Part I
ONE
When Roland and Eddie entered Our Lady of Serenity the following morning, daylight was only a distant rumor on the northeast horizon. Eddie lit their way down the center aisle with a 'sener, his lips pressed tightly together. The thing they had come for was humming. It was a sleepy hum, but he hated the sound of it just the same. The church itself felt freaky. Empty, it seemed too big, somehow. Eddie kept expecting to see ghostly figures (or perhaps a complement of the vagrant dead) sitting in the pews and looking at them with otherworldly disapproval.
But the hum was worse.
When they reached the front, Roland opened his purse and took out the bowling bag which Jake had kept in his knapsack until yesterday. The gunslinger held it up for a moment and they could both read what was printed on the side: NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES.
"Not a word from now until I tell you it's all right," Roland said. "Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Roland pressed his thumb into the groove between two of the floorboards and the hidey-hole in the preacher's cove sprang open. He lifted the top aside. Eddie had once seen a movie on TV about guys disposing of live explosives during the London Blitz - UXB , it had been called - and Roland's movements now recalled that film strongly to his mind. And why not? If they were right about what was in this hiding place - and Eddie knew they were - then it was an unexploded bomb.
Roland folded back the white linen surplice, exposing the box. The hum rose. Eddie's breath stopped in his throat. He felt the skin all over his body grow cold. Somewhere close, a monster of nearly unimaginable malevolence had half-opened one sleeping eye.
The hum dropped back to its former sleepy pitch and Eddie breathed again.
Roland handed him the bowling bag, motioning for Eddie to hold it open. With misgivings (part of him wanted to whisper in Roland's ear that they should forget the whole thing), Eddie did as he was bidden. Roland lifted the box out, and once again the hum rose. In the rich, if limited, glow of the 'sener, Eddie could see sweat on the gunslinger's brow. He could feel it on his own. If Black Thirteen awoke and pitched them out into some black limbo...
I won't go. I'll fight to stay with Susannah .
Of course he would. But he was still relieved when Roland slipped the elaborately carved ghostwood box into the queer metallic bag they'd found in the vacant lot. The hum didn't disappear entirely, but subsided to a barely audible drone. And when Roland gently pulled the drawstring running around the top of the bag, closing its mouth, the drone became a distant whisper. It was like listening to a seashell.
Eddie sketched the sign of the cross in front of himself. Smiling faintly, Roland did the same.
Outside the church, the northeast horizon had brightened appreciably - there would be real daylight after all, it seemed.
"Roland."
The gunslinger turned toward him, eyebrows raised. His left fist was closed around the bag's throat; he was apparently not willing to trust the weight of the box to the bag's drawstring, stout as it looked.
"If we were todash when we found that bag, how could we have picked it up?"
Roland considered this. Then he said, "Perhaps the bag is todash, too."
"Still?"
Roland nodded. "Yes, I think so. Still."
"Oh." Eddie thought about it. "That's spooky."
"Changing your mind about revisiting New York, Eddie?" Eddie shook his head. He was scared, though. Probably more scared than he'd been at any time since standing up in the aisle of the Barony Coach to riddle Blaine.
TWO
By the time they were halfway along the path leading to the Doorway Cave (It's upsy , Henchick had said, and so it had been, and so it was), it was easily ten o' the clock and remarkably warm. Eddie stopped, wiped the back of his neck with his bandanna, and looked out over the twisting arroyos to the north. Here and there he could see black, gaping holes and asked Roland if they were the garnet mines. The gunslinger told him they were. "
"And which one have you got in mind for the kiddies? Can we see it from here?"
"As a matter of fact, yes." Roland drew the single gun he was wearing and pointed it. "Look over the sight."
Eddie did and saw a deep draw which made the shape of a jagged double S . It was filled to the top with velvety shadows; he guessed there might be only half an hour or so at midday when the sun reached the bottom. Farther to the north, it appeared to dead-end against a massive rock-face. He supposed the mine entrance was there, but it was too dark to make out. To the southeast this arroyo opened on a dirt track that wound its way back to East Road. Beyond East Road were fields sloping down to fading but still green plots of rice. Beyond the rice was the river.
"Makes me think of the story you told us," Eddie said. "Eye-bolt Canyon."
"Of course it does."
"No thinny to do the dirty work, though."
"No," Roland agreed. "No thinny."
"Tell me the truth: Are you really going to stick this town's kids in a mine at the end of a dead-end arroyo?"
"No."
"The folken think you... that we mean to do that. Even the dish-throwing ladies think that."
"I know they do," Roland said. "I want them to."
"Why?"
"Because I don't believe there's anything supernatural about the way the Wolves find the children. After hearing Gran-pere Jaffords's story, I don't think there's anything supernatural about the Wolves , for that matter. No, there's a rat in this particular corn-crib. Someone who goes squealing to the powers that be in Thunderclap."
"Someone different each time, you mean. Each twenty-three or twenty-four years."
"Yes."
