Wolves of the Calla

that's where he is. I'm glad. He's an old cockuh but still a hothead.'

I should introduce Aaron Deepneau to Jamie Jaffords, Eddie thought. They could play Castles instead of chess, and yarn away the days of the Goat Moon.

Tower, meanwhile, was smiling sadly. He adjusted his glasses on his face. For a moment they stayed straight, and then they tilted again. The tilt was somehow worse than the crack; made Tower look slightly crazy as well as vulnerable. 'He's a hothead and I'm a coward. Perhaps that's why we're friends-we fit around each other's wrong places, make something that's almost whole.'

'Say maybe you're a little hard on yourself,' Eddie said.

'I don't think so. My analyst says that anyone who wants to know how the children of an A-male father and a B-female mother turn out would only have to study my case-history. He also says-'

'Cry your pardon, Calvin, but I don't give much of a shit about your analyst. You held onto the lot up the street, and that's good enough for me.'

'I don't take any credit for that,' Calvin Tower said morosely. 'It's like this'-he picked up the book that he'd put down beside the coffee-maker-'and the other ones he threatened to burn. I just have a problem letting things go. When my first wife said she wanted a divorce and I asked why, she said, 'Because when I married you, I didn't understand. I thought you were a man. It turns out you're a packrat.''

'The lot is different from the books,' Eddie said.

'Is it? Do you really think so?' Tower was looking at him, fascinated. When he raised his coffee cup, Eddie was pleased to see that the worst of his shakes had subsided.

'Don't you?'

'Sometimes I dream about it,' Tower said. 'I haven't actually been in there since Tommy Graham's deli went bust and I paid to have it knocked down. And to have the fence put up, of course, which was almost as expensive as the men with the wrecking ball. I dream there's a field of flowers in there. A field of roses. And instead of just to First Avenue, it goes on forever. Funny dream, huh?'

Eddie was sure that Calvin Tower did indeed have such dreams, but he thought he saw something else in the eyes hiding behind the cracked and tilted glasses. He thought Tower was letting this dream stand for all the dreams he would not tell.

'Funny,' Eddie agreed. 'I think you better pour me another slug of that mud, beg ya I do. We'll have us a little palaver.'

Tower smiled and once more raised the book Andolini had meant to charbroil. 'Palaver. It's the kind of thing they're always saying in here.'

'Do you say so?'

'Uh-huh.'

Eddie held out his hand. 'Let me see.'

At first Tower hesitated, and Eddie saw the bookshop owner's face briefly harden with a misery mix of emotions.

'Come on, Cal, I'm not gonna wipe my ass with it.'

'No. Of course not. I'm sorry.' And at that moment Tower looked sorry, the way an alcoholic might look after a particularly destructive bout of drunkenness. 'I just… certain books are very important to me. And this one is a true rarity.'

He passed it to Eddie, who looked at the plastic-protected cover and felt his heart stop.

'What?' Tower asked. He set his coffee cup down with a bang. 'What's wrong?'

Eddie didn't reply. The cover illustration showed a small rounded building like a Quonset hut, only made of wood and thatched with pine boughs. Standing off to one side was an Indian brave wearing buckskin pants. He was shirtless, holding a tomahawk to his chest. In the background, an old-fashioned steam locomotive was charging across the prairie, boiling gray smoke into a blue sky.

The title of this book was The Dogan. The author was Benjamin Slightman Jr.

From some great distance, Tower was asking him if he was going to faint. From only slightly closer by, Eddie said that he wasn't. Benjamin Slightman Jr. Ben Slightman the Younger, in other words. And-

He pushed Tower's pudgy hand away when it tried to take the book back. Then Eddie used his own finger to count the letters in the author's name. There were, of course, nineteen.

TEN

He swallowed another cup of Tower's coffee, this time without the Half and Half. Then he took the plastic-wrapped volume in hand once more.

