SEVEN
For Calvin Tower (who had begun life as Calvin Toren), there was no immediate sense of relief, no Thank God I'm saved feeling. His first thought was They're bad; this new one is worse .
In the dim light of the storage room, the newcomer seemed to merge with his own leaping shadow and become an apparition ten feet tall. One with burning eyeballs starting from their sockets and a mouth pulled down to reveal jaws lined with glaring white teeth that almost looked like fangs. In one hand was a pistol that appeared to be the size of a blunderbuss, the kind of weapon referred to in seventeenth-century tales of adventure as a machine. He grabbed Andolini by the top of his shirt and the lapel of his sport-coat and threw him against the wall. The hoodlum's hip struck the glass case and it toppled over. Tower gave a cry of dismay to which neither of the two men paid the slightest attention.
Balazar's man tried to wriggle away to his left. The new one, the snarling man with his black hair tied back behind him, let him get going, then tripped him and went down on top of him, one knee on the hoodlum's chest. He shoved the muzzle of the blunderbuss, the machine, into the soft shelf under the hoodlum's chin. The hoodlum twisted his head, trying to get rid of it. The new one only dug it in deeper.
In a choked voice that made him sound like a cartoon duck, Balazar's torpedo said, "Don't make me laugh, slick - that ain't no real gun."
The new one - the one who had seemed to merge with his own shadow and become as tall as a giant - pulled his machine out from under the hoodlum's chin, cocked it with his thumb, and pointed it deep into the storage area. Tower opened his mouth to say something, God knew what, but before he could utter a word there was a deafening crash, the sound of a mortar shell going off five feet from some hapless G.I.'s foxhole. Bright yellow flame shot from the machine's muzzle. A moment later, the barrel was back under the hoodlum's chin.
"What do you think now, Jack?" the new one panted. "Still think it's a fake? Tell you whatI think: the next time I pull this trigger, your brains are going all the way to Hoboken."
EIGHT
Eddie saw fear in Jack Andolini's eyes, but no panic. This didn't surprise him. It had been Jack Andolini who'd collared him after the cocaine mule-delivery from Nassau had gone wrong. This version of him was younger - ten years younger - but no prettier. Andolini, once dubbed Old Double-Ugly by the great sage and eminent junkie Henry Dean, had a bulging caveman's forehead and a jutting Alley Oop jaw to match. His hands were so huge they looked like caricatures. Hair sprouted from the knuckles. He looked like Old Double-Stupid as well as Old Double-Ugly, but he was far from dumb. Dummies didn't work their way up to become the second-in-command to guys like Enrico Balazar. And while Jack might not be that yet in this when, he would be by 1986, when Eddie would come flying back into JFK with about two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Bolivian marching-powder under his shirt. In that world, that where and when, Andolini had become Il Roche's field-marshal. In this one, Eddie thought there was a very good chance he was going to take early retirement. From everything . Unless, that was, he played it perfectly.
Eddie shoved the barrel of the pistol deeper under Andolini's chin. The smell of gas and gunpowder was strong in the air, for the time being overwhelming the smell of books. Somewhere in the shadows there was an angry hiss from Sergio, the bookstore cat. Sergio apparently didn't approve of loud noises in his domain.
Andolini winced and twisted his head to the left. "Don't, man... that thing's hot!"
"Not as hot as where you'll be five minutes from now," Eddie said. "Unless you listen to me, Jack. Your chances of getting out of this are slim, but not quite none. Will you listen?"