"Who'd do that?" Eddie asked. "Who could do that?"
"I'm not sure, but I have an idea."
"Took? Kind of a handed-down thing, from father to son?"
"If you're rested, Eddie, I think we'd better press on."
"Overholser? Maybe that guy Telford, the one who looks like a TV cowboy?"
Roland walked past him without speaking, his new shor'boots gritting on the scattered pebbles and rock-splinters. From his good left hand, the pink bag swung back and forth. The thing inside was still whispering its unpleasant secrets.
"Chatty as ever, good for you," Eddie said, and followed him.
THREE
The first voice which arose from the depths of the cave belonged to the great sage and eminent junkie.
"Oh, wookit the wittle sissy!" Henry moaned. To Eddie, he sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge's dead partner in A Christmas Carol , funny and scary at the same time. "Does the wittle sissy think he's going back to Noo-Ork? You'll go a lot farther than that if you try it, bro. Better hunker where you are...just do your little carvings... be a good little homo..." The dead brother laughed. The live one shivered.
"Eddie?" Roland asked.
"Listen to your brother, Eddie!" his mother cried from the cave's dark and sloping throat. On the rock floor, scatters of small bones gleamed. "He gave up his life for you, his whole life , the least you could do is listen to him!"
"Eddie, are you all right?"
Now came the voice of Csaba Drabnik, known in Eddie's crowd as the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Csaba was telling Eddie to give him a cigarette or he'd pull Eddie's fuckin pants down. Eddie tore his attention away from this frightening but fascinating gabble with an effort.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess so."
"The voices are coming from your own head. The cave finds them and amplifies them somehow. Sends them on. It's a little upsetting, I know, but it's meaningless."
"Why'd you let em kill me, bro?" Henry sobbed. "I kept thinking you'd come, but you never did!"
"Meaningless," Eddie said. "Okay, got it. What do we do now?"
"According to both stories I've heard of this place - Callahan's and Henchick's - the door will open when I open the box."
Eddie laughed nervously. "I don't even want you to take the box out of the bag , how's that for chickenshit?"
"If you've changed your mind..."
Eddie was shaking his head. "No. I want to go through with it." He flashed a sudden, bright grin. "You're not worried about me scoring, are you? Finding the man and getting high?"
From deep in the cave, Henry exulted, "It's China White, bro! Them niggers sell the best!"
"Not at all," Roland said. "There are plenty of things I am worried about, but you returning to your old habits isn't one of them."
"Good." Eddie stepped a little farther into the cave, looking at the free-standing door. Except for the hieroglyphics on the front and the crystal knob with the rose etched on it, this one looked exactly like the ones on the beach. "If you go around - ?"
"If you go around, the door's gone," Roland said. "There is a hell of a drop-off, though... all the way to Na'ar, for all I know. I'd mind that, if I were you."
"Good advice, and Fast Eddie says thankya." He tried the crystal doorknob and found it wouldn't budge in either direction. He had expected that, too. He stepped back.
Roland said, "You need to think of New York. Of Second Avenue in particular, I think. And of the time. The year of nineteen and seven-seven."
"How do you think of a year ?"
When Roland spoke, his voice betrayed a touch of impatience. "Think of how it was on the day you and Jake followed Jake's earlier self, I suppose."
Eddie started to say that was the wrong day, it was too early, then closed his mouth. If they were right about the rules, he couldn't go back to that day, not todash, not in the flesh, either. If they were right, time over there was somehow hooked to time over here, only running a little faster. If they were right about the rules... if there were rules...
Well, why don't you just go and see?
"Eddie? Do you want me to try hypnotizing you?" Roland had drawn a shell from his gunbelt. "It can make you see the past more clearly."
"No. I think I better do this straight and wide-awake."
Eddie opened and closed his hands several times, taking and releasing deep breaths as he did so. His heart wasn't running particularly fast - was going slow, if anything - but each beat seemed to shiver through his entire body. Christ, all this would have been so much easier if there were just some controls you could set, like in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine or that movie about the Morlocks!
"Hey, do I look all right?" he asked Roland. "I mean, if I land on Second Avenue at high noon, how much attention am I going to attract?"
"If you appear in front of people," Roland said, "probably quite a lot. I'd advise you to ignore anyone who wants to palaver with you on the subject and vacate the area immediately."
"That much I know. I meant how do I look clotheswise?"
Roland gave a small shrug. "I don't know, Eddie. It's your city, not mine."
Eddie could have demurred. Brooklyn was his city. Had been, anyway. As a rule he hadn't gone into Manhattan from one month to the next, thought of it almost as another country. Still, he supposed he knew what Roland meant. He inventoried himself and saw a plain flannel shirt with horn buttons above dark-blue jeans with burnished nickel rivets instead of copper ones, and a button-up fly. (Eddie had seen zippers in Lud, but none since.) He reckoned he would pass for normal on the street. New York normal, at least. Anyone who gave him a second look would think cafe waiter/artist-wannabe playing hippie on his day off. He didn't think most people would even bother with the first look, and that was absolutely to the good. But there was one thing he could add -
"Have you got a piece of rawhide?" he asked Roland.
