Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [255]
“No,” Tower said. “But it’d be just the thing for a guy like me, wouldn’t it?” He looked at Eddie keenly. “Why do you ask?”
But Tower’s future responsibility to save a man now exploring the hidden highways of multiple Americas was a subject Eddie didn’t feel like getting into right now. He’d come as close to blowing the guy’s mind as he wanted to, and he had to get back through the unfound door before Black Thirteen wore Roland away to a frazzle.
“Never mind. But if you see one, you ought to pick it up. One more thing and then I’m gone.”
“What’s that?”
“I want your promise that as soon as I leave, you’ll leave.”
Tower once more grew shifty. It was the side of him Eddie knew he could come to outright loathe, given time. “Why…to tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can do that. Early evenings are often a very busy time for me…people are much more prone to browse once the workday’s over…and Mr. Brice is coming in to look at a first of The Troubled Air, Irwin Shaw’s novel about radio and the McCarthy era…I’ll have to at least skim through my appointment calendar, and…”
He droned on, actually gathering steam as he descended toward trivialities.
Eddie said, very mildly: “Do you like your balls, Calvin? Are you maybe as attached to them as they are to you?”
Tower, who’d been wondering about who would feed Sergio if he just pulled up stakes and ran, now stopped and looked at him, puzzled, as if he had never heard this simple one-syllable word before.
Eddie nodded helpfully. “Your nuts. Your sack. Your stones. Your cojones. The old sperm-firm. Your testicles.”
“I don’t see what—”
Eddie’s coffee was gone. He poured some Half and Half into the cup and drank that, instead. It was very tasty. “I told you that if you stayed here, you could look forward to a serious maiming. That’s what I meant. That’s probably where they’ll start, with your balls. To teach you a lesson. As to when it happens, what that mostly depends on is traffic.”
“Traffic.” Tower said it with a complete lack of vocal expression.
“That’s right,” Eddie said, sipping his Half and Half as if it were a thimble of brandy. “Basically how long it takes Jack Andolini to drive back out to Brooklyn and then how long it takes Balazar to load up some old beater of a van or panel truck with guys to come back here. I’m hoping Jack’s too dazed to just phone. Did you think Balazar’d wait until tomorrow? Convene a little brain-trust of guys like Kevin Blake and ’Cimi Dretto to discuss the matter?” Eddie raised first one finger and then two. The dust of another world was beneath the nails. “First, they got no brains; second, Balazar doesn’t trust em.
“What he’ll do, Cal, is what any successful despot does: he’ll react right away, quick as a flash. The rush-hour traffic will hold em up a little, but if you’re still here at six, half past at the latest, you can say goodbye to your balls. They’ll hack them off with a knife, then cauterize the wound with one of those little torches, those Bernz-O-Matics—”
“Stop,” Tower said. Now instead of white, he’d gone green. Especially around the gills. “I’ll go to a hotel down in the Village. There are a couple of cheap ones that cater to writers and artists down on their luck, ugly rooms but not that bad. I’ll call Aaron, and we’ll go north tomorrow morning.”
“Fine, but first you have to pick a town to go to,” Eddie said. “Because I or one of my friends may need to get in touch with you.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I don’t know any towns in New England north of Westport, Connecticut!”
“Make some calls once you get to the hotel in the Village,” Eddie said. “You pick the town, and then tomorrow morning, before you leave New York, send your pal Aaron up to your vacant lot. Have him write the zip code on the board fence.” An unpleasant thought struck Eddie. “You have zip codes, don’t you? I mean, they’ve been invented, right?”
Tower looked at him as if he were crazy. “Of course they have.”
“ ’Kay. Have him put it on the Forty-sixth street side, all the way down where the fence ends. Have you got that?”
“Yes, but—”