’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. I keep 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 suppositories, 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.