From deep in the cave, the voice of Mr. Tubther, his fifth-grade teacher, cried out with lugubrious intensity. "You had potential! You were a wonderful student, and look at what you turned into! Why did you let your brother spoil you?"
To which Henry replied, in sobbing outrage: "He let me die! He killed me!"
Roland swung his purse off his shoulder, put it on the floor at the mouth of the cave beside the pink bag, opened it, rummaged through it. Eddie had no idea how many things were in there; he only knew he'd never seen the bottom of it. At last the gunslinger found what Eddie had asked for and held it out.
While Eddie tied back his hair with the hank of rawhide (he thought it finished off the artistic-hippie look quite nicely), Roland took out what he called his swag-bag, opened it, and began to empty out its contents. There was the partially depleted sack of tobacco Callahan had given him, several kinds of coin and currency, a sewing kit, the mended cup he had turned into a rough compass not far from Shardik's clearing, an old scrap of map, and the newer one the Tavery twins had drawn. When the bag was empty, he took the big revolver with the sandalwood grip from the holster on his left hip. He rolled the cylinder, checked the loads, nodded, and snapped the cylinder back into place. Then he put the gun into the swag-bag, yanked the lacings tight, and tied them in a clove hitch that would come loose at a single pull. He held the bag out to Eddie by the worn strap.
At first Eddie didn't want to take it. "Nah, man, that's yours."
"These last weeks you've worn it as much as I have. Probably more."
"Yeah, but this is New York we're talking about, Roland. In New York, everybody steals."
"They won't steal from you. Take the gun."
Eddie looked into Roland's eyes for a moment, then took the swag-bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. "You've got a feeling."
"A hunch, yes."
"Ka at work?"
Roland shrugged. "It's always at work."
"All right," Eddie said. "And Roland - if I don't make it back, take care of Suze."
"Your job is to make sure I don't have to."
No , Eddie thought. My job is to protect the rose .
He turned to the door. He had a thousand more questions, but Roland was right, the time to ask them was done.
"Eddie, if you really don't want to - "
"No," he said. "I do want to." He raised his left hand and gave a thumbs-up. "When you see me do that, open the box."
"All right."
Roland speaking from behind him. Because now it was just Eddie and the door. The door with unfound written on it in some strange and lovely language. Once he'd read a novel called The Door Into Summer , by... who? One of the science-fiction guys he was always dragging home from the library, one of his old reliables, perfect for the long afternoons of summer vacation. Murray Leinster, Paul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison... Robert Heinlein. He thought it was Heinlein who'd written The Door Into Summer . Henry always ragging him about the books he brought home, calling him the wittle sissy, the wittle bookworm, asking him if he could read and jerk off at the same time, wanting to know how he could sit fuckin still for so long with his nose stuck in some made-up piece of shit about rockets and time machines. Henry older than him. Henry covered with pimples that were always shiny with Noxema and Stri-Dex. Henry getting ready to go into the Army. Eddie younger. Eddie bringing books home from the library. Eddie thirteen years old, almost the age Jake is now. It's 1977 and he's thirteen and on Second Avenue and the taxis are shiny yellow in the sun. A black man wearing Walkman earphones is walking past Chew Chew Mama's, Eddie can see him, Eddie knows the black man is listening to Elton John singing - what else? - "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." The sidewalk is crowded. It's late afternoon and people are going home after another day in the steel arroyos of Calla New York, where they grow money instead of rice, can ya say prime rate. Women looking amiably weird in expensive business suits and sneakers; their high heels are in their gunna because the workday is done and they're going home. Everyone seems to be smiling because the light is so bright and the air is so warm, it's summer in the city and somewhere there's the sound of a jack hammer, like on that old Lovin Spoonful song. Before him is a door into the summer of '77, the cabbies are getting a buck and a quarter on the drop and thirty cents every fifth of a mile thereafter, it was less before and it'll be more after but this is now, the dancing point of now. The space shuttle with the teacher on board hasn't blown up. John Lennon is still alive, although he won't be much longer if he doesn't stop messing with that wicked heroin, that China White. As for Eddie Dean, Edward Cantor Dean, he knows nothing about heroin. A few cigarettes are his only vice (other than trying to jack off, at which he will not be successful for almost another year). He's thirteen. It's 1977 and he has exactly four hairs on his chest, he counts them religiously each morning, hoping for big number five. It's the summer after the Summer of the Tall Ships. It's a late afternoon in the month of June and he can hear a happy tune. The tune is coming from the speakers over the doorway of the Tower of Power record shop, it's Mungo Jerry singing "In the Summertime," and -
Suddenly it was all real to him, or as real as he thought he needed it to be. Eddie raised his left hand and popped up his thumb: let's go . Behind him, Roland had sat down and eased the box out of the pink bag. And when Eddie gave him the thumbs-up, the gunslinger opened the box.
