Needful Things

CHAPTER TWELVE

Monday the 14th of October, Columbus Day, dawned fair and hot in Castle Rock. The residents grumbled about the heat, and when they met in groups-on the Town Common, at Nan’s, on the benches in front of the Municipal Building-they told each other it was unnatural. Probably had something to do with the goddam oil-fires in Kuwait, they said, or maybe that hole in the ozone layer they were always blabbing about on TV. Several of the oldtimers declared it was never seventy degrees at seven o’clock in the morning during the second week of October when they were young.

This wasn’t true, of course, and most (if not all) of them knew it; every two or three years you could count on Indian summer to get a little out of hand and there would be four or five days that felt like the middle of July. Then one morning you’d wake up with what felt like a summer cold only to see the front lawn stiff with frost and a snow-flurry or two breezing around in the chilly air.

They knew all this, but as a topic of conversation, the weather was simply too good to ruin by acknowledging it. No one wanted to argue; arguments when the weather turned unseasonably hot were not a good idea. People were apt to get ugly, and if Castle Rock residents wanted a sobering example of what could happen when people got ugly, they only had to look as far as the intersection of Willow and Ford streets.

“Those two wimmin had it comin,” Lenny Partridge, the town’s oldest resident and premier gossip, opined as he stood on the steps of the bandbox county courthouse which took up the west wing of the Municipal Building. “Both of em crazier’n a pair of rats in a backed-up shithouse. That Cobb woman stuck a meat-fork in her husband, you know.” Lenny hitched at the truss beneath his baggy trousers.

“Stuck him just like a pig, she did. Hot damn! Ain’t some wimmin crazy?” He looked up at the sky and added: “Hot like this there’s apt to be more contention. I seen it before. First thing Sheriff Pangborn ort to do is order Henry Beaufort to keep the Tiger closed until the weather gets normal again.”

“That’s jake with me, oldtimer,” Charlie Fortin said. “I can get my beer at Hemphill’s for a day or two and do my drinkin at home.”

This earned him laughter from the loose knot of men around Lenny and a fierce scowl from Mr. Partridge himself. The group broke up.

Most of these men had to work, holiday or no holiday.

Already some of the rickety pulp-trucks parked in front of Nan’s were pulling out, headed for logging operations in Sweden and Nodd’s Ridge and out by Castle Lake.

2

Danforth “Buster” Keeton sat in his study, wearing only his underpants. The underpants were soggy. He hadn’t left the room since Sunday evening, when he had made a brief trip down to the Municipal Building. He’d gotten the Bureau of Taxation file and brought it home.

Castle Rock’s Head Selectman was oiling his Colt revolver for the third time. At some point this morning he meant to load it. Then he meant to kill his wife. Then he meant to go down to the Municipal Building, find that son of a bitch Ridgewick (he had no idea that it was Norris’s day off) and kill him. Last of all, he intended to lock himself in his office and kill himself. He had decided that the only way he could escape the Persecutors forever was by taking these steps.

He had been a fool to think otherwise. Not even a board game which magically picked winners at the race-track could stop Them. Oh no. He had learned that lesson yesterday when he had come home to find those terrible pink slips taped up all over the house.

The telephone on the desk rang. Startled, Keeton squeezed the Colt’s trigger. There was a dry snap. If the gun had been loaded, he would have put a bullet spang through the study door.

He scooped the phone up. “Can’t you people leave me alone for even a little while?” he shouted angrily.

The quiet voice which replied silenced him at once. It was the voice of Mr. Gaunt, and it poured over Keeton’s blistered soul like soothing balm. ?”

“What luck did you have with the toy I sold you, Mr. Keeton “It worked!” Keeton said. His voice was jubilant. He forgot, at least for the moment, that he was planning a strenuous morning of murder and suicide. “I collected on every race, by God!”

“Well, that’s fine,” Mr. Gaunt said warmly.

Keeton’s face clouded again. His voice dropped to what was almost a whisper. “Then… yesterday… when I got home…”

He found he could not go on. A moment later he discovered-to his great amazement and even greater delight-that he didn’t have to.

“You discovered They had been in your house?” Mr. Gaunt asked.

“Yes! Yes! How did you know?” “They are everywhere in this town,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I told you that when last we met, did I not?”

“Yes! And-” Keeton broke off suddenly. His face twisted in alarm. “They could have this line tapped, do you realize that, Mr.

Gaunt? They could be listening in on our conversation right now!”

Mr. Gaunt remained calm. “They could, but They’re not. Please don’t think I am naive, Mr. Keeton. I have encountered Them before.

Many times.”

“I’m sure you have,” Keeton said. He was discovering that the wild joy he had taken in Winning Ticket was little or nothing compared to this; to finding, after what felt like centuries of struggle and darkness, a kindred soul.

“I have a small electronic device attached to my line,” Mr. Gaunt went on in his calm and mellow voice. “If the line is tapped, a small light goes on. I am looking at that light now, Mr. Keeton, and it is dark. As dark as some of the hearts in this town.”

“You do know, don’t you?” Danforth Keeton said in a fervent, trembling voice. He felt as if he might weep.

“Yes. And I called to tell you that you mustn’t do anything rash, Mr. Keeton.” The voice was soft, lulling. As he listened to it, Keeton felt his mind begin to drift away like a child’s helium-filled balloon.

“That would make things far too easy for Them. Why, do you realize what would happen if you were to die?”

“No,” Keeton murmured. He was looking out the window. His eyes were blank and dreamy.

“They would have a party!” Mr. Gaunt cried softly. “They would get liquored up in Sheriff Pangborn’s office! They would go out to Homeland Cemetery and urinate on your grave!”

“Sheriff Pangborn?” Keeton said uncertainly.

“You don’t really believe a drone like Deputy Ridgewick is allowed to operate in a case like this without orders from his higherups, do you?”

“No, of course not.” He was beginning to see more clearly now.

They; it had always been They, a tormenting dark cloud around him, and when you snatched at that cloud, you came away with nothing. Now he at last began to understand that They had faces and names. They might even be vulnerable. Knowing this was a tremendous relief.

“Pangborn, Fullerton, Samuels, the Williams woman, your own wife.

They are all part of it, Mr. Keeton, but I suspect-yes, and rather strongly-that Sheriff Pangborn is the ringleader. If so, he would love it if you killed one or two of his underlings and then put yourself out of the way. Why, I suspect that is exactly what he has been aiming for all along. But you’re going to fool him, Mr.

Keeton, aren’t you?”

“Yessss!” Keeton whispered fiercely. “What should I do?”

“Nothing today. Go about your business as usual. Go to the races tonight, if you like, and enjoy your new purchase. If you appear the same as always to Them, it will throw Them off balance.

It will sow confusion and uncertainty amidst the enemy.”

“Confusion and uncertainty.” Keeton spoke the words slowly, tasting them.

“Yes. I’m laying my own plans, and when the time comes, I’ll let you know.”

“Do you promise?”

“Oh yes indeed, Mr. Keeton. You are quite important to me.

In fact, I would go so far as to say I could not do without you.”

Mr. Gaunt rang off. Keeton put his pistol and the gun-cleaning kit away. Then he went upstairs, dumped his soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, showered, and dressed. When he came down, Myrtle shrank away from him at first, but Keeton spoke kindly to her and kissed her cheek. Myrtle began to relax. Whatever the crisis had been, it seemed to have passed.

3

Everett Frankel was a big red-haired man who looked as Irish as County Cork… which was not surprising, since it was from Cork that his mother’s ancestors had sprung. He had been Ray Van Allen’s P.A. for four years, ever since he’d gotten out of the Navy.

