Wolves of the Calla

"So here's Tower, and he's sort of like Roland-the last of his line. He sells off a piece of property here and a piece there, making his taxes, making his house payments, keeping up with the credit cards and the doctor bills, paying for his stock. And yeah, I'm making this up… except somehow it doesn't feel that way."

"No," Jake said. He spoke in a low, fascinated voice. "It doesn't."

"Perhaps you shared his khef," Roland said. "More likely, you touched him. As my old friend Alain used to. Go on, Eddie."

"And every year he tells himself the bookstore'll turn around. Catch on, maybe, the way things in New York sometimes do. Get out of the red and into the black and then he'll be okay. And finally there's only one thing left to sell: lot two-ninety-eight on Block Nineteen in Turtle Bay."

"Two-nine-eight adds up to nineteen," Susa

"What's Blue Car Syndrome?" Jake asked.

"When you buy a blue car, you see blue cars everywhere."

"Not here, you don't," Jake said.

"Not here," Oy put in, and they all looked at him. Days, sometimes whole weeks would go by, and Oy would do nothing but give out the occasional echo of their talk. Then he would say something that might almost have been the product of original thought. But you didn't know. Not for sure. Not even Jake knew for sure.

The way we don't know for sure about nineteen, Susa

"He holds onto that lot until the bitter end," Eddie said. "I mean hey, he doesn't even own the crappy building his bookstore's in, he only leases it."

Jake took over. "Tom and Jerry's Artistic Deli goes out of business, and Tower has it torn down. Because part of him wants to sell the lot. That part of him says he'd be crazy not to." Jake fell silent for a moment, thinking about how some thoughts came in the middle of the night. Crazy thoughts, crazy ideas, and voices that wouldn't shut up. "But there's another part of him, another voice-"

"The voice of the Turtle," Susa

"Yes, the Turtle or the Beam," Jake agreed. "They're probably the same thing. And this voice tells him he has to hold onto it at all costs." He looked at Eddie. "Do you think he knows about the rose? Do you think he goes down there sometimes and looks at it?"

"Does a rabbit shit in the woods?" Eddie responded. "Sure he goes. And sure he knows. On some level he must know. Because a corner lot in Manhattan… how much would a thing like that be worth, Susa

"In my time, probably a million bucks," she said. "By 1977, God knows. Three? Five?" She shrugged. "Enough to let sai Tower go on selling books at a loss for the rest of his life, provided he was reasonably careful about how he invested the principal."

Eddie said, "Everything about this shows how reluctant he is to sell. I mean Suze already pointed out how little Sombra got for their hundred grand."

"But they did get something," Roland said. "Something very important."

"A foot in the door," Eddie said.

"You say true. And now, as the term of their agreement winds down, they send your world's version of the Big Coffin Hunters. Hard-caliber boys. If greed or necessity doesn't compel Tower to sell them the land with the rose on it, they'll terrify him into it."

"Yeah," Jake said. And who would stand on Tower's side? Maybe Aaron Deepneau. Maybe no one. "So what do we do?"

"Buy it ourselves," Susa

FIVE

There was a moment of thunderstruck silence, and then Eddie nodded thoughtfully. "Sure, why not? The Sombra Corporation doesn't have a topping privilege in their little agreement-they probably tried, but Tower wouldn't go for it. So sure, we'll buy it. How many deerskins do you think he'll want? Forty? Fifty? If he's a real hard bargainer, maybe we can throw in some relics from the Old People. You know, cups and plates and arrowheads. They'd be conversation pieces at cocktail parties."

Susa

"Okay, maybe not so fu

"Also," Jake said apologetically, "we weren't even really there, at least not the way you are when you go through one of the doors. They sensed us, but basically we were invisible."

"Let's take one thing at a time," Susa

"How much?" Jake asked. "I know that's sort of impolite- my mother'd faint if she heard me ask someone that, but-"

"We've come a little bit too far to worry about being polite," Susa

"The year Mort pushed you in front of the subway train," Eddie said.

She nodded. "That happened in August. About six weeks later, my father had a heart attack-the first of many. Some of it was probably stress over what happened to me, but I won't own all of it. He was a hard driver, pure and simple."

"You don't have to own any of it," Eddie said. "I mean, it's not as if you jumped in front of that subway car, Suze."

"I know. But how you feel and how long you feel it doesn't always have a lot to do with objective truth. With Mama gone, it was my job to take care of him and I couldn't handle it-I could never completely get the idea that it was my fault out of my head."

"Gone days," Roland said, and without much sympathy.

"Thanks, sug," Susa

"He probably would sell it for deerskins, if Eddie's right about the Beam," Roland said. "I believe a deep part of Mr. Tower's mind and spirit-the ka that made him hold onto the lot for so long in the first place-has been waiting for us."

"Waiting for the cavalry," Eddie said with a trace of a grin. "Like Fort Ord in the last ten minutes of a John Wayne movie."

Roland looked at him, unsmiling. "He's been waiting for the White."

Susa

"Yes," Roland said, "he is." And wondered, briefly, what color that other one was. Mia.

"We need a door," Jake said.

"We need at least two," Eddie said. "One to deal with Tower, sure. But before we can do that, we need one to go back to Susa

"Or to go back to 1968 and discover Mr. Carver was gone," Jake said. 'Tu

Susa