Eddie's ears were immediately assaulted by a sweetly dissonant jangle of chimes. His eyes began to water. In front of him, the free-standing door clicked open and the cave was suddenly illuminated by strong sunlight. There was the sound of beeping horns and the rat-a-tat-tat of a jackhammer. Not so long ago he had wanted a door like this so badly that he'd almost killed Roland to get it. And now that he had it, he was scared to death.
The todash chimes felt as if they were tearing his head apart. If he listened to that for long, he'd go insane. Go if you're going , he thought.
He stepped forward, through his gushing eyes seeing three hands reach out and grasp four doorknobs. He pulled the door toward him and golden late-day sunlight dazzled his eyes. He could smell gasoline and hot city air and someone's aftershave.
Hardly able to see anything, Eddie stepped through the unfound door and into the summer of a world from which he was now fan-gon, the exiled one.
FOUR
It was Second Avenue, all right; here was the Blimpie's, and from behind him came the cheery sound of that Mungo Jerry song with the Caribbean beat. People moved around him in a flood - uptown, downtown, all around the town. They paid no attention to Eddie, partly because most of them were only concentrating on getting out of town at the end of another day, mostly because in New York, not noticing other people was a way of life.
Eddie shrugged his right shoulder, settling the strap of Roland's swag-bag there more firmly, then looked behind him. The door back to Calla Bryn Sturgis was there. He could see Roland sitting at the mouth of the cave with the box open on his lap.
Those fucking chimes must be driving him crazy , Eddie thought. And then, as he watched, he saw the gunslinger remove a couple of bullets from his gunbelt and stick them in his ears. Eddie grinned. Good move, man . At least it had helped to block out the warble of the thinny back on 1-70. Whether it worked now or whether it didn't, Roland was on his own. Eddie had things to do.
He turned slowly on his little spot of the sidewalk, then looked over his shoulder again to verify the door had turned with him. It had. If it was like the other ones, it would now follow him everywhere he went. Even if it didn't, Eddie didn't foresee a problem; he wasn't planning on going far. He noticed something else, as well: that sense of darkness lurking behind everything was gone. Because he was really here, he supposed, and not just todash. If there were vagrant dead lurking in the vicinity, he wouldn't be able to see them.
Once more shrugging the swag-bag's strap further up on his shoulder, Eddie set off for The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.
FIVE
People moved aside for him as he walked, but that wasn't quite enough to prove he was really here; people did that when you were todash, too. At last Eddie provoked an actual collision with a young guy toting not one briefcase but two - a Big Coffin Hunter of the business world if Eddie had ever seen one.
"Hey, watch where you're going!" Mr. Businessman squawked when their shoulders collided.
"Sorry, man, sorry," Eddie said. He was here, all right. "Say, could you tell me what day - "
But Mr. Businessman was already gone, chasing the coronary he'd probably catch up to around the age of forty-five or fifty, from the look of him. Eddie remembered the punchline of an old New York joke: "Pardon me, sir, can you tell me how to get to City Hall, or should I just go fuck myself?" He burst out laughing, couldn't help it.
Once he had himself back under control, he got moving again. On the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he saw a man looking into a shop window at a display of shoes and boots. This guy was also wearing a suit, but looked considerably more relaxed than the one Eddie had bumped into. Also he was carrying only a single briefcase, which Eddie took to be a good omen.
"Cry your pardon," Eddie said, "but could you tell me what day it is?"
"Thursday," the window-shopper said. "The twenty-third of June."
"1977?"
The window-shopper gave Eddie a little half-smile, both quizzical and cynical, plus a raised eyebrow. "1977, that's correct. Won't be 1978 for... gee, another six months. Think of that."
Eddie nodded. "Thankee-sai."
"Nothing," Eddie said, and hurried on.
Only three weeks to July fifteenth, give or take , he thought. That's cutting it too goddam close for comfort .
Yes, but if he could persuade Calvin Tower to sell him the lot today, the whole question of time would be moot. Once, a long time ago, Eddie's brother had boasted to some of his friends that his little bro could talk the devil into setting himself on fire, if he really set his mind to it. Eddie hoped he still had some of that persuasiveness. Do a little deal with Calvin Tower, invest in some real estate, then maybe take a half-hour time-out and actually enjoy that New York groove a little bit. Celebrate. Maybe get a chocolate egg-cream, or -
The run of his thoughts broke off and he stopped so suddenly that someone bumped into him and then swore. Eddie barely felt the bump or heard the curse. The dark-gray Lincoln Town Car was parked up there again - not in front of the fire hydrant this time, but a couple of doors down.
Balazar's Town Car.
Eddie started walking again. He was suddenly glad Roland had talked him into taking one of his revolvers. And that the gun was fully loaded.
