Wolves of the Calla (74 page)

“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.”

“Thankee-
what
?”

“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.

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 filched 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 shopowner, 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?”

“I—”

“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.

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.