Wolves of the Calla (65 page)

The name on the letterhead is
THE SOMBRA CORPORATION.

“You went,” Roland said.

“We all went,” Callahan said. “If the invitation had been for me alone, I never would’ve. But, since they were asking for all three of us . . . and
wanted to give us a million dollars . . . do you have any idea what a million bucks would have meant to a fly-by-night outfit like Home or Lighthouse? Especially during the Reagan years?”

Susannah gave a start at this. Eddie shot her a nakedly triumphant look. Callahan clearly wanted to ask the reason for this byplay, but Roland was twirling his finger in that hurry-up gesture again, and now it really
was
getting late. Pressing on for midnight. Not that any of Roland’s ka-tet looked sleepy; they were tightly focused on the Pere, marking every word.

“Here is what I’ve come to believe,” Callahan said, leaning forward. “There is a loose league of association between the vampires and the low men. I think if you traced it back, you’d find the roots of their association in the dark land. In Thunderclap.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Roland said. His blue eyes flashed out of his pale and tired face.

“The vampires—those who aren’t Type Ones—are stupid. The low men are smarter, but not by a whole lot. Otherwise I never would have been able to escape them for as long as I did. But then—finally—someone else took an interest. An agent of the Crimson King, I should think, whoever or whatever he is. The low men were drawn away from me. So were the vampires. There were no posters during those last months, not that I saw; no chalked messages on the sidewalks of West Fort Street or Jefferson Avenue, either. Someone giving the orders, that’s what I think. Someone a good deal smarter. And a million dollars!” He shook his head. A small and bitter smile touched his face. “In the end, that was what blinded me. Nothing but money. ‘Oh yes,
but it’s to do good!’ I told myself . . . and we told each other, of course. ‘It’ll keep us independent for at least five years! No more going to the Detroit City Council, begging with our hats in our hands!’ All true. It didn’t occur to me until later that there’s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.”

“What happened?” Eddie asked.

“Why, we kept our appointment,” the Pere said. His face wore a rather ghastly smile. “The Tishman Building, 982 Michigan Avenue, one of the finest business addresses in the D. December 19th, 4:20
P.M.
”

“Odd time for an appointment,” Susannah said.

“We thought so, too, but who questions such minor matters with a million dollars at stake? After some discussion, we agreed with Al—or rather Al’s mother. According to her, one should show up for important appointments five minutes early, no more and no less. So we walked into the lobby of the Tishman Building at 4:10
P.M.
, dressed in our best, found Sombra Corporation on the directory board, and went on up to the thirty-third floor.”

“Had you checked this corporation out?” Eddie asked.

Callahan looked at him as if to say
duh
. “According to what we could find in the library, Sombra was a closed corporation—no public stock issue, in other words—that mostly bought other companies. They specialized in high-tech stuff, real estate, and construction. That seemed to be all anyone knew. Assets were a closely guarded secret.”

“Incorporated in the U.S.?” Susannah asked.

“No. Nassau, the Bahamas.”

Eddie started, remembering his days as a cocaine mule and the sallow thing from whom he had bought his last load of dope. “Been there, done that,” he said. “Didn’t see anyone from the Sombra Corporation, though.”

But did he know that was true? Suppose the sallow thing with the British accent worked for Sombra? Was it so hard to believe that they were involved in the dope trade, along with whatever else they were into? Eddie supposed not. If nothing else, it suggested a tie to Enrico Balazar.

“Anyway, they were there in all the right reference books and yearlies,” Callahan said. “Obscure, but there. And rich. I don’t know exactly what Sombra is, and I’m at least half-convinced that most of the people we saw in their offices on the thirty-third floor were nothing but extras . . . stage-dressing . . . but there probably is an actual Sombra Corporation.

“We took the elevator up there. Beautiful reception area—French Impressionist paintings on the walls, what else?—and a beautiful receptionist to go with it. The kind of woman—say pardon, Susannah—if you’re a man, you can almost believe that if you were allowed to touch her breast, you’d live forever.”

