8

   It was a short distance but he had gotten barely halfway when Andolini's hand clamped on his upper arm with the paralyzing force of a vise-grip. His breath as hot as a bull's on the back of Eddie's neck. He did all this in the time you would have thought, looking at him, it would have taken his brain to convince his hand to pull the door-handle up.
   Eddie turned around.
   Be cool, Eddie, Roland whispered.
   Cool, Eddie responded.
   "I could kill you for that," Andolini said. "No one tells me stick it up my ass, especially no shitass little junkie like you."
   "Kill shit!" Eddie screamed at him―but it was a calculated scream. A cool scream, if you could dig that. They stood there, dark figures in the golden horizontal light of late spring sundown in the wasteland of housing developments that is the Bronx's Co-Op City, and people heard the scream, and people heard the word kill, and if their radios were on they turned them up and if their radios were off they turned them on and then turned them up because it was better that way, safer.
   "Rico Balazar broke his word! I stood up for him and he didn't stand up for me! So I tell you to stick it up your fuckin ass, I tell him to stick it up his fuckin ass, I tell anybody I want to stick it up his fuckin ass!"
   Andolini looked at him. His eyes were so brown the color seemed to have leaked into his corneas, turning them the yellow of old parchment.
   "Itell President Reagan to stick it up his ass if he breaks his word to me, and fuck his fuckin rectal palp or whatever it is!"
   The words died away in echoes on brick and concrete. A single child, his skin very black against his white basketball shorts and high-topped sneakers, stood in the playground across the street, watching them, a basketball held loosely against his side in the crook of his elbow.
   "You done?" Andolini asked when the last of the echoes were gone.
   "Yes," Eddie said in a completely normal tone of voice.
   "Okay," Andolini said. He spread his anthropoid fingers and smiled … and when he smiled, two things happened simultaneously: the first was that you saw a charm that was so surprising it had a way of leaving people defenseless; the second was that you saw how bright he really was. How dangerously bright. "Now can we start over?"
   Eddie brushed his hands through his hair, crossed his arms briefly so he could scratch both arms at the same time, and said, "I think we better, because this is going nowhere."
   "Okay," Andolini said. "No one has said nothing, and no one has ranked out nobody.'' And without turning his head or breaking the rhythm of his speech he added, "Get back in the truck, dumb wit."
   Col Vincent, who had climbed cautiously out of the delivery truck through the door Andolini had left open retreated so fast he thumped his head. He slid across the seat and slouched in his former place, rubbing it and sulking.
   "You gotta understand the deal changed when the Customs people put the arm on you," Andolini said reasonably. "Balazar is a big man. He has interests to protect. People to protect. One of those people, it just so happens, is your brother Henry. You think that's bullshit? If you do, you better think about the way Henry is now."
   "Henry's fine," Eddie said, but he knew better and he couldn't keep the knowing out of his voice. He heard it and knew Jack Andolini heard it, too. These days Henry was always on the nod, it seemed like. There were holes in his shirts from cigarette burns. He had cut the shit out of his hand using the electric can-opener on a can of Calo for Potzie, their cat. Eddie didn't know how you cut yourself with an electric can-opener, but Henry had managed it. Sometimes the kitchen table would be powdery with Henry's leavings, or Eddie would find blackened curls of char in the bathroom sink.
   Henry, he would say, Henry, you gotta take care of this, this is getting out of hand, you're a bust walking around and waiting to happen.
