"So that's what they want it for," Eddie said. "Condos. But - "
"What are condominiums?" Susannah asked, frowning. "It sounds like some newfangled kind of spice rack."
"It's a kind of co-op apartment deal," Eddie said. "They probably had em in your when, but by a different name."
"Yeah," Susannah said with some asperity. "We called em coops. Or sometimes we went way downtown and called em apartment buildings."
"It doesn't matter because it was never about condos," Jake said. "Never about the building the sign said they were going to put there, for that matter. All that's only, you know... shoot, what's the word?"
"Camouflage?" Roland suggested.
Jake grinned. "Camuflage, yeah. It's about the rose , not the building! And they can't get at it until they own the ground it grows on. I'm sure of it."
"You may be right about the building's not meaning anything," Susannah said, "but that Turtle Bay name has a certain resonance, wouldn't you say?" She looked at the gunslinger. "That part of Manhattan is called Turtle Bay, Roland."
He nodded, unsurprised. The Turtle was one of the twelve Guardians, and almost certainly stood at the far end of the Beam upon which they now traveled.
"The people from Mills Construction might not know about the rose," Jake said, "but I bet the ones from Sombra Corporation do." His hand stole into Oy's fur, which was thick enough at the billy-bumbler's neck to make his fingers disappear entirely. "I think that somewhere in New York City - in some business building, probably in Turtle Bay on the East Side - there's a door marked sombra corporation. And someplace behind that door there's another door . The kind that takes you here."
For a minute they sat thinking about it - about worlds spinning on a single axle in dying harmony - and no one said anything.
FOUR
"Here's what I think is happening," Eddie said. "Suze, Jake, feel free to step in if you think I'm getting it wrong. This guy Cal Tower's some sort of custodian for the rose. He may not know it on a conscious level, but he must be. Him and maybe his whole family before him. It explains the name."
"Only he's the last," Jake said.
"You can't be sure of that, hon," Susannah said.
"No wedding ring," Jake responded, and Susannah nodded, giving him that one, at least provisionally.
"Maybe at one time there were lots of Torens owning lots of New York property," Eddie said, "but those days are gone. Now the only thing standing between the Sombra Corporation and the rose is one nearly broke fat guy who changed his name. He's a... what do you call someone who loves books?"
"A bibliophile," Susannah said.
"Yeah, one of those. And George Biondi may not be Einstein, but he said at least one smart thing while we were eavesdropping. He said Tower's place wasn't a real shop but just a hole you poured money into. What's going on with him is a pretty old story where we come from, Roland. When my Ma used to see some rich guy on TV - Donald Trump, for instance - "
"Who?" Susannah asked.
"You don't know him, he would've been just a kid back in '64. And it doesn't matter. 'Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,' my mother would tell us. 'It's the American way, boys.'
"So here's Tower, and he's sort of like Roland - the last of his line. He sells off a piece of property here and a piece there, making his taxes, making his house payments, keeping up with the credit cards and the doctor bills, paying for his stock. And yeah, I'm making this up... except somehow it doesn't feel that way."
"No," Jake said. He spoke in a low, fascinated voice. "It doesn't."
"Perhaps you shared his khef," Roland said. "More likely, you touched him. As my old friend Alain used to. Go on, Eddie."
"And every year he tells himself the bookstore'll turn around. Catch on, maybe, the way things in New York sometimes do. Get out of the red and into the black and then he'll be okay. And finally there's only one thing left to sell: lot two-ninety-eight on Block Nineteen in Turtle Bay."
"Two-nine-eight adds up to nineteen," Susannah said. "I wish I could decide if that means something or if it's just Blue Car Syndrome."
"What's Blue Car Syndrome?" Jake asked.
"When you buy a blue car, you see blue cars everywhere."
"Not here, you don't," Jake said.
"Not here," Oy put in, and they all looked at him. Days, sometimes whole weeks would go by, and Oy would do nothing but give out the occasional echo of their talk. Then he would say something that might almost have been the product of original thought. But you didn't know. Not for sure. Not even Jake knew for sure.
The way we don't know for sure about nineteen , Susannah thought, and gave the bumbler a pat on the head. Oy responded with a companionable wink.