Six
"Aaron!" Tower called as he mounted the porch steps.
Roland caught Deepneau's eyes and put a finger across his lips.
"Aaron, heyAaron !" 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 Fryeburg, and holy Joe, she's got every novel Herman Wouk ever wrote! Not the book club editions, either, which is what I expected, but - "
Thescroink! of the screen door's rusty spring being stretched was followed by the clump of shoes across the porch.
" - the Doubleday firsts!Marjorie Morningstar! The Caine Mutiny! I think somebody across the lake better hope their fire insurance is paid up, because - "
He stepped in. Saw Aaron. Saw Roland sitting across from Deepneau, looking at him steadily from those frightening blue eyes with the deep crow's feet at the corners. And, last of all, he saw Eddie. But Eddie didn't see him. At the last moment Eddie Dean had lowered his clasped hands between his knees and then lowered his head so his gaze was fixed upon them and the board floor below them. He was quite literally biting his tongue. There were two drops of blood on the side of his right thumb. He fixed his eyes on these. He fixed every iota of his attention on them. Because if he looked at the owner of that jolly voice, Eddie would surely kill him.
Saw our car. Saw it but never went over for a look. Never called out and asked his friend who was here, or if everything was okay. IfAaronwas okay. Because he had some guy named Herman Wouk on his mind, not book club editions but the real thing. No worries, mate. Because you've got no more short-term imagination than Jack Andolini. You and Jack, just a couple ragged cockroaches, scuttling across the floor of the universe. Eyes on the prize, right? Eyes on the fucking prize.
"You," Tower said. The happiness and excitement were gone from his voice. "The guy from - "
"The guy from nowhere," Eddie said without looking up. "The one who peeled Jack Andolini off you when you were about two minutes from shitting in your pants. And this is how you repay. You're quite the guy, aren't you?" As soon as he finished speaking, Eddie clamped down on his tongue again. His clasped hands were trembling. He expected Roland to intervene - surely he would, Eddie couldn't be expected to deal with this selfish monster on his own, he wasn't capable of it - but Roland said nothing.
Tower laughed. The sound was as nervous and brittle as his voice when he'd realized who was sitting in the kitchen of his rented cabin. "Oh, sir. . . Mr. Dean. . . I really think you've exaggerated the seriousness of that situation - "
"What I remember," Eddie said, still without looking up, "is the smell of the gasoline. I fired my dinh's gun, do you recall that? I suppose we were lucky there were no fumes, and that I fired it in the right direction. They poured gasoline all over the corner where you keep your desk. They were going to burn your favorite books. . . or should I say your best friends, your family? Because that's what they are to you, aren't they? And Deepneau, who the fuck is he? Just some old guy full of cancer who ran north with you when you needed a running buddy. You'd leave him dying in a ditch if someone offered you a first edition of Shakespeare or some special Ernest Hemingway. "
"I resent that!" Tower cried. "I happen to know that my bookshop has been burned flat, and through an oversight it's uninsured! I'm ruined, and it's all your fault! I want you out of here!"
"You defaulted on the insurance when you needed cash to buy that Hopalong Cassidy collection from the Clarence Mulford estate last year," Aaron Deepneau said mildly. "You told me that insurance lapse was only temporary, but - "
"It was!" Tower said. He sounded both injured and surprised, as if he had never expected betrayal from this quarter. Probably he hadn't. "Itwas only temporary, goddammit!"
" - but to blame this young man," Deepneau went on in that same composed but regretful voice, "seems most unfair. "
"I want you out of here!" Tower snarled at Eddie. "You and your friend, as well! I have no wish to do business with you! If you ever thought I did, it was a. . . amisapprehension! " He seized upon this last word as though upon a prize, and nearly shouted it out.
Eddie clasped his hands more tightly yet. He had never been more aware of the gun he was wearing; it had gained a kind of balefully lively weight. He reeked with sweat; he could smell it. And now drops of blood began to ooze out from between his palms and fall to the floor. He could feel his teeth beginning to sink into his tongue. Well, it was certainly a way to forget the pain in one's leg. Eddie decided to give the tongue in question another brief conditional parole.