Eddie burst out laughing, looked sideways at Susannah, and stopped in a hurry.

“It was 4:17. We were invited to sit down. Which we did, feeling nervous as hell. People came and went. Every now and then a door to our left would open and we’d see a floor filled with desks and cubicles. Phones ringing, secretaries flitting hither and yon with files, the sound of a big copier. If it
was a set-up—and I think it was—it was as elaborate as a Hollywood movie. I was nervous about our appointment with Mr. Sayre, but no more than that. Extraordinary, really. I’d been on the run more or less constantly since leaving ’Salem’s Lot eight years previous, and I’d developed a pretty good early-warning system, but it never so much as chirruped that day. I suppose if you could reach him via the Ouija board, John Dillinger would say much the same about his night at the movies with Anna Sage.

“At 4:19, a young man in a striped shirt and tie that looked just oh so Hugo Boss came out and got us. We were whisked down a corridor past some very upscale offices—with an upscale executive beavering away in every one, so far as I could see—and to double doors at the end of the hall. This was marked
CONFERENCE ROOM
. Our escort opened the doors. He said, ‘God luck, gentlemen.’ I remember that very clearly. Not
good
luck, but
god
luck. That was when my perimeter alarms started to go off, and by then it was far too late. It happened fast, you see. They didn’t . . . ”

It happens fast. They have been after Callahan for a long time now, but they waste little time gloating. The doors slam shut behind them, much too loudly and hard enough to shiver in their frames. Executive assistants who drag down eighteen thousand a year to start with close doors a certain way
—
with respect for money and power
—
and this isn’t it. This is the way angry drunks and addicts on the jones close doors. Also crazy
people, of course. Crazy people are ace doorslammers.

Callahan’s alarm systems are fully engaged now, not pinging but
howling,
and when he looks around the executive conference room, dominated at the far end by a large window giving a terrific view of Lake Michigan, he sees there’s good reason for this and has time to think
Dear Christ—Mary, mother of God—how could I have been so foolish?
He can see thirteen people in the room. Three are low men, and this is his first good look at their heavy, unhealthy-looking faces, red-glinting eyes, and full, womanish lips. All three are smoking. Nine are Type Three vampires. The thirteenth person in the conference room is wearing a loud shirt and clashing tie, low-men attire for certain, but his face has a lean and foxy look, full of intelligence and dark humor. On his brow is a red circle of blood that seems neither to ooze nor to clot.

There is a bitter crackling sound. Callahan wheels and sees Al and Ward drop to the floor. Standing to either side of the door through which they entered are numbers fourteen and fifteen, a low man and a low woman, both of them holding electrical stunners.

“Your friends will be all right, Father Callahan.”

He whirls around again. It’s the man with the blood-spot on his forehead. He looks about sixty, but it’s hard to tell. He’s wearing a garish yellow shirt and a red tie. When his thin lips part in a smile, they reveal teeth that come to points.
It’s Sayre,
Callahan thinks.
Sayre, or whoever signed that letter. Whoever thought this little sting up.

“You, however, won’t,” he continues.

The low men look at him with a kind of dull avidity: here he is, finally, their lost pooch with the burned paw and the scarred forehead. The vampires are more interested. They almost thrum within their blue auras. And
all at once Callahan can hear the chimes. They’re faint, somehow damped down, but they’re there. Calling him.

Sayre
—
if that’s his name
—
turns to the vampires. “He’s the one,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s killed hundreds of you in a dozen versions of America. My friends”
—
he gestures to the low men
—
“were unable to track him down, but of course they seek other, less suspecting prey in the ordinary course of things. In any case, he’s here now. Go on, have at him. But don’t kill him!”

He turns to Callahan. The hole in his forehead fills and gleams but never drips.
It’s an eye,
Callahan thinks,
a bloody eye.
What is looking out of it? What is watching, and from where?

