"Ow!"Jake said. "Man, that hurts!"
Eddie paid no attention. In fact the hand on Jake's shoulder clamped down even tighter.
"Christ," Eddie whispered. "Dear Jesus Christ, what's this? What in hell is this?"
EIGHT
Jake watched Eddie go past pale to ashy gray. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. Not without
difficulty, Jake pried the clamping hand off his shoulder. Eddie made as if to point with that hand, but didn't
seem to have the strength. It fell against the side of his leg with a little thump.
The man who had gotten out on the passenger side of the Town Car walked around to the sidewalk while the
driver opened the rear curbside door. Even to Jake their moves looked practiced, almost like steps in a dance.
The man who got out of the back seat was wearing an expensive suit, but that didn't change the fact that he
was basically a dumpy little guy with a potbelly and black hair going gray around the edges. Dandrufjy black
hair, from the look of his suit's shoulders.
To Jake, the day suddenly felt darker than ever. He looked up to see if the sun had gone behind a cloud. It
hadn't, but it almost seemed to him that there was a black corona forming around its brilliant circle, like a
ring of mascara around a startled eye.
Half a block farther downtown, the 1977 version of him was glancing in the window of a restaurant, and Jake
could remember the name of it: Chew Chew Mama's. Not far beyond it was Tower of Power Records, where
he would think Towers are selling cheap today. If that version of him had looked back, he would have seen
the gray Town Car… but he hadn't. Kid Seventy-seven's mind was fixed firmly on the future.
"It's Balazar," Eddie said.
"What?"
Eddie was pointing at the dumpy guy, who had paused to adjust his Sulka tie. The other two now stood
flanking him. They looked simultaneously relaxed and watchful.
"Enrico Balazar. And looking much younger. God, he's almost middle-aged!"
"It's 1977," Jake reminded him. Then, as the penny dropped: "That's the guy you and Roland killed?" Eddie
had told Jake the story of the shoot-out at Balazar's club in 1987, leaving out the gorier parts. The part, for
instance, where Kevin Blake had lobbed the head of Eddie's brother into Balazar's office in an effort to flush
Eddie and Roland into the open. Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie.
"Yeah," Eddie said. "The guy Roland and I killed. And the one who was driving, that's Jack Andolini. Old
Double-Ugly, people used to call him, although never to his face. He went through one of those doors with
me just before the shooting started."
"Roland killed him, too. Didn't he?"
Eddie nodded. It was simpler than trying to explain how Jack Andolini had happened to the blind and
faceless beneath the tearing claws and ripping jaws of the lobstrosities on the beach.
"The other bodyguard's George Biondi. Big Nose. I killed him myself. Will kill him. Ten years from now."
Eddie looked as if he might faint at any second.
"Eddie, are you okay?"
"I guess so. I guess I have to be." They had drawn away from the bookshop's doorway. Oy was still crouched
at Jake's ankle. Down Second Avenue, Jake's other, earlier self had disappeared. I'm running by now, Jake
thought. Maybe jumping over the UPS guy's dolly. Sprinting all-out for the delicatessen, because I'm sure
that's the way back to Mid-World. The way back to him.
Balazar peered at his reflection in the window beside the today's specials display-board, gave the wings of
hair above his ears one last little fluff with the tips of his fingers, then stepped through the open door.
Andolini and Biondi followed.
"Hard guys," Jake said.
"The hardest," Eddie agreed.
"From Brooklyn."
"Well, yeah."
"Why are hard guys from Brooklyn visiting a used-book store in Manhattan?"
"I think that's what we're here to find out. Jake, did I hurt your shoulder?"
"I'm okay. But I don't really want to go back in there."
"Neither do I. So let's go."
They went back into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.
NINE
Oy was still at Jake's heel and still whining. Jake wasn't crazy about the sound, but he understood it. The
smell of fear in the bookstore was palpable. Deepneau sat beside the chessboard, gazing unhappily at Calvin
Tower and the newcomers, who didn't look much like bibliophiles in search of the elusive signed first edition.
The other two old guys at the counter were drinking the last of their coffee in big gulps, with the air of
fellows who have just remembered important appointments elsewhere.
Cowards, Jake thought with a contempt he didn't recognize as a relatively new thing in his life. Lowbellies.
Being old forgives some of it, but not all of it.
"We just have a couple of things to discuss, Mr. Toren," Balazar was saying. He spoke in a low, calm,
reasonable voice, without even a trace of accent. "Please, if we could step back into your office—"
"We don't have business," Tower said. His eyes kept drifting to Andolini. Jake supposed he knew why. Jack
Andolini looked the ax-wielding psycho in a horror movie. "Come July fifteenth, we might have business.
Might. So we could talk after the Fourth. I guess. If you wanted to." He smiled to show he was being
reasonable. "But now? Gee, I just don't see the point. It's not even June yet. And for your information my
name's not—"
"He doesn't see the point," Balazar said. He looked at Andolini; looked at the one with the big nose; raised
his hands to his shoulders, then dropped them. What's wrong with this world of ours? the gesture said. "Jack?
George? This man took a check from me—the amount before the decimal point was a one followed by five
zeroes—and now he says he doesn't see the point of talking to me."
"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."
