Wolves of the Calla Read online

  "Where you got Charlie the Choo-Choo and the riddle book?"

  "Right."

  Eddie loved the mystified, dazzled grin Jake was wearing. It lit up his whole face. "Remember how excited Roland got when I told him the owner's name?"

  Eddie did. The owner of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind was a fellow named Calvin Tower.

  "Hurry up," Jake said. "I want to watch."

  Eddie didn't have to be asked twice. He wanted to watch, too.

  FOUR

  Jake stopped in the doorway to the bookstore. His smile didn't fade, exactly, but it faltered.

  "What is it?" Eddie asked. "What's wrong?"

  "Dunno. Something's different, I think. It's just . . . so much has happened since I was here . . . "

  He was looking at the chalkboard in the window, which Eddie thought was actually a very clever way of selling books. It looked like the sort of thing you saw in diners, or maybe the fish markets.

  TODAY'S SPECIALS

  From Mississippi! Pan-Fried William Faulkner

  Hardcovers Market Price

  Vintage Library Paperbacks 75c each

  From Maine! Chilled Stephen King

  Hardcovers Market Price

  Book Club Bargains

  Paperbacks 75c each

  From California! Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler

  Hardcovers Market Price

  Paperbacks 7 for $5.00

  Eddie looked beyond this and saw that other Jake--the one without the tan or the look of hard clarity in his eyes--standing at a small display table. Kiddie books. Probably both the Nineteen Fairy Tales and the Modern Nineteen.

  Quit it, he told himself. That's obsessive-compulsive crap and you know it.

  Maybe, but good old Jake Seventy-seven was about to make a purchase from that table which had gone on to change--and very likely to save--their lives. He'd worry about the number nineteen later. Or not at all, if he could manage it.

  "Come on," he told Jake. "Let's go in."

  The boy hung back.

  "What's the matter?" Eddie asked. "Tower won't be able to see us, if that's what you're worried about."

  "Tower won't be able to," Jake said, "but what if he can?" He pointed at his other self, the one who had yet to meet Gasher and Tick-Tock and the old people of River Crossing. The one who had yet to meet Blaine the Mono and Rhea of the Coos.

  Jake was looking at Eddie with a kind of haunted curiosity. "What if I see myself?"

  Eddie supposed that might really happen. Hell, anything might happen. But that didn't change what he felt in his heart. "I think we're supposed to go in, Jake."

  "Yeah . . . " It came out in a long sigh. "I do, too."

  FIVE

  They went in and they weren't seen and Eddie was relieved to count twenty-one books on the display table that had attracted the boy's notice. Except, of course, when Jake picked up the two he wanted--Charlie the Choo-Choo and the riddle book--that left nineteen.

  "Find something, son?" a mild voice inquired. It was a fat fellow in an open-throated white shirt. Behind him, at a counter that looked as if it might have been filched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, a trio of old guys were drinking coffee and nibbling pastries. A chessboard with a game in progress sat on the marble counter.

  "The guy sitting on the end is Aaron Deepneau," Jake whispered. "He's going to explain the riddle about Samson to me."

  "Shh!" Eddie said. He wanted to hear the conversation between Calvin Tower and Kid Seventy-seven. All of a sudden that seemed very important . . . only why was it so fucking dark in here?

  Except it's not dark at all. The east side of the street gets plenty of sun at this hour, and with the door open, this place is getting all of it. How can you say it's dark?

  Because it somehow was. The sunlight--the contrast of the sunlight--only made it worse. The fact that you couldn't exactly see that darkness made it worse still . . . and Eddie realized a terrible thing: these people were in danger. Tower, Deepneau, Kid Seventy-seven. Probably him and Mid-World Jake and Oy, as well.

  All of them.

  SIX

  Jake watched his other, younger self take a step back from the bookshop owner, his eyes widening in surprise. Because his name is Tower, Jake thought. That's what surprised me. Not because of Roland's Tower, though--I didn't know about that yet--but because of the picture I put on the last page of my Final Essay.

  He had pasted a photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the last page, then had scribbled all over it with a black Crayola, darkening it as best he could.

  Tower asked him his name. Seventy-seven Jake told him and Tower joked around with him a little. It was good joking-around, the kind you got from adults who really didn't mind kids.

  "Good handle, pard," Tower was saying. "Sounds like the footloose hero in a Western novel--the guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, and then travels on. Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe . . . "

  Jake took a step closer to his old self (part of him was thinking what a wonderful sketch all this would make on Saturday Night Live), and his eyes widened slightly. "Eddie!" He was still whispering, although he knew the people in the bookstore couldn't--

  Except maybe on some level they could. He remembered the lady back on Fifty-fourth Street, twitching her skirt up at the knee so she could step over Oy. And now Calvin Tower's eyes shifted slightly in his direction before going back to the other version of him.

  "Might be good not to attract unnecessary attention," Eddie muttered in his ear.

  "I know," Jake said, "but look at Charlie the Choo-Choo, Eddie!"

