Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

"And in time I may," Roland said, "but this morning time is short."

Back to that again , Eddie thought. Yesterday it hardly existed, and now it's short. But it's all about time, somehow, isn't it"?Rolands old days, our old days, and these new days. These dangerous new days .

"Why?" Susannah asked.

"Our friends," Roland said, and nodded to the south. "I have a feeling they'll be making themselves known to us soon."

"Are they our friends?" Jake asked.

"That really is to the side," Roland said, and again wondered if that were really true. "For now, let's turn the mind of our khef to this Bookstore of the Mind, or whatever it's called. You saw the harriers from the Leaning Tower greensticking the owner, didn't you? This man Tower, or Toren."

"Pressuring him, you mean?" Eddie asked. "Twisting his arm?"

"Yes."

"Sure they were," Jake said.

"Were," Oy put in. "Sure were."

"Bet you anything that Tower and Toren are really the same name," Susannah said. "That toren's Dutch for 'tower.' " She saw Roland getting ready to speak, and held up her hand. "It's the way folks often do things in our bit of the universe, Roland- change the foreign name to one that's more… well… American."

"Yeah," Eddie said. "So Stempowicz becomes Stamper… Yakov becomes Jacob… or…"

"Or Beryl Evans becomes Claudia y Inez Bachman," Jake said. He laughed but didn't sound very amused.

Eddie picked a half-burned stick out of the fire and began to doodle with it in the dirt. One by one the Great Letters formed: C… L… A… U. "Big Nose even said Tower was Dutch. 'A squarehead's always a squarehead, right, boss?' " He looked at Jake for confirmation. Jake nodded, then took the stick and continued on with it: D… I… A.

"Him being Dutch makes a lot of sense, you know," Susannah said. "At one time, the Dutch owned most of Manhattan."

"You want another Dickens touch?" Jake asked. He wrote y in the dirt after CLAUDIA, then looked up at Susannah. "How about the haunted house where I came through into this world?"

"The Mansion," Eddie said.

"The Mansion in Dutch Hill," Jake said.

"Dutch Hill. Yeah, that's right. Goddam."

"Let's go to the core," Roland said. "I think it's the agreement paper you saw. And you felt you had to see it, didn't you?"

Eddie nodded.

"Did your need feel like a part of following the Beam?"

"Roland, I think it was the Beam."

"The way to the Tower, in other words."

"Yeah," Eddie said. He was thinking about the way clouds flowed along the Beam, the way shadows bent along the Beam, the way every twig of every tree seemed to turn in its direction. All things serve the Beam , Roland had told them, and Eddie's need to see the paper Balazar had put in front of Calvin Tower had felt like a need, harsh and imperative.

"Tell me what it said."

Eddie bit his lip. He didn't feel as scared about this as he had about carving the key which had ultimately allowed them to rescue Jake and pull him through to this side, but it was close. Because, like the key, this was important. If he forgot something, worlds might crash.

"Man, I can't remember it all, not word for word-"

Roland made an impatient gesture. "If I need that, I'll hypnotize you and get it word for word."

"Do you think it matters?" Susannah asked.

"I think it all matters," Roland said.

"What if hypnosis doesn't work on me?" Eddie asked. "What if I'm not, like, a good subject?"

"Leave that to me," Roland said.

"Nineteen," Jake said abruptly. They all turned toward him. He was looking at the letters he and Eddie had drawn in the dirt beside the dead campfire. "Claudia y Inez Bachman. Nineteen letters."

Roland considered for a moment, then let it pass. If the number nineteen was somehow part of this, its meaning would declare itself in time. For now there were other matters.

"The paper," he said. "Let's stay with that for now. Tell me everything about it you can remember."

"Well, it was a legal agreement, with the seal at the bottom and everything." Eddie paused, struck by a fairly basic question. Roland probably got this part of it-he'd been a kind of law enforcement officer, after all-but it wouldn't hurt to be sure. "You know about lawyers, don't you?"

Roland spoke in his driest tone. "You forget that I came from Gilead, Eddie. The most inner of the Inner Baronies. We had more merchants and farmers and manufactors than lawyers, I think, but the count would have been close."

Susannah laughed. "You make me think of a scene from Shakespeare, Roland. Two characters-might have been Falstaff and Prince Hal, I'm not sure-are talkin about what they're gonna do when they win the war and take over. And one of em says, 'First we'll kill all the lawyers.' "

"It would be a fairish way to start," Roland said, and Eddie found his thoughtful tone rather chilling. Then the gunslinger turned to him again. "Go on. If you can add anything, Jake, please do. And relax, both of you, for your fathers' sakes. For now I only want a sketch."

Eddie supposed he'd known that, but hearing Roland say it made him feel better. "All right. It was a Memorandum of Agreement. That was right at the top, in big letters. At the bottom it said Agreed to , and there were two signatures. One was Calvin Tower. The other was Richard someone. Do you remember, Jake?"

"Sayre," Jake said. "Richard Patrick Sayre." He paused briefly, lips moving, then nodded. "Nineteen letters."

"And what did it say, this agreement?" Roland asked.

"Not all that much, if you want to know the truth," Eddie said. "Or that's what it seemed like to me, anyway. Basically it said that Tower owned a vacant lot on the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Second Avenue-"

" The vacant lot," Jake said. "The one with the rose in it."

"Yeah, that one. Anyway, Tower signed this agreement on July 15th, 1976. Sombra Corporation gave him a hundred grand. What he gave them, so far as I could tell, was a promise not to sell the lot to anyone but Sombra for the next year, to take care of it-pay the taxes and such-and then to give Sombra first right of purchase, assuming he hasn't sold it to them by then, anyway. Which he hadn't when we were there, but the agreement still had a month and a half to run."

"Mr. Tower said the hundred thousand was all spent," Jake put in.

"Was there anything in the agreement about this Sombra Corporation having a topping privilege?" Susannah asked.

Eddie and Jake thought it over, exchanged a glance, then shook their heads.

"Sure?" Susannah asked.

"Not quite, but pretty sure," Eddie said. "You think it matters?"

"I don't know," Susannah said. "The kind of agreement you're talking about… well, without a topping privilege, it just doesn't seem to make sense. What does it boil down to, when you stop to think about it? 'I, Calvin Tower, agree to think about selling you my vacant lot. You pay me a hundred thousand dollars and I'll think about it for a whole year. When I'm not drinking coffee and playing chess with my friends, that is. And when the year's up, maybe I'll sell it to you and maybe I'll keep it and maybe I'll just auction it off to the highest bidder. And if you don't like it, sweetcheeks, you just go spit.' "

"You're forgetting something," Roland said mildly.

"What?" Susannah asked.

"This Sombra is no ordinary law-abiding combination. Ask yourself if an ordinary law-abiding combination would hire someone like Balazar to carry their messages."

"You have a point," Eddie said. "Tower was mucho scared."

"Anyway," Jake said, "it makes at least a few things clearer. The sign I saw in the vacant lot, for instance. This Sombra Company also got the right to 'advertise forthcoming projects' there for their hundred thousand. Did you see that part, Eddie?"