Song of Susannah - Stephen King [69]
“How old is he?” Cullum asked.
Eddie looked at Roland, who only shook his head. Had Roland ever actually seen Tower? At this particular moment, Eddie couldn’t remember. He thought not.
“I think in his fifties.”
“He’s the book collector, ain’t he?” Cullum asked, then laughed at Eddie’s expression of surprise. “Told you, I keep a weather eye out on the summah folk. You never know when one’s gonna turn out to be a deadbeat. Maybe an outright thief. Or, eight or nine years ago, we had this woman from New Jersey who turned out to be a firebug.” Cullum shook his head. “Looked like a small-town librarian, the sort of lady who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, and she was lightin up barns all over Stoneham, Lovell, and Waterford.”
“How do you know he’s a book dealer?” Roland asked, and tossed the ball back to Cullum, who immediately tossed it to Eddie.
“Didn’t know that, ” he said. “Only that he collects em, because he told Jane Sargus. Jane’s got a little shop right where Dimity Road branches off from Route 5. That’s about a mile south of here. Dimity Road’s actually where that fella and his friend are stayin, if we’re talking about the right ones. I guess we are.”
“His friend’s name is Deepneau,” Eddie said, and tossed the Yaz ball to Roland. The gunslinger caught it, tossed it to Cullum, then went to the fireplace and dropped the last shred of his cigarette onto the little pile of logs stacked on the grate.
“Don’t bother with names, like I told you, but the friend’s skinny and looks about seventy. Walks like his hips pain him some. Wears steel-rimmed glasses.”
“That’s the guy, all right,” Eddie said.
“Janey has a little place called Country Collectibles. She gut some furniture in the barn, dressers and armoires and such, but what she specializes in is quilts, glassware, and old books. Sign says so right out front.”
“So Cal Tower…what? Just went in and started browsing?” Eddie couldn’t believe it, and at the same time he could. Tower had been balky about leaving New York even after Jack and George Biondi had threatened to burn his most valuable books right in front of his eyes. And once he and Deepneau got here, the fool had signed up for general delivery at the post office—or at least his friend Aaron had, and as far as the bad guys were concerned, one was as good as the other. Callahan had left him a note telling him to stop advertising his presence in East Stoneham. How stupid can you be??? had been the Pere’s final communication to sai Tower, and the answer seemed to be more stupid than a bag of hammers.
“Ayuh,” Cullum said. “Only he did a lot more’n browse.” His eyes, as blue as Roland’s, were twinkling. “Bought a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of readin material. Paid with traveler’s checks. Then he gut her to give him a list of other used bookstores in the area. There’s quite a few, if you add in Notions in Norway and that Your Trash, My Treasure place over in Fryeburg. Plus he got her to write down the names of some local folks who have book collections and sometimes sell out of their houses. Jane was awful excited. Talked about it all over town, she did.”
Eddie put a hand to his forehead and groaned. That was the man he’d met, all right, that was Calvin Tower to the life. What had he been thinking? That once he “gut” north of Boston he was safe?
“Can you tell us how to find him?” Roland asked.
“Oh, I c’n do better’n that. I can take you right to where they’re stayin.”
Roland had been tossing the ball from hand to hand. Now he stopped and shook his head. “No. You