Before you call in your marker.
That brought it all crashing back on him. Markers! They held his! They! On Thursday They would call those markers home… and what then? What then?
Visions of damning newspaper headlines danced in his head.
“Would you like to know how the serious bettors of the thirties used this toy?” Gaunt asked softly.
“Sure,” Keeton said, but he didn’t care, not really… not until he looked up. Then Gaunt’s eyes met his again, captured them again, and the idea of using a child’s game to pick winners seemed to make perfect sense again.
“Well,” Gaunt said, “they’d take that day’s newspaper or Racing Form and run the races, one by one. On this board, you know. They would give each horse in each race a name from the paper-they’d do it by touching one of the tin horses and saying the name at the same time-and then wind the thing up and let it go. They’d run the whole slate that way-eight, ten, a dozen races. Then they’d go to the track and bet on the horses that won at home.”
“Did it work?” Keeton asked. His voice seemed to be coming to him from some other place. A far place. He seemed to be floating in Leland Gaunt’s eyes. Floating on red foam. The sensation was queer but really quite pleasant.
“It seemed to,” Gaunt said. “Probably just silly superstition, but… would you like to buy this toy and try it for yourself.?”
“Yes,” Keeton said.
“You’re a man who needs a Winning Ticket quite badly, aren’t you, Danforth?”
“I need more than one. I need a whole slew of them. How much?”
Leland Gaunt laughed. “Oh no-you don’t get me that way!
Not when I am already in your debt! I’ll tell you what-open your wallet and give me the first bill you find in there. I’m sure it will be the right one.”
So Keeton opened his wallet and drew out a bill without looking away from Gaunt’s face, and of course it was the one with Thomas Jefferson’s face on it-the kind of bill which had gotten him into all this trouble in the first place.
5
Gaunt made it disappear as neatly as a magician doing a trick and said: “There is one more thing.”
“What?”
Gaunt leaned forward. He looked at Keeton earnestly, and touched him on the knee. “Mr. Keeton, do you know about…
Them?”
Keeton’s breath caught, the way the breath of a sleeper will sometimes catch when he finds himself in the throes of a bad dream.
“Yes,” he whispered. “God, yes"’ “This town is full of Them,” Gaunt went on in the same low, confidential tone. “Absolutely infested. I’ve been open less than a week, and I know it already. I think They may be after me. In fact, I’m quite sure of it. I may need your help.”
“Yes,” Keeton said. He spoke more strongly now. “By God, You’ll have all the help you need!”
“Now, You just met me and you don’t owe me a damned thing-” Keeton, who felt already that Gaunt was the closest friend he had made in the last ten years, opened his mouth to protest. Gaunt held up his hand, and the protests ceased at once.
“-and you don’t have the slightest idea if I’ve sold you something which will really work or just another bag of dreams… the kind that turn into nightmares when you give them a poke and a whistle. I’m sure you believe all this now; I have a great gift of I persuasion, if I do say so myself. But I believe In satisfied customers, Mr. Keeton, and only satisfied customers. I have been in business for many years, and I have built my reputation on satisfied customers. So take the toy.
If it works for you, fine. If it doesn’t, give ’
I it to the Salvation Army or throw it in the town dump. What are you out? Couple of bucks?”
“Couple of bucks,” Keeton agreed dreamily.
“But if it does work, and if you can clear your mind of these ephemeral financial worries, come back and see me. We’ll sit down and have coffee, just as we have this morning… and talk about Them.”
“It’s gone too far to just put the money back,” Keeton said in the clear but disconnected tones of one who talks in his sleep.
“There are more tracks than I can brush away in five days.”
“A lot can change in five days,” Mr. Gaunt said thoughtfully.
He rose to his feet, moving with sinuous grace. “You’ve got a big day ahead of you… and so do I.”
“But Them,” Keeton protested. “What about Them?”
Gaunt placed one of his long, chilly hands on Keeton’s arm, and even in his dazed state, Keeton felt his stomach curl up on itself at that touch. “We’ll deal with Them later,” he said. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
6
“John!” Alan called asjohn LaPointe slipped into the Sheriff’s Office by the alley door. “Good to see you!”
It was ten-thirty on Saturday morning and the Castle Rock Sheriff’s Office was as deserted as it ever got. Norris was out fishing somewhere, and Seaton Thomas was down in Sanford, visiting his two old-maid sisters. Sheila Brigham was at the Our Lady of Serene Waters rectory, helping her brother draft another letter to the paper explaining the essentially harmless nature of Casino Nite. Father Brigham also wanted the letter to express his belief that William Rose was as crazy as a cootiebug in a shitheap. One could not come right out and say such a thing, of course-not in a family newspaper-but Father John and Sister Sheila were doing the best they could to get the point across. Andy Clutterbuck was on duty somewhere, or so Alan assumed; he hadn’t called in since Alan arrived at the office an hour ago. Until John showed up, the only other person in the Municipal Building seemed to be Eddie Warburton, who was fussing with the water-cooler in the corner.
“What’s up, doc?” John asked, sitting on the corner of Alan’s desk.
“On Saturday morning? Not much. But watch this.” Alan unbuttoned the right cuff of his khaki shirt and pushed the sleeve up.
“Please notice that my hand never leaves my wrist.”
“Uh-huh,” John said. He Pulled a stick of juicy Fruit out of his pants pocket, peeled off the wrapper, and stuck it in his mouth.
Alan showed his open right palm, flipped his hand to display the back, then closed the hand into a fist. He reached into it with his left index finger and pulled out a tiny ear of silk. He waggled his eyebrows at John. “Not bad, huh?”
“If that’s Sheila’s scarf, she’s gonna be unhappy to find it all wrinkled up and smelling of your sweat,” John said. He seemed less than poleaxed with wonder.
“Not my fault she left it on her desk,” Alan replied. “Besides, magicians don’t sweat. Now say-hey and abracadabra!” He pulled Sheila’s scarf from his fist and puffed it dramatically into the air.
It billowed out, then settled onto Norris’s typewriter like a brightly colored butterfly. Alan looked at John, then sighed. “Not that great, huh?”
“It’s a neat trick,” John said, “but I’ve seen it a few times before.
Like maybe thirty or forty?”
“What do you think, Eddie?” Alan called. “Not bad for a backwoods Deputy Daws, huh?”
Eddie barely looked up from the cooler, which he was now filling from a supply of plastic jugs labelled SPRING WATER.
“Didn’t see, Shurf. Sorry.”
“Hopeless, both of you,” Alan said. “But I’m working on a variation, John. It’s going to wow you, I promise.”
“Uh-huh. Alan, do You still want me to check the bathrooms at that new restaurant out on the River Road?”
“I still do,” Alan said.
“Why do I always get the shit detail? Why can’t Norris-”.’ Norris checked the Happy Trails Campground johns in July and August,” Alan said. “In June I did it. Quit bitching, Johnny.
It’s just your turn. I want you to take water samples, too. Use a couple of the special pouches they sent from Augusta. There’s still a bunch in that cabinet in the hallway. I think I saw ’em behind Norris’s box of Hi-Ho crackers.”