SIX
The chalkboard was back in the window (today's special was a New England Boiled Dinner consisting of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Frost - for dessert, your choice of Mary McCarthy or Grace Metalious), but the sign hanging in the door read sorry we're closed. According to the digital bank-clock up the street from Tower of Power Records, it was 3:14 p.m. Who shut up shop at quarter past three on a weekday afternoon?
Someone with a special customer, Eddie reckoned. That was who.
He cupped his hands to the sides of his face and looked into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. He saw the small round display table with the children's books on it. To the right was the counter that looked as if it might have been niched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, only today no one was sitting there, not even Aaron Deepneau. The cash register was likewise unattended, although Eddie could read the words on the orange tab sticking up in its window: no sale.
Place was empty. Calvin Tower had been called away, maybe there'd been a family emergency -
He's got an emergency, all right , the gunslinger's cold voice spoke up in Eddie's head. It came in that gray auto-carriage. And look again at the counter, Eddie. Only this time why don't you actually use your eyes instead of just letting the light pour through them ?
Sometimes he thought in the voices of other people. He guessed lots of people did that - it was a way of changing perspective a little, seeing stuff from another angle. But this didn't feel like that kind of pretending. This felt like old long, tall, and ugly actually talking to him inside his head.
Eddie looked at the counter again. This time he saw the strew of plastic chessmen on the marble, and the overturned coffee cup. This time he saw the spectacles lying on the floor between two of the stools, one of the lenses cracked.
He felt the first pulse of anger deep in the middle of his head. It was dull, but if past experience was any indicator, the pulses were apt to come faster and harder, growing sharper as they did. Eventually they would blot out conscious thought, and God help anyone who wandered within range of Roland's gun when that happened. He had once asked Roland if this happened to him, and Roland had replied, It happens to all of us . When Eddie had shaken his head and responded that he wasn't like Roland - not him, not Suze, not Jake - the gunslinger had said nothing.
Tower and his special customers were out back, he thought, in that combination storeroom and office. And this time talking probably wasn't what they had in mind. Eddie had an idea this was a little refresher course, Balazar's gentlemen reminding Mr. Tower that the fifteenth of July was coming, reminding Mr. Tower of what the most prudent decision would be once it came.
When the word gentlemen crossed Eddie's mind, it brought another pulse of anger with it. That was quite a word for guys who'd break a fat and harmless bookstore owner's glasses, then take him out back and terrorize him. Gentlemen! Fuck-commala!
He tried the bookshop door. It was locked, but the lock wasn't such of a much; the door rattled in its jamb like a loose tooth. Standing there in the recessed doorway, looking (he hoped) like a fellow who was especially interested in some book he'd glimpsed inside, Eddie began to increase his pressure on the lock, first using just his hand on the knob, then leaning his shoulder against the door in a way he hoped would look casual.
Chances are ninety-four in a hundred that no one's looking at you, anyway. This is New York, right? Can you tell me how to get to City Hall or should I just go fuck myself?
He pushed harder. He was still a good way from exerting maximum pressure when there was a snap and the door swung inward. Eddie entered without hesitation, as if he had every right in the world to be there, then closed the door again. It wouldn't latch. He took a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas off the children's table, ripped out the last page (Never liked the way this one ended, anyway , he thought), folded it three times, and stuck it into the crack between the door and the jamb. Good enough to keep it closed. Then he looked around.
The place was empty, and now, with the sun behind the skyscrapers of the West Side, shadowy. No sound -
Yes. Yes, there was. A muffled cry from the back of the shop. Caution, gentlemen at work , Eddie thought, and felt another pulse of anger. This one was sharper.
He yanked the tie on Roland's swag-bag, then walked toward the door at the back, the one marked employees only. Before he got there, he had to skirt an untidy heap of paperbacks and an overturned display rack, the old-fashioned drugstore kind that turned around and around. Calvin Tower had grabbed at it as Balazar's gents hustled him toward the storage area. Eddie hadn't seen it happen, didn't need to.
The door at the back wasn't locked. Eddie took Roland's revolver out of the swag-bag and set the bag itself aside so it wouldn't get in his way at a crucial moment. He eased the storage-room door open inch by inch, reminding himself of where Tower's desk was. If they saw him he'd charge, screaming at the top of his lungs. According to Roland, you always screamed at the top of your lungs when and if you were discovered. You might startle your enemy for a second or two, and sometimes a second or two made all the difference in the world.
This time there was no need for screaming or for charging. The men he was looking for were in the office area, their shadows once more climbing high and grotesque on the wall behind them. Tower was sitting in his office chair, but the chair was no longer behind the desk. It had been pushed into the space between two of the three filing cabinets. Without his glasses, his pleasant face looked naked. His two visitors were facing him, which meant their backs were to Eddie. Tower could have seen him, but Tower was looking up at Jack Andolini and George Biondi, concentrating on them alone. At the sight of the man's naked terror, another of those pulses went through Eddie's head.
