He let go of the prisoner's mind and retreated, watching, waiting to see if the prisoner knew he was there or not.
4
After the vomiting stopped, Eddie remained bent over the basin, eyes tightly closed.
Blanked there for a second. Don't know what it was. Did I look around?
He groped for the faucet and ran cool water. Eyes still closed, he splashed it over his cheeks and brow.
When it could be avoided no longer, he looked up into the mirror again.
His own eyes looked back at him.
There were no alien voices in his head.
No feeling of being watched.
You had a momentary fugue, Eddie, the great sage and eminent junkie advised him. A not uncommon phenomenon in one who is going cool turkey.
Eddie glanced at his watch. An hour and a half to New York . The plane was scheduled to land at 4:05 EDT , but it was really going to be high noon. Showdown time.
He went back to his seat. His drink was on the divider. He took two sips and the stew came back to ask him if she could do any thing else for him. He opened his mouth to say no … and then there was another of those odd blank moments.
5
"I'd like something to eat, please," the gunslinger said through Eddie Dean's mouth.
"We'll be serving a hot snack in―"
"I'm really starving, though," the gunslinger said with perfect truthfulness. "Anything at all, even a popkin―"
"Popkin?" the army woman frowned at him, and the gunslinger suddenly looked into the prisoner's mind. Sandwich … the word was as distant as the murmur in a conch shell.
"A sandwich, even," the gunslinger said.
The army woman looked doubtful. "Well … I have some tuna fish …"
"That would be fine," the gunslinger said, although he had never heard of tooter fish in his life. Beggars could not be choosers.
"You do look a little pale," the army woman said. "I thought maybe it was air-sickness."
"Pure hunger."
She gave him a professional smile. "I'll see what I can rustle up."
Russel? the gunslinger thought dazedly. In his own world to russel was a slang verb meaning to take a woman by force. Never mind. Food would come. He had no idea if he could carry it back through the doorway to the body which needed it so badly, but one thing at a time, one thing at a time.
Russel, he thought, and Eddie Dean's head shook, as if in disbelief.
Then the gunslinger retreated again.
6
Nerves, the great oracle and eminent junkie assured him. Just nerves. All part of the cool turkey experience, little brother.
But if nerves was what it was, how come he felt this odd sleepiness stealing over him―odd because he should have been itchy, ditsy, feeling that urge to squirm and scratch that came before the actual shakes; even if he had not been in Henry's "cool turkey" state, there was the fact that he was about to attempt bringing two pounds of coke through U.S. Customs, a felony punishable by not less than ten years in federal prison, and he seemed to suddenly be having blackouts as well.
Still, that feeling of sleepiness.
He sipped at his drink again, then let his eyes slip shut.
Why'd you black out?
I didn't, or she'd be running for all the emergency gear they carry.
Blanked out, then. It's no good either way. You never blanked out like that before in your life. Nodded out, yeah, but never blanked out.
Something odd about his right hand, too. It seemed to throb vaguely, as if he had pounded it with a hammer.
He flexed it without opening his eyes. No ache. No throb. No blue bombardier's eyes. As for the blank-outs, they were just a combination of going cool turkey and a good case of what the great oracle and eminent et cetera would no doubt call the smuggler's blues.
But I'm going to sleep, just the same, he thought. How 'bout that?
Henry's face drifted by him like an untethered balloon. Don't worry, Henry was saying. You'll be all right, little brother. You fly down there toNassau, check in at the Aquinas, there'll be a man come by Friday night. One of the good guys. He'll fix you, leave you enough stuff to take you through the weekend. Sunday night he brings the coke and you give him the key to the safe deposit box. Monday morning you do the routine just like Balazar said. This guy will play; he knows how it's supposed to go. Monday noon you fly out, and with a face as honest as yours, you'll breeze through Customs and we'll be eating steak inSparksbefore the sun goes down. It's gonna be a breeze, little brother, nothing but a cool breeze.
But it had been sort of a warm breeze after all.
The trouble with him and Henry was they were like Charlie Brown and Lucy. The only difference was once in awhile Henry would hold onto the football so Eddie could kick it―not often, but once in awhile. Eddie had even thought, while in one of his heroin dazes, that he ought to write Charles Schultz a letter. Dear Mr. Schultz, he would say. You're missing a bet by ALWAYS having Lucy pull the football up at the last second. She ought to hold it down there once in awhile. Nothing Charlie Brown could ever predict, you understand. Sometimes she'd maybe hold it down for him to kick three, even four times in a row, then nothing for a month, then once, and then nothing for three or four days, and then, you know, you get the idea. That would REALLY fuck the kid up, wouldn't it?
Eddie knew it would really fuck the kid up.
From experience he knew it.
One of the good guys, Henry had said, but the guy who showed up had been a sallow-skinned thing with a British accent, a hairline moustache that looked like something out of a 1940s filmnoire, and yellow teeth that all leaned inward, like the teeth of a very old animal trap.
"You have the key, Senor?" he asked, except in that British public school accent it came out sounding like what you called your last year of high school.
"The key's safe," Eddie said, "if that's what you mean."
"Then give it to me."
"That's not the way it goes. You're supposed to have something to take me through the weekend. Sunday night you're supposed to bring me something. I give you the key. Monday you go into town and use it to get something else. I don't know what, 'cause that's not my business."
Suddenly there was a small flat blue automatic in the sallow-skinned thing's hand. "Why don't you just give it to me, Senor? I will save time and effort; you will save your life."
There was deep steel in Eddie Dean, junkie or no junkie. Henry knew it; more important, Balazar knew it. That was why he had been sent. Most of them thought he had gone because he was hooked through the bag and back again. He knew it, Henry knew it, Balazar, too. But only he and Henry knew he would have gone even if he was as straight as a stake. For Henry. Balazar hadn't got quite that far in his figuring, but fuck Balazar.
"Why don't you just put that thing away, you little scuzz?" Eddie asked. "Or do you maybe want Balazar to send someone down here and cut your eyes out of your head with a rusty knife?"
The sallow thing smiled. The gun was gone like magic; in its place was a small envelope. He handed it to Eddie. "Just a little joke, you know."
"If you say so."
"I see you Sunday night."
He turned toward the door.