Wolves of the Calla

'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?'

'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.

'Watch your mouth, you're in a place of scholarship,' Balazar said, but Jake thought he smiled a little. 'Come on, Toren. Just a little chat.'

'That's not my name! I had it legally changed on—'

'Whatever,' Balazar said soothingly. He actually patted Tower's arm. Jake was still trying to get used to the idea that all this… all this melodrama. . . had happened after he'd left the store with his two new books (new to him, anyway) and resumed his journey. That it had all happened behind his back.

'A squarehead's always a squarehead, right, boss?' Biondi asked jovially. 'Just a Dutchman. Don't matter what he calls himself.'

Balazar said, 'If I want you to talk, George, I'll tell you what I want you to say. Have you got that?'

'Okay,' Biondi said. Then, perhaps after deciding that didn't sound quite enthusiastic enough: 'Yeah! Sure.'

'Good.' Balazar, now holding the arm he had patted, guided Tower toward the back of the shop. Books were piled helter-skelter here; the air was heavy with the scent of a million musty pages. There was a door marked employees only. Tower produced a ring of keys, and they jingled slightly as he picked through them.

'His hands are shaking,' Jake murmured.

Eddie nodded. 'Mine would be, too.'

Tower found the key he wanted, turned it in the lock, opened the door. He took another look at the three men who had come to visit him—hard guys from Brooklyn—then led them into the back room. The door closed behind them, and Jake heard the sound of a bolt being shot across. He doubted Tower himself had done that.

Jake looked up into the convex anti-shoplifting mirror mounted in the corner of the shop, saw Deepneau pick up the telephone beside the cash register, consider it, then put it down again.

'What do we do now?' Jake asked Eddie.

'I'm gonna try something,' Eddie said. 'I saw it in a movie once.' He stood in front of the closed door, then tipped Jake a wink. 'Here I go. If I don't do anything but bump my head, feel free to call me an asshole.'

Before Jake could ask him what he was talking about, Eddie walked into the door. Jake saw his eyes close and his mouth tighten in a grimace. It was the expression of a man who expects to take a hard knock.

Only there was no hard knock. Eddie simply passed through the door. For one moment his moccasin-clad foot was sticking out, and then it went through, too. There was a low rasping sound, like a hand being passed over rough wood.

Jake bent down and picked Oy up. 'Close your eyes,' he said.

'Eyes,' the bumbler agreed, but continued to look at Jake with that expression of calm adoration. Jake closed his own eyes, squinting them shut When he opened them again, Oy was mimicking him. Without wasting any time, Jake walked into the door with the employees only sign on it. There was a moment of darkness and the smell of wood. Deep in his head, he heard a couple of those disturbing chimes again. Then he was through.

TEN

It was a storage area much bigger than Jake had expected— almost as big as a warehouse and stacked high with books in every direction. He guessed that some of those stacks, held in place by pairs of upright beams that provided shoring rather than shelving, had to be fourteen or sixteen feet high. Narrow, crooked aisles ran between them. In a couple he saw rolling platforms that made him think of the portable boarding ramps you saw in smaller airports. The smell of old books was the same back here as in front, but ever so much stronger, almost overwhelming. Above them hung a scattering of shaded lamps that provided yellowish, uneven illumination. The shadows of Tower, Balazar, and Balazar's friends leaped grotesquely on the wall to their left. Tower turned that way, leading his visitors to a corner that really was an office: there was a desk with a typewriter and a Rolodex on it, three old filing cabinets, and a wall covered with various pieces of paperwork. There was a calendar with some nineteenth-century guy on the May sheet Jake didn't recognize… and then he did. Robert Browning. Jake had quoted him in his Final Essay.

Tower sat down in the chair behind his desk, and immediately seemed sorry he'd done that. Jake could sympathize. The way the other three crowded around him couldn't have been very pleasant. Their shadows jumped up the wall behind the desk like the shadows of gargoyles.

Balazar reached into his suitcoat and brought out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and put it down on Tower's desk. 'Recognize this?'

Eddie moved forward. Jake grabbed at him. 'Don't go close! They'll sense you!'

'I don't care,' Eddie said. 'I need to see that paper.'

Jake followed, not knowing what else to do. Oy stirred in his arms and whined. Jake shushed him curtly, and Oy blinked. 'Sorry, buddy,' Jake said, 'but you have to keep quiet.'

Was the 1977 version of him in the vacant lot yet? Once inside it, that earlier Jake had slipped somehow and knocked himself unconscious. Had that happened yet? No sense wondering. Eddie was right. Jake didn't like it, but he knew it was true: they were supposed to be here , not there, and they were supposed to see the paper Balazar was now showing Calvin Tower.

ELEVEN

Eddie got the first couple of lines before Jack Andolini said, 'Boss, I don't like this. Something feels hinky.'

Balazar nodded. 'I agree. Is someone back here with us, Mr. Toren?' He still sounded calm and courteous, but his eyes were everywhere, assessing this large room's potential for concealment.

'No,' Tower said. 'Well, there's Sergio; he's the shop cat. I imagine he's back here somew—'

'This ain't no shop,' Biondi said, 'it's a hole you pour money into. One of those chi-chi designers'd have trouble making enough to cover the overhead on a joint this big, and a bookstore? Man,