” Shoes off and pants off! Now! Now! You better have em off before I get to thirty, or you’re dead.
Onetwothreefourfi—”
Again, the speed of the count leaves no time for consideration, let alone remonstrance. George/Nort starts to sit down and Voice Number Two says: “Sit down and we’ll kill you. ”
And so the Hitler Brothers stagger around the knapsack, the Polaroid, the gun, and the flashlight like spastic cranes, pulling off their footgear while Voice Number One runs his suicidally rapid count. The shoes come off and the pants go down. George is a boxers guy while Lennie favors briefs of the pee-stained variety.
There is no sign of Lennie’s hardon; Lennie’s hardon has decided to take the rest of the night off.
“Now get out,” Voice Number One says.
George faces into the light. His Yankees sweatshirt hangs down over his underwear shorts, which billow almost to his knees. He’s still wearing his fanny-pack. His calves are heavily muscled, but they are trembling.
And George’s face is long with sudden dismayed realization.
” Listen, you guys, ” he says, “if we go out of here without finishing this guy, they’ll kill us. These are very bad
— ”
“If you schmucks aren’t out of here by the time I get to ten, ” says Voice Number One, “I’ll kill you myself.”
To which Voice Number Two adds, with a kind of hysterical contempt: “Gai cocknif en yom, you cowardly motherfuckers! Stay, get shot, who cares?”
Later, after repeating this phrase to a dozen Jews who only shake their heads in bewilderment, Callahan will happen on an elderly fellow in Topeka who translates gai cocknif en yom for him. It means go shit in the
ocean.
Voice Number One starts reeling them off again: “Onetwothree-four—”
George/Nort and Lennie/Bill exchange a cartoon look of indecision, then bolt for the door in their underwear. The big searchlight turns to follow them. They are out; they are gone.
” Follow, ” Voice Number One says gruffly to his partner. “If they get the idea to turn back— ”
” Yeahyeah, ” says Voice Number Two, and he’s gone.
The brilliant light clicks off. “Turn over on your stomach,” says Voice Number One.
Callahan tries to tell him he doesn’t think he can, that his balls now feel roughly the size of teapots, but all that comes from his mouth is mush, because of his broken jaw. He compromises by rolling over on his left side as far as he can.
” Hold still,” says Voice Number One. “I don’t want to cut you.” It’s not the voice of a man who does stuff like this for a living. Even in his current state, Callahan can tell that. The guy’s breathing in rapid wheezes that sometimes catch in an alarming way and then start up again. Callahan wants to thank him. It’s one thing to save a stranger if you’re a cop or a fireman or a lifeguard, he supposes. Quite another when you’re just an ordinary member of the greater public. And that’s what his rescuer is, he thinks, both his rescuers, although how they came so well prepared he doesn’t know. How could they know the Hitler Brothers ‘ names ? And exactly where were they waiting? Did they come in from the street, or were they in the abandoned laundrymat the whole time? Other stuff Callahan doesn’t know. And doesn’t really care. Because someone saved, someone saved, someone saved his life tonight, and that’s the big thing, the only thing that matters.
George and Lennie almost had their hooks in him, din’t they, dear, but the cavalry came at the last minute, just like in a John Wayne movie.
What Callahan wants to do is thank this guy. Where Callahan wants to be is safe in an ambulance and on his way to the hospital before the punks blindside the owner of Voice Number Two outside, or the owner of Voice Number One has an excitement-induced heart attack. He tries and more mush comes out of his mouth.
Drunkspeak, what Rowan used to call gubbish. It sounds like fann-ou.
His hands are cut free, then his feet. The guy doesn’t have a heart attack. Callahan rolls over onto his back again, and sees a pudgy white hand holding the scalpel. On the third finger is a signet ring. It shows an open book. Below it are the words Ex Libris. Then the searchlight goes on again and Callahan raises an arm over his eyes. “Christ, man, why areyou doing that?”It comes out Cry-mah, I-oo oonnat, but the owner of Voice Number One seems to understand.
