The Drawing of the Three

You speak as if it was a word I'd never heard before. Do you fear for him?

Yes! Christ, yes!

Then do what they expect. Cry. Pule and beg. Ask for this fix of yours. I'm sure they expect you to, and I'm sure they have it. Do all those things, make them sure of you, and you can be sure all your fears will be justified.

I don't understand what you m?

I mean if you show a yellow gut, you will go far toward getting your precious brother killed. Is that what you want?

All right. I'll be cool. It may not sound that way, but I'll be cool.

Is that what you call it? All right, then. Yes. Be cool.

'This isn't the way the deal was supposed to go down,' Eddie said, speaking past Col and directly at Jack Andolini's tufted ear. 'This isn't why I took care of Balazar's goods and hung onto my lip while some other guy would have been puking out five names for every year off on the plea-bargain.'

'Balazar thought your brother would be safer with him,' Jack said, not looking around. 'He took him into protective custody.'

'Well good,' Eddie said. 'You thank him for me, and you tell him that I'm back, his goods are safe, and I can take care of Henry just like Henry always took care of me. You tell him I'll have a six-pack on ice and when Henry walks in the place we're going to split it and then we'll get in our car and come on into town and do the deal like it was supposed to be done. Like we talked about it.'

'Balazar wants to see you, Eddie,' Jack said. His voice was implacable, immovable. His head did not turn. 'Get in the truck.'

'Stick it where the sun doesn't shine, motherfucker,' Eddie said, and started for the doors to his building.

8

It was a short distance but he had gotten barely halfway when Andolini's hand clamped on his upper arm with the paralyzing force of a vise-grip. His breath as hot as a bull's on the back of Eddie's neck. He did all this in the time you would have thought, looking at him, it would have taken his brain to convince his hand to pull the door-handle up.

Eddie turned around.

Be cool, Eddie, Roland whispered.

Cool, Eddie responded.

'I could kill you for that,' Andolini said. 'No one tells me stick it up my ass, especially no shitass little junkie like you.'

'Kill shit!' Eddie screamed at him?but it was a calculated scream. A cool scream, if you could dig that. They stood there, dark figures in the golden horizontal light of late spring sundown in the wasteland of housing developments that is the Bronx's Co-Op City, and people heard the scream, and people heard the word kill, and if their radios were on they turned them up and if their radios were off they turned them on and then turned them up because it was better that way, safer.

'Rico Balazar broke his word! I stood up for him and he didn't stand up for me! So I tell you to stick it up your fuckin ass, I tell him to stick it up his fuckin ass, I tell anybody I want to stick it up his fuckin ass!'

Andolini looked at him. His eyes were so brown the color seemed to have leaked into his corneas, turning them the yellow of old parchment.

'Itell President Reagan to stick it up his ass if he breaks his word to me, and fuck his fuckin rectal palp or whatever it is!'

The words died away in echoes on brick and concrete. A single child, his skin very black against his white basketball shorts and high-topped sneakers, stood in the playground across the street, watching them, a basketball held loosely against his side in the crook of his elbow.

'You done?' Andolini asked when the last of the echoes were gone.

'Yes,' Eddie said in a completely normal tone of voice.

'Okay,' Andolini said. He spread his anthropoid fingers and smiled … and when he smiled, two things happened simultaneously: the first was that you saw a charm that was so surprising it had a way of leaving people defenseless; the second was that you saw how bright he really was. How dangerously bright. 'Now can we start over?'

Eddie brushed his hands through his hair, crossed his arms briefly so he could scratch both arms at the same time, and said, 'I think we better, because this is going nowhere.'

'Okay,' Andolini said. 'No one has said nothing, and no one has ranked out nobody.'' And without turning his head or breaking the rhythm of his speech he added, 'Get back in the truck, dumb wit.'

Col Vincent, who had climbed cautiously out of the delivery truck through the door Andolini had left open retreated so fast he thumped his head. He slid across the seat and slouched in his former place, rubbing it and sulking.

'You gotta understand the deal changed when the Customs people put the arm on you,' Andolini said reasonably. 'Balazar is a big man. He has interests to protect. People to protect. One of those people, it just so happens, is your brother Henry. You think that's bullshit? If you do, you better think about the way Henry is now.'

'Henry's fine,' Eddie said, but he knew better and he couldn't keep the knowing out of his voice. He heard it and knew Jack Andolini heard it, too. These days Henry was always on the nod, it seemed like. There were holes in his shirts from cigarette burns. He had cut the shit out of his hand using the electric can-opener on a can of Calo for Potzie, their cat. Eddie didn't know how you cut yourself with an electric can-opener, but Henry had managed it. Sometimes the kitchen table would be powdery with Henry's leavings, or Eddie would find blackened curls of char in the bathroom sink.

Henry, he would say, Henry, you gotta take care of this, this is getting out of hand, you're a bust walking around and waiting to happen.

Yeah, okay, little brother, Henry would respond, zero perspiration, I got it all under control, but sometimes, looking at Henry's ashy face and burned out eyes, Eddie knew Henry was never going to have anything under control again.