Eddie thumped the unwounded side of his head, being careful to use his right hand for this bit
of theater. His left arm was stiffening up, and his leg was once more starting to throb between the knee and the ankle. He supposed it was possible that good old Aaron was traveling with some
heavy-duty painkillers and made a mental note to ask for a few if he was.
“Cry pardon,” Eddie said, “but I took a knock on the head while I was arriving in this charming little town, and I think it’s screwed up my hearing. I thought you said that sai . . . that Mr. Tower had decided against selling us the lot.”
Deepneau smiled, rather wearily. ‘You know perfectly well what I said.”
“But he’s supposed to sell it to us! He had a letter from Stefan Toren, his three-times-great grandfather, saying just that!”
“Cal says different,” Aaron responded mildly. “Have another strawberry, Mr. Dean.”
“No thank you!”
“Have another strawberry, Eddie,” Roland said, and handed him one.
Eddie took it. Considered squashing it against Long, Tall, and Ugly’s beak, just for the hell of it, then dipped it first in a saucer of cream, then in the sugarbowl. He began to eat. And damn, it was hard to stay bitter with that much sweetness flooding your mouth. A fact of which Roland
(Deepneau too, for that matter) was surely aware.
“According to Cal,” Deepneau said, “there was nothing in the envelope he had from Stefan Toren except for this man’s name.” He tilted his mostly hairless head toward Roland. “Toren’s will — what was in the olden days sometimes called a ‘dead-letter’ — was long gone.”
“I knew what was in the envelope,” Eddie said. “He asked me, and I knew! ”
“So he told me.” Deepneau regarded him expressionlessly. “He said it was a trick any streetcorner magician could do.”
“Did he also tell you that he promised to sell us the lot if I could tell him the name? That he fucking promised? ”
“He claims to have been under considerable stress when he made that promise. As I am sure
he was.”
“Does the son of a bitch think we mean to weasel on him?” Eddie asked. His temples were thudding with rage. Had he ever been so angry? Once, he supposed. When Roland had refused to
let him go back to New York so he could score some horse. “Is that it? Because we won’t. We’ll come up with every cent he wants, and more. I swear it on the face of my father! And on the
heart of my dinh!”
“Listen to me carefully, young man, because this is important.”
Eddie glanced at Roland. Roland nodded slightly, then crushed out his cigarette on one
bootheel. Eddie looked back at Deepneau, silent but glowering.
“He says that is exactly the problem. He says you’ll pay him some ridiculously low token amount — a dollar is the usual sum in such cases — and then stiff him for the rest. He claims
you tried to hypnotize him into believing you were a supernatural being, or someone with access to supernatural beings . . . not to mention access to millions from the Holmes Dental Corporation
. . . but he was not fooled.”
Eddie gaped at him.
“These are things Calvin says, ” Deepneau continued in that same calm voice, “but they are not necessarily the things Calvin believes. ”
“What in hell do you mean?”
“Calvin has issues with letting go of things,” Deepneau said. “He is quite good at finding rare and antiquarian books, you know — a regular literary Sherlock Holmes —and he is compulsive
about acquiring them. I’ve seen him hound the owner of a book he wants — I’m afraid there’s no other word that really fits — until the book’s owner gives in and sells. Sometimes just to make Cal stop calling on the telephone, I’m sure.
“Given his talents, his location, and the considerable sum of money to which he gained
complete access on his twenty-sixth birthday, Cal should have been one of the most successful
antiquarian book-dealers in New York, or in the whole country. His problem isn’t with buying
but selling. Once he has an item he’s really worked to acquire, he hates to let it go again. I
remember when a book collector from San Francisco, a fellow almost as compulsive as Cal
himself, finally wore down Cal enough to sell him a signed first of Moby-Dick. Cal made over seventy thousand dollars on that one deal alone, but he also didn’t sleep for a week.
“He feels much the same way about the lot on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. It’s the only real property, other than his books, which he still has. And he’s convinced himself that you want to steal it from him.”
There was a short period of silence. Then Roland said: “Does he know better, in his secret heart?”
“Mr. Deschain, I don’t understand what — ”
“Aye, ya do,” Roland said. “Does he?”
“Yes,” Deepneau said at last. “I believe he does.”
“Does he understand in his secret heart that we are men of our word who will pay him for his property, unless we’re dead?”
“Yes, probably. But — ”
“Does he understand that, if he transfers ownership of the lot to us, and if we make this transfer perfectly clear to Andolini’s dinh — his boss, a man named Balazar — ”
“I know the name,” Deepneau said dryly. “It’s in the papers from time to time.”
“That Balazar will then leave your friend alone? If, that is, he can be made to understand that the lot is no longer your friend’s to sell, and that any effort to take revenge on sai Tower will cost Balazar himself dearly?”
Deepneau crossed his arms over his narrow chest and waited. He was looking at Roland with a
kind of uneasy fascination.
“In short, if your friend Calvin Tower sells us that lot, his troubles will be over. Do you think he knows that in his secret heart?”
“Yes,” Deepneau said. “It’s just that he’s got this . . . this kink about letting stuff go.”
“Draw up a paper,” Roland said. “Object, the vacant square of waste ground on the corner of those two streets. Tower the seller. Us the buyer.”
“The Tet Corporation as buyer,” Eddie put in.
Deepneau was shaking his head. “I could draw it up, but you won’t convince him to sell.
Unless you’ve got a week or so, that is, and you’re not averse to using hot irons on his feet. Or maybe his balls.”
Eddie muttered something under his breath. Deepneau asked him what he’d said. Eddie told
him nothing. What he’d said was Sounds good.
“We will convince him,” Roland said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, my friend.”
“We will convince him,” Roland repeated. He spoke in his driest tone.
Outside, an anonymous little car (a Hertz rental if Eddie had ever seen one) rolled into the clearing and came to a stop.
Bite your tongue, bite your tongue, Eddie told himself, but as Calvin Tower got briskly out of the car (giving the new vehicle in his dooryard only the most cursory glance), Eddie felt his
temples begin to heat up. He rolled his hands into fists, and when his nails bit into the skin of his palms, he grinned in bitter appreciation of the pain.
Tower opened the trunk of his rental Chevy and pulled out a large bag. His latest haul, Eddie thought. Tower looked briefly south, at the smoke in the sky, then shrugged and started for the cabin.
That’s right, Eddie thought, that’s right, you whore, just something on fire, what’s it to you?
Despite the throb of pain it caused in his wounded arm, Eddie squeezed his fists tighter, dug his nails in deeper.
You can’t kill him, Eddie, Susannah said. You know that, don’t you?
Did he know it? And even if he did, could he listen to Suze’s voice? To any voice of reason, for that matter? Eddie didn’t know. What he knew was that the real Susannah was gone, she had
a monkey named Mia on her back and had disappeared into the maw of the future. Tower, on the
other hand, was here. Which made sense, in a way. Eddie had read someplace that nuclear war’s
most likely survivors would be the cockroaches.
Never mind, sugar, you just, bite down on your tongue and let Roland handle this. You can’t kill him!
No, Eddie supposed not.
Not, at least, until sai Tower had signed on the dotted line. After that, however . . . after that . .
SIX
“Aaron!” Tower called as he mounted the porch steps.
Roland caught Deepneau’s eyes and put a finger across his lips.
“Aaron, hey Aaron!” Tower sounded strong and happy to be alive — not a man on the run but a man on a wonderful busman’s holiday. “Aaron, I went over to that widow’s house in East