Song of Susannah - Stephen King [76]
Eddie rolled his eyes. These folken were their own worst enemas, as Henry might have said.
“Fine,” Roland said. “Just keep coming.”
And—wonders never ceased, it seemed—Deepneau did.
* * *
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?”