already,” he said. “What’s this new one, ‘Cimi?”
‘Cimi licked his lips. He didn’t like telling Da Boss bad news even under the best of
circumstances; when he looked like this . . .
“Well,” he said, and licked his lips. “You see—”
“Will you hurry the fuck up?”Balazar yelled.
19
The sandalwood grips of the revolver were so smooth that Eddie’s first act upon receiving
it was to nearly drop it on his toes. The thing was so big it looked prehistoric, so heavy he
knew he would have to lift it two-handed. The recoil, he thought, is apt to drive me right through the nearest wall. That’s if it fires at all. Yet there was some part of him that wanted to hold it, that responded to its perfectly expressed purpose, that sensed its dim and bloody
history and wanted to be part of it.
No one but the best ever held this baby in his hand,Eddie thought. Until now, at least.
“Are you ready?” Roland asked.
“No, but let’s do it,” Eddie said.
He gripped Roland’s left wrist with his left hand. Roland slid his hot right arm around
Eddie’s bare shoulders.
Together they stepped back through the doorway, from the windy darkness of the beach in
Roland’s dying world to the cool fluorescent glare of Balazar’s private bathroom in The
Leaning Tower.
Eddie blinked, adjusting his eyes to the light, and heard ‘Cimi Dretto in the other room.
“We got a problem,” ‘Cimi was saying. Don’t we all, Eddie thought, and then his eyes riveted on Balazar’s medicine chest. It was standing open. In his mind he heard Balazar
telling Jack to search the bathroom, and heard Andolini asking if there was any place in
there he wouldn’t know about. Balazar had paused before replying. There is a small panel
on the back wall of the medicine cabinet, he had said. Ikeep a few personal things in there.
Andolini had slid the metal panel open but had neglected to close it. “Roland!” he hissed.
Roland raised his own gun and pressed the barrel against his lips in a shushing gesture.
Eddie crossed silently to the medicine chest.
A few personal things—there was a bottle of supposito- ries, a copy of a blearily printed
magazine called Child’s Play (the cover depicting two naked girls of about eight engaged in a soul-kiss) . . . and eight or ten sample packages of Keflex. Eddie knew what Keflex was.
Junkies, prone as they were to infections both general and local, usually knew.
Keflex was an antibiotic.
“Oh, I got plenty of those already,” Balazar was saying. He sounded harried. “What’s this new one, ‘Cimi?”
If this doesn’t knock out whatever’s wrong with him nothing will,Eddie thought. He began
to grab the packages and went to stuff them into his pockets. He realized he had no pockets and uttered a harsh bark that wasn’t even close to laughter.
He began to dump them into the sink. He would have to pick them up later … if there was a later.
“Well,” ‘Cimi was saying, “you see—”
“Will you hurry the fuck up?”Balazar yelled.
“It’s the kid’s big brother,” ‘Cimi said, and Eddie froze with the last two packages of Keflex still in his hand, his head cocked. He looked more like the dog on the old RCA Victor
records than ever.
“What about him?” Balazar asked impatiently.
“He’s dead,” ‘Cimi said.
Eddie dropped the Keflex into the sink and turned toward Roland.
“They killed my brother,” he said.
20
Balazar opened his mouth to tell ‘Cimi not to bother him with a bunch of crap when he had
important things to worry about—like this impossible-to-shake feeling that the kid was
going to fuck him, Andolini or no Andolini—when he heard the kid as clearly as the kid
had no doubt heard him and ‘Cimi. “They killed my brother,” the kid said.
Suddenly Balazar didn’t care about his goods, about the unanswered questions, or anything
except bringing this situa- tion to a screeching halt before it could get any weirder.
“Kill him, Jack!”he shouted.
There was no response. Then he heard the kid say it again: “They killed my brother. They
killed Henry.”
Balazar suddenly knew— knew— it wasn’t Jack the kid was talking to.
“Get all the gentlemen,” he said to ‘Cimi. “All of them. We’re gonna burn his ass and when he’s dead we’re gonna take him in the kitchen and I’m gonna personally chop his head off.”