Sayre says, “These particular friends of the King all carry the AIDS virus. You surely know what I mean, don’t you? We’ll let
that
kill you. It will take you out of the game forever, in this world and all the others. This is no game for a fellow like you, anyway. A false priest like you.”

Callahan doesn’t hesitate. If he hesitates, he will be lost. It’s not AIDS he’s afraid of, but of letting them put their filthy lips on him in the first place, to kiss him as the one was kissing Lupe Delgado in the alley. They don’t get to win. After all the way he’s come, after all the jobs, all the jail cells, after finally getting sober in Kansas,
they don’t get to win.

He doesn’t try to reason with them. There is no palaver. He just sprints down the right side of the conference room’s extravagant mahogany table. The man in the yellow shirt, suddenly alarmed, shouts “Get him! Get him!” Hands slap at his jacket
—
specially bought at Grand River Menswear for this auspicious occasion
—
but slip off. He has time to think
The window won’t break, it’s made of some tough glass, anti-suicide glass, and it won’t break . . .
and he has just time enough to call on God for
the first time since Barlow forced him to take of his poisoned blood.

“Help me! Please help me!”
Father Callahan cries, and runs shoulder-first into the window. One more hand slaps at his head, tries to tangle itself in his hair, and then it is gone. The window shatters all around him and suddenly he is standing in cold air, surrounded by flurries of snow. He looks down between black shoes which were also specially purchased for this auspicious occasion, and he sees Michigan Avenue, with cars like toys and people like ants.

He has a sense of them
—
Sayre and the low men and the vampires who were supposed to infect him and take him out of the game forever
—
clustered at the broken window, staring with disbelief.

He thinks,
This
does
take me out of it forever . . . doesn’t it?

And he thinks, with the wonder of a child:
This is the last thought I’ll ever have. This is goodbye.

Then he is falling.

Callahan stopped and looked at Jake, almost shyly. “Do you remember it?” he asked. “The actual . . . ” He cleared his throat. “The dying?”

Jake nodded gravely. “You don’t?”

“I remember looking at Michigan Avenue from between my new shoes. I remember the sensation of standing there—seeming to, anyway—in the middle of a snow flurry. I remember Sayre behind me, yelling in some other language. Cursing. Words that guttural just about had to be curses. And I remember thinking,
He’s frightened
. That was actually my last
thought, that Sayre was frightened. Then there was an interval of darkness. I floated. I could hear the chimes, but they were distant. Then they came closer. As if they were mounted on some engine that was rushing toward me at terrible speed.

“There was light. I saw light in the darkness. I thought I was having the Kübler-Ross death experience, and I went toward it. I didn’t care where I came out, as long as it wasn’t on Michigan Avenue, all smashed and bleeding, with a crowd standing around me. But I didn’t see how that could happen. You don’t fall thirty-three stories, then regain consciousness.

“And I wanted to get away from the chimes. They kept getting louder. My eyes started to water. My ears hurt. I was glad I still had eyes and ears, but the chimes made any gratitude I might have felt pretty academic.

“I thought,
I have to get into the light,
and I lunged for it. I . . . ”

He opens his eyes, but even before he does, he is aware of a smell. It’s the smell of hay, but very faint, almost exhausted. A ghost of its former self, you might say. And he? Is he a ghost?

He sits up and looks around. If this is the afterlife, then all the holy books of the world, including the one from which he himself used to preach, are wrong. Because he’s not in heaven or hell; he’s in a stable. There are white wisps of ancient straw on the floor. There are cracks in the board walls through which brilliant light streams. It’s the light he followed out of the darkness, he thinks. And he
thinks,
It’s desert light.
Is there any concrete reason to think so? Perhaps. The air is dry when he pulls it into his nostrils. It’s like drawing the air of a different planet.

Maybe it is,
he thinks
. Maybe this is the Planet Afterlife.

The chimes are still there, both sweet and horrible, but now fading
. . .
fading
. . .
and gone. He hears the faint snuffle of hot wind. Some of it finds its way through the gaps between the boards, and a few bits of straw lift off from the floor, do a tired little dance, then settle back.