   Yeah, okay, little brother, Henry would respond, zero perspiration, I got it all under control, but sometimes, looking at Henry's ashy face and burned out eyes, Eddie knew Henry was never going to have anything under control again.
   What he wanted to say to Henry and couldn't had nothing to do with Henry getting busted or getting them both busted. What he wanted to say was Henry, it's like you're looking for a room to die in. That's how it looks to me, and I want you to fucking quit it. Because if you die, what did I live for?
   "Henry isn't fine," Jack Andolini said. "He needs someone to watch out for him. He needs―what's that song say? A bridge over troubled waters. That's what Henry needs. A bridge over troubled waters. IlRoche is being that bridge."
   Il Roche is a bridge to hell, Eddie thought. Out loud he said, "That's where Henry is? At Balazar's place?"
   "Yes."
   "I give him his goods, he gives me Henry?"
   "And your goods," Andolini said, "don't forget that."
   "The deal goes back to normal, in other words."
   "Right."
   "Now tell me you think that's really gonna happen. Come on, Jack. Tell me. I wanna see if you can do it with a straight face. And if you can do it with a straight face, I wanna see how much your nose grows."
   "I don't understand you, Eddie."
   "Sure you do. Balazar thinks I've got his goods? If he thinks that, he must be stupid, and I know he's not stupid."
   "I don't know what he thinks," Andolini said serenely. "It's not my job to know what he thinks. He knows you had his goods when you left the Islands, he knows Customs grabbed you and then let you go, he knows you're here and not on your way to Riker's, he knows his goods have to be somewhere."
   "And he knows Customs is still all over me like a wetsuit on a skin-diver, because you know it, and you sent him some kind of coded message on the truck's radio. Something like 'Double cheese, hold the anchovies,' right, Jack?"
   Jack Andolini said nothing and looked serene.
   "Only you were just telling him something he already knew. Like connecting the dots in a picture you can already see what it is."
   Andolini stood in the golden sunset light that was slowly turning furnace orange and continued to look serene and continued to say nothing at all.
   "He thinks they turned me. He thinks they're running me. He thinks I might be stupid enough to run. I don't exactly blame him. I mean, why not? A smackhead will do anything. You want to check, see if I'm wearing a wire?"
   "I know you're not," Andolini said. "I got something in the van. It's like a fuzz-buster, only it picks up short-range radio transmissions. And for what it's worth, I don't think you're running for the Feds."
   "Yeah?"
   "Yeah. So do we get in the van and go into the city or what?"
   "Do I have a choice?"
   No, Roland said inside his head.
   "No," Andolini said.
   Eddie went back to the van. The kid with the basketball was still standing across the street, his shadow now so long it was a gantry.
   "Get out of here, kid," Eddie said. "You were never here, you never saw nothing or no one. Fuck off."
   The kid ran.
   Col was grinning at him.
   "Push over, champ," Eddie said.
   "I think you oughtta sit in the middle, Eddie."
   "Push over," Eddie said again. Col looked at him, then looked at Andolini, who did not look at him but only pulled the driver's door closed and looked serenely straight ahead like Buddha on his day off, leaving them to work the seating arrangements out for themselves. Col glanced back at Eddie's face and decided to push over.
   They headed into New York―and although the gunslinger (who could only stare wonderingly at spires even greater and more graceful, bridges that spanned a wide river like steel cobwebs, and rotored air-carriages that hovered like strange man-made insects)  did not know it, the place they were headed for was the Tower.

