Song of Susannah (Page 94)

"Yes."

"Not a bad idea," Harrigan agreed, "for mine eyes can see Officer Benzyck headed back this way, and it might be well if you were gone when he gets here. I’m glad your furry little friend wasn’t hurt, son."

"Thanks, Mr. Harrigan."

"Praise God, he’s no more a dog than I am, is he?"

"No, sir," Jake said, smiling widely.

"Beware that woman, boys. She put a thought in my head. I call that witchcraft. And she wastwo. "

"Twins-say-twim, aye," Callahan said, and then (without knowing he meant to do it until it was done) he sketched the sign of the cross in front of the preacher.

"Thank you for your blessing, heathen or not," Earl Harrigan said, clearly touched. Then he turned toward the approaching NYPD patrolman and called cheerfully, "Officer Benzyck! Good to see you and there’s some jam right there on your collar, praise God!"

And while Officer Benzyck was studying the jam on his uniform collar, Jake and Callahan slipped away.

Five

"Whoo-eee," Jake said under his breath as they walked toward the brightly underlit hotel canopy. A white limousine, easily twice the size of any Jake had seen before (and he’d seen his share; once his father had even taken him to the Emmys), was offloading laughing men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses. They came out in a seemingly endless stream.

"Yes indeed," Callahan said. "It’s like being on a roller coaster, isn’t it?"

Jake said, "We’re not even supposed tobe here. This was Roland and Eddie’s job. We were just supposed to go see Calvin Tower."

"Something apparently thought different."

"Well, it should have thought twice," Jake said gloomily. "A kid and a priest, with one gun between them? It’s a joke. What are our chances, if the Dixie Pig is full of vampires and low men unwinding on their day off?"

Callahan did not respond to this, although the prospect of trying to rescue Susannah from the Dixie Pig terrified him. "What was that Gan stuff you were spouting?"

Jake shook his head. "I don’t know – I can barely remember what I said. I think it’s part of the touch, Pere. And do you know where I think I got it?"

"Mia?"

The boy nodded. Oy trotted neatly at his heel, his long snout not quite touching Jake’s calf. "And I’m getting something else, as well. I keep seeing this black man in a jail cell. There’s a radio playing, telling him all these people are dead – the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, George Harrison, Peter Sellers, Itzak Rabin, whoeverhe is. I think it might be the jail in Oxford, Mississippi, where they kept Odetta Holmes for awhile."

"But this is aman you see. Not Susannah but aman. "

"Yes, with a toothbrush mustache, and he wears funny little gold-rimmed glasses, like a wizard in a fairy-tale."

They stopped just outside the radiance of the hotel’s entrance. A doorman in a green swallowtail coat blew an ear-splitting blast on his little silver whistle, hailing down a Yellow Cab.

"Is it Gan, do you think? Is the black man in the jail cell Gan?"

"I don’t know." Jake shook his head with frustration.

"There’s something about the Dogan, too, all mixed in."

"And this comes from the touch."

"Yes, but it’s not from Mia or Susannah or you or me. I think…" Jake’s voice lowered. "I think I better figure out who that black man is and what he means to us, because I think that what I’m seeing comes from the Dark Tower itself." He looked at Callahan solemnly. "In some ways, we’re getting very close to it, and that’s why it’s so dangerous for the ka-tet to be broken like it is.

"In some ways, we’re almost there."

Six

Jake took charge smoothly and completely from the moment he stepped out of the revolving doors with Oy in his arms and then put the billy-bumbler down on the lobby’s tile floor. Callahan didn’t think the kid was even aware of it, and probably that was all to the good. If he got self-conscious, his confidence might crumble.

Oy sniffed delicately at his own reflection in one of the lobby’s green glass walls, then followed Jake to the desk, his claws clicking faintly on the black and white marble squares. Callahan walked beside him, aware that he was looking at the future and trying not to goggle at it too obviously.

"She was here," Jake said. "Pere, I can almost see her. Both of them, her and Mia."

Before Callahan could reply, Jake was at the desk. "Cry pardon, ma’am," he said. "My name is Jake Chambers. Do you have a message for me, or a package, or something? It’d be either from Susannah Dean or maybe from a Miss Mia."

The woman peered down doubtfully at Oy for a moment. Oy looked up at her with a cheery grin that revealed a great many teeth. Perhaps these disturbed the clerk, because she turned away from him with a frown and examined the screen of her computer.

"Chambers?" she asked.

"Yes, ma’am." Spoken in his best getting-along-with-grownups voice. It had been awhile since he’d needed to use that one, but it was still there, Jake found, and within easy reach.

"I have something for you, but it’s not from a woman. It’s from someone named Stephen King." She smiled. "I don’t suppose it’s the famous writer? Do you know him?"

"No, ma’am," Jake said, and snuck a sidewards glance at Callahan. Neither of them had heard of Stephen King until recently, but Jake understood why the name might give his current traveling companion the chills. Callahan didn’t look particularly chilly at the moment, but his mouth had thinned to a single line.

"Well," she said, "I suppose it’s a common enough name, isn’t it? Probably there arenormal Stephen Kings all over the United States who wish he’d just…I don’t know…give it arest. " She voiced a nervous little laugh, and Callahan wondered what had set her on edge. Oy, who got less doggy the longer you looked at him? Maybe, but Callahan thought it was more likely something in Jake, something that whispereddanger. Perhaps evengunslinger. Certainly there was something in him that set him apart from other boys.Far. Callahan thought of him pulling the Ruger from the docker’s clutch and sticking it under the unfortunate taxi driver’s nose.Tell me that you were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend! he’d screamed, his finger already white on the trigger.Tell me that you don’t want to die here in the street with a hole in your head!