Eddie was pointing at the dumpy guy, who had paused to adjust his Sulka tie. The other two now stood flanking him. They looked simultaneously relaxed and watchful.

“Enrico Balazar. And looking much younger. God, he’s almost middle-aged!”

“It’s 1977,” Jake reminded him. Then, as the penny dropped: “That’s the guy you and Roland killed ?” Eddie had told Jake the story of the shoot-out at Balazar’s club in 1987, leaving out the gorier parts. The part, for instance, where Kevin Blake had lobbed the head of Eddie’s brother into Balazar’s office in an effort to flush Eddie and Roland into the open. Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “The guy Roland and I killed. And the one who was driving, that’s Jack Andolini. Old Double-Ugly, people used to call him, although never to his face. He went through one of those doors with me just before the shooting started.”

“Roland killed him, too. Didn’t he?”

Eddie nodded. It was simpler than trying to explain how Jack Andolini had happened to die blind and faceless beneath the tearing claws and ripping jaws of the lobstrosities on the beach.

“The other bodyguard’s George Biondi. Big Nose. I killed him myself. Will kill him. Ten years from now.” Eddie looked as if he might faint at any second.

“Eddie, are you okay?”

“I guess so. I guess I have to be.” They had drawn away from the bookshop’s doorway. Oy was still crouched at Jake’s ankle. Down Second Avenue, Jake’s other, earlier self had disappeared. I’m running by now, Jake thought. Maybe jumping over the UPS guy’s dolly. Sprinting all-out for the delicatessen, because I’m sure that’s the way back to Mid-World. The way back to him.

Balazar peered at his reflection in the window beside the TODAY’S SPECIALS display-board, gave the wings of hair above his ears one last little fluff with the tips of his fingers, then stepped through the open door. Andolini and Biondi followed.

“Hard guys,” Jake said.

“The hardest,” Eddie agreed.

“From Brooklyn.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why are hard guys from Brooklyn visiting a used-book store in Manhattan?”

“I think that’s what we’re here to find out. Jake, did I hurt your shoulder?”

“I’m okay. But I don’t really want to go back in there.”

“Neither do I. So let’s go.”

They went back into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

Nine