The Plant

April 4, 1981 490 Park Avenue South New York City Skies fair, winds light, temperature 50 F.
9:16 A. M.

RainBo Soft Drinks has its New York offices on the third floor of the building which stands at 490 Park Avenue South. Although small (market share as of 3/1/81: 6. 5%), RainBo is enthusiastic, a young and growing concern. In early April of 1981, the RainBo top brass certainly has something to be excited about: they have gotten the rights (for a price they can afford) to commercially exploit the classic Harold Arlen composition “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” They are tooling up a whole new PR campaign around the song.

On this Saturday morning, executive vice president George Patella (“I'm a knee man” is his favorite singles-bar pickup line... not that he is single) has driven in from his home in Westport because a brilliant concept has come to him in the middle of the night. He wants to memo it and lay it on his superior's desk before noon. And after noon, there's a certain new titty-bar over on 7th Avenue that he's been meaning to check out.

His head full of animated soda bottles dancing over the rainbow in cunning little red shoes, George Patella barely registers the man who follows him in, catching the door and murmuring “Thank you” after George has used his key. All he notices is an older gentleman, in his late sixties or early seventies, handsome in a haggard sort of way, and wearing a green military uniform.

If asked later to be more specific about this uniform, Mr. Patella would be unable to add much, although he is by nature a friendly and helpful man (albeit one with a tendency to put his wedding ring into a rear compartment of his wallet on certain occasions). If his head hadn't been so full of those dancing soda bottles, he might have seen that the elderly fellow with the steel gray brush-cut wore no insignia and no badges of rank. If chivvied into total recall (or hypnotized into it), Patella might have said this of the man who stepped into the elevator with him that Saturday morning: he was wearing a dark green shirt, a black tie held to the shirt with a plain gold bar, and dark green pants, sharply creased and cuffed, over brightly shined black shoes. An outfit of military aspect, in other words, but one that could have been purchased at the Army-Navy store a block over for a total cost of under forty dollars.

It is the way he wears what he has on that gives the impression of military dress; once the older gentleman has pushed the button for his floor (George Patella has no idea which one), he stands perfectly straight and perfectly still, with his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes on the lighted floor-indicator. He doesn't fidget or call attention to himself in any way, certainly not by attempting to chat. And there is nothing in his posture which suggests discomfort. This is a man who has stood so—not quite at attention, but certainly not at ease—many times before. His face communicates that. That, and the idea that he perhaps enjoys such a posture.

All and all no surprise that George Patella, preoccupied with his own concerns (he's too deep within them to even realize he's softly whistling “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”), does not question the man's right to be there. All else aside, the man in the green shirt and trousers radiates that sense of right place-right time. And certainly George Patella does not recognize the man sharing his elevator car as General Anthony “Iron-Guts” Hecksler (U. S. Army Ret.), madman, murderer, and fugitive from justice. Patella gets off on Three to write his memo about the dancing soda bottles. The man in the green pants and shirt stays aboard the elevator car. Patella the soft-drink seller has one last glimpse of the military fella as he (Patella) turns the corner toward the RainBo offices: an elderly gent standing quietly erect, looking straight ahead, hands clasped in front of him, the fingers of those hands slightly bunched by arthritis. Just standing there, just waiting for the elevator to go up, so he can get on with his own business.

Whatever that business might be.

April 4, 1981 Cony Island Skies fair, winds light, temperature 51 F.
9:40 A. M.

As soon as Sandra Jackson and Dina Andrews step off the train, eleven-year-old Dina expresses her desire to go on the Wonder Wheel, which has just resumed operation for another season.

On their way down there, they are huckstered cheerfully from both sides of the mostly empty midway. One cry makes Sandra smile: “Hey, pretty blonde lady! Hey, you little red-headed cutie! Come on over here and try your luck! Make my day!”

Sandra diverts to the Wheel of Chance and sizes the game up. It's a little like roulette, only with prizes instead of money if you win. Hit red or black, odd or even, and win a small prize. Hit one of the triples and win a bigger one. Hit a four-way and win a bigger one yet. And if you should pick a single number and hit, you win the prize of prizes—the big pink teddy bear. All this possibility for a