The Drawing of the Three (16 page)

And the joker was wearing a pair of guns.

They looked older than the hills, old enough to have come from a Wild West museum . . . but they were guns just the same, they might even really work, and Andolini suddenly realized he was going to have to take care of the white-faced man right away . . . unless he really
was
a spook, and if that was the case, it wouldn’t matter fuck-all, so there was really no sense worrying about it.

Andolini let go of Eddie and snap-rolled to the right, barely feeling the edge of rock that tore open his five-hundred-dollar sport jacket. At the same instant the gunslinger drew left-handed, and his
draw was as it had always been, sick or well, wide awake or still half asleep: faster than a streak of blue summer lightning.

I’m beat,
Andolini thought, full of sick wonder.
Christ, he’s faster than anybody I ever saw! I’m beat, holy Mary Mother of God, he’s gonna blow me away, he’s g
—

The man in the ragged shirt pulled the trigger of the revolver in his left hand and Jack Andolini thought—really thought—he was dead before he realized there had been only a dull click instead of a report.

Misfire.

Smiling, Andolini rose to his knees and raised his own gun.

“I don’t know who you are, but you can kiss your ass good-bye, you fucking spook,” he said.

Eddie sat up, shivering, his naked body pocked with goosebumps. He saw Roland draw, heard the dry snap that should have been a bang, saw Andolini come up on his knees, heard him say something, and before he really knew what he was doing his hand had found a ragged chunk of rock. He pulled it out of the grainy earth and threw it as hard as he could.

It struck Andolini high on the back of the head and bounced away. Blood sprayed from a ragged hanging flap in Jack Andolini’s scalp. Andolini fired, but the bullet that surely would have killed the gunslinger otherwise went wild.

Not really wild,
the gunslinger could have told Eddie.
When you feel the wind of the slug on your cheek, you can’t really call it wild.

He thumbed the hammer of his gun back and pulled the trigger
again as he recoiled from Andolini’s shot. This time the bullet in the chamber fired—the dry, authoritative crack echoed up and down the beach. Gulls asleep on rocks high above the lobstrosities awoke and flew upward in screaming, startled packs.

The gunslinger’s bullet would have stopped Andolini for good in spite of his own involuntary recoil, but by then Andolini was also in motion, falling sideways, dazed by the blow on the head. The crack of the gunslinger’s revolver seemed distant, but the searing poker it plunged into his left arm, shattering the elbow, was real enough. It brought him out of his daze and he rose to his feet, one arm hanging broken and useless, the gun wavering wildly about in his other hand, looking for a target.

It was Eddie he saw first, Eddie the junkie, Eddie who had somehow brought him to this crazy place. Eddie was standing there as naked as the day he had been born, shivering in the chilly wind, clutching himself with both arms. Well, he might die here, but he would at least have the pleasure of taking Eddie Fucking Dean with him.

Andolini brought his gun up. The little Cobra now seemed to weigh about twenty pounds, but he managed.

This better not be another misfire,
Roland thought grimly, and thumbed the hammer back again. Below the din of the gulls, he heard the smooth oiled click as the chamber revolved.

It was no misfire.

The gunslinger hadn’t aimed at Andolini’s head but at the gun in Andolini’s hand. He didn’t know if they still needed this man, but they might; he was important to Balazar, and because Balazar had proved to be every bit as dangerous as Roland had thought he might be, the best course was the safest one.

His shot was good, and that was no surprise; what happened to Andolini’s gun and hence to Andolini was. Roland had seen it happen, but only twice in all the years he had seen men fire guns at each other.

Bad luck for you, fellow,
the gunslinger thought as Andolini wandered off toward the beach, screaming. Blood poured down his shirt and pants. The hand which had been holding the Colt Cobra was missing below the middle of the palm. The gun was a senseless piece of twisted metal lying on the sand.

Eddie stared at him, stunned. No one would ever misjudge Jack Andolini’s caveman face again, because now he had no face; where it had been there was now nothing but a churned mess of raw flesh and the black screaming hole of his mouth.

“My God, what happened?”

