The other might be sick, dying even, but there was enough steel left in his spine for him to have some left to loan this scared twenty-one-year-old junkie.
"That is a very interesting red mark on your chest," one of the Customs men said. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. There was a pack in his shirt pocket. Eddie felt as if he could take about five of the cigarettes in that pack, line his mouth with them from corner to corner, light them all, inhale deeply, and be easier in his mind. "It looks like a stripe. It looks like you had something taped there, Eddie, and all at once decided it would be a good idea to rip it off and get rid of it."
"I picked up an allergy in the Bahamas," Eddie said. "I told you that. I mean, we've been through all of this several times. I'm trying to keep my sense of humor, but it's getting harder all the time."
"Fuck your sense of humor," another said savagely, and Eddie recognized that tone. It was the way he himself sounded when he'd spent half a night in the cold waiting for the man and the man didn't come. Because these guys were junkies, too. The only difference was guys like him and Henry were their junk.
"What about that hole in your gut? Where'd that come from, Eddie? Publishers Clearing House?" A third agent was pointing at the spot where Eddie had poked himself. It had finally stopped dribbling but there was still a dark purple bubble there which looked more than ready to break open at the slightest urging.
Eddie indicated the red band where the tape had been. "It itches," he said. This was no lie. "I fell asleep on the plane--check the stew if you don't believe me--"
"Why wouldn't we believe you, Eddie?"
"I don't know," Eddie said. "Do you usually get big drug smugglers who snooze on their way in?" He paused, gave them a second to think about it, then held out his hands. Some of the nails were ragged. Others were jagged. When you went cool turkey, he had discovered, your nails suddenly became your favorite munchies. "I've been pretty good about not scratching, but I must have dug myself a damned good one while I was sleeping."
"Or while you were on the nod. That could be a needlemark." Eddie could see they both knew better. You shot yourself up that close to the solar plexus, which was the nervous system's switchboard, you weren't ever going to shoot yourself up again.
"Give me a break," Eddie said. "You were in my face so close to look at my pupils I thought you were going to soul-kiss me. You know I wasn't on the nod."
The third Customs agent looked disgusted. "For an innocent lambikins, you know an awful lot about dope, Eddie."
"What I didn't pick up on Miami Vice I got from the Reader's Digest. Now tell me the truth--how many times are we going to go through this?"
A fourth agent held up a small plastic Baggie. In it were several fibers.
"These are filaments. We'll get the lab confirmation, but we know what sort they are. They're filaments of strapping tape."
"I didn't take a shower before I left the hotel," Eddie said for the fourth time. "I was out by the pool, getting some sun. Trying to get rid of the rash. The allergy rash. I fell asleep. I was damned lucky to make the plane at all. I had to run like hell. The wind was blowing. I don't know what stuck to my skin and what didn't."
Another reached out and ran a finger up the three inches of flesh from the inner bend of Eddie's left elbow.
"And these aren't needle tracks."
Eddie shoved the hand away. "Mosquito bites. I told you. Almost healed. Jesus Christ, you can see that for yourself!"
They could. This deal hadn't come up overnight. Eddie had stopped arm-popping a month ago. Henry couldn't have done that, and that was one of the reasons it had been Eddie, had to be Eddie. When he absolutely had to fix, he had taken it very high on his upper left thigh, where his left testicle lay against the skin of the leg . . . as he had the other night, when the sallow thing had finally brought him some stuff that was okay. Mostly he had just snorted, something with which Henry could no longer content himself. This caused feelings Eddie couldn't exactly define . . . a mixture of pride and shame. If they looked there, if they pushed his testicles aside, he could have some serious problems. A bloodtest could cause him problems even more serious, but that was one step further than they could go without some sort of evidence--and evidence was something they just didn't have. They knew everything but could prove nothing. All the difference between world and want, his dear old mother would have said.
"Mosquito bites."
"Yes."
"And the red mark's an allergic reaction."
"Yes. I had it when I went to the Bahamas; it just wasn't that bad."