21
“They killed my brother,” the prisoner said. The gunslinger said nothing. He only watched and thought: The bottles. In the sink. That’s what I need, or what he thinks I need. The
packets. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.
From the other room: “Kill him, Jack!”
Neither Eddie nor the gunslinger took any notice of this.
“They killed my brother. They killed Henry.”
In the other room Balazar was now talking about taking Eddie’s head as a trophy. The
gunslinger found some odd comfort in this: not everything in this world was different from
his own, it seemed.
The one called ‘Cimi began shouting hoarsely for the others. There was an ungentlemanly
thunder of running feet.
“Do you want to do something about it, or do you just want to stand here?” Roland asked.
“Oh, I want to do something about it,” Eddie said, and raised the gunslinger’s revolver.
Although only moments ago he had believed he would need both hands to do it, he found
that he could do it easily.
“And what is it you want to do?” Roland asked, and his voice seemed distant to his own
ears. He was sick, full of fever, but what was happening to him now was the onset of a
different fever, one which was all too familiar. It was the fever that had overtaken him in
Tull. It was battle-fire, hazing all thought, leaving only the need to stop thinking and start
shooting.
“I want to go to war,” Eddie Dean said calmly.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Roland said, “but you are going to find out.
When we go through the door, you go right. I have to go left. My hand.” Eddie nodded.
They went to their war.
22
Balazar had expected Eddie, or Andolini, or both of them. He had not expected Eddie and
an utter stranger, a tall man with dirty gray-black hair and a face that looked as if it had
been chiseled from obdurate stone by some savage god. For a moment he was not sure
which way to fire.
‘Cimi, however, had no such problems. Da Boss was mad at Eddie. Therefore, he would
punch Eddie’s clock first and worry about the other catzarro later. ‘Cimi turned ponderously toward Eddie and pulled the trigger of his automatic three times. The casings jumped and
gleamed in the air. Eddie saw the big man turning and went into a mad slide along the floor,
whizzing along like some kid in a disco contest, a kid so jived-up he didn’t realize he’d left
his entire John Travolta outfit, underwear included, behind; he went with his wang
wagging and his bare knees first heating and then scorching as the friction built up. Holes
punched through plastic that was supposed to look like knotty pine just above him. Slivers
of it rained down on his shoulders and into his hair.
Don’t let me die naked and needing a fix, God,he prayed, knowing such a prayer was more
than blasphemous; it was an absurdity. Still he was unable to stop it. /’// die, but please, just let me have one more—
The revolver in the gunslinger’s left hand crashed. On the open beach it had been loud;
over here it was deafening.
“Oh Jeez!”‘Cimi Dretto screamed in a strangled, breathy voice. It was a wonder he could scream at all. His chest sud- denly caved in, as if someone had swung a sledgehammer at a
barrel. His white shirt began to turn red in patches, as if poppies were blooming on it. “Oh Jeez! Oh Jeez! Oh J—”
Claudio Andolini shoved him aside. ‘Cimi fell with a thud. Two of the framed pictures on
Balazar’s wall crashed down. The one showing Da Boss presenting the Sportsman of the
Year trophy to a grinning kid at a Police Athletic League banquet landed on ‘Cimi’s head.
Shattered glass fell on his shoulders.
“oh jeez”he whispered in a fainting little voice, and blood began to bubble from his lips.
Claudio was followed by Tricks and one of the men who had been waiting in the storage
room. Claudio had an auto- matic in each hand; the guy from the storage room had a
Remington shotgun sawed off so short that it looked like a derringer with a case of the
mumps; Tricks Postino was carry- ing what he called The Wonderful Rambo
Machine—this was an M-16 rapid-fire assault weapon.
” Where’s my brother, you fucking needle-freak?” Claudio screamed. “What’d you do to
Jack?” He could not have been terribly interested in an answer, because he began to fire with both weapons while he was still yelling. I’m dead, Eddie thought, and then Roland