Stephen King – The Dark Tower 5 – The Wolves of the Calla

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 what I 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?”