'What makes it special?' he asked. 'I mean, it's special to me because I met someone recently whose name is the same as the name of the guy who wrote this. But-'

An idea struck Eddie, and he turned to the back flap, hoping for a picture of the author. What he found instead was a curt two-line author bio: 'BENJAMIN SLIGHTMAN, JR. is a rancher in Montana. This is his second novel.' Below this was a drawing of an eagle, and a slogan: buy war bonds!

'But why's it special to you? What makes it worth seventy-five hundred bucks?'

Tower's face kindled. Fifteen minutes before he had been in mortal terror for his life, but you'd never know it looking at him now, Eddie thought. Now he was in the grip of his obsession. Roland had his Dark Tower; this man had his rare books.

He held it so Eddie could see the cover. 'The Dogan, right?'

'Right.'

Tower flipped the book open and pointed to the inner flap, also under plastic, where the story was summarized. 'And here?'

' 'TheDogan,' ' Eddie read. ' 'A thrilling tale of the old west and one Indian brave's heroic effort to survive.' So?'

'Now look at this!' Tower said triumphantly, and turned to the title page. Here Eddie read:

The Hogan

Benjamin Slightman Jr.

'I don't get it,' Eddie said. 'What's the big deal?'

Tower rolled his eyes. 'Look again.'

'Why don't you just tell me what-'

'No, look again. I insist. The joy is in the discovery, Mr. Dean. Any collector will tell you the same. Stamps, coins, or books, the joy is in the discovery.'

He flipped back to the cover again, and this time Eddie saw it. 'The title on the front's misprinted, isn't it? Dogan instead of Hogan'

Tower nodded happily. 'A hogan is an Indian home of the type illustrated on the front. A dogan is… well, nothing. The misprinted cover makes the book somewhat valuable, but now… look at this…'

He turned to the copyright page and handed the book to Eddie. The copyright date was 1943, which of course explained the eagle and the slogan on the author-bio flap. The title of the book was given as The Hogan, so that seemed all right. Eddie was about to ask when he got it for himself.

'They left the 'Jr.' off the author's name, didn't they?'

'Yes! Yes!' Tower was almost hugging himself. 'As if the book had actually been written by the author's father! In fact, once when I was at a bibliographic convention in Philadelphia, I explained this book's particular situation to an attorney who gave a lecture on copyright law, and this guy said that Slightman Jr.'s father might actually be able to assert right of ownership over this book because of a simple typographical error! Amazing, don't you think?'

'Totally,' Eddie said, thinking Slightman the Elder. Thinking Slightman the Younger. Thinking about how Jake had become fast friends with the latter and wondering why this gave him such a bad feeling now, sitting here and drinking coffee in little old Calla New York.

At least he took the Ruger, Eddie thought.

'Are you telling me that's all it takes to make a book valuable?' he asked Tower. 'One misprint on the cover, a couple more inside, and all at once the thing's worth seventy-five hundred bucks?'

'Not at all,' Tower said, looking shocked. 'But Mr. Slightman wrote three really excellent Western novels, all taking the Indians' point of view. The Hogan is the middle one. He became a big bug in Montana after the war-some job having to do with water and mineral rights-and then, here is the irony, a group of Indians killed him. Scalped him, actually. They were drinking outside a general store-'

A general store named Took's, Eddie thought. I'd bet my watch and warrant on it.

'-and apparendy Mr. Slightman said something they took objection to, and… well, there goes your ballgame.'

'Do all your really valuable books have similar stories?' Eddie asked. 'I mean, some sort of coincidence makes them valuable, and not just the stories themselves?'

Tower laughed. 'Young man, most people who collect rare books won't even open their purchases. Opening and closing a book damages the spine. Hence damaging the resale price.'

'Doesn't that strike you as slightly sick behavior?'

'Not at all,' Tower said, but a tell tale red blush was climbing his cheeks. Part of him apparently took Eddie's point. 'If a customer spends eight thousand dollars for a signed first edition of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, it makes perfect sense to put that book away in a safe place where it can be admired but not touched. If the fellow actually wants to read the story, let him buy a Vintage paperback.'