“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.”