Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

"Considering that we're more ghosts than people, I'd say that's debatable." Eddie gave the back of Jake's neck a friendly scruff. "And if you have forgotten something important, Roland might be able to help you remember. He's good at that."

Jake grinned at this, relieved. He knew from personal experience that the gunslinger really was good at helping people remember. Roland's friend Alain might have been the one with the strongest ability to touch other minds, and his friend Cuthbert had gotten all the sense of humor in that particular ka-tet, but Roland had developed over the years into one hell of a hypnotist. He could have made a fortune in Las Vegas.

"Can we follow me now?" Jake asked. "Check out the rose?" He looked up and down Second Avenue-a street that was somehow bright and dark at the same time-with a kind of unhappy perplexity. "Things are probably better there. The rose makes everything better."

Eddie was about to say okay when a dark gray Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of Calvin Tower's bookshop. It parked by the yellow curb in front of a fire hydrant with absolutely no hesitation. The front doors opened, and when Eddie saw who was getting out from behind the wheel, he seized Jake's shoulder.

"Ow!"Jake said. "Man, that hurts!"

Eddie paid no attention. In fact the hand on Jake's shoulder clamped down even tighter.

"Christ," Eddie whispered. "Dear Jesus Christ, what's this? What in hell is this ?"

Jake watched Eddie go past pale to ashy gray. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. Not without difficulty, Jake pried the clamping hand off his shoulder. Eddie made as if to point with that hand, but didn't seem to have the strength. It fell against the side of his leg with a little thump.

The man who had gotten out on the passenger side of the Town Car walked around to the sidewalk while the driver opened the rear curbside door. Even to Jake their moves looked practiced, almost like steps in a dance. The man who got out of the back seat was wearing an expensive suit, but that didn't change the fact that he was basically a dumpy little guy with a potbelly and black hair going gray around the edges. Dandrufjy black hair, from the look of his suit's shoulders.

To Jake, the day suddenly felt darker than ever. He looked up to see if the sun had gone behind a cloud. It hadn't, but it almost seemed to him that there was a black corona forming around its brilliant circle, like a ring of mascara around a startled eye.

Half a block farther downtown, the 1977 version of him was glancing in the window of a restaurant, and Jake could remember the name of it: Chew Chew Mama's. Not far beyond it was Tower of Power Records, where he would think Towers are selling cheap today . If that version of him had looked back, he would have seen the gray Town Car… but he hadn't. Kid Seventy-seven's mind was fixed firmly on the future.

"It's Balazar," Eddie said.

"What?"

Eddie was pointing at the dumpy guy, who had paused to adjust his Sulka tie. The other two now stood flanking him. They looked simultaneously relaxed and watchful.

"Enrico Balazar. And looking much younger. God, he's almost middle-aged!"

"It's 1977," Jake reminded him. Then, as the penny dropped: "That's the guy you and Roland killed?" Eddie had told Jake the story of the shoot-out at Balazar's club in 1987, leaving out the gorier parts. The part, for instance, where Kevin Blake had lobbed the head of Eddie's brother into Balazar's office in an effort to flush Eddie and Roland into the open. Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie.

"Yeah," Eddie said. "The guy Roland and I killed. And the one who was driving, that's Jack Andolini. Old Double-Ugly, people used to call him, although never to his face. He went through one of those doors with me just before the shooting started."

"Roland killed him, too. Didn't he?"

Eddie nodded. It was simpler than trying to explain how Jack Andolini had happened to the blind and faceless beneath the tearing claws and ripping jaws of the lobstrosities on the beach.

"The other bodyguard's George Biondi. Big Nose. I killed him myself. Will kill him. Ten years from now." Eddie looked as if he might faint at any second.

"Eddie, are you okay?"

"I guess so. I guess I have to be." They had drawn away from the bookshop's doorway. Oy was still crouched at Jake's ankle. Down Second Avenue, Jake's other, earlier self had disappeared. I'm running by now , Jake thought. Maybe jumping over the UPS guy's dolly. Sprinting all-out for the delicatessen, because I'm sure that's the way back to Mid-World. The way back to him.

Balazar peered at his reflection in the window beside the today's specials display-board, gave the wings of hair above his ears one last little fluff with the tips of his fingers, then stepped through the open door. Andolini and Biondi followed.

"Hard guys," Jake said.

"The hardest," Eddie agreed.

"From Brooklyn."

"Well, yeah."

"Why are hard guys from Brooklyn visiting a used-book store in Manhattan?"

"I think that's what we're here to find out. Jake, did I hurt your shoulder?"

"I'm okay. But I don't really want to go back in there."

"Neither do I. So let's go."

They went back into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

Oy was still at Jake's heel and still whining. Jake wasn't crazy about the sound, but he understood it. The smell of fear in the bookstore was palpable. Deepneau sat beside the chessboard, gazing unhappily at Calvin Tower and the newcomers, who didn't look much like bibliophiles in search of the elusive signed first edition. The other two old guys at the counter were drinking the last of their coffee in big gulps, with the air of fellows who have just remembered important appointments elsewhere.

Cowards , Jake thought with a contempt he didn't recognize as a relatively new thing in his life. Lowbellies. Being old forgives some of it, but not all of it .

"We just have a couple of things to discuss, Mr. Toren," Balazar was saying. He spoke in a low, calm, reasonable voice, without even a trace of accent. "Please, if we could step back into your office-"

"We don't have business," Tower said. His eyes kept drifting to Andolini. Jake supposed he knew why. Jack Andolini looked the ax-wielding psycho in a horror movie. "Come July fifteenth, we might have business. Might . So we could talk after the Fourth. I guess. If you wanted to." He smiled to show he was being reasonable. "But now? Gee, I just don't see the point. It's not even June yet. And for your information my name's not-"

"He doesn't see the point," Balazar said. He looked at Andolini; looked at the one with the big nose; raised his hands to his shoulders, then dropped them. What's wrong with this world of ours? the gesture said. "Jack? George? This man took a check from me-the amount before the decimal point was a one followed by five zeroes-and now he says he doesn't see the point of talking to me."

"Unbelievable," Biondi said. Andolini said nothing. He simply looked at Calvin Tower, muddy brown eyes peering out from beneath the unlovely bulge of his skull like mean little animals peering out of a cave. With a face like that, Jake supposed, you didn't have to talk much to get your point across. The point being intimidation.

" I want to talk to you ," Balazar said. He spoke in a patient, reasonable tone of voice, but his eyes were fixed on Tower's face with a terrible intensity. "Why? Because my employers in this matter want me to talk to you. That's good enough for me. And do you know what? I think you can afford five minutes of chitchat for your hundred grand. Don't you?"