He arrived at Castle Rock Family Practice at quarter to eight that Monday morning, and Nancy Ramage, the head nurse, asked him if he could go right out to the Burgmeyer farm. Helen Burgmeyer had suffered what might have been an epileptic seizure in the night, she said. If Everett’s diagnosis confirmed this, he was to bring her back to town in his car so the doctor-who would be in shortlycould examine her and decide if she needed to go to the hospital for tests.

Ordinarily, Everett would have been unhappy to be sent on a house-call first thing, especially one so far out in the country, but on an unseasonably hot morning like this, a ride out of town seemed like just the thing.

Besides, there was the pipe.

Once he was in his Plymouth, he unlocked the glove compartment and took it out. It was a meerschaum, with a bowl both deep and wide. It had been carved by a master craftsman, that pipe; birds and flowers and vines circled the bowl in a pattern that actually seemed to change when one looked at it from different angles. He had left the pipe in the glove compartment not just because smoking was forbidden in the doctor’s office but because he didn’t like the idea of other people (especially a snoop like Nancy Ramage) seeing it. First they would want to know where he had gotten it. Then they would want to know how much he had paid for it.

Also, some of them might covet it.

He put the stem between his teeth, marvelling again at how perfectly right it felt there, how perfectly in its place. He tilted down the rearview mirror for a moment so he could see himself, and approved completely of what he saw. He thought the pipe made him look older, wiser, handsomer. And when he had the pipe clenched between his teeth, the bowl pointed up a bit at just the right debonair angle, he felt older, wiser, handsomer.

He drove down Main Street, meaning to cross the Tin Bridge between the town and the country, and then slowed as he approached Needful Things. The green awning tugged at him like a fishhook. It suddenly seemed very important-imperative, in factthat he stop.

He pulled in, started to get out of the car, then remembered that the pipe was still clenched between his teeth. He took it out (feeling a small pang of regret as he did so) and locked it in the glove compartment again. This time he actually reached the sidewalk before returning to the Plymouth to lock all four doors. With a nice pipe like that, it didn’t do to take chances. Anybody might be tempted to steal a nice pipe like that. Anybody at all.

He approached the shop and then stopped, feeling disappointed.

A sign hung in the window.

CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY

it read.

Everett was about to turn away when the door opened. Mr.

Gaunt stood there, looking resplendent and quite debonair himself in a fawn-colored jacket with elbow patches and charcoal-gray pants.

“Come in, Mr. Frankel,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”

“Well, I’m on my way out of town-business-and I thought I’d just stop and tell you again how much I like my pipe. I’ve always wanted one just like that.”

Beaming, Mr. Gaunt said, “I know.”

“But I see you’re closed, so I won’t bother y-” “I am never closed to my favorite customers, Mr. Frankel, and I put you among that number. High among that number. Step in.”

And he held out his hand.

Everett shrank away from it. Leland Gaunt laughed cheerfully at this and stepped aside so the young Physician’s Assistant could enter.

“I really can’t stay-” Everett began, but he felt his feet carry him forward into the gloom of the shop as if they knew better.

“Of course not,” Mr. Gaunt said. “The healer must be about his appointed rounds, releasing the chains of illness which bind the body and…” His grin, a thing of raised eyebrows and clenched, jostling teeth, sprang forth. “… and driving out those devils which bind the spirit. Am I right?”

“I guess so,” Everett said. He felt a pang of unease as Mr.

Gaunt closed the door. He hoped his pipe would be all right.

Sometimes people broke into cars. Sometimes they did that even in broad daylight.

“Your pipe will be fine,” Mr. Gaunt soothed. From his pocket he drew a plain envelope with one word written across the front.

The word was Lovey. “Do you remember promising to play a little prank for me, Dr. Frankel?”

“I’m not a doc-” Mr. Gaunt’s eyebrows drew together in a way that made Everett cease and desist at once. He took half a step backward.

“Do you remember or don’t you?” Mr. Gaunt asked sharply.

“You’d better answer me quickly, young man-I’m not as sure of that pipe as I was a moment ago.”

“I remember!” Everett said. His voice was hasty and alarmed.

“Sally Ratcliffe! The speech teacher!”

The bunched center of Mr. Gaunt’s more or less single eyebrow relaxed. Everett Frankel relaxed with it. “That’s right. And the time has come to play that little prank, Doctor. Here.”

He held out the envelope. Everett took it, being careful that his fingers should not touch Mr. Gaunt’s as he did so.

“Today is a school holiday, but the young Miss Ratcliffe is in her office, updating her files,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I know that’s not on your way to the Burgmeyer farm-” “How do you know so much?” Everett asked in a dazed voice.

Mr. Gaunt waved this away impatiently. “-but you might make time to go by on your way back, yes?”

“I suppose-” “And since outsiders at a school, even when the students aren’t there, are regarded with some suspicion, you might explain your presence by dropping in at the school nurse’s office, yes?”

”If she’s there, I guess I could do that,” Everett said. “In fact, I really should, because-” -you still haven’t picked up the vaccination records,” Mr.

Gaunt finished for him. “That’s fine. As a matter of fact she won’t be there, but you don’t know that, do you? just poke your head into her office, then leave. But on your way in or your way out, I want you to put that envelope in the car Miss Ratcliffe has borrowed from her young man. I want you to put it under the driver’s seat… but not entirely under. I want you to leave it with just a corner sticking out.”

Everett knew perfectly well who “Miss Ratcliffe’s young man” was: the high school Physical Education instructor. Given a choice, Everett would have preferred playing the trick on Lester Pratt rather than on his fiancee. Pratt was a beefy young Baptist who usually wore blue tee-shirts and blue sweat-pants with a white stripe running down the outside of each leg. He was the sort of fellow who exuded sweat and Jesus from his pores in apparently equal (and copious) amounts.

Everett didn’t care much for him. He wondered vaguely if Lester had slept with Sally yet-she was quite the dish. He thought the answer was probably no. He further thought that when Lester got bet up after a little too much necking on the porch swing, Sally probably had him do sit-ups in the back yard or run a few dozen wind-sprints around the house.

“Sally has got the Prattmobile again?”

“Indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said, a trifle testily. “Are you done being witty, Dr. Frankel?”

“Sure,” he said. In truth, he felt a surprisingly deep sense of relief. He had been a little worried about the “prank” Mr. Gaunt wanted him to play. Now he saw that his worry had been foolish.

It wasn’t as if Mr. Gaunt wanted him to stick a firecracker in the lady’s shoe or put Ex-Lax in her chocolate milk or anything like that. What harm could an envelope do?

Mr. Gaunt’s smile, sunny and resplendent, burst forth once again.

“Very good,” he said. He came toward Everett, who observed with horror that Mr. Gaunt apparently meant to put an arm around him.

Everett moved hastily backward. In this way, Mr. Gaunt maneuvered him back to the front door an,d opened it.

“Enjoy that pipe,” he said. “Did I tell you that it once belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the great Sherlock Holmes?”

“No!” Everett Frankel exclaimed.

“Of course I didn’t,” Mr. Gaunt said, grinning. “That would have been a lie… and I never lie in matters of business, Dr.

Frankel. Don’t forget your little errand.”

“I won’t.”

“Then I’ll wish you a good day.”

“Same to Y-” But Everett was talking to no one. The door with its drawn shade had already been closed behind him.

He looked at it for a moment, then walked slowly back to his Plymouth. If he had been asked for an exact account of what he had said to Mr. Gaunt and what Mr. Gaunt had said to him, he would have made a poor job of it, because he couldn’t exactly remember. He felt like a man who has been given a whiff of light anaesthetic.