  Eddie did, and for a moment saw nothing--except for Charlie himself, of course: Charlie with his headlight eye and not-quite-trustworthy cowcatcher grin. Then Eddie's eyebrows went up.

  "I thought Charlie the Choo-Choo was written by a lady named Beryl Evans," he whispered.

  Jake nodded. "I did, too."

  "Then who's this--" Eddie took another look. "Who's this Claudia y Inez Bachman?"

  "I have no idea," Jake said. "I never heard of her in my life."

  SEVEN

  One of the old men at the counter came sauntering toward them. Eddie and Jake drew away. As they stepped back, Eddie's spine gave a cold little wrench. Jake was very pale, and Oy was giving out a series of low, distressed whines. Something was wrong here, all right. In a way they had lost their shadows. Eddie just didn't know how.

  Kid Seventy-seven had taken out his wallet and was paying for the two books. There was some more talk and good-natured laughter, then he headed for the door. When Eddie started after him, Mid-World Jake grabbed his arm. "No, not yet--I come back in."

  "I don't care if you alphabetize the whole place," Eddie said. "Let's wait out on the sidewalk."

  Jake thought about this, biting his lip, then nodded. They headed for the door, then stopped and moved aside as the other Jake returned. The riddle book was open. Calvin Tower had lumbered over to the chessboard on the counter. He looked around with an amiable smile.

  "Change your mind about that cup of coffee, O Hyperborean Wanderer?"

  "No, I wanted to ask you--"

  "This is the part about Samson's Riddle," Mid-World Jake said. "I don't think it matters. Although the Deepneau guy sings a pretty good song, if you want to hear it."

  "I'll pass," Eddie said. "Come on."

  They went out. And although things on Second Avenue were still wrong--that sense of endless dark behind the scenes, behind the very sky--it was somehow better than in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. At least there was fresh air.

  "Tell you what," Jake said. "Let's go down to Second and Forty-sixth right now." He jerked his head toward the version of him listening to Aaron Deepneau sing. "I'll catch up with us."

  Eddie considered it, then shook his head.

  Jake's face fell a little. "Don't you want to see the rose?"

  "You bet your ass I do," Eddie said. "I'm wild to see it."

  "Then--"

  "I do
n't feel like we're done here yet. I don't know why, but I don't."

  Jake--the Kid Seventy-seven version of him--had left the door open when he went back inside, and now Eddie moved into it. Aaron Deepneau was telling Jake a riddle they would later try on Blaine the Mono: What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks. Mid-World Jake, meanwhile, was once more looking at the notice-board in the bookstore window (Pan-Fried William Faulkner, Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler). He wore a frown of the kind that expresses doubt and anxiety rather than ill temper.

  "That sign's different, too," he said.

  "How?"

  "I can't remember."

  "Is it important?"

  Jake turned to him. The eyes below the furrowed brow were haunted. "I don't know. It's another riddle. I hate riddles!"

  Eddie sympathized. When is a Beryl not a Beryl? "When it's a Claudia," he said.

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind. Better step back, Jake, or you're going to run into yourself."

  Jake gave the oncoming version of John Chambers a startled glance, then did as Eddie suggested. And when Kid Seventy-seven started on down Second Avenue with his new books in his left hand, Mid-World Jake gave Eddie a tired smile. "I do remember one thing," he said. "When I left this bookstore, I was sure I'd never come here again. But I did."

  "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?"

  EIGHT

  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. Dandruffy 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 die 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.

  NINE

  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 amoun
t 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 chit-chat for your hundred grand. Don't you?"

  "The hundred thousand is gone," Tower said bleakly. "As I'm sure you and whoever hired you must know."

  "That's of no concern to me," Balazar said. "Why would it be? It was your money. What concerns me is whether or not you're going to take us out back. If not, we'll have to have our conversation right here, in front of the whole world."

  The whole world now consisted of Aaron Deepneau, one billy-bumbler, and a couple of expatriate New Yorkers none of the men in the bookstore could see. Deepneau's counter-buddies had run like the lowbellies they were.

  Tower made one last try. "I don't have anyone to mind the store. Lunch-hour is coming up, and we often have quite a few browsers during--"

  "This place doesn't do fifty dollars a day," Andolini said, "and we all know it, Mr. Toren. If you're really worried you're going to miss a big sale, let him run the cash register for a few minutes."

  For one horrible second, Jake thought the one Eddie had called "Old Double-Ugly" meant none other than John "Jake" Chambers. Then he realized Andolini was pointing past him, at Deepneau.

  Tower gave in. Or Toren. "Aaron?" he asked. "Do you mind?"

  "Not if you don't," Deepneau said. He looked troubled. "Sure you want to talk with these guys?"

  Biondi gave him a look. Jake thought Deepneau stood up under it remarkably well. In a weird way, he felt proud of the old guy.

  "Yeah," Tower said. "Yeah, it's fine."

  "Don't worry, he won't lose his butthole virginity on our account," Biondi said, and laughed.