9

   Like Andolini, Enrico Balazar did not think Eddie Dean was running for the Feds; like Andolini, Balazar knew it.
   The bar was empty. The sign on the door read CLOSED TONITE ONLY. Balazar sat in his office, waiting for Andolini and Col Vincent to arrive with the Dean kid. His two personal bodyguards, Claudio Andolini, Jack's brother, and 'Cimi Dretto, were with him. They sat on the sofa to the left of Balazar's large desk, watching, fascinated, as the edifice Balazar was building grew. The door was open. Beyond the door was a short hallway. To the right it led to the back of the bar and the little kitchen beyond, where a few simple pasta dishes were prepared. To the left was the accountant's office and the storage room. In the accountant's office three more of Balazar's "gentlemen"―this was how they were known—were playing Trivial Pursuit with Henry Dean.
   "Okay," George Biondi was saying, "here's an easy one, Henry. Henry? You there, Henry? Earth to Henry, Earth people need you. Come in, Henry. I say again: come in, H―"
   "I'm here, I'm here," Henry said. His voice was the slurry, muddy voice of a man who is still asleep telling his wife he's awake so she'll leave him alone for another five minutes.
   "Okay. The category is Arts and Entertainment. The question is … Henry? Don't you fuckin nod off on me, asshole!"
   "I'm not!" Henry cried back querulously.
   "Okay. The question is, 'What enormously popular novel by William Peter Blatty, set in the posh Washington D.C. suburb of Georgetown , concerned the demonic possession of a young girl?'"
   "Johnny Cash," Henry replied.
   "Jesus Christ!" Tricks Postino yelled. "That's what you say to every thin! Johnny Cash, that's what you say to fuckin everythin!"
   "Johnny Cash is everything," Henry replied gravely, and there was a moment of silence palpable in its considering surprise … then a gravelly burst of laughter not just from the men in the room with Henry but the two other "gentlemen" sitting in the storage room.
   "You want me to shut the door, Mr. Balazar?" 'Cimi asked quietly.
   "No, that's fine," Balazar said. He was second-generation Sicilian, but there was no trace of accent in his speech, nor was it the speech of a man whose only education had been in the streets. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the business, he had finished high school. Had in fact done more: for two years he had gone to business school―NYU. His voice, like his business methods, was quiet and cultured and American, and this made his physical aspect as deceiving as Jack Andolini's. People hearing his clear, unaccented American voice for the first time almost always looked dazed, as if hearing a particularly good piece of ventriloquism. He looked like a farmer or innkeeper or small-time mafioso who had been successful more by virtue of being at the right place at the right time than because of any brains. He looked like what the wiseguys of a previous generation had called a "Mustache Pete." He was a fat man who dressed like a peasant. This evening he wore a plain white cotton shirt open at the throat (there were spreading sweat-stains beneath the arms) and plain gray twill pants. On his fat sockless feet were brown loafers, so old they were more like slippers than shoes. Blue and purple varicose veins squirmed on his ankles.
   'Cimi and Claudio watched him, fascinated.
   In the old days they had called him IlRoche― The Rock. Some of the old-timers still did. Always in the right-hand top drawer of his desk, where other businessmen might keep pads, pens, paper-clips, things of that sort, Enrico Balazar kept three decks of cards. He did not play games with them, however.
   He built with them.
   He would take two cards and lean them against each other, making an A without the horizontal stroke. Next to it he would make another A-shape. Over the top of the two he would lay a single card, making a roof. He would make A after A, overlaying each, until his desk supported a house of cards. You bent over and looked in, you saw something that looked like a hive of triangles. 