Once he was sitting behind the wheel again, the first thing Everett did was unlock the glove compartment, put the envelope with Lovey written on the front in, and take the pipe out. One thing he did remember was Mr. Gaunt’s teasing him, saying that A. Conan Doyle had once owned the pipe. And he had almost believed him.

How silly! You only had to put it in your mouth and clamp your teeth on the stem to know better. The original owner of this pipe had been Hermann Goring.

Everett Frankel started his car and drove slowly out of town.

And on his way to the Burgmeyer farm, he had to pull over to the side of the road only twice to admire how much that pipe improved his looks.

4

Albert Gendron kept his dental offices in the Castle Building, a graceless brick structure which stood across the street from the town’s Municipal Building and the squat cement pillbox that housed the Castle County Water District. The Castle Building had thrown its shadow over Castle Stream and the Tin Bridge since 1924, and housed three of the county’s five lawyers, an optometrist, an audiologist, several independent realtors, a credit consultant, a onewoman answering service, and a framing shop. The half dozen other offices in the building were currently vacant.

Albert, who had been one of Our Lady of Serene Waters’ stalwarts since the days of old Father O’Neal, was getting on now, his once-black hair turning salt-and-pepper, his broad shoulders sloping in a way they never had in his young days, but he was still a man of imposing size-at six feet, seven inches tall and two hundred and eighty pounds, he was the biggest man in town, if not the entire county.

He climbed the narrow staircase to the fourth and top floor slowly, stopping on the landings to catch his breath before going on up, mindful of the heart-murmur Dr. Van Allen said he now had.

Halfway up the final flight, he saw a sheet of paper taped to the frosted glass panel of his office door, obscuring the lettering which read ALBERT GENDRON D.D.S.

He was able to read the salutation on this note while he was still five steps from the top, and his heart began to pound harder, murmur or no murmur. Only it wasn’t exertion causing it to kick up its heels; it was rage.

LISTEN UP YOU MACKEREL-SNAPPER! was printed at the top of the sheet in bright red Magic Marker.

Albert pulled the note from the door and read it quickly. He breathed through his nose as he did so-harsh, snorting exhalations that made him sound like a bull about to charge.

LISTEN UP YOU MACKEREL-SNAPPER!

We have tried to reason with you-“Let him hear who hath understanding”-but it has been no use. YOU ARE SET ON YOUR COURSE OF DAMNATION AND BY THEIR WORKS SHALT YOU KNOW THEM. We have put up with your Popish idolatry and even with your licentious worship of the Babylon Whore. But now you have gone too far.

THERE WILL BE NO DICING WITH THE DEVIL IN CASTLE ROCK!

Decent Christians can smell HELLFIRIE and BRIMSTONE in Castle Rock this fall. If you cannot it is because your nose has been stuffed shut by your own sin and degradation. HEAR OUR WARNING AND HEED IT: GIVE UP

YOUR PLAN TO TURN THIS TOWN INTO A DEN OF THIEVES AND GAMBLERS OR YOU

WILL SMELL THE HELLFIRE! YOU WILL SMELL THE BRIMSTONE!

“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Psalm 9:17.

HEAR AND HEED, OR YOUR CRIES OF LAMENTATION WILL BE LOUD INDEED.

THE CONCERNED BAPTIST MEN OF CASTLE ROCK

“Shit on toast,” Albert said at last, and crumpled the note into one ham-sized fist. “That idiotic little Baptist shoe-salesman has finally gone out of his mind.”

His first order of business after opening his office was to call Father John and tell him the game might be getting a little rougher between now and Casino Nite.

“Don’t worry, Albert,” Father Brigham said calmly. “If the idiot bumps us, he’s going to find out how hard we mackerel-snappers can bump back… am I right?”

“Right you are, Father,” Albert said. He was still holding the crumpled note in one hand. Now he looked down at it and an unpleasant little smile surfaced below his walrus moustache. “Right you are.”

5

By quarter past ten that morning, the digital read-out in front of the bank announced the temperature in Castle Rock as seventy-seven degrees. On the far side of the Tin Bridge, the unseasonably hot sun produced a bright twinkle, a daystar at the place where Route 117 came over the horizon and headed toward town. Alan Pangborn was in his office, going over reports on the Cobb-jerzyck murders, and did not see that reflection of sun on metal and glass.

It wouldn’t have interested him much if he had-it was, after all, only an approaching car. Nevertheless, the savagely bright twinkle of chrome and glass, heading toward the bridge at better than seventy miles an hour, heralded the arrival of a significant part of Alan Pangborn’s destiny… and that of the whole town.

In the show window of Needful Things, the sign reading CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY was taken down by a long-fingered hand which emerged from the sleeve of a fawn sport-jacket. A new sign went up in its place.

This one read

HELP WANTED.

6

The car was still doing fifty in a zone posted for twenty-five when it crossed the bridge. It was a unit the high school kids would have regarded with awe and envy: a lime-green Dodge Challenger that had been jacked in the back so the nose pointed toward the road.

Through the smoked-glass windows, one could dimly make out the roll-bar which arched across the roof between the front and back seats.

The rear end was covered with stickers:

HEARST, FUELLY, FRAM, QUAKER STATE, GOODYEAR WIDE OVALS, RAM CHARGER.

The straight-pipes burbled contentedly, fat on the ninety-six-octane fuel which could be purchased only at Oxford Plains Speedway once you got north of Portland.

It slowed a little at the intersection of Main and Laurel, then pulled into one of the slant-parking spaces in front of The Clip Joint with a low squeal of tires. There was no one in the shop getting a haircut just then; both Bill Fullerton and Henry Gendron, his number-two barber, were seated in the customers’ chairs under the old Brylcreem and Wildroot Creme Oil signs. They had shared the morning paper out between them. As the driver gunned his engine briefly, causing exhaust to crackle and bang through the pipes, both looked up.

“A death-machine if I ever saw one,” Henry said.

Bill nodded and plucked at his lower lip with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. “Ayuh.”

They both watched expectantly as the engine died and the driver’s door opened. A foot encased in a scuffed black engineer boot emerged from the Challenger’s dark innards. It was attached to a leg clad in tight, faded denim. A moment later the driver got out and stood in the unseasonably hot daylight, removing his sunglasses and tucking them into the V of his shirt as he looked around in leisurely, contemptuous fashion.

“Uh-oh,” Henry said. “Looks like a bad penny just turned up.”

Bill Fullerton stared at the apparition with the sports section of the newspaper in his lap and his jaw hanging slightly agape. “Ace Merrill,” he said. “As I live and breathe.”

“What in the hell is he doing here?” Henry asked indignantly.

“I thought he was over in Mechanic Falls, fuckin up their way of life.”

“Dunno,” Bill said, and pulled at his lower lip again. “Lookit im! Gray as a rat and probably twice as mean! How old is he, Henry?”

Henry shrugged. “More’n forty and lesson fifty is all I know.

Who cares how old he is, anyway? He still looks like trouble to me.

As if he had overheard him, Ace turned toward the plate-glass window and raised his hand in a slow, sarcastic wave. The two men jerked and rustled indignantly, like a pair of old maids who have just realized that the insolent wolf-whistle coming from the doorway of the pool-hall is for them.

Ace shoved his hands into the pockets of his Low Riders and strolled away-portrait of a man with all the time in the world and all the cool moves in the known universe.

“You think you oughtta call Sheriff Pangborn?” Henry asked.

Bill Fullerton pulled at his lower lip some more. At last he shook his head. “He’ll know Ace is back in town soon enough,” he said.

“Won’t need me to tell him. Or you either.”

They sat in silence and watched Ace stroll up Main Street until he had passed from their view.

