"How did you know I was here?"
"Wait for the ambulance," says Voice Number One. "Don't try to move on your own. You've lost a lot of blood, and you may have internal injuries."
Then he's gone. Callahan lies on the floor, smelling bleach and detergent and sweet departed fabric softener . U wash or we wash, he thinks , either way it all comes kleen. His testicles throb and swell. His jaw throbs and there's swelling there, too. He can feel his whole face tightening as the flesh puffs up. He lies there and waits for the ambulance and life or the return of the Hitler Brothers and death. For the lady or the tiger. For Diana's treasure or the deadly biter-snake. And some interminable, uncountable time later, red pulses of light wash across the dusty floor and he knows this time it's the lady. This time it's the treasure .
This time it's life.
ELEVEN
"And that," Callahan said, "is how I ended up in Room 577 of that same hospital that same night."
Susannah looked at him, wide-eyed. "Are you serious?"
"Serious as a heart attack," he said. "Rowan Magruder died, I got the living shit beaten out of me, and they slammed me back into the same bed. They must have had just about enough time to re-make it, and until the lady came with the morphine-cart and put me out, I lay there wondering if maybe Magruder's sister might not come back and finish what the Hitler Brothers had started. But why should such things surprise you? There are dozens of these odd crossings in both our stories, do ya. Have you not thought about the coincidence of Calla Bryn Sturgis and my own last name, for instance?"
"Sure we have," Eddie said.
"What happened next?" Roland asked.
Callahan grinned, and when he did, the gunslinger realized the two sides of the man's face didn't quite line up. He'd been jaw-broke, all right. "The storyteller's favorite question, Roland, but I think what I need to do now is speed my tale up a bit, or we'll be here all night. The important thing, the part you really want to hear, is the end part, anyway."
Well, you may think so , Roland mused, and wouldn't have been surprised to know all three of his friends were harboring versions of the same thought.
"I was in the hospital for a week. When they let me out, they sent me to a welfare rehab in Queens. The first place they offered me was in Manhattan and a lot closer, but it was associated with Home - we sent people there sometimes. I was afraid that if I went there, I might get another visit from the Hitler Brothers."
"And did you?" Susannah asked.
"No. The day I visited Rowan in Room 577 of Riverside Hospital and then ended up there myself was May 19th, 1981," Callahan said. "I went out to Queens in the back of a van with three or four other walking-wounded guys on May 25th. I'm going to say it was about six days after that, just before I checked out and hit the road again, that I saw the story in the Post . It was in the front of the paper, but not on the front page, TWO MEN FOUND SHOT TO DEATH IN CONEY ISLAND, the headline said. COPS SAY 'IT LOOKS LIKE A MOB JOB.' That was because the faces and hands had been burned with acid. Nevertheless, the cops ID'd both of them: Norton Randolph and William Garton, both of Brooklyn. There were photos. Mug shots; both of them had long records. They were my guys, all right. George and Lennie."
"You think the low men got them, don't you? "Jake asked.
"Yes. Payback's a bitch."
"Did the papers ever ID them as the Hitler Brothers?" Eddie asked. "Because, man, we were still scarin each other with those guys when I came along."
"There was some speculation about that possibility in the tabloids," Callahan said, "and I'll bet that in their hearts the reporters who covered the Hitler Brothers murders and mutilations knew it was Randolph and Garton - there was nothing afterward but a few halfhearted copycat cuttings - but no one in the tabloid press wants to kill the bogeyman, because the bogeyman sells papers."
"Man," Eddie said. "You have been to the wars."
"You haven't heard the last act yet," Callahan said. "It's a dilly."