'Cimi had seen these houses fall over hundreds of times (Claudio had also seen it happen from time to time, but not so frequently, because he was thirty years younger than 'Cimi, who expected to soon retire with his bitch of a wife to a farm they owned in northern New Jersey, where he would devote all his time to his garden … and to outliving the bitch he had married; not his mother-in-law, he had long since given up any wistful notion he might once have had of eating fettucini at the wake of La Monstra, La Monstra was eternal, but for outliving the bitch there was at least some hope; his father had had a saying which, when translated, meant something like "God pisses down the back of your neck every day but only drowns you once," and while 'Cimi wasn't completely sure he thought it meant God was a pretty good guy after all, and so he could hope to outlive the one if not the other), but had only seen Balazar put out of temper by such a fall on a single occasion. Mostly it was something errant that did it—someone closing a door hard in another room, or a drunk stumbling against a wall; there had been times when 'Cimi saw an edifice Mr. Balazar (whom he still called Da Boss, like a character in a Chester Gould comic strip) had spent hours building fall down because the bass on the juke was too loud. Other times these airy constructs fell down for no perceptible reason at all. Once―this was a story he had told at least five thousand times, and one of which every person he knew (with the exception of himself) had tired―Da Boss had looked up at him from the ruins and said: "You see this 'Cimi? For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all."
   Carlocimi Dretto thought this the most profound statement of the human condition he had ever heard.
   That one time Balazar had been put out of temper by the collapse of one of his structures had been twelve, maybe fourteen years ago. There was a guy who came in to see him about booze. A guy with no class, no manners. A guy who smelled like he took a bath once a year whether he needed it or not. A mick, in other words. And of course it was booze. With micks it was always booze, never dope. And this mick, he thought what was on Da Boss's desk was a joke. "Make a wish!" he yelled after Da Boss had explained to him, in the way one gentleman explains to another, why it was impossible for them to do business. And then the mick, one of those guys with curly red hair and a complexion so white he looked like he had TB or something, one of those guys whose names started with O and then had that little curly mark between the O and the real name, had blown on Da Boss's desk, like a nino blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, and cards flew everywhere around Balazar's head, and Balazar had opened the left top drawer in his desk, the drawer where other businessmen might keep their personal stationery or their private memos or something like that, and he had brought out a .45, and he had shot the Mick in the head, and Balazar's expression never changed, and after 'Cimi and a guy named Truman Alexander who had died of a heart attack four years ago had buried the Mick under a chickenhouse somewhere outside of Sedonville, Connecticut, Balazar had said to 'Cimi, "It's up to men to build things, paisan. It's up to God to blow them down. You agree?"
   "Yes, Mr. Balazar," 'Cimi had said. He did agree.
   Balazar had nodded, pleased. "You did like I said? You put him someplace where chickens or ducks or something like that could shit on him?"
   "Yes."
   "That's very good," Balazar said calmly, and took a fresh deck of cards from the right top drawer of his desk.
   One level was not enough for Balazar , IlRoche. Upon the roof of the first level he would build a second, only not quite so wide; on top of the second a third; on top of the third a fourth. He would go on, but after the fourth level he would have to stand to do so. You no longer had to bend much to look in, and when you did what you saw wasn't rows of triangle shapes but a fragile, bewildering, and impossibly lovely hall of diamond-shapes. You looked in too long, you felt dizzy. Once 'Cimi had gone in the Mirror Maze at Coney and he had felt like that. He had never gone in again.
   'Cimi said (he believed no one believed him; the truth was no one cared one way or the other) he had once seen Balazar build something which was no longer a house of cards but a tower of cards, one which stood nine levels high before it collapsed. That no one gave a shit about this was something 'Cimi didn't know because everyone he told affected amazement because he was close to Da Boss. But they would have been amazed if he had had the words to describe it―how delicate it had been, how it reached almost three quarters of the way from the top of the desk to the ceiling, a lacy construct of jacks and deuces and kings and tens and Big Akers, a red and black configuration of paper diamonds standing in defiance of a world spinning through a universe of incoherent motions and forces; a tower that seemed to 'Cimi's amazed eyes to be a ringing denial of all the unfair paradoxes of life.
   If he had known how, he would have said: I looked at what he built, and to me it explained the stars.