7

No one would have guessed, watching Ace Merrill strut indolently up Main Street, that he was a man with a desperate problem. It was a problem Buster Keeton could have identified with to some extent; Ace owed some fellows a large chunk of money. Well over eighty thousand dollars, to be specific. But the worst Buster’s creditors could do was put him in jail. If Ace didn’t have the money soon, say by the first of November, his creditors were apt to put him in the ground.

The boys Ace Merrill had once terrorized-boys like Teddy Duchamp, Chris Chambers, and Vern Tessio-would have recognized him at once in spite of his graying hair. During the years when Ace had worked at the local textile mill (it had been closed for the last five years), that might not have been the case. In those days his vices had been beer and petty theft. He had put on a great deal of weight as a result of the former and had attracted a fair amount of attention from the late Sheriff George Bannerman as a result of the latter. Then Ace discovered cocaine.

He quit his job at the mill, lost fifty pounds running in highvery high-gear, and graduated to first-degree burglary as a result of this marvelous substance. His financial situation began to yo-yo in the grandiose way only high-margin traders on the stock market and cocaine dealers experience. He might start a month flat broke and end it with fifty or sixty thousand dollars tucked under the roots of the dead apple tree behind his place on Cranberry Bog Road. One day it was a seven-course French dinner at Maurice; the next it might be Kraft macaroni and cheese in the kitchen of his trailer. It all depended on the market and on the supply, because Ace, like most cocaine dealers, was his own best customer.

A year or so after the new Ace-long, lean, graying, and hooked through the bag-emerged from the suit of blubber he had been growing ever since he and public education parted company, he met some fellows from Connecticut. These fellows traded in firearms as well as blow.

Ace saw eye to eye with them at once; like him, the Corson brothers were their own best customers. They offered Ace what amounted to a high-caliber franchise for the central Maine area, and Ace accepted gladly. This was a pure business decision no more than the decision to start dealing coke had been a pure business decision. If there was anything in the world Ace loved more than cars and coke, it was guns.

On one of the occasions when he found himself embarrassed for funds, he had gone to see his uncle, who had loaned money to half the people in town and was reputed to be rolling in dough.

Ace saw no reason why he should not qualify for such a loan; he was young (well… forty-eight… relatively young), he had prospects, and he was blood.

His uncle, however, held a radically different view of things.

“Nope,” Reginald Marion “Pop” Merrill told him. “I know where your money comes from-when you have money, that is. It comes from that white shit.”

“Aw, Uncle Reginald-” “Don’t you Uncle Reginald me,” Pop had replied. “You got a spot of it on y’nose right now. Careless. Folks who use that white shit and deal it always get careless. Careless people end up in the Shank. That’s if they’re lucky. If they ain’t, they wind up fertilizing a patch of swamp about six feet long and three feet deep. I can’t collect money if the people who owe it to me are dead or doing time. I wouldn’t give you the sweat out of my dirty asshole, is what I mean to say.”

That particular embarrassment had come shortly after Alan Pangborn had assumed his duties as Sheriff of Castle County. And Alan’s first major bust had come when he surprised Ace and two of his friends trying to crack the safe in Henry Beaufort’s office at The Mellow Tiger. It was a very good bust, a textbook bust, and Ace had found himself in Shawshank less than four months after his uncle had warned him of the place. The charges of attempted robbery were dropped in a plea-bargain, but Ace still got a pretty good dose of hard time on a nighttime breaking and entering charge.

He got out in the spring of 1989 and moved to Mechanic Falls.

He had a job to go to; Oxford Plains Speedway participated in the state’s pre-release program, and John “Ace” Merrill obtained a position as maintenance man and part-time pit mechanic.

A good many of his old friends were still around-not to mention his old customers-and soon Ace was doing business and having nosebleeds again.

He kept the job at the Speedway until his sentence was officially up, and quit the day it was. He’d gotten a phone call from the Flying Corson Brothers in Danbury, Connecticut, and soon he was dealing shooting irons again as well as the Bolivian marching powder.

The ante had gone up while he was in stir, it seemed; instead of pistols, rifles, and repeating shotguns, he now found himself doing a lively business in automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

The climax had come in June of this year, when he sold a groundfired Thunderbolt missile to a seafaring man with a South American accent. The seafaring man stowed the Thunderbolt below, then paid Ace seventeen thousand dollars in fresh hundreds with nonsequential serial numbers.

“What do you use a thing like that for?” Ace had asked with some fascination.

“Anytheeng you want to, sefior,” the seafaring man had replied unsmilingly.

Then, in July, everything had crashed. Ace still didn’t really understand how it could have happened, except that it probably would have been better if he had stuck with the Flying Corson Brothers for coke as well as guns. He had taken delivery of two pounds of Colombian flake from a guy in Portland, financing the deal with the help of Mike and Dave Corson. They had kicked in about eighty-five thousand. That particular pile of blow had seemed worth twice the asking price-it had tested high blue. Ace knew that eighty-five big ones was a lot more boost than he was used to handling, but he felt confident and ready to move up. In those days, “No problem!” had been Ace Merrill’s main guidepost to living.

Things had changed since then. Things had changed a lot.

These changes began when Dave Corson called from Danbury, Connecticut, to ask Ace what he thought he was doing, trying to pass off baking soda as cocaine. The guy in Portland had apparently managed to stiff Ace, high blue or no high blue, and when Dave Corson began to realize this, he stopped sounding so friendly. In fact, he began to sound positively unfriendly.

Ace could have done a fade. Instead, he gathered all his courage-which was not inconsiderable, even in his middle age-and went to see the Flying Corson Brothers. He gave them his view of what had happened. He did his explaining in the back of a Dodge van with wall-to-wall carpet, a heated mud-bed, and a mirror on the ceiling. He was very convincing. He had to be very convincing, because the van had been parked at the end of a rutted dirt road some miles west of Danbury, a black fellow named Too-Tall Timmy was behind the wheel, and the Flying Corson Brothers, Mike and Dave, were sitting on either side of Ace with H & K recoilless rifles.

As he talked, Ace found himself remembering what his uncle had said before the bust at The Mellow Tiger. Careless people end up in the Shank. That’s if they’re lucky. If they ain’t, they wind up fertilizing a patch of swamp about sixfeet long and threeftet deep.

Well, Pop had been right about the first half; Ace intended to exercise all his persuasiveness to avoid the second half There were no prerelease programs from the swamp.

He was very persuasive. And at some point he said two magic words: Ducky Morin.

. “You bought that crap from Ducky?” Mike Corson said, his bloodshot eyes opening wide. “You sure that’s who it was?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Ace had replied. “Why?”

The Flying Corson Brothers looked at each other and began to laugh. Ace didn’t know what they were laughing about, but he was glad they were doing it, just the same. It seemed like a good sign.

“What did he look like?” Dave Corson asked.

“He’s a tall guy-not as tall as him”Ace cocked a thumb at the driver, who was wearing a pair of Walkman earphones and rocking back and forth to a beat only he could hear“but tall. He’s a Canuck.

Talks like dis, him. Got a little gold earring.”

“That’s ole Daffy Duck,” Mike Corson agreed.

“Tell you the truth, I’m amazed nobody’s whacked the guy yet,”

Dave Corson said. He looked at his brother, Mike, and they shook their heads at each other in perfectly shared wonder.

“I thought he was okay,” Ace said. “Ducky always used to be okay.”

“But you took some time off, dintcha?” Mike Corson asked.

“Little vacation at the Crossbar Hotel,” Dave Corson said.

“You must have been inside when the Duckman discovered free-base,”

Mike said. “That was when his act started goin downhill fast.”

“Ducky has a little trick he likes to pull these days,” Dave said.

