Song of Susannah (Page 60)

I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that I was raised in Brooklyn simply because of some writer’s mistake, something that will eventually be fixed in the second draft. Hey, Pere, I’m with you – I refuse to believe I’m acharacter.This is my f**king life!

"Go on, Roland," he said. "Get that thing outta me."

The gunslinger poured some of the disinfectant from the bowl over Eddie’s shin, then used the tip of the knife to flick the clot out of the wound. With that done, he lowered the pliers. "Be ready to bite the pain, Eddie," he murmured, and a moment later Eddie did.

Twelve

Roland knew what he was doing, had done it before, and the bullet hadn’t gone deep. The whole thing was over in ninety seconds, but it was the longest minute and a half in Eddie’s life. At last Roland tapped the pliers on one of Eddie’s closed hands. When Eddie managed to unroll his fingers, the gunslinger dropped a flattened slug into it. "Souvenir," he said. "Stopped right on the bone. That was the scraping that you heard."

Eddie looked at the mashed piece of lead, then flicked it across the linoleum floor like a marble. "Don’t want it," he said, and wiped his brow.

Tower, ever the collector, picked up the cast-off slug. Deepneau, meanwhile, was examining the toothmarks in his belt with silent fascination.

"Cal," Eddie said, getting up on his elbows. "You had a book in your case – "

"I want those books back," Tower said immediately. "You better be taking care of them, young man."

"I’m sure they’re in great condition," Eddie said, telling himself once more to bite his tongue if he had to.Or grab Aaron’s belt and bite that again, if your tongue won’t do.

"They better be, young man; now they’re all I have left."

"Yes, along with the forty or so in your various safe deposit boxes," Aaron Deepneau said, completely ignoring the vile look his friend shot him. "The signedUlysses is probably the best, but there are several gorgeous Shakespeare folios, a complete set of signed Faulkners – "

"Aaron, would you please be quiet?"

" – and aHuckleberry Finn that you could turn into a Mercedes-Benz sedan any day of the week," Deepneau finished.

"In any case, one of them was a book called’Salem’s Lot, " Eddie said. "By a man named – "

"Stephen King," Tower finished. He gave the slug a final look, then put it on the kitchen table next to the sugarbowl. "I’ve been told he lives close to here. I’ve picked up two copies ofLot and also three copies of his first novel,Carrie. I was hoping to take a trip to Bridgton and get them signed. I suppose now that won’t happen."

"I don’t understand what makes it so valuable," Eddie said, and then: "Ouch, Roland, that hurts!"

Roland was checking the makeshift bandage around the wound in Eddie’s leg. "Be still," he said.

Tower paid no attention to this. Eddie had turned him once more in the direction of his favorite subject, his obsession, his darling. What Eddie supposed Gollum in the Tolkien books would have called "his precious."

"Do you remember what I told you when we were discussingThe Hogan, Mr. Dean? OrThe Dogan, if you prefer? I said that the value of a rare book – like that of a rare coin or a rare stamp – is created in different ways. Sometimes it’s just an autograph – "

"Your copy of’Salem’s Lot isn’t signed."

"No, because this particular author is very young and not very well known. He may amount to something one day, or he may not." Tower shrugged, almost as if to say that was up to ka. "But this particular book…well, the first edition was only seventy-five hundred copies, and almost all of them sold in New England."

"Why? Because the guy who wrote it is from New England?"

"Yes. As so often happens, the book’s value was created entirely by accident. A local chain decided to promote it heavily. They even produced a TV commercial, which is almost unheard-of at the local retail level. And it worked. Bookland of Maine ordered five thousand copies of the first edition – almost seventy per cent – and sold nearly every single one. Also, as withThe Hogan, there were misprints in the front matter. Not the title, in this case, but on the flap. You can tell an authentic first of’Salem’s Lot by the clipped price – at the last minute, Doubleday decided to raise the price from seven-ninety-five to eight-ninety-five – and by the name of the priest in the flap copy."

Roland looked up. "What about the name of the priest?"

"In the book, it’s Father Callahan. But on the flap someone wrote FatherCody, which is actually the name of the town’s doctor."

"And that’s all it took to bump the price of a copy from nine bucks to nine hundred and fifty," Eddie marveled.

Tower nodded. "That’s all – scarcity, clipped flap, mis-print. But there’s also an element of speculation in collecting rare editions which I find…quite exciting."

"That’s one word for it," Deepneau said dryly.

"For instance, suppose this man King becomes famous or critically acclaimed? I admit the chances are small, but suppose that did happen? Available first editions of his second book are so rare that, instead of being worth seven hundred and fifty dollars, my copy might be worth ten times that." He frowned at Eddie. "So you’d better be taking good care of it."

"I’m sure it’ll be fine," Eddie said, and wondered what Calvin Tower would think if he knew that one of the book’s characters had it on a shelf in his arguably fictional rectory. Said rectory in a town that was the fraternal twin of one in an old movie starring Yul Brynner as Roland’s twin, and introducing Horst Buchholz as Eddie’s.