10

   Balazar knew how everything would have to be.
   The Feds had smelled Eddie―maybe he had been stupid to send Eddie in the first place, maybe his instincts were failing him, but Eddie had seemed somehow so right, so perfect. His uncle, the first man he had worked for in the business, said there were exceptions to every rule but one: Never trust a junkie. Balazar had said nothing―it was not the place of a boy of fifteen to speak, even if only to agree―but privately had thought the only rule to which there was no exception was that there were some rules for which that was not true.
   But if Tio Verone were alive today, Balazar thought, he would laugh at you and say look, Rico, you always were too smart for your own good, you knew the rules, you kept your mouth shut when it was respectful to keep it shut, but you always had that snot look in your eyes. You always knew too much about how smart you were, and so you finally fell into the pit of your own pride, just like I always knew you would.
   He made an A shape and overlaid it.
   They had taken Eddie and held him awhile and then let him go.
   Balazar had grabbed Eddie's brother and the stash they shared. That would be enough to bring him … and he wanted Eddie.
   He wanted Eddie because it had only been two hours, and two hours was wrong.
   They had questioned him at Kennedy, not at 43rd Street , and that was wrong, too. That meant Eddie had succeeded in ditching most or all of the coke.
   Or had he?
   He thought. He wondered.
   Eddie had walked out of Kennedy two hours after they took him off the plane. That was too short a time for them to have sweated it out of him and too long for them to have decided he was clean, that some stew had made a rash mistake.
   He thought. He wondered.
   Eddie's brother was a zombie, but Eddie was still smart, Eddie was still tough. He wouldn't have turned in just two hours … unless it was his brother. Something about his brother.
   But still, how come no 43rd Street ? How come no Customs van, the ones that looked like Post Office trucks except for the wire grilles on the back windows? Because Eddie really had done something with the goods? Ditched them? Hidden them?
   Impossible to hide goods on an airplane.
   Impossible to ditch them.
   Of course it was also impossible to escape from certain prisons, rob certain banks, beat certain raps. But people did. Harry Houdini had escaped from strait-jackets, locked trunks, fucking bank vaults. But Eddie Dean was no Houdini.
   Was he?
   He could have had Henry killed in the apartment, could have had Eddie cut down on the L.I.E. or, better yet, also in the apartment, where it would look to the cops like a couple of junkies who got desperate enough to forget they were brothers and killed each other. But it would leave too many questions unanswered.
   He would get the answers here, prepare for the future or merely satisfy his curiosity, depending on what the answers were, and then kill both of them.
   A few more answers, two less junkies. Some gain and no great loss.
   In the other room, the game had gotten around to Henry again. "Okay, Henry," George Biondi said. "Be careful, because this one is tricky. The category is Geography. The question is, 'What is the only continent where kangaroos are a native form of life?' "
   A hushed pause.
   "Johnny Cash," Henry said, and this was followed by a bull-throated roar of laughter.
   The walls shook.
   'Cimi tensed, waiting for Balazar's house of cards (which would become a tower only if God, or the blind forces that ran the universe in His name, willed it), to fall down.
   The cards trembled a bit. If one fell, all would fall.
   None did.
   Balazar looked up and smiled at 'Cimi. "Piasan," he said. "II Dio est bono; il Dio est malo; temps est poco-poco; tu est une grande peeparollo."
   'Cimi smiled. "Si, senor," he said. "lo grande peeparollo; lo va fanculo por tu."
   "None va fanculo, catzarro," Balazar said. "Eddie Dean va fanculo." He smiled gently, and began on the second level of his tower of cards.

11

   When the van pulled to the curb near Balazar's place, Col Vincent happened to be looking at Eddie. He saw something impossible. He tried to speak and found himself unable. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and all he could get out was a muffled grunt.
   He saw Eddie's eyes change from brown to blue.

12

   This time Roland made no conscious decision to come forward. He simply leaped without thinking, a movement as involuntary as rolling out of a chair and going for his guns when someone burst into a room.
   The Tower! he thought fiercely. It's the Tower, my God, the Tower is in the sky, the Tower! I see the Tower in the sky, drawn in lines of red fire! Cuthbert! Alan! Desmond! The Tower! The T―
   But this time he felt Eddie struggling—not against him, but trying to talk to him, trying desperately to explain something to him.
   The gunslinger retreated, listening―listening desperately, as above a beach some unknown distance away in space and time, his mindless body twitched and trembled like the body of a man experiencing a dream of highest ecstasy or deepest horror.

13

   Sign! Eddie was screaming into his own head … and into the head of that other.
   It's a sign, just a neon sign, I don't know what tower it is you're thinking about but this is just a bar, Balazar's place, TheLeaningTower, he named it that after the one inPisa! It's just a sign that's supposed to look like the fuckingLeaningTowerofPisa! Let up! Let up! You want to get us killed before we have a chance to go at them?
   Pitsa? the gunslinger replied doubtfully, and looked again.
   A sign. Yes, all right, he could see now: it was not the Tower, but a Signpost. It leaned to one side, and there were many scalloped curves, and it was a marvel, but that was all. He could see now that the sign was a thing made of tubes, tubes which had somehow been filled with glowing red swamp-fire. In some places there seemed to be less of it than others; in those places the lines of fire pulsed and buzzed.
   He now saw letters below the tower which had been made of shaped tubes; most of them were Great Letters. TOWER he could read, and yes, LEANING. LEANING TOWER . The first word was three letters, the first T, the last E, the middle one which he had never seen.
   Tre? he asked Eddie.
   THE. It doesn't matter. Do you see it's just a sign? That's what matters!
   Isee, the gunslinger answered, wondering if the prisoner really believed what he was saying or was only saying it to keep the situation from spilling over as the tower depicted in those lines of fire seemed about to do, wondering if Eddie believed any sign could be a trivial thing.
   Then ease off! Do you hear me? Ease off!
   Be cool? Roland asked, and both felt Roland smile a little in Eddie's mind.
   Be cool, right. Let me handle things.
   Yes. All right. He would let Eddie handle things.
   For awhile.

