eddie said. "You thank him for me, and you tell him that I'm back, his goods are safe, and I can take care of Henry just like Henry always took care of me. You tell him I'll have a six-pack on ice and when Henry walks in the place we're going to split it and then we'll get in our car and come on into town and do the deal like it was supposed to be done. Like we talked about it."
   "Balazar wants to see you, Eddie," Jack said. His voice was implacable, immovable. His head did not turn. "Get in the truck."
   "Stick it where the sun doesn't shine, motherfucker," Eddie said, and started for the doors to his building.