"He had it when he went down there," one of the men said to another.
"Uh-huh," the second said. "You believe it?"
"Sure."
"You believe in Santa Claus?"
"Sure. When I was a kid I even had my picture taken with him once." He looked at Eddie. "You got a picture of this famous red mark from before you took your little trip, Eddie?"
Eddie didn't reply.
"If you're clean, why won't you take a bloodtest?" This was the first guy again, the guy with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It had almost burned down to the filter.
Eddie was suddenly angry--white-hot angry. He listened inside.
Okay, the voice responded at once, and Eddie felt more than agreement, he felt a kind of go-to-the-wall approval. It made him feel the way he felt when Henry hugged him, tousled his hair, punched him on the shoulder, and said You done good, kid--don't let it go to your head, but you done good.
"You know I'm clean." He stood up suddenly--so suddenly they moved back. He looked at the smoker who was closest to him. "And I'll tell you something, babe, if you don't get that coffin-nail out of my face I'm going to knock it out."
The guy recoiled.
"You guys have emptied the crap-tank on that plane already. God, you've had enough time to have been through it three times. You've been through my stuff. I bent over and let one of you stick the world's longest finger up my ass. If a prostate check is an exam, that was a motherfucking safari. I was scared to look down. I thought I'd see that guy's fingernail sticking out of my cock."
He glared around at them.
"You've been up my ass, you've been through my stuff, and I'm sitting here in a pair of Jockies with you guys blowing smoke in my face. You want a bloodtest? Kay. Bring in someone to do it."
They murmured, looked at each other. Surprised. Uneasy.
"But if you want to do it without a court order," Eddie said, "whoever does it better bring a lot of extra hypos and vials, because I'll be damned if I'm gonna piss alone. I want a Federal marshal in here, and I want each one of you to take the same goddam test, and I want your names and IDs on each vial, and I want them to go into that Federal marshal's custody. And whatever you test mine for--cocaine, heroin, bennies, pot, whatever--I want those same tests performed on the samples from you guys. And then I want the results turned over to my lawyer."
"Oh boy, YOUR LAWYER," one of them cried. "That's what it always comes down to with you shitbags, doesn't it, Eddie? You'll hear from MY LAWYER. I'll sic MY LAWYER on you. That crap makes me want to puke!"
"As a matter of fact I don't currently have one," Eddie said, and this was the truth. "I didn't think I needed one. You guys changed my mind. You got nothing because I have nothing, but the rock and roll just doesn't stop, does it? So you want me to dance? Great. I'll dance. But I'm not gonna do it alone. You guys'll have to dance, too."
There was a thick, difficult silence.
"I'd like you to take down your shorts again, please, Mr. Dean," one of them said. This guy was older. This guy looked like he was in charge of things. Eddie thought that maybe--just maybe--this guy had finally realized where the fresh tracks might be. Until now they hadn't checked. His arms, his shoulders, his legs . . . but not there. They had been too sure they had a bust.
"I'm through taking things off, taking things down, and eating this shit," Eddie said. "You get someone in here and we'll do a bunc
h of bloodtests or I'm getting out. Now which do you want?"
That silence again. And when they started looking at each other, Eddie knew he had won.
WE won, he amended. What's your name, fella?
Roland. Yours is Eddie. Eddie Dean.
You listen good.
Listen and watch.
"Give him his clothes," the older man said disgustedly. He looked at Eddie. "I don't know what you had or how you got rid of it, but I want you to know that we're going to find out."
The old dude surveyed him.
"So there you sit. There you sit, almost grinning. What you say doesn't make me want to puke. What you are does."
"I make you want to puke."
"That's affirmative."
"Oh, boy," Eddie said. "I love it. I'm sitting here in a little room and I've got nothing on but my underwear and there's seven guys around me with guns on their hips and I make you want to puke? Man, you have got a problem."
Eddie took a step toward him. The Customs guy held his ground for a moment, and then something in Eddie's eyes--a crazy color that seemed half-hazel, half-blue--made him step back against his will.