14

   Col Vincent finally managed to get his tongue off the roof of his mouth. "Jack." His voice was as thick as shag carpet.
   Andolini turned off the motor and looked at him, irritated.
   "His eyes."
   "What about his eyes?"
   "Yeah, what about my eyes?" Eddie asked.
   Col looked at him.
   The sun had gone down, leaving nothing in the air but the day's ashes, but there was light enough for Col to see that Eddie's eyes were brown again.
   If they had ever been anything else.
   You saw it, part of his mind insisted, but had he? Col was twenty-four, and for the last twenty-one of those years no one had really believed him trustworthy. Useful sometimes. Obedient almost always … if kept on a short leash. Trustworthy? No. Col had eventually come to believe it himself.
   "Nothing," he muttered.
   "Then let's go," Andolini said.
   They got out of the pizza van. With Andolini on their left and Vincent on their right, Eddie and the gunslinger walked into The Leaning Tower.

CHAPTER 5
SHOWDOWN AND SHOOT-OUT

1

   In a blues tune from the twenties Billie Holiday, who would one day discover the truth for herself, sang: "Doctor tole me daughter you got to quit it fast/Because one more rocket gonna be your last." Henry Dean's last rocket went up just five minutes before the van pulled up in front of The Leaning Tower and his brother was herded inside.
   Because he was on Henry's right, George Biondi―known to his friends as "Big George" and to his enemies as "Big Nose"―asked Henry's questions. Now, as Henry sat nodding and blinking owlishly over the board, Tricks Postino put the die in a hand which had already gone the dusty color that results in the extremities after long-term heroin addiction, the dusty color which is the precursor of gangrene.
   "Your turn, Henry," Tricks said, and Henry let the die fall from his hand.
   When he went on staring into space and showed no intention of moving his game piece, Jimmy Haspio moved it for him. "Look at this, Henry," he said. "You got a chance to score a piece of the pie."
   "Reese's Pieces," Henry said dreamily, and then looked around, as if awakening. "Where's Eddie?"
   "He'll be here pretty soon," Tricks soothed him. "Just play the game."
   "How about a fix?"
   "Play the game, Henry."
   "Okay, okay, stop leaning on me."
   "Don't lean on him," Kevin Blake said to Jimmy.
   "Okay, I won't," Jimmy said.
   "You ready?" George Biondi said, and gave the others an enormous wink as Henry's chin floated down to his breastbone and then slowly rose once more―it was like watching a soaked log not quite ready to give in and sink for good.
   "Yeah," Henry said. "Bring it on."
   "Bring it on!" Jimmy Haspio cried happily.
   "You bring that fucker!" Tricks agreed, and they all roared with laughter (in the other room Balazar's edifice, now three levels high, trembled again, but did not fall).
   "Okay, listen close," George said, and winked again. Although Henry was on a Sports category, George announced the category was Arts and Entertainment. "What popular country and western singer had hits with 'A Boy Named Sue,' 'Folsom Prison Blues,' and numerous other shitkicking songs?"
   Kevin Blake, who actually could add seven and nine (if you gave him poker chips to do it with), howled with laughter, clutching his knees and nearly upsetting the board.
   Still pretending to scan the card in his hand, George continued: "This popular singer is also known as The Man in Black. His first name means the same as a place you go to take a piss and his last name means what you got in your wallet unless you're a fucking needle freak."
   There was a long expectant silence.
   "Walter Brennan," Henry said at last.
   Bellows of laughter. Jimmy Haspio clutched Kevin Blake. Kevin punched Jimmy in the shoulder repeatedly. In Balazar's office, the house of cards which was now becoming a tower of cards trembled again.
   "Quiet down!" 'Cimi yelled. "Da Boss is buildin!"
   They quieted at once.
   "Right," George said. "You got that one right, Henry. It was a toughie, but you came through."
   "Always do," Henry said. "Always come through in the fuckin clutch. How about a fix?"
   "Good idea!" George said, and took a Roi-Tan cigar box from behind him. From it he produced a hypo. He stuck it into the scarred vein above Henry's elbow, and Henry's last rocket took off.

