What Callahan wants to do is thank this guy. Where Callahan wants to be is safe in an ambulance and on his way to the hospital before the punks blindside the owner of Voice Number Two outside, or the owner of Voice Number One has an excitement-induced heart attack. He tries and more mush comes out of his mouth. Drunkspeak, what Rowan used to call gubbish. It sounds like fann-ou.

His hands are cut free, then his feet. The guy doesn't have a heart attack. Callahan rolls over onto his back again, and sees a pudgy white hand holding the scalpel. On the third finger is a signet ring. It shows an open book. Below it are the words Ex Libris. Then the searchlight goes on again and Callahan raises an arm over his eyes. "Christ, man, why areyou doing that?"It comes out Cry-mah, I-oo oonnat, but the owner of Voice Number One seems to understand.

"I should think that would be obvious, my wounded friend, " he says. "Should we meet again, I'd like it to be for the first time. If we pass on the street, I would as soon go unrecognized. Safer that way. "

Gritting footsteps. The light is backing away.

"We're going to call an ambulance from the pay phone across the street-"

"No! Don't do that! What if they come back?" In his quite genuine terror, these words come out with perfect clarity.

"We'll be watching," says Voice Number One. The wheeze is fading now. The guy's getting himself back under control. Good for him. "I think it is possible that they'll come back, the big one was really quite distressed, but if the Chinese are correct, I'm now responsible for your life. It's a responsibility I intend to live up to. Should they reappear, I'll throw a bullet at them. Not over their heads, either. " The shape pauses. He looks like a fairly big man himself. Got a gut on him, that much is for sure. "Those were the Hitler Brothers, my friend. Do you know who I'm talking about?"

"Yes, " Callahan whispers. "And you won't tell me who you are? "

"Better you not know," says Mr. Ex Libris.

"Do you know who I am?"

A pause. Gritting steps. Mr. Ex Libris is now standing in the doorway of the abandoned laundrymat. "No, " he says. Then, "A priest. It doesn't matter."

"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.

"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."

Roland made the twirling go-on gesture, but it didn't look urgent. He'd rolled himself a smoke and looked about as content as his three companions had ever seen him. Only Oy, sleeping at Jake's feet, looked more at peace with himself.

"I looked for my footbridge when I left New York for the second time, riding across the GWB with my paperback and my bottle," Callahan said, "but my footbridge was gone. Over the next couple of months I saw occasional flashes of the highways in hiding-and I remember getting a ten-dollar bill with Chadbourne on it a couple of times-but mostly they were gone. I saw a lot of Type Three Vampires and remember thinking that they were spreading. But I did nothing about them. I seemed to have lost the urge, the way Thomas Hardy lost the urge to write novels and Thomas Hart Benton lost the urge to paint his murals. 'Just mosquitoes,' I'd think. 'Let them go.' My job was getting into some town, finding the nearest Brawny Man or ManPower or Job Guy, and also finding a bar where I felt comfortable. I favored places that looked like the Americano or the Blarney Stone in New York."

"You liked a little steam-table with your booze, in other words," Eddie said.

"That's right," Callahan said, looking at Eddie as one does at a kindred spirit. "Do ya! And I'd protect those places until it was time to move on. By which I mean I'd get tipsy in my favorite neighborhood bar, then finish up the evening-the crawling, screaming, puking-down-the-front-of-your-shirt part-somewhere else. Alfresco, usually."