by Stephen King
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 you guys 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.
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 was 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 doorhandle 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.
"I tell 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, dumbwit."
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. Il Roche 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 body-guards, 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.