2

   The pizza van's exterior was grungy, but underneath the road-filth and spray-paint was a high-tech marvel the DEA guys would have envied. As Balazar had said on more than one occasion, you couldn't beat the bastards unless you could compete with the bastards―unless you could match their equipment. It was expensive stuff, but Balazar's side had an advantage: they stole what the DEA had to buy at grossly inflated prices. There were electronics company employees all the way down the Eastern Seaboard willing to sell you top secret stuff at bargain basement prices. These catzzaroni (Jack Andolini called them Silicon Valley Coke-Heads) practically threw the stuff at you.
   Under the dash was a fuzz-buster; a UHF police radar jammer; a high-range/high frequency radio transmissions detector; an h-r/hf jammer; a transponder-amplifier that would make anyone trying to track the van by standard triangulation methods decide it was simultaneously in Connecticut, Harlem, and Montauk Sound; a radio-telephone … and a small red button which Andolini pushed as soon as Eddie Dean got out of the van.
   In Balazar's office the intercom uttered a single short buzz.
   "That's them," he said. "Claudio, let them in. 'Cimi, you tell everyone to dummy up. So far as Eddie Dean knows, no one's with me but you and Claudio. 'Cimi, go in the storeroom with the other gentlemen."
   They went, 'Cimi turning left, Claudio Andolini going right.
   Calmly, Balazar started on another level of his edifice.

3

   Just let me handle it, Eddie said again as Claudio opened the door.
   Yes, the gunslinger said, but remained alert, ready to come forward the instant it seemed necessary.
   Keys rattled. The gunslinger was very aware of odors―old sweat from Col Vincent on his right, some sharp, almost acerbic aftershave from Jack Andolini on his left, and, as they stepped into the dimness, the sour tang of beer.
   The smell of beer was all he recognized. This was no tumble-down saloon with sawdust on the floor and planks set across sawhorses for a bar—it was as far from a place like Sheb's in Tull as you could get, the gunslinger reckoned. Glass gleamed mellowly everywhere, more glass in this one room than he had seen in all the years since his childhood, when supply-lines had begun to break down, partially because of interdicting raids carried out by the rebel forces of Parson, the Good Man, but mostly, he thought, simply because the world was moving on. Farson had been a symptom of that great movement, not the cause.
   He saw their reflections everywhere―on the walls, on the glass-faced bar and the long mirror behind it; he could even see them reflected as curved miniatures in the graceful bell-shapes of wine glasses hung upside down above the bar … glasses as gorgeous and fragile as festival ornaments.
   In one corner was a sculpted creation of lights that rose and changed, rose and changed, rose and changed. Gold to green; green to yellow; yellow to red; red to gold again. Written across it in Great Letters was a word he could read but which meant nothing to him: ROCKOLA.
   Never mind. There was business to be done here. He was no tourist; he must not allow himself the luxury of behaving like one, no matter how wonderful or strange these things might be.
   The man who had let them in was clearly the brother of the man who drove what Eddie called the van (as in vanguard, Roland supposed), although he was much taller and perhaps five years younger. He wore a gun in a shoulder-rig.
   "Where's Henry?" Eddie asked. "I want to see Henry." He raised his voice. "Henry! Hey, Henry!"
   No reply; only silence in which the glasses hung over the bar seemed to shiver with a delicacy that was just beyond the range of a human ear.
   "Mr. Balazar would like to speak to you first."
   "You got him gagged and tied up somewhere, don't you?" Eddie asked, and before Claudio could do more than open his mouth to reply, Eddie laughed. "No, what am I thinking about―you got him stoned, that's all. Why would you bother with ropes and gags when all you have to do to keep Henry quiet is needle him? Okay. Take me to Balazar. Let's get this over with."