There was the tang of gasoline in the air, a smell which Eddie guessed would frighten even the most stout-hearted shop owner, especially one presiding over an empire of paper. Beside the taller of the two men - Andolini - was a glass-fronted bookcase about five feet high. The door was swung open. Inside were four or five shelves of books, all the volumes wrapped in what looked like clear plastic dust-covers. Andolini was holding up one of them in a way that made him look absurdly like a TV pitchman. The shorter man - Biondi - was holding up a glass jar full of amber liquid in much the same way. Not much question about what it was.
"Please, Mr. Andolini," Tower said. He spoke in a humble, shaken voice. "Please, that's a very valuable book."
"Of course it is," Andolini said. "All the ones in the case are valuable. I understand you've got a signed copy of Ulysses that's worth twenty-six thousand dollars."
"What's that about, Jack?" George Biondi asked. He sounded awed. "What kind of book's worth twenty-six large?"
"I don't know," Andolini said. "Why don't you tell us, Mr. Tower? Or can I call you Cal?"
"My Ulysses is in a safe-deposit box," Tower said. "It's not for sale."
"But these are," Andolini said. "Aren't they? And I see the number 7500 on the flyleaf of this one in pencil. No twenty-six grand, but still the price of a new car. So here's what I'm going to do, Cal. Are you listening?"
Eddie was moving closer, and although he strove to be quiet, he made no effort whatever to conceal himself. And still none of them saw him. Had he been this stupid when he'd been of this world? This vulnerable to what was not even an ambush, properly speaking? He supposed he had been, and knew it was no wonder Roland had at first held him in contempt.
"I... I'm listening."
"You've got something Mr. Balazar wants as badly as you want your copy of Ulysses . And although these books in the glass cabinet are technically for sale, I bet you sell damned few of them, because you just... can't... bear... to part with them. The way you can't bear to part with that vacant lot. So here's what's going to happen. George is going to pour gasoline over this book with 7500 on it, and I'm going to light it on fire. Then I'm going to take another book out of your little case of treasures, and I'm going to ask you for a verbal commitment to sell that lot to the Sombra Corporation at high noon on July fifteenth. Got that?"
"If you give me that verbal commitment, this meeting will come to an end. If you don't give me that verbal commitment, I'm going to burn the second book. Then a third. Then a fourth. After four, sir, I believe my associate here is apt to lose patience."
"You're fucking A," George Biondi said. Eddie was now almost close enough to reach out and touch Big Nose, and still they didn't see him.
"At that point I think we'll just pour gasoline inside your little glass cabinet and set all your valuable books on f - "
Movement at last snagged Jack Andolini's eye. He looked beyond his partner's left shoulder and saw a young man with hazel eyes looking out of a deeply tanned face. The man was holding what looked like the world's oldest, biggest prop revolver. Had to be a prop.
"Who the fuck're - " Jack began.
Before he could get any further, Eddie Dean's face lit up with happiness and good cheer, a look that vaulted him way past handsome and into the land of beauty. "George !" he cried. It was the tone of one greeting his oldest, fondest friend after a long absence. "George Biondi ! Man, you still got the biggest beak on this side of the Hudson! Good to see you, man!"
There is a certain hardwiring in the human animal that makes us respond to strangers who call us by name. When the summoning call is affectionate, we seem almost compelled to respond in kind. In spite of the situation they were in back here, George "Big Nose" Biondi turned, with the beginning of a grin, toward the voice that had hailed him with such cheerful familiarity. That grin was in fact still blooming when Eddie struck him savagely with the butt of Roland's gun. Andolini's eyes were sharp, but he saw little more than a blur as the butt came down three times, the first blow between Biondi's eyes, the second above his right eye, the third into the hollow of his right temple. The first two blows provoked hollow thudding sounds. The last one yielded a soft, sickening smack. Biondi went down like a sack of mail, eyes rolling up to show the whites, lips puckering in a restless way that made him look like a baby who wanted to nurse. The jar tumbled out of his relaxing hand, hit the cement floor, shattered. The smell of gasoline was suddenly much stronger, rich and cloying.
Eddie gave Biondi's partner no time to react. While Big Nose was still twitching on the floor in the spilled gas and broken glass, Eddie was on Andolini, forcing him backward.
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?"
"I don't know you. How do you know us?"
Eddie took the gun out from beneath Old Double-Ugly's chin and saw a red circle where the barrel of Roland's revolver had pressed. Suppose I told you that it's your ka to meet me again, ten years from now ? And to be eaten by lobstrosities ? That they'll start with the feet inside your Gucci loafers and work their way up ? Andolini wouldn't believe him, of course, any more than he'd believed Roland's big old revolver would work until Eddie had demonstrated the truth. And along this track of possibility - on this level of the Tower - Andolini might not be eaten by lobstrosities. Because this world was different from all the others. This was Level Nineteen of the Dark Tower. Eddie felt it. Later he would ruminate on it, but not now. Now the very act of thinking was difficult. What he wanted right now was to kill both of these men, then head over to Brooklyn and tune up on the rest of Balazar's tet. Eddie tapped the barrel of the revolver against one of Andolini's jutting cheekbones. He had to restrain himself from really going to work on that ugly mug, and Andolini saw it. He blinked and wet his lips. Eddie's knee was still on his chest. Eddie could feel it going up and down like a bellows.