"I'M NOT CARRYING!" Eddie roared. "QUIT NOW! JUST QUIT! LET ME ALONE!"
The silence again. Then the older man turned around and yelled at someone, "Didn't you hear me? Get his clothes!"
And that was that.
2
"You think we're being tailed?" the cabbie asked. He sounded amused.
Eddie turned forward. "Why do you say that?"
"You keep looking out the back window."
"I never thought about being tailed," Eddie said. This was the absolute truth. He had seen the tails the first time he looked around. Tails, not tail. He didn't have to keep looking around to confirm their presence. Out-patients from a sanitarium for the mentally retarded would have trouble losing Eddie's cab on this late May afternoon; traffic on the L.I.E. was sparse. "I'm a student of traffic patterns, that's all."
"Oh," the cabbie said. In some circles such an odd statement would have prompted questions, but New York cab drivers rarely question; instead they assert, usually in a grand manner. Most of these assertions begin with the phrase This city! as if the words were a religious invocation preceeding a sermon . . . which they usually were. Instead, this one said: "Because if you did think we were being tailed, we're not. I'd know. This city! Jesus! I've tailed plenty of people in my time. You'd be surprised how many people jump into my cab and say 'Follow that car.' I know, sounds like something you only hear in the movies, right? Right. But like they say, art imitates life and life imitates art. It really happens! And as for shaking a tail, it's easy if you know how to set the guy up. You . . ."
Eddie tuned the cabbie down to a background drone, listening just enough so he could nod in the right places. When you thought about it, the cabbie's rap was actually quite amusing. One of the tails was a dark blue sedan. Eddie guessed that one belonged to Customs. The other was a panel truck with GINELLI'S PIZZA written on the sides. There was also a picture of a pizza, only the pizza was a smiling boy's face, and the smiling boy was smacking his lips, and written under the picture was the slogan "UMMMMM! It's-a GOOOOD Pizza!" Only some young urban artist with a spray-can and a rudimentary sense of humor had drawn a line through Pizza and had printed PUSSY above it.
Ginelli. There was only one Ginelli Eddie knew; he ran a restaurant called Four Fathers. The pizza business was a sideline, a guaranteed stiff, an accountant's angel. Ginelli and Balazar. They went together like hot dogs and mustard.
According to the original plan, there was to have been a limo waiting outside the terminal with a driver ready to whisk him away to Balazar's place of business, which was a midtown saloon. But of course the original plan hadn't included two hours in a little white room, two hours of steady questioning from one bunch of Customs agents while another bunch first drained and then raked the contents of Flight 901's wastetanks, looking for the big carry they also suspected, the big carry that would be unflushable, undissolvable.
When he came out, there was no limo, of course. The driver would have had his instructions: if the mule isn't out of the terminal fifteen minutes or so after the rest of the passengers have come out, drive away fast. The limo driver would know better than to use the car's telephone, which was actually a radio that could easily be monitored. Balazar would call people, find out Eddie had struck trouble, and get ready for trouble of his own. Balazar might have recognized Eddie's steel, but that didn't change the fact that Eddie was a junkie. A junkie could not be relied upon to be a stand-up guy.
This meant there was a possibility that the pizza truck just might pull up in the lane next to the taxi, someone just might stick an automatic weapon out of the pizza truck's window, and then the back of the cab would become something that looked like a bloody cheese-grater. Eddie would have been more worried about that if they held him for four hours instead of two, and seriously worried if it had been six hours instead of four. But only two . . . he thought Balazar would trust him to have hung on to his lip at least that long. He would want to know about his goods.
The real reason Eddie kept looking back was the door.
It fascinated him.
As the Customs agents had half-carried, half-dragged him down the stairs to Kennedy's administration section, he had looked back over his shoulder and there it had been, improbable but indubitably, inarguably real, floating along at a distance of about three feet. He could see the waves rolling steadily in, crashing on the sand; he saw that the day over there was beginning to darken.
