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 radiotelephone . . . 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 Farson, 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.”