“And your trade?”

“I deal in lead!” Roland called, and Eddie felt goose-bumps pebble his arms.

A long pause. Then: “Have they killed Calvin?”

“Not that we know of,” Eddie called back. “If you know something we don’t, why don’t you come on out here and tell us?”

“Are you the guy who showed up while Cal was dickering with that prick Andolini?”

Eddie felt another throb of anger at the word dickering. At the slant it put on what had actually been going down in Tower’s back room. “A dicker? Is that what he told you it was?” And then, without waiting for Aaron Deepneau to answer: “Yeah, I’m that guy. Come out here and let’s talk.”

No answer. Twenty seconds slipped by. Eddie pulled in breath to call Deepneau again. Roland put a hand on Eddie’s arm and shook his head. Another twenty seconds went by, and then there was the rusty shriek of a spring as a screen door was pushed open. A tall, skinny man stepped out of the boathouse, blinking like an owl. In one hand he held a large black automatic pistol by the barrel. Deepneau raised it over his head. “It’s a Beretta, and unloaded,” he said. “There’s only one clip and it’s in the bedroom, under my socks. Loaded guns make me nervous. Okay?”

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.