The door was like one of those trick pictures with a hidden image in them, it seemed; you couldn't see that hidden part for the life of you at first, but once you had, you couldn't unsee it, no matter how hard you tried.
It had disappeared on the two occasions when the gunslinger went back without him, and that had been scary--Eddie had felt like a child whose nightlight has burned out. The first time had been during the customs interrogation.
I have to go, Roland's voice had cut cleanly through whatever question they were currently throwing at him. I'll only be a few moments. Don't be afraid.
Why? Eddie asked. Why do you have to go?
"What's wrong?" one of the Customs guys had asked him. "All of a sudden you look scared."
All of a sudden he had felt scared, but of nothing this yo-yo would understand.
He looked over his shoulder, and the Customs men had also turned. They saw nothing but a blank white wall covered with white panels drilled with holes to damp sound; Eddie saw the door, its usual three feet away (now it was embedded in the room's wall, an escape hatch none of his interrogators could see). He saw more. He saw things coming out of the waves, things that looked like refugees from a horror movie where the effects are just a little more special than you want them to be, special enough so everything looks real. They looked like a hideous cross-breeding of prawn, lobster, and spider. They were making some weird sound.
"You getting the jim-jams?" one of the Customs guys had asked. "Seeing a few bugs crawling down the wall, Eddie?"
That was so close to the truth that Eddie had almost laughed. He understood why the man named Roland had to go back, though; Roland's mind was safe enough--at least for the time being--but the creatures were moving toward his body, and Eddie had a suspicion that if Roland did not soon vacate it from the area it currently occupied, there might not be any body left to go back to.
Suddenly in his head he heard David Lee Roth bawling: Oh Iyyyyy . . . ain't got nobody . . . and this time he did laugh. He couldn't help it.
"What's so funny?" the Customs agent who had wanted to know if he was seeing bugs asked him.
"This whole situation," Eddie had responded. "Only in the sense of peculiar, not hilarious. I mean, if it was a movie it would be more like Fellini than Woody Allen, if you get what I mean."
You'll be all right? Roland asked.
Yeah, fine. TCB, man.
I don't understand. br />
Go take care of business.
Oh. All right. I'll not be long.
And suddenly that other had been gone. Simply gone. Like a wisp of smoke so thin that the slightest vagary of wind could blow it away. Eddie looked around again, saw nothing but drilled white panels, no door, no ocean, no weird monstrosities, and he felt his gut begin to tighten. There was no question of believing that it had all been a hallucination after all; the dope was gone, and that was all the proof Eddie needed. But Roland had . . . helped, somehow. Made it easier.
"You want me to hang a picture there?" one of the Customs guys asked.
"No," Eddie said, and blew out a sigh. "I want you to let me out of here."
"Soon as you tell us what you did with the skag," another said, "or was it coke?" And so it started again: round and round she goes and where she stops nobody knows.
Ten minutes later--ten very long minutes--Roland was suddenly back in his mind. One second gone, next second there. Eddie sensed he was deeply exhausted.
Taken care of? he asked.
Yes. I'm sorry it took so long. A pause. I had to crawl.
Eddie looked around again. The doorway had returned, but now it offered a slightly different view of that world, and he realized that, as it moved with him here, it moved with Roland there. The thought made him shiver a little. It was like being tied to this other by some weird umbilicus. The gunslinger's body lay collapsed in front of it as before, but now he was looking down a long stretch of beach to the braided hightide line where the monsters wandered about, growling and buzzing. Each time a wave broke all of them raised their claws. They looked like the audiences in those old documentary films where Hitler's speaking and everyone is throwing that old seig heil! salute like their lives depended on it--which they probably did, when you thought about it. Eddie could see the tortured markings of the gunslinger's progress in the sand.
As Eddie watched, one of the horrors reached up, lightning quick, and snared a sea-bird which happened to swoop too close to the beach. The thing fell to the sand in two bloody, spraying chunks. The parts were covered by the shelled horrors even before they had stopped twitching. A single white feather drifted up. A claw snatched it down.
Holy Christ, Eddie thought numbly. Look at those snappers.