“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. IfRoche is being that bridge.”
If 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 inthe 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 body-guards, Claudio Andolini, Jack’s brother, and ‘CimiDretto, 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 peo- ple 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 posses- sion 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 particu- larly goodpiece
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 spread- ing 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 Roche— 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