“You defaulted on the insurance when you needed cash to buy that Hopalong Cassidy collection from the Clarence Mulford estate last year,” Aaron Deepneau said mildly. “You told me that insurance lapse was only temporary, but—”

“It was!” Tower said. He sounded both injured and surprised, as if he had never expected betrayal from this quarter. Probably he hadn’t. “It was only temporary, goddammit!”

“—but to blame this young man,” Deepneau went on in that same composed but regretful voice, “seems most unfair.”

“I want you out of here!” Tower snarled at Eddie. “You and your friend, as well! I have no wish to do business with you! If you ever thought I did, it was a … a misapprehension!” He seized upon this last word as though upon a prize, and nearly shouted it out.

Eddie clasped his hands more tightly yet. He had never been more aware of the gun he was wearing; it had gained a kind of balefully lively weight. He reeked with sweat; he could smell it. And now drops of blood began to ooze out from between his palms and fall to the floor. He could feel his teeth beginning to sink into his tongue. Well, it was certainly a way to forget the pain in one’s leg. Eddie decided to give the tongue in question another brief conditional parole.

“What I remember most clearly about my visit to you—”

“You have some books that belong to me,” Tower said. “I want them back. I insist on—”

“Shut up, Cal,” Deepneau said.

“What?” Tower did not sound wounded now; he sounded shocked. Almost breathless.

“Stop squirming. You’ve earned this scolding, and you know it. If you’re lucky, a scolding is all it will be. So shut up and for once in your life take it like a man.”

“Hear him very well,” Roland said in a tone of dry approval.

“What I remember most clearly,” Eddie pushed on, “is how horrified you were by what I told Jack—about how I and my friends would fill Grand Army Plaza with corpses if he didn’t lay off. Some of them women and children. You didn’t like that, but do you know what, Cal? Jack Andolini’s here, right now, in East Stoneham.”

“You lie!” Tower said. He drew in breath as he said it, turning the words into an inhaled scream.

“God,” Eddie replied, “if only I did. I saw two innocent women die, Cal. In the general store, this was. Andolini set an ambush, and if you were a praying man—I suppose you’re not, unless there’s some first edition you feel in danger of losing, but if you were—you might want to get down on your knees and pray to the god of selfish, obsessed, greedy, uncaring dishonest bookstore owners that it was a woman named Mia who told Balazar’s dinh where we were probably going to end up, her, not you. Because if they followed you, Calvin, those two women’s blood is on your hands!”