"Waiting for the cavalry," Eddie said with a trace of a grin. "Like Fort Ord in the last ten minutes of a John Wayne movie."
Roland looked at him, unsmiling. "He's been waiting for the White."
Susannah held her brown hands up to her brown face and looked at them. "Then I guess he isn't waiting for me," she said.
"Yes," Roland said, "he is." And wondered, briefly, what color that other one was. Mia.
"We need a door," Jake said.
"We need at least two," Eddie said. "One to deal with Tower, sure. But before we can do that, we need one to go back to Susannah's when. And I mean as close to when Roland took her as we can possibly get. It'd be a bummer to go back to 1977, get in touch with this guy Carver, and discover he had Odetta Holmes declared legally dead in 1971. That the whole estate had been turned over to relatives in Green Bay or San Berdoo."
"Or to go back to 1968 and discover Mr. Carver was gone," Jake said. 'Tunneled everything into his own accounts and retired to the Costa del Sol."
Susannah was looking at him with a shocked oh-my-lands expression that would have been funny under other circumstances. "Pop Mose'd never do such a thing! Why, he's my godfather!"
Jake looked embarrassed. "Sorry. I read lots of mystery novels - Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Ed McBain - and stuff like that happens in them all the time."
"Besides," Eddie said, "big money can do weird things to people."
She gave him a cold and considering glance that looked strange, almost alien, on her face. Roland, who knew something Eddie and Jake didn't, thought it a frog-squeezing look. "How would you know?" she asked. And then, almost at once, "Oh, sugar, I'm sorry. That was uncalled-for."
"It's okay," Eddie said. He smiled. The smile looked stiff and unsure of itself. "Heat of the moment." He reached out, took her hand, squeezed it. She squeezed back. The smile on Eddie's face grew a little, started to look as if it belonged there.
"It's just that I know Moses Carver. He's as honest as the day is long."
Eddie raised his hand - not signaling belief so much as an unwillingness to go any further down that path.
"Let me see if I understand your idea," Roland said. "First, it depends upon our ability to go back to your world of New York at not just one point of when, but two."
There was a pause while they parsed that, and then Eddie nodded. "Right. 1964, to start with. Susannah's been gone a couple of months, but nobody's given up hope or anything like that. She strolls in, everybody claps. Return of the prodigal daughter. We get the dough, which might take a little time - "
"The hard part's apt to be getting Pop Mose to let go of it," Susannah said. "When it comes to money in the bank, that man got a tight grip. And I'm pretty sure that in his heart, he still sees me as eight years old."
"But legally it's yours, right?" Eddie asked. Roland could see that he was still proceeding with some caution. Hadn't quite got over that crack - How would you know? - just yet. And the look that had gone with it. "I mean, he can't stop you from taking it, can he?"
"No, honey," she said. "My dad and Pop Mose made me a trust fund, but it went moot in 1959, when I turned twenty-five." She turned her eyes - dark eyes of amazing beauty and expression - upon him. "There. You don't need to devil me about my age anymore, do you? If you can subtract, you can figure it out for yourself."
"It doesn't matter," Eddie said. "Time is a face on the water."
Roland felt gooseflesh run up his arms. Somewhere - perhaps in a glaring, blood-colored field of roses still far from here - a rustie had just walked over his grave.
SIX
"Has to be cash," Jake said in a dry, businesslike tone.
"Huh?" Eddie looked away from Susannah with an effort.
"Cash," Jake repeated. "No one'd honor a check, even a cashier's check, that was thirteen years old. Especially not one for millions of dollars."
"How do you know stuff like that, sug?" Susannah asked.
Jake shrugged. Like it or not (usually he didn't), he was Elmer Chambers's son. Elmer Chambers wasn't one of the world's good guys - Roland would never call him part of the White - but he had been a master of what network execs called "the kill." A Big Coffin Hunter in TVLand , Jake thought. Maybe that was a little unfair, but saying that Elmer Chambers knew how to play the angles was definitely not unfair. And yeah, he was Jake, son of Elmer. He hadn't forgotten the face of his father, although he had times when he wished that wasn't so.
"Cash, by all means cash," Eddie said, breaking the silence. "A deal like this has to be cash. If there's a check, we cash it in 1964, not 1977. Stick it in a gym-bag - did they have gym-bags in 1964, Suze? Never mind. Doesn't matter. We stick it in a bag and take it to 1977. Doesn't have to be the same day Jake bought Charlie the Choo-Choo and Riddle-De-Dum , but it ought to be close."
"And it can't be after July fifteenth of '77," Jake put in.