Song of Susannah

FIVE

The coffee he made was better by far than any they’d had in Calla Bryn Sturgis, better than any Roland had had since his days in Mejis, Drop-riding out on the Rim. There were also strawberries. Cultivated and store-bought, Deepneau said, but Eddie was transported by their sweetness. The three of them sat in the kitchen of Jaffords Rentals’ Cabin #19, drinking coffee and dipping the big strawberries in the sugarbowl. By the end of their palaver, all three men looked like assassins who’d dabbled the tips of their fingers in the spilled blood of their latest victim. Deepneau’s unloaded gun lay forgotten on the windowsill.

Deepneau had been out for a walk on the Rocket Road when he heard gunfire, loud and clear, and then explosions. He’d hurried back to the cabin (not that he was capable of too much hurry in his current condition, he said), and when he saw the smoke starting to rise in the south, had decided that returning to the boathouse might be wise, after all. By then he was almost positive it was the Italian hoodlum, Andolini, so-

“What do you mean, you returned to the boathouse?” Eddie asked.

Deepneau shifted his feet under the table. He was extremely pallid, with purple patches beneath his eyes and only a few wisps of hair, fine as dandelion fluff, on his head. Eddie remembered Tower’s telling him that Deepneau had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago. He didn’t look great today, but Eddie had seen folks-especially in the City of Lud-who looked a lot worse. Jake’s old pal Gasher had been just one of them.

“Aaron?” Eddie asked. “What did you mean-”

“I heard the question,” he said, a trifle irritably. “We got a note via general delivery, or rather Cal did, suggesting we move out of the cabin to someplace adjacent, and keep a lower profile in general. It was from a man named Callahan. Do you know him?”

Roland and Eddie nodded.

“This Callahan… you could say he took Cal to the woodshed.”

Cal, Calla, Callahan, Eddie thought, and sighed.

“Cal’s a decent man in most ways, but he does not enjoy being taken to the woodshed. We did move down to the boathouse for a few days…” Deepneau paused, possibly engaging in a brief struggle with his conscience. Then he said, “Two days, actually. Only two. And then Cal said we were crazy, being in the damp was making his arthritis worse, and he could hear me wheezing. ’Next thing I’ll have you in that little shitpot hospital over in Norway,’ he said, ’with pneumonia as well as cancer.’ He said there wasn’t a chance in hell of Andolini finding us up here, as long as the young guy-you'-he pointed a gnarled and strawberry-stained finger at Eddie-'kept his mouth shut. ’Those New York hoodlums can’t find their way north of Westport without a compass,’ he said.”

Eddie groaned. For once in his life he absolutely loathed being right about something.

“He said we’d been very careful. And when I said, ’Well, somebody found us, this Callahan found us,’ Cal said well of course.” Again the finger pointed at Eddie. “You must have told Mr. Callahan where to look for the zip code, and after that it was easy. Then Cal said, ’And the post office was the best he could do, wasn’t it? Believe me, Aaron, we’re safe out here. No one knows where we are except the rental agent, and she’s back in New York.”

Deepneau peered at them from beneath his shaggy eyebrows, then dipped a strawberry and ate half of it.

“Is that how you found us? The rental agent?”

“No,” Eddie said. “A local. He took us right to you, Aaron.”

Deepneau sat back. “Ouch.”

“Ouch is right,” Eddie said. “So you moved back into the cabin, and Cal went right on buying books instead of hiding out here and reading one. Correct?”

Deepneau dropped his eyes to the tablecloth. “You have to understand that Cal is very dedicated. Books are his life.”

“No,” Eddie said evenly, “Cal isn’t dedicated. Cal is obsessed, that’s what Cal is.”

“I understand that you are a scrip,” Roland said, speaking for the first time since Deepneau had led them into the cabin. He had lit another of Cullum’s cigarettes (after plucking the filter off as the caretaker had shown him) and now sat smoking with what looked to Eddie like absolutely no satisfaction at all.

“A scrip? I don’t…”

“A lawyer.”

“Oh. Well, yes. But I’ve been retired from practice since-”

“We need you to come out of retirement long enough to draw up a certain paper,” Roland said, and then explained what sort of paper he wanted. Deepneau was nodding before the gunslinger had done more than get started, and Eddie assumed Tower had already told his friend this part of it. That was okay. What he didn’t like was the expression on the old fella’s face. Still, Deepneau let Roland finish. He hadn’t forgotten the basics of relating to potential clients, it seemed, retired or not.

When he was sure Roland was finished, Deepneau said: “I feel I must tell you that Calvin has decided to hold onto that particular piece of property a little longer.”

Eddie thumped the unwounded side of his head, being careful to use his right hand for this bit of theater. His left arm was stiffening up, and his leg was once more starting to throb between the knee and the ankle. He supposed it was possible that good old Aaron was traveling with some heavy-duty painkillers and made a mental note to ask for a few if he was.

“Cry pardon,” Eddie said, “but I took a knock on the head while I was arriving in this charming little town, and I think it’s screwed up my hearing. I thought you said that sai… that Mr. Tower had decided against selling us the lot.”

