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.

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.

“Kill him, Jack!” he shouted.

There was no response. Then he heard the kid say it again: “They killed my brother. They killed Henry.”

Balazar suddenly knew—knew—it wasn’t Jack the kid was talking to.

“Get all the gentlemen,” he said to ’Cimi. “All of them. We’re gonna burn his ass and when he’s dead we’re gonna take him in the kitchen and I’m gonna personally chop his head off.”

21

“They killed my brother,” the prisoner said. The gunslinger said nothing. He only watched and thought: The bottles. In the sink. That’s what I need, or what he thinks I need. The packets. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.

From the other room: “Kill him, Jack!” Neither Eddie nor the gunslinger took any notice of this.

“They killed my brother. They killed Henry.”

In the other room Balazar was now talking about taking Eddie’s head as a trophy. The gunslinger found some odd comfort in this: not everything in this world was different from his own, it seemed.