“I should think that would be obvious, my wounded friend, ” he says. “Should we meet again, I’d like it to be for the first time. If we pass on the street, I would as soon go unrecognized. Safer that way. ”
Gritting footsteps. The light is backing away.
“We’re going to call an ambulance from the pay phone across the street—”
“No! Don’t do that! What if they come back?” In his quite genuine terror, these words come out with perfect clarity.
” We’ll be watching,” says Voice Number One. The wheeze is fading now. The guy’s getting himself back under control. Good for him. “I think it is possible that they’ll come back, the big one was really quite distressed,
but if the Chinese are correct, I’m now responsible for your life. It’s a responsibility I intend to live up to.
Should they reappear, I’ll throw a bullet at them. Not over their heads, either. ” The shape pauses. He looks like a fairly big man himself. Got a gut on him, that much is for sure. “Those were the Hitler Brothers, my friend. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“Yes, ” Callahan whispers. “And you won’t tell me who you are ? ”
“Better you not know,” says Mr. Ex Libris.
“Do you know who I am?”
A pause. Gritting steps. Mr. Ex Libris is now standing in the doorway of the abandoned laundrymat. “No, ”
he says. Then, “A priest. It doesn’t matter.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Wait for the ambulance,” says Voice Number One. “Don’t try to move on your own. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you may have internal injuries.”
Then he’s gone. Callahan lies on the floor, smelling bleach and detergent and sweet departed fabric softener.
U wash or we wash, he thinks, either way it all comes kleen. His testicles throb and swell. His jaw throbs and there’s swelling there, too. He can feel his whole face tightening as the flesh puffs up. He lies there and waits for the ambulance and life or the return of the Hitler Brothers and death. For the lady or the tiger. For Diana’s treasure or the deadly biter-snake. And some interminable, uncountable time later, red pulses of light wash across the dusty floor and he knows this time it’s the lady. This time it’s the treasure.
This time it’s life.
ELEVEN
“And that,” Callahan said, “is how I ended up in Room 577 of that same hospital that same night.”
Susannah looked at him, wide-eyed. “Are you serious?”
“Serious as a heart attack,” he said. “Rowan Magruder died, I got the living shit beaten out of me, and they slammed me back into the same bed. They must have had just about enough time to re-make it, and until the lady came with the morphine-cart and put me out, I lay there wondering if maybe Magruder’s sister might not come back and finish what the Hitler Brothers had started. But why should such things surprise you? There are dozens of these odd crossings in both our stories, do ya. Have you not thought about the coincidence of Calla Bryn Sturgis and my own last name, for instance?”
“Sure we have,” Eddie said.
“What happened next?” Roland asked.
Callahan grinned, and when he did, the gunslinger realized the two sides of the man’s face didn’t quite line up. He’d been jaw-broke, all right. “The storyteller’s favorite question, Roland, but I think what I need to do now is speed my tale up a bit, or we’ll be here all night. The important thing, the part you really want to hear,
is the end part, anyway.”
Well, you may think so, Roland mused, and wouldn’t have been surprised to know all three of his friends were harboring versions of the same thought.
“I was in the hospital for a week. When they let me out, they sent me to a welfare rehab in Queens. The first place they offered me was in Manhattan and a lot closer, but it was associated with Home—we sent people there sometimes. I was afraid that if I went there, I might get another visit from the Hitler Brothers.”
“And did you?” Susannah asked.
“No. The day I visited Rowan in Room 577 of Riverside Hospital and then ended up there myself was May 19th, 1981,” Callahan said. “I went out to Queens in the back of a van with three or four other walking-wounded guys on May 25th. I’m going to say it was about six days after that, just before I checked out and hit the road again, that I saw the story in the Post. It was in the front of the paper, but not on the front page, TWO MEN FOUND SHOT TO DEATH IN CONEY ISLAND, the headline said. COPS SAY ‘IT LOOKS