"You didn't answer my question," Eddie said. "What you did instead was ask a question of your own. The next time you do that, Jack, I'm going to use the barrel of this gun to break your face. Then I'll shoot out one of your kneecaps, turn you into a jackhopper for the rest of your life. I can shoot off a good many parts of you and still leave you able to talk. And don't play dumb with me. You're not dumb - except maybe in your choice of employer - and I know it. So let me ask you again: Will you listen to me?"
"What choice do I have?"
Moving with that same blurry, spooky speed, Eddie swept Roland's gun across Andolini's face. There was a sharp crack as his cheekbone snapped. Blood began to flow from his right nostril, which to Eddie looked about the size of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Andolini cried out in pain, Tower in shock.
Eddie socked the muzzle of the pistol back into the soft place under Andolini's chin. Without looking away from him, Eddie said: "Keep an eye on the other one, Mr. Tower. If he starts to stir, you let me know."
"Who are you?" Tower almost bleated.
"A friend. The only one you've got who can save your bacon. Now watch him and let me work."
"A-All right."
Eddie Dean turned his full attention back to Andolini. "I laid George out because George is stupid. Even if he could carry the message I need carried, he wouldn't believe it. And how can a man convince others of what he doesn't believe himself?"
"Got a point there," Andolini said. He was looking up at Eddie with a kind of horrified fascination, perhaps finally seeing this stranger with the gun for what he really was. For what Roland had known he was from the very beginning, even when Eddie Dean had been nothing but a wetnose junkie shivering his way through heroin withdrawal. Jack Andolini was seeing a gunslinger.
"You bet I do," Eddie said. "And here's the message I want you to carry: Tower's off-limits."
Jack was shaking his head. "You don't understand. Tower has something somebody wants. My boss agreed to get it. He promised. And my boss always - "
"Always keeps his promises, I know," Eddie said. "Only this time he won't be able to, and that's not going to be his fault. Because Mr. Tower has decided not to sell his vacant lot up the street to The Sombra Corporation. He's going to sell it to the... mmm... to the Tet Corporation, instead. Got that?"
"Mister, I don't know you, but I know my boss. He won't stop."
"He will. Because Tower won't have anything to sell. The lot will no longer be his. And now listen even more closely, Jack. Listen ka-me, not ka-mai." Wisely, not foolishly.
Eddie leaned down. Jack stared up at him, fascinated by the bulging eyes - hazel irises, bloodshot whites - and the savagely grinning mouth which was now the distance of a kiss from his own.
"Mr. Calvin Tower has come under the protection of people more powerful and more ruthless than you could ever imagine, Jack. People who make Il Roche look like a hippie flower-child at Woodstock. You have to convince him that he has nothing to gain by continuing to harass Calvin Tower, and everything to lose."
"I can't - "
"As for you, know that the mark of Gilead is on this man. If you ever touch him again - if you ever even step foot in this shop again - I'll come to Brooklyn and kill your wife and children. Then I'll find your mother and father, and I'll kill them. Then I'll kill your mother's sisters and your father's brothers. Then I'll kill your grandparents, if they're still alive. You I'll save for last. Do you believe me?"
Jack Andolini went on staring into the face above him - the bloodshot eyes, the grinning, snarling mouth - but now with mounting horror. The fact was, he did believe. And whoever he was, he knew a great deal about Balazar and about this current deal. About the current deal, he might know more than Andolini knew himself.
"There's more of us," Eddie said, "and we're all about the same thing: protecting..." He almost said protecting the rose . "... protecting Calvin Tower. We'll be watching this place, we'll be watching Tower, we'll be watching Tower's friends - guys like Deepneau." Eddie saw Andolini's eyes flicker with surprise at that, and was satisfied. "Anybody who comes here and even raises his voice to Tower, we'll kill their whole families and them last. That goes for George, for 'Cimi Dretto, Tricks Postino... for your brother Claudio, too."
Andolini's eyes widened at each name, then winced momentarily shut at the name of his brother. Eddie thought that maybe he'd made his point. Whether or not Andolini could convince Balazar was another question. But in a way it doesn't even matter , he thought coldly. Once Tower's sold us the lot, it doesn't really matter what they do to him, does it ?
"How do you know so much>" Andolini asked.
"That doesn't matter. Just pass on the message. Tell Balazar to tell his friends at Sombra that the lot is no longer for sale. Not to them, it isn't. And tell him that Tower is now under the protection of folk from Gilead who carry hard calibers."
"Hard - ?"
"I mean folk more dangerous than any Balazar has ever dealt with before," Eddie said, "including the people from the Sombra Corporation. Tell him that if he persists, there'll be enough corpses in Brooklyn to fill Grand Army Plaza. And many of them will be women and children. Convince him."