“Do you know what bait-and-switch is, Ace?”

Ace thought about it. Then he shook his head.

“Yes, you do,” Dave said. “Because that’s the reason your ass is in a crack. Ducky showed you a lot of Baggies filled with white powder. One was full of good coke. The rest were full of shit. Like you, Ace.”

“We tested!” Ace said. “I picked a bag at random, and we tested it!”

Mike and Dave looked at each other with dark drollery.

“They tested,” Dave Corson said.

“He picked a bag at random,” Mike Corson added.

They rolled their eyes upward and looked at each other in the mirror on the ceiling.

“Well?” Ace said, looking from one to the other. He was glad they knew who Ducky was, he was also glad they believed he hadn’t meant to cheat them, but he was distressed just the same. They were treating him like a chump, and Ace Merrill was nobody’s chump.

” Well what?” Mike Corson asked. “If you didn’t think you picked the test bag yourself, the deal wouldn’t go down, would it?

Ducky is like a magician doing the same raggedy-ass card trick over and over again. ‘Pick a card, any card.’ You ever hear that one, AceHole?”

Guns or no guns, Ace bridled. “Don’t you call me that.”

“We’ll call you anything we want,” Dave said. “You owe us eighty-five large, Ace, and what we’ve got for collateral on that money so far is a shitload of Arm & Hammer baking soda worth about a buck-fifty. We’ll call you Hubert J. Motherfucker if we want to.”

He and his brother looked at each other. Wordless communication passed between them. Dave got up and tapped Too-Tall Timmy on the shoulder. He gave Too-Tall his gun. Then Dave and Mike left the van and stood close together by a drift of sumac at the edge of some farmer’s field, talking earnestly. Ace didn’t know what words they were saying, but he knew perfectly well what was going on. They were deciding what to do with him.

He sat on the edge of the mud-bed, sweating like a pig, waiting for them to come back in. Too-Tall Timmy sprawled in the upholstered captain’s chair Mike Corson had vacated, holding the H & K on Ace and nodding his head back and forth. Very faintly, Ace could hear the voices of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell coming from the earphones.

Marvin and Tarnmi, who were both the late great these days, were singing “My Mistake.”

Mike and Dave came back in.

“We’re going to give you three months to make good,” Mike said.

Ace felt himself go limp with relief. “Right now we want our money more than we want to rip your skin off. There’s something else, too.”

“We want to whack Ducky Morin,” Dave said. “His shit has gone on long enough.”

“Guy’s giving us all a bad name,” Mike said.

“We think you can find him,” Dave said. “We think he’ll figure once an Ace-Hole, always an Ace-Hole.”

“You got any comment on that, Ace-Hole?” Mike asked him.

Ace had no comment on that. He was happy just knowing that he would be seeing another weekend.

“November first is the deadline,” Dave said. “You bring us our money by November first and then we all go after Ducky. If you don’t, we’re going to see how many pieces of you we can cut off before you finally give up and die.”

8

When the balloon went up, Ace had been holding about a dozen assorted heavy-caliber weapons of both the automatic and semiautomatic varieties. He spent most of his grace period trying to turn these weapons into cash. Once he did that, he could turn cash back into coke. You couldn’t have a better asset than cocaine when you needed to turn some big bucks in a hurry.

But the market for guns was temporarily in the horse latitudes.

He sold half his stock-none of the big guns-and that was it.

During the second week in September he had met a promising prospect at the Piece of Work Pub in Lewiston. The prospect had hinted in every way it was possible to hint that he would like to buy at least six and perhaps as many as ten automatic weapons, if the name of a reliable ammunition dealer went with the shooting irons. Ace could do that; the Flying Corson Brothers were the most reliable ammo dealers he knew.

Ace went into the grimy bathroom to do a couple of lines before hammering the deal home. He was suffused with the happy, relieved glow which has bedevilled a number of American Presidents; he believed he saw light at the end of the tunnel.

He laid the small mirror he carried in his shirt pocket on the toilet tank and was spooning coke onto it when a voice spoke from the urinal nearest the stall Ace was in. Ace never found out who the voice belonged to; he only knew that its owner might well have saved him fifteen years in a Federal penitentiary.

“Man you be talking to wearin a wire,” the voice from the urinal said, and when Ace left the bathroom he went out the back door.

9

Following that near miss (it never occurred to him that his unseen informant might just have been amusing himself), an odd kind of paralysis settled over Ace. He became afraid to do anything but buy a little coke now and then for his own personal use. He had never experienced such a sensation of dead stop before. He hated it, but didn’t know what to do about it. The first thing he did every day was look at the calendar. November seemed to be rushing toward him.

Then, this morning, he had awakened before dawn with a thought blazing in his mind like strange blue light: he had to go home. He had to go back to Castle Rock. That was where the answer was. Going home felt right… but even if it turned out to be wrong, the change of scenery might break the strange vaporlock in his head.

In Mechanic Falls he was just john Merrill, an ex-con who lived in a shack with plastic on the windows and cardboard on the door.

In Castle Rock he had always been Ace Merrill, the ogre who strode through the nightmares of a whole generation of little kids. In Mechanic Falls he was poor-white back-road trash, a guy who had a custom Dodge but no garage to put it in. In Castle Rock he had been, at least for a little while, something like a king.

So he had come back, and here he was, and what now?

Ace didn’t know. The town looked smaller, grimier, and emptier than he remembered. He supposed Pangborn was around someplace, and pretty soon old Bill Fullerton would get him on the honker and tell him who was back in town. Then Pangborn would find him and ask him what he thought he was doing here. He would ask if Ace had a job. He didn’t, and he couldn’t even claim he had come back to visit his unc, because Pop had been in his junkshop when the place burned down. Okay then, Ace, Pangborn would say, why don’t you just jump back into your street machine and cruise on out of here?

And what was he going to say to that?

Ace didn’t know-he only knew that the flash of dark-blue light with which he had awakened was still glimmering somewhere inside him.

The lot where the Emporium Galorium had stood was still vacant, he saw. Nothing there but weeds, a few charred board-ends, and some road-litter. Broken glass twinkled back the sun in eyewatering shards of hot light. There was nothing there to look at, but Ace wanted to look, anyway. He started across the street. He had almost reached the far side when the green awning two storefronts up caught his eye.

NEEDFUL THINGS,

the side of the awning read. Now what kind of name for a store was that? Ace walked up the street to see. He could look at the vacant lot where his uncle’s tourist-trap had stood later on; he didn’t think anyone was going to move it.

The first thing to catch his eye was the

HELP WANTED

sign. He paid it little attention. He didn’t know what he had come back to Castle Rock for, but a stockboy job wasn’t it.

There were a number of rather classy-looking items in the window-the sort of stuff he would have taken away if he were doing a little nightwork in some rich guy’s house. A chess set with carved jungle animals for pieces. A necklace of black pearls-it looked valuable to Ace, but he supposed the pearls were probably artificial.

Surely no one in this dipshit burg could afford a string of genuine black pearls. Good job, though; they looked real enough to him.

AndAce looked at the book behind the pearls with narrowed eyes.

It had been set up on its spine so someone looking in the window could easily see the cover, which depicted the silhouettes of two men standing on a ridge at night. One had a pick, the other a shovel.

They appeared to be digging a hole. The title of the book was Lost and Buried Treasures of New England. The author’s name was printed below the picture in small white letters.

It was Reginald Merrill.

Ace went to the door and tried the knob. It turned easily. The bell overhead jingled. Ace Merrill entered Needful Things.

“No,” Ace said, looking at the book Mr. Gaunt had taken from the window display and put into his hands. “This isn’t the one I want.

You must have gotten the wrong one.”

