He dialed the hotel he had last seen through the horn-rimmed spectacles of his childhood. Dialing that number, 1-207-941-8282, was fatally easy. He held the telephone to his ear, looking out his study's wide picture window. The surfers were gone; a couple were walking slowly up the beach, hand in hand, where they had been. The couple could have been a poster on the wall of the travel agency where Carol Feeny worked, that was how perfect they were. Except, that was, for the fact they were both wearing glasses.
Gonna getcha, fuckface! Gonna break your glasses!
Criss, his mind sent up abruptly. His last name was Criss. Victor Criss.
Oh Christ, that was nothing he wanted to know, not at this late date, but it didn't seem to matter in the slightest. Something was happening down there in the vaults, down there where Rich Tozier kept his own personal collection of Golden Oldies. Doors were opening.
Only they're not records down there, are they? Down there you're not Rich 'Records' Tozier, hot-shot KLAD deejay and the Man of a Thousand Voices, are you? And those things that are opening . . . they aren't exactly doors, are they?
He tried to shake these thoughts off.
Thing to remember is that I'm okay. I'm okay, you're okay, Rich Tozier's okay. Could use a cigarette, is all.
He had quit four years ago but he could use one now, all right.
They're not records but dead bodies. You buried them deep but now there's some kind of crazy earthquake going on and the ground is spitting them up to the surface. You're not Rich 'Records' Tozier down there; down there you're just Richie 'Four-Eyes' Tozier and you're with your buddies and you're so scared it feels like your balls are turning into Welch's grape jelly. Those aren't doors, and they're not opening. Those are crypts, Richie. They're cracking open and the vampires you thought were dead are all flying out again.
A cigarette, just one. Even a Carlton would do, for Christ's sweet sake.
Gonna getcha, four-eyes! Gonna make you EAT that fuckin bookbag!
Town House,' a male voice with a Yankee tang said; it had travelled all the way across New England, the Midwest, and under the casinos of Las Vegas to reach his ear.
Rich asked the voice if he could reserve a suite of rooms at the Town House, beginning tomorrow. The voice told him he could, and then asked him for how long.
'I can't say. I've got — ' He paused briefly, minutely.
What did he have, exactly? In his mind's eye he saw a boy with a tartan bookbag running from the tough guys; he saw a boy who wore glasses, a thin boy with a pale face that had somehow seemed to scream Hit me! Go on and hit me! in some mysterious way to every passing bully. Here's my lips! Mash them back against my teeth! Here's my nose! Bloody it for sure and break it if you can! Box an ear so it swells up like a cauliflower! Split an eyebrow! Here's my chin, go for the knockout button! Here are my eyes, so blue and so magnified behind these hateful, hateful glasses, these horn-rimmed specs one bow of which is held on with adhesive tape. Break the specs! Drive a shard of glass into one of these eyes and close it forever! What the hell!
He closed his eyes and said: 'I've got business in Derry, you see. I don't know how long the transaction will take. How about three days, with an option to renew?'
'An option to renew?' the desk-clerk asked doubtfully, and Rich waited patiently for the fellow to work it over in his mind. 'Oh, I get you! That's very good!'
'Thank you, and I . . . ah . . . hope you can vote for us in Novembah,' John F. Kennedy said. 'Jackie wants to . . . ah . . . do ovuh the ah . . . Oval Office, and I've got a job all lined up for my . . . ah . . . brothah Bobby.'
'Mr Tozier?'
'Yes.'
'Okay . . . somebody else got on the line there for a few seconds.'
Just an old pol from the DOP, Rich thought. That's Dead Old Party, in case you should wonder. Don't worry about it. A shudder worked through him, and he told himself again, almost desperately: You're okay, Rich.
'I heard it, too,' Rich said. 'Must have been a line cross-over. How we looking on that room?'
'Oh, there's no problem with that,' the clerk said. 'We do business here in Derry, but it really never booms.'
'Is that so?'
'Oh, ayuh,' the clerk agreed, and Rich shuddered again. He had forgotten that, too — that simple northern New England-ism for yes. Oh, ayuh.
Gonna getcha, creep! the ghostly voice of Henry Bowers screamed, and he felt more crypts cracking open inside of him; the stench he smelled was not decayed bodies but decayed memories, and that was somehow worse.
He gave the Town House clerk his American Express number and hung up. Then he called Steve Covall, the KLAD program director.
'What's up, Rich?' Steve asked. The last Arbitron ratings had shown KLAD at the top of the cannibalistic Los Angeles FM-rock market, and ever since then Steve had been in an excellent mood — thank God for small favors.
'Well, you might be sorry you asked,' he told Steve. 'I'm taking a powder.'
'Taking — ' He could hear the frown in Steve's voice. 'I don't think I get you, Rich.'
'I have to put on my boogie shoes. I'm going away.'
'What do you mean, going away? According to the log I have right here in front of me, you're on the air tomorrow from two in the afternoon until six P-M., just like always. In fact, you're interviewing Clarence demons in the studio at four. You know Clarence Clemons, Rich? As in "Come on and blow, Big Man?"'
'Clemons can talk to Mike O'Hara as well as he can to me.'
'Clarence doesn't want to talk to Mike, Rich. Clarence doesn't want to talk to Bobby Russell. He doesn't want to talk to me. Clarence is a big fan of Buford Kissdrivel and Wyatt the Homicidal Bag-Boy. He wants to talk to you, my friend. And I have no interest in having a pis sed-off two-hundred-and –fifty-pound saxophone player who was once almost drafted by a pro football team running amok in my studio.'
'I don't think he has a history of running amok,' Rich said. 'I mean, we're talking Clarence Clemons here, not Keith Moon.'
There was silence on the line. Rich waited patiently.
'You're not serious, are you?' Steve finally asked. He sounded plaintive: 'I mean, unless your mother just died or you've got to have a brain tumor out or something, this is called crapping out.'
'I have to go, Steve.'
'Is your mother sick? Did she God-forbid die?'
'She died ten years ago.'
'Have you got a brain tumor?'
'Not even a rectal polyp.'
'This is not funny, Rich.'
'No.'
'You're being a fucking busher, and I don't like it.'
'I don't like it either, but I have to go.'
'Where? Why? What is this? Talk to me, Rich!'
'Someone called me. Someone I used to know a long time ago. In another place. Back then something happened. I made a promise. We all promised that we would go back if the something started happening again. And I guess it has.'
'What something are we talking about, Rich?'
'I'd just as soon not say.' Also, you'll think I'm crazy if I tell you the truth: I don't remember.
'Whe n did you make this famous promise?'
'A long time ago. In the summer of 1958.'
There was another long pause, and he knew Steve Covall was trying to decide if Rich 'Records' Tozier, aka Buford Kissdrivel, aka Wyatt the Homicidal Bag-Boy, etc., etc., was having him on or was having some kind of mental breakdown.