"I... man, I'll try."
Eddie stood up, then backed up. Curled in the puddles of gasoline and the strews of broken glass, George Biondi was beginning to stir and mutter deep in his throat. Eddie gestured to Jack with the barrel of Roland's pistol, telling him to get up.
"You better try hard," he said.
NINE
Tower poured them each a cup of black coffee, then couldn't drink his. His hands were shaking too badly. After watching him try a couple of times (and thinking about a bomb-disposal character in UXB who lost his nerve), Eddie took pity on him and poured half of Tower's coffee into his own cup.
"Try now," he said, and pushed the half-cup back to the bookshop owner. Tower had his glasses on again, but one of the bows had been twisted and they sat crookedly on his face. Also, there was the crack running across the left lens like a lightning bolt. The two men were at the marble counter, Tower behind it, Eddie perched on one of the stools. Tower had carried the book Andolini had threatened to burn first out here with him, and put it down beside the coffee-maker. It was as if he couldn't bear to let it out of his sight.
Tower picked up the cup with his shaking hand (no rings on it, Eddie noticed - no rings on either hand) and drained it. Eddie couldn't understand why the man would choose to drink such so-so brew black. As far as Eddie himself was concerned, the really good taste was the Half and Half. After the months he had spent in Roland's world (or perhaps whole years had been sneaking by), it tasted as rich as heavy cream.
"Better?" Eddie asked.
"Yes." Tower looked out the window, as if expecting the return of the gray Town Car that had jerked and swayed away just ten minutes before. Then he looked back at Eddie. He was still frightened of the young man, but the last of his outright terror had departed when Eddie stowed the huge pistol back inside what he called "my friend's swag-bag." The bag was made of a scuffed, no-color leather, and closed along the top with lacings rather than a zipper. To Calvin Tower, it seemed that the young man had stowed the more frightening aspects of his personality in the "swag-bag" along with the oversized revolver. That was good, because it allowed Tower to believe that the kid had been bluffing about killing whole hoodlum families as well as the hoodlums themselves.
"Where's your pal Deepneau today?" Eddie asked.
"Oncologist. Two years ago, Aaron started seeing blood in the toilet bowl when he moved his bowels. A younger man, he thinks 'Goddam hemorrhoids' and buys a tube of Preparation H. Once you're in your seventies, you assume the worst. In his case it was bad but not terrible. Cancer moves slower when you get to be his age; even the Big C gets old. Funny to think of, isn't it? Anyway, they baked it with radiation and they say it's gone, but Aaron says you don't turn your back on cancer. He goes back every three months, and that's where he is. I'm glad. He's an old cockuh but still a hothead."
I should introduce Aaron Deepneau to Jamie Jaffords , Eddie thought. They could play Castles instead of chess, and yarn away the days of the Goat Moon .
Tower, meanwhile, was smiling sadly. He adjusted his glasses on his face. For a moment they stayed straight, and then they tilted again. The tilt was somehow worse than the crack; made Tower look slightly crazy as well as vulnerable. "He's a hothead and I'm a coward. Perhaps that's why we're friends - we fit around each other's wrong places, make something that's almost whole."
"Say maybe you're a little hard on yourself," Eddie said.
"I don't think so. My analyst says that anyone who wants to know how the children of an A-male father and a B-female mother turn out would only have to study my case-history. He also says - "
"Cry your pardon, Calvin, but I don't give much of a shit about your analyst. You held onto the lot up the street, and that's good enough for me."
"I don't take any credit for that," Calvin Tower said morosely. "It's like this" - he picked up the book that he'd put down beside the coffee-maker - "and the other ones he threatened to burn. I just have a problem letting things go. When my first wife said she wanted a divorce and I asked why, she said, 'Because when I married you, I didn't understand. I thought you were a man. It turns out you're a packrat.'"
"The lot is different from the books," Eddie said.
"Is it? Do you really think so?" Tower was looking at him, fascinated. When he raised his coffee cup, Eddie was pleased to see that the worst of his shakes had subsided.
"Don't you?"
"Sometimes I dream about it," Tower said. "I haven't actually been in there since Tommy Graham's deli went bust and I paid to have it knocked down. And to have the fence put up, of course, which was almost as expensive as the men with the wrecking ball. I dream there's a field of flowers in there. A field of roses. And instead of just to First Avenue, it goes on forever. Funny dream, huh?"
Eddie was sure that Calvin Tower did indeed have such dreams, but he thought he saw something else in the eyes hiding behind the cracked and tilted glasses. He thought Tower was letting this dream stand for all the dreams he would not tell.
"Funny," Eddie agreed. "I think you better pour me another slug of that mud, beg ya I do. We'll have us a little palaver."
Tower smiled and once more raised the book Andolini had meant to charbroil. "Palaver. It's the kind of thing they're always saying in here."
"Do you say so?"
"Uh-huh."
Eddie held out his hand. "Let me see."