"What I remember most clearly about my visit to you - "
"You have some books that belong to me," Tower said. "I want them back. Iinsist on - "
"Shut up, Cal," Deepneau said.
"What?"Tower did not sound wounded now; he sounded shocked. Almost breathless.
"Stop squirming. You've earned this scolding, and you know it. If you're lucky, a scolding is all it will be. So shut up and for once in your life take it like a man. "
"Hear him very well," Roland said in a tone of dry approval.
"What I remember most clearly," Eddie pushed on, "is how horrified you were by what I told Jack - about how I and my friends would fill Grand Army Plaza with corpses if he didn't lay off. Some of them women and children. You didn't like that, but do you know what, Cal? Jack Andolini's here, right now, in East Stoneham. "
"Youlie! " Tower said. He drew in breath as he said it, turning the words into an inhaled scream.
"God," Eddie replied, "if only I did. I saw two innocent women die, Cal. In the general store, this was. Andolini set an ambush, and if you were a praying man - I suppose you're not, unless there's some first edition you feel in danger of losing, but if you were - you might want to get down on your knees and pray to the god of selfish, obsessed, greedy, uncaring dishonest bookstore owners that it was a woman namedMia who told Balazar's dinh where we were probably going to end up,her, not you. Because if they followedyou, Calvin, those two women's blood is onyour hands! "
His voice was rising steadily, and although Eddie was still looking steadfastly down, his whole body had begun to tremble. He could feel his eyes bulging in their sockets and the cords of strain standing out on his neck. He could feel his balls drawn all the way up, as small and as hard as pe
ach-pits. Most of all he could feel the desire to spring across the room, as effortless as a ballet dancer, and bury his hands in Calvin Tower's fat white throat. He was waiting for Roland to intervene - hopingfor Roland to intervene - but the gunslinger did not, and Eddie's voice continued to rise toward the inevitable scream of fury.
"One of those women went right down but the other. . . she stayed up for a couple of seconds. A bullet took off the top of her head. I think it was a machine-gun bullet, and for the couple of seconds she stayed on her feet, she looked like a volcano. Only she was blowing blood instead of lava. Well, but it was probably Mia who ratted. I've got a feeling about that. It's not entirely logical, but luckily for you, it'sstrong. Mia using what Susannah knew and protecting her chap. "
"Mia? Young man - Mr. Dean - I know no - "
"Shut up!" Eddie cried. "Shut up, you rat! You lying, reneging weasel! You greedy, grasping, piggy excuse for a man! Why didn't you take out a few billboards? H I, I'M CAL TOWER ! I' M STAYING ON THE ROCKET ROAD IN EAST STONEHAM! W HY DON ' T YOU COME SEE ME AND MY FRIEND, AARON! B RING GUNS! "
Slowly, Eddie looked up. Tears of rage were rolling down his face. Tower had backed up against the wall to one side of the door, his eyes huge and moist in his round face. Sweat stood out on his brow. He held his bag of freshly acquired books against his chest like a shield.
Eddie looked at him steadily. Blood dripped from between his tightly clasped hands; the spot of blood on the arm of his shirt had begun to spread again; now a trickle of blood ran from the left side of his mouth, as well. And he supposed he understood Roland's silence. This was Eddie Dean's job. Because he knew Tower inside as well as out, didn't he? Knew him very well. Once upon a time not so long ago hadn't he himself thought everything in the world but heroin pale and unimportant? Hadn't he believed everything in the world that wasn't heroin up for barter or sale? Had he not come to a point when he would literally have pimped his own mother in order to get the next fix? Wasn't that why he was so angry?
"That lot on the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street was never yours," Eddie said. "Not your father's, or his father's, all the way back to Stefan Toren. You were only custodians, the same way I'm custodian of the gun I wear. "
"I deny that!"
"Do you?" Aaron asked. "How strange. I've heard you speak of that piece of land in almost those exact words - "
"Aaron, shut up!"
" - many times," Deepneau finished calmly.