Deepneau smiled, rather wearily. ’You know perfectly well what I said.”

“But he’s supposed to sell it to us! He had a letter from Stefan Toren, his three-times-great grandfather, saying just that!”

“Cal says different,” Aaron responded mildly. “Have another strawberry, Mr. Dean.”

“No thank you!”

“Have another strawberry, Eddie,” Roland said, and handed him one.

Eddie took it. Considered squashing it against Long, Tall, and Ugly’s beak, just for the hell of it, then dipped it first in a saucer of cream, then in the sugarbowl. He began to eat. And damn, it was hard to stay bitter with that much sweetness flooding your mouth. A fact of which Roland (Deepneau too, for that matter) was surely aware.

“According to Cal,” Deepneau said, “there was nothing in the envelope he had from Stefan Toren except for this man’s name.” He tilted his mostly hairless head toward Roland. “Toren’s will-what was in the olden days sometimes called a ’dead-letter’-was long gone.”

“I knew what was in the envelope,” Eddie said. “He asked me, and I knew!”

“So he told me.” Deepneau regarded him expressionlessly. “He said it was a trick any streetcorner magician could do.”

“Did he also tell you that he promised to sell us the lot if I could tell him the name? That he fucking promised?”

“He claims to have been under considerable stress when he made that promise. As I am sure he was.”

“Does the son of a bitch think we mean to weasel on him?” Eddie asked. His temples were thudding with rage. Had he ever been so angry? Once, he supposed. When Roland had refused to let him go back to New York so he could score some horse. “Is that it? Because we won’t. We’ll come up with every cent he wants, and more. I swear it on the face of my father! And on the heart of my dinh!”

“Listen to me carefully, young man, because this is important.”

Eddie glanced at Roland. Roland nodded slightly, then crushed out his cigarette on one bootheel. Eddie looked back at Deepneau, silent but glowering.

“He says that is exactly the problem. He says you’ll pay him some ridiculously low token amount-a dollar is the usual sum in such cases-and then stiff him for the rest. He claims you tried to hypnotize him into believing you were a supernatural being, or someone with access to supernatural beings… not to mention access to millions from the Holmes Dental Corporation… but he was not fooled.”

Eddie gaped at him.

“These are things Calvin says,” Deepneau continued in that same calm voice, “but they are not necessarily the things Calvin believes.”

“What in hell do you mean?”

“Calvin has issues with letting go of things,” Deepneau said. “He is quite good at finding rare and antiquarian books, you know-a regular literary Sherlock Holmes-and he is compulsive about acquiring them. I’ve seen him hound the owner of a book he wants-I’m afraid there’s no other word that really fits-until the book’s owner gives in and sells. Sometimes just to make Cal stop calling on the telephone, I’m sure.

“Given his talents, his location, and the considerable sum of money to which he gained complete access on his twenty-sixth birthday, Cal should have been one of the most successful antiquarian book-dealers in New York, or in the whole country. His problem isn’t with buying but selling. Once he has an item he’s really worked to acquire, he hates to let it go again. I remember when a book collector from San Francisco, a fellow almost as compulsive as Cal himself, finally wore down Cal enough to sell him a signed first of Moby-Dick. Cal made over seventy thousand dollars on that one deal alone, but he also didn’t sleep for a week.

“He feels much the same way about the lot on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. It’s the only real property, other than his books, which he still has. And he’s convinced himself that you want to steal it from him.”

There was a short period of silence. Then Roland said: “Does he know better, in his secret heart?”

“Mr. Deschain, I don’t understand what-”

“Aye, ya do,” Roland said. “Does he?”

“Yes,” Deepneau said at last. “I believe he does.”

“Does he understand in his secret heart that we are men of our word who will pay him for his property, unless we’re dead?”

“Yes, probably. But-”

“Does he understand that, if he transfers ownership of the lot to us, and if we make this transfer perfectly clear to Andolini’s dinh-his boss, a man named Balazar-”

“I know the name,” Deepneau said dryly. “It’s in the papers from time to time.”

“That Balazar will then leave your friend alone? If, that is, he can be made to understand that the lot is no longer your friend’s to sell, and that any effort to take revenge on sai Tower will cost Balazar himself dearly?”

Deepneau crossed his arms over his narrow chest and waited. He was looking at Roland with a kind of uneasy fascination.

“In short, if your friend Calvin Tower sells us that lot, his troubles will be over. Do you think he knows that in his secret heart?”

“Yes,” Deepneau said. “It’s just that he’s got this… this kink about letting stuff go.”

“Draw up a paper,” Roland said. “Object, the vacant square of waste ground on the corner of those two streets. Tower the seller. Us the buyer.”

“The Tet Corporation as buyer,” Eddie put in.

Deepneau was shaking his head. “I could draw it up, but you won’t convince him to sell. Unless you’ve got a week or so, that is, and you’re not averse to using hot irons on his feet. Or maybe his balls.”

Eddie muttered something under his breath. Deepneau asked him what he’d said. Eddie told him nothing. What he’d said was Sounds good.