“It’s the only book in the show window, I assure you,” Mr.

Gaunt said in a mildly puzzled voice. “You can look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

For a moment Ace did almost that, and then he let out an exasperated little sigh. “No, that’s okay,” he said.

The book the shopkeeper had handed him was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. What had happened was clear enoughhe’d had Pop on his mind, and he’d made a mistake. The real mistake, though, had been coming back to Castle Rock in the first place. Why in the fuck had he done it?

“Listen, this is a very interesting place you’ve got here, but I ought to get a move on. I’ll see you another time, Mr.-” “Gaunt,” the shopkeeper said, putting out his hand. “Leland Gaunt.”

Ace put his own hand out and it was swallowed up. A great, galvanizing power seemed to rush through him at the moment of contact.

His mind was filled with that dark-blue light again: a huge, sheeting flare of it this time.

He took his hand back, dazed and weak-kneed.

“What was that?” he whispered.

“I believe they call it’an attention-getter,’ ” Mr. Gaunt said.

He spoke with quiet composure. “You’ll want to pay attention to me, Mr. Merrill.”

“How did you know my name? I didn’t tell you my name.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” Mr. Gaunt said with a little laugh.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

“How could you be expecting me? I didn’t even know I was coming until I got in the damn car.”

“Excuse me for a moment, please.”

Gaunt stepped back toward the window, bent, and picked up a sign which was leaning against the wall. Then he leaned into the window, removed

HELP WANTED

and put up

CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY

in its place.

“Why’d you do that?” Ace felt like a man who has stumbled into a wire fence with a moderate electric charge running through it.

“It’s customary for shopkeepers to remove help-wanted signs when they have filled the vacant position,” Mr. Gaunt said, a little severely. “My business in Castle Rock has grown at a very satisfying rate, and I now find I need a strong back and an extra pair of hands.

I tire so easily these days.”

“Hey, I don’t-” “I also need a driver,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Driving is, I believe, your main skill. Your first job, Ace, will be to drive to Boston. I have an automobile parked in a garage there. It will amuse you-it’s a Tucker.”

“A Tucker?” For a moment Ace forgot that he hadn’t come to town to take a stockboy’s job… or a chauffeur’s either, for that matter.

“You mean like in that movie?”

“Not exactly,” Mr. Gaunt said. He walked behind the counter where his old-fashioned cash register stood, produced a key, and unlocked the drawer beneath. He took out two small envelopes.

One of them he laid on the counter. The other he held out to Ace.

“It’s been modified in some ways. Here. The keys.”

“Hey, now, wait a minute! I told you-” Mr. Gaunt’s eyes were some strange color Ace could not quite pick up, but when they first darkened and then blazed out at him, Ace felt his knees grow watery again.

“You’re in a jam, Ace, but if you don’t stop behaving like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand, I believe I am going to lose interest in helping you. Shop assistants are a dime a dozen. I know, believe me. I’ve hired hundreds of them over the years. Perhaps thousands. So stop fucking around and take the keys.”

Ace took the little envelope. As the tips of his fingers touched the tips of Mr. Gaunt’s, that dark, sheeting fire filled his head once more. He moaned.

“You’ll drive your car to the address I give you,” Mr. Gaunt said, “and park it in the space where mine is now stored. I’ll expect you back by midnight at the latest. I think it will actually be a good deal earlier than that.

“My car is much faster than it looks.”

He grinned, revealing all those teeth.

Ace tried again. “Listen, Mr.-” “Gaunt.”

Ace nodded, his head bobbing up and down like the head of a marionette controlled by a novice puppet-master. “Under other circumstances, I’d take you up on it. You’re… interesting.” It wasn’t the word he wanted, but it was the best one he could wrap his tongue around for the time being. “But you were right-I am in a jackpot, and if I don’t find a large chunk of cash in the next two weeks-” “Well, what about the book?” Mr. Gaunt asked. His tone was both amused and reproving. “Isn’t that why you came in?”

“It isn’t what I-” He discovered he was still holding it in his hand, and looked down at it again. The picture was the same, but the title had changed back to what he had seen in the show window: Lost and Buried Treasures of New England, by Reginald Merrill.

“What is this?” he asked thickly. But suddenly he knew. He wasn’t in Castle Rock at all; he was at home in Mechanic Falls, lying in his own dirty bed, dreaming all this.

“It looks like a book to me,” Mr. Gaunt said. “And wasn’t your late uncle’s name Reginald Merrill? What a coincidence.”

“My uncle never wrote anything but receipts and IOUs in his whole life,” Ace said in that same thick, sleepy voice. He looked up at Gaunt again, and found he could not pull his eyes away.

Gaunt’s eyes kept changing color. Blue gray… hazel… brown… black.

“Well,” Mr. Gaunt admitted, “perhaps the name on the book is a pseudonym. Perhaps I wrote that particular tome myself.”

“You?”

Mr. Gaunt steepled his fingers under his chin. “Perhaps it isn’t even a book at all. Perhaps all the really special things I sell aren’t what they appear to be. Perhaps they are actually gray things with only one remarkable property-the ability to take the shapes of those things which haunt the dreams of men and women.” He paused, then added thoughtfully: “Perhaps they are dreams themselves.”

“I don’t get any of this.”

Mr. Gaunt smiled. “I know. It doesn’t matter. If your uncle had written a book, Ace, mightn’t it have been about buried treasure?

Wouldn’t you say that treasure-whether buried in the ground or in the pockets of his fellow men-was a subject which greatly interested him?”

“He liked money, all right,” Ace said grimly.

“Well, what happened to it?” Mr. Gaunt cried. “Did he leave any of it to you? Surely he did; are you not his only surviving relative?”

“He didn’t leave me a red fucking cent!” Ace yelled back furiously. “Everyone in town said that old bastard had the first dime he ever made, but there was less than four thousand dollars in his bank accounts when he died. That went to bury him and clean up that mess he left downstreet. And when they opened his safe deposit box, do you know what they found?”

“Yes,” Mr. Gaunt said, and although his mouth was SERIOUS-EVEN sympathetic-his eyes were laughing. “Trading stamps. Six books of Plaid Stamps and fourteen of Gold Bond Stamps.”

“That’s right!” Ace said. He looked balefully down at Lost and Buried Treasures of New England. His disquiet and his sense of dreamy disorientation had been swallowed, at least for the time being, by his rage. “And you know what? You can’t even redeem Gold Bond Stamps anymore. The company went out of business.

Everyone in Castle Rock was afraid of him-even I was a little afraid of him-and everyone thought he was as rich as Scrooge McFucking Duck, but he died broke.” “Maybe he “Maybe he didn’t trust banks,” Mr.

Gaunt said. buried his treasure. Do you think that’s possible, Ace?”

Ace opened his mouth. Closed it again. Opened it. Closed it.

“Stop that,” said Mr. Gaunt. “You look like a fish in an aquarium.”

Ace looked at the book in his hand. He put it on the counter and riffled through the pages, which were crammed tight with small print.

And something breezed out. It was a large and ragged chunk of brown paper, unevenly folded, and he recognized it at once it had been torn from a Hemphill’s Market shopping bag. How often, as a little boy, had he watched his uncle tear off a piece of brown paper just like this one from one of the bags he kept under his ancient Tokeheim cash register? How many times had he watched him add up figures on such a scrap… or write an IOU on it?

He unfolded it with shaking hands.

It was a map, that much was clear, but at first he could make nothing of it-it was just a bunch of lines and crosses and squiggly circles.

“What the fuck?”

“You need something to focus your concentration, that’s all,” Mr.

Gaunt said. “This might help.”

