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!”