“My bullet must have struck the cylinder of his gun at the second he pulled the trigger,” the gunslinger said. He spoke as dryly as a professor giving a police academy ballistics lecture. “The result was an explosion that tore the back off his gun. I think one or two of the other cartridges may have exploded as well.”

“Shoot him,” Eddie said. He was shivering harder than ever, and now it wasn’t just the combination of night air, sea breeze, and naked body that was causing it. “Kill him. Put him out of his misery, for God’s s—”

“Too late,” the gunslinger said with a cold indifference that chilled Eddie’s flesh all the way in to the bone.

And Eddie turned away just too late to avoid seeing the lobstrosities swarm over Andolini’s feet, tearing off his Gucci loafers . . . with the feet still inside them, of course. Screaming, waving his arms
spasmodically before him, Andolini fell forward. The lobstrosities swarmed greedily over him, questioning him anxiously all the while they were eating him alive:
Dad-a-chack? Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dod-a-chock?

“Jesus,” Eddie moaned. “What do we do now?”

“Now you get exactly as much of the (
devil-powder
the gunslinger said;
cocaine
Eddie heard) as you promised the man Balazar,” Roland said, “no more and no less. And we go back.” He looked levelly at Eddie. “Only this time I have to go back with you. As myself.”

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. “Can you do that?” And at once answered his own question. “Sure you can. But why?”

“Because you can’t handle this alone,” Roland said. “Come here.”

Eddie looked back at the squirming hump of clawed creatures on the beach. He had never liked Jack Andolini, but he felt his stomach roll over just the same.

“Come here,” Roland said impatiently. “We’ve little time, and I have little liking for what I must do now. It’s something I’ve never done before. Never thought I
would
do.” His lips twisted bitterly. “I’m getting used to doing things like that.”

Eddie approached the scrawny figure slowly, on legs that felt more and more like rubber. His bare skin was white and glimmering in the alien dark.
Just who are you, Roland?
he thought. What
are you? And that heat I feel baking off you—is it just fever? Or some kind of madness? I think it might be both.

God, he needed a fix. More: he
deserved
a fix.

“Never done
what
before?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Take this,” Roland said, and gestured at the ancient revolver slung low on his right hip. Did not point; there was no finger to point
with,
only a bulky, rag-wrapped bundle. “It’s no good to me. Not now, perhaps never again.”

“I . . .” Eddie swallowed. “I don’t want to touch it.”

“I don’t want you to either,” the gunslinger said with curious
gentleness, “but I’m afraid neither of us has a choice. There’s going to be shooting.”

“There is?”

“Yes.” The gunslinger looked serenely at Eddie. “Quite a lot of it, I think.”

Balazar had become more and more uneasy. Too long. They had been in there too long and it was too quiet. Distantly, maybe on the next block, he could hear people shouting at each other and then a couple of rattling reports that were probably firecrackers . . . but when you were in the sort of business Balazar was in, firecrackers weren’t the first thing you thought of.

A scream. Was that a scream?

Never mind. Whatever’s happening on the next block has nothing to do with you. You’re turning into an old woman.

All the same, the signs were bad. Very bad.

“Jack?” he yelled at the closed bathroom door.

There was no answer.

Balazar opened the left front drawer of his desk and took out the gun. This was no Colt Cobra, cozy enough to fit in a clamshell holster; it was a .357 Magnum.

“ ’Cimi!” he shouted. “I want you!”

He slammed the drawer. The tower of cards fell with a soft, sighing thump. Balazar didn’t even notice.

’Cimi Dretto, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, filled the doorway. He saw that
Da Boss
had pulled his gun out of the drawer, and ’Cimi immediately pulled his own from beneath a plaid jacket so loud it could have caused flash-burns on anyone who made the mistake of looking at it too long.

“I want Claudio and Tricks,” he said. “Get them quick. The kid is up to something.”

“We got a problem,” ’Cimi said.

Balazar’s eyes flicked from the bathroom door to ’Cimi. “Oh, I got plenty of those already,” he said. “What’s this new one, ’Cimi?”

’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.

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.

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.

Suddenly Balazar didn’t care about his goods, about the unanswered questions, or anything except bringing this situation to a screeching halt before it could get any weirder.