Ace looked up. Mr. Gaunt had put a small mirror in an ornate silver frame on the glass case beside his own cash register. Now he opened the other envelope he had taken from the locked drawer, and spilled a generous quantity of cocaine onto the mirror’s surface.

To Ace’s not inexperienced eye, it looked to be of fabulously high quality; the spotlight over the display case kicked thousands of little sparkles from the clean flakes.

“Jesus, mister!” Ace’s nose began to tingle in anticipation. “Is that Colombian?”

“No, this is a special hybrid,” Mr. Gaunt said. “It comes from the Plains of Leng.” He took a gold letter opener from the inside pocket of his fawn jacket and began to organize the pile of blow into long, chubby lines.

“Where’s that?”

“Over the hills and far away,” Mr. Gaunt replied without looking up. “Don’t ask questions, Ace. Men who owe money do well to simply enjoy the good things which come their way.”

He put the letter opener back and drew a short glass straw from the same pocket. He handed it to Ace. “Be my guest.”

The straw was amazingly heavy-not glass after all but some sort of rock crystal, Ace guessed. He bent over the mirror, then hesitated.

What if the old guy had AIDS or something like that?

Don’t ask questions, Ace. Men who owe money do well to simply enjoy the good things which come their way.

“Amen,” Ace said aloud, and tooted up. His head filled with that vague banana-lemon taste that really good cocaine always seemed to have. It was mellow, but it was also powerful. He felt his heart begin to pound. At the same time, his thoughts grew sharply focused and took on a polished chromium edge. He remembered something a guy had told him not long after he fell in love with this stuff. Things have more names when you’re coked up. A lot more names.

He hadn’t understood then, but he thought he did now.

He offered the straw to Gaunt, but Gaunt shook his head.

“Never before five,” he said, “but you enjoy, Ace.”

“Thanks,” Ace said.

He looked at the map again and found that he could now read it perfectly. The two parallel lines with the X between them was clearly the Tin Bridge, and once you realized that, everything else fell neatly into place. The squiggle which ran between the lines, through the X, and up to the top of the paper was Route 117. The small circle with the larger circle behind it must represent the Gavineaux dairy farm: the big circle would be the cowbarn. It all made sense. It was as clear and clean and sparkly as the crisp heap of dope this incredibly hip dude had poured out of the little envelope.

Ace bent over the mirror again. “Fire when ready,” he murmured, and took another two lines. Bang! Zap! “Christ, that’s powerful stuff,” he said in a gasping voice.

“Sho null,” Mr. Gaunt agreed gravely.

Ace looked up, suddenly sure the man was laughing at him, but Mr.

Gaunt’s face was calm and clear. Ace bent over the map again.

Now it was the crosses which caught his eye. There were seven of them-no, actually there were eight. One appeared to be on the dead, swampy ground owned by old man Treblehorn… except old man Treblehorn was dead, had been for years, and hadn’t there been talk at one time that his uncle Reginald had gotten most of that land as repayment of a loan?

Here was another, on the edge of the Nature Conservancy on the other side of Castle View, if he had his geography right. There were two out on Town Road #3, near a circle that was probably the old Joe Camber place, Seven Oaks Farm. Two more on the land supposedly owned by Diamond Match on the west side of Castle Lake.

Ace stared up at Gaunt with wild, bloodshot eyes. “Did he bury his money? Is that what the crosses mean? Are they the places he buried his money?”

Mr. Gaunt shrugged elegantly. “I’m sure I don’t know. It seems logical, but logic often has little to do with the way people behave.”

“But it could be,” Ace said. He was becoming frantic with excitement and cocaine overload; what felt like stiff bundles of copper wire were exploding in the big muscles of his arms and belly. His sallow face, pocked with the scars of adolescent acne, had taken on a dark flush. “It could be! All the places those crosses are… all that could be Pop’s property! Do you see? He might have put all that land in a blind trust or whatever the fuck they call it… so nobody could buy it… so nobody could find what he put there…”

He snorted the rest of the coke on the mirror and then leaned over the counter. His bulging, bloodshot eyes jittered in his face.

“I could be more than just out of the shithole,” he said in a low : trembling whisper. “I could be fucking rich.” ‘Yes,” Mr. Gaunt said, “I’d say that’s a good possibility. But remember that, Ace.” He cocked his thumb toward the wall, and the sign there which read I DO NOT ISSUE REFUNDS OR MAKE EXCHANGES CAVEAT

EMPTOR!

Ace looked at the sign. “What’s it mean?”

“It means that you’re not the first person who ever thought he had found the key to great riches in an old book,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“It also means that I still need a stockboy and a driver.”

Ace looked at him, almost shocked. Then he laughed. “You kidding?” He pointed at the map. “I’ve got a lot of digging to do.”

Mr. Gaunt sighed regretfully, folded the sheet of brown paper, put it back into the book, and placed the book in the drawer under the cash register. He did all this with incredible swiftness.

“Hey!” Ace yelled. “What are you doing?”

“I just remembered that book is already promised to another customer, Mr. Merrill. I’m sorry. And I really am closed-it’s Columbus Day, you know.”

“Wait a minute!”

“Of course, if you had seen fit to take the job, I’m sure something could have been worked out. But I can see that you’re very busy; you undoubtedly want to make sure your affairs are in order before the Corson Brothers turn you into coldcuts.”

Ace’s mouth had begun to open and close again. He was trying to remember where the little crosses had been and was discovering that he couldn’t do it. All of them seemed to blend together into one big cross in his jazzed-up, flying mind… the sort of cross you saw in cemeteries.

“All right!” he cried. “All right, I’ll take the fucking job!”

“In that case, I believe this book is for sale after all,” Mr.

Gaunt said. He drew it out of the drawer and checked the flyleaf.

“It goes for a dollar and a half.” His jostling teeth appeared in a wide, sharky smile. “That’s a dollar thirty-five, with the employee discount.”

Ace drew his wallet from his back pocket, dropped it, and almost clouted his head on the edge of the glass case bending over to pick it up.

“But I’ve got to have some time off,” he told Mr. Gaunt. :,Indeed.” ‘Because I really do have some digging to do.”

“Of course.”

“Time is short.”

“How wise of you to know it.”

“How about when I get back from Boston?”

“Won’t you be tired?”

“Mr. Gaunt, I can’t afford to be tired.”

“I might be able to help you there,” Mr. Gaunt said. His smile widened and his teeth bulged from it like the teeth of a skull. “I might have a little pick-me-up for you, is what I mean to say.” :,What?” Ace asked, his eyes widening. “What did you say?” ‘I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” Ace said. “Never mind.”

“All right-do you still have the keys I gave you?”

Ace was surprised to discover that he had stuffed the envelope containing the keys into his back pocket.

“Good.” Mr. Gaunt rang up $1.35 on the old register, took the five-dollar bill Ace had laid on the counter, and rendered three dollars and sixty-five cents change. Ace took it like a man in a dream.

“Now,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Let me give you a few directions, Ace.

And remember what I said: I want you back by midnight. If you’re not back by midnight, I will be unhappy. When I’m unhappy, I sometimes lose my temper. You wouldn’t want to be around when that happens.”

“Do you Hulk out?” Ace asked jestingly.

Mr. Gaunt looked up with a grinning ferocity that caused Ace to retreat a step. “Yes,” he said. “That’s just what I do, Ace. I Hulk out. Indeed I do. Now pay attention.”

Ace paid attention.

It was quarter of eleven and Alan was just getting ready to go down to Nan’s and catch a quick cup of coffee when Sheila Brigham buzzed him. It was Sonny jackett on line one, she said. He insisted on talking to Alan and nobody else.

Alan picked up the phone. “Hello, Sonny-what can I do for you?”

“Well,” Sonny said in his drawling downeast accent, “I hate to put more trouble on your plate after the double helpin you got yesterday, Sheriff, but I think an old friend of yours is back in town.”

“Who’s that?”

“Ace Merrill. I seen his car parked upstreet from here.”

Oh shit, what next? Alan thought. “Did you see him?”

“Nope, but you can’t miss the car. Puke-green Dodge Challenger-what the kids call a ramrod. I seen it up to the Plains.”

“Well, thanks, Sonny.”

“Don’t mention it-what do you suppose that booger’s doin back in Castle Rock, Alan?”

“I don’t know,” Alan said, and thought as he hung up: But I guess I betterfind out.

12

There was a space empty next to the green Challenger. Alan swung Unit I in next to it and got out. He saw Bill Fullerton and Henry Gendron looking out the barber-shop window at him with brighteyed interest and raised a hand to them. Henry pointed across the street.

Alan nodded and crossed. Wilma jerzyck and Nettle Cobb kill each other on a street-corner one day and Ace Merrill turns up the next, he thought. This town’s turning into Barnum & Bailey’s Circus.

As he reached the sidewalk on the far side, he saw Ace come sauntering out of the shadow cast by the green awning of Needful Things. He had something in one hand. At first Alan couldn’t tell what it was, but as Ace drew closer, he decided he had been able to tell; he just hadn’t been able to believe it. Ace Merrill wasn’t the sort of guy you expected to see with a book in his hand.

They drew together in front of the vacant lot where the Emporium Galorium had once stood.

“Hello, Ace,” Alan said.

Ace didn’t seem in the least surprised to see him. He took his sunglasses from the V of his shirt, shook them out one-handed, and slipped them on. “Well, well, well-how they hangin, boss?”

“What are you doing in Castle Rock, Ace?” Alan asked evenly.

Ace looked up at the sky with exaggerated interest. Little glints of light twinkled on the lenses of his Ray-Bans. “Nice day for a ride,” he said. “Summery.”

“Very nice,” Alan agreed. “Have you got a valid license, Ace?”

Ace looked at him reproachfully. “Would I be out driving if I didn’t? That wouldn’t be legal, would it?”

“I don’t think that’s an answer.”

“I took the re-exam as soon as they gave me my pink sheet,” Ace said. “I’m street-legal. How’s that, boss? Is that an answer?”

“Maybe I could check for myself.” Alan held out his hand.

“Why, I don’t think you trust me!” Ace said. He spoke in the same jocular, teasing voice, but Alan heard the anger beneath it.

“Let’s just say I’m from Missouri.”

Ace shifted the book to his left hand so he could dig the wallet out of his hip pocket with his right, and Alan got a better look at the cover. The book was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

He looked at the license. It was signed and valid.

“The car registration is in the glove compartment, if you want to cross the street and look at that, too,” Ace said. Alan could hear the anger in his voice more clearly now. And the old arrogance as well.

“I think I’ll trust you on that one, Ace. Why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing back here in town?”

“I came to look at that,” Ace said, and pointed to the vacant lot.

“I don’t know why, but I did. I doubt if you believe me, but it happens to be the truth.”

Oddly enough, Alan did believe him.

“I see you bought a book, too.”

“I can read,” Ace said. “I doubt if you believe that, either.”

“Well, well.” Alan hooked his thumbs into his belt. “You had a look and you bought a book.”

“He’s a poet and he don’t know it.”

“Why, I guess I am. It’s good of you to point it out, Ace. Now I guess you’ll be sliding on out of town, won’t you?”

“What if I don’t? You’d find something to bust me for, I guess.

Is the word ‘rehabilitation’ in your vocabulary, Sheriff Pangborn?”

“Yes,” Alan said, “but the definition isn’t Ace Merrill.”

“You don’t want to push me, man.”

“I’m not. If I start, you’ll know it.”

Ace took off his sunglasses. “You guys never quit, do you? You never… fucking… quit.”

Alan said nothing.

After a moment Ace seemed to regain his composure. He put his Ray-Bans back on. “You know,” he said, “I think I will leave.

I’ve got places to go and things to do.”

“That’s good. Busy hands are happy hands.”

“But if I want to come back, I will. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Ace, and I want to tell you that I don’t think that would be wise at all. Do you hear me?”

“You don’t scare me.”

“If I don’t,” Alan said, “you’re even dumber than I thought.”

Ace looked at Alan for a moment through his dark glasses, then laughed. Alan didn’t care for the sound of it-it was a creepy sort of laugh, strange and off-center. He stood and watched as Ace crossed the street in his outdated hood’s strut, opened the door of his car, and got in. A moment later the engine roared into life.

Exhaust blatted through the straight-pipes; people stopped on the street to look.

That’s an illegal muffler, Alan thought. A glasspack. I could cite him for that.

But what would be the point? He had bigger fish to fry than Ace Merrill, who was leaving town anyway. For good this time, he hoped.

He watched the green Challenger make an illegal U-turn on Main Street and head back toward Castle Stream and the edge of town. Then he turned and looked thoughtfully up the street at the green awning.

Ace had come back to his old home town and bought a book-Treasure Island, to be exact. He had bought it in Needful Things.

I thought that place was closed today, Alan thought. Wasn’t that what the sign said?

He walked up the street to Needful Things. He had not been wrong about the sign; it read

CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY.

If he’ll see Ace, maybe he’ll see me, Alan thought, and raised his fist to knock. Before he could bring it down, the pager clipped to his belt went off. Alan pushed the button that turned the hateful gadget off and stood indecisively in front of the shop door a moment longer … but there was really no question about what he had to do now. If you were a lawyer or a business executive, maybe you could afford to ignore your pages for awhile, but when you were a County Sheriff-and one who was elected rather than appointed there wasn’t much question about priorities.

Alan crossed the sidewalk, then paused and spun around quickly.

He felt a little like the player who is “it” in a game of Red Light, the one whose job it is to catch the other players in motion so he can send them all the way back to the beginning. The feeling that he was being watched had returned, and it was very strong.

He was positive he would see the surprised twitch of the drawn shade on Mr. Gaunt’s side of the door.

But there was nothing. The shop just went on dozing in the unnaturally hot October sunlight, and if he hadn’t seen Ace coming out with his own eyes, Alan would have sworn the place was empty, watched feeling or no watched feeling.

He crossed to his cruiser, leaned in to grab the mike, and radioed in.

“Henry Payton called,” Sheila told him. “He’s already got preliminary reports on Nettle Cobb and Wilma jerzyck from Henry Ryan-by?”

“I copy. BY.”

“Henry said if you want him to give you the high spots, he’ll be in from right now until about noon. By.”

“Okay. I’m just up Main Street. I’ll be right in. By.”

“Uh, Alan?”

“Yeah?”

“Henry also asked if we’re going to get a fax machine before the turn of the century, so he can just send copies of this stuff instead of calling all the time and reading it to you. By.”

“Tell him to write a letter to the Head Selectman,” Alan said grumpily. “I’m not the one who writes the budget and he knows it.”

“Well, I’m just telling you what he said. No need to get all huffy about it. By.”

Alan thought Sheila sounded rather huffy herself, however.

“Over and out,” he said.

He got into Unit 1 and racked the mike. He glanced at the bank in time to see the big digital read-out over the door announce the time as ten-fifty and the temperature as eighty-two degrees. Jesus, we don’t need this, he thought. Everyone in town’s got a goddam case of prickly heat.

Alan drove slowly back to the Municipal Building, lost in thought.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on in Castle Rock, something which was on the verge of slipping out of control. It was crazy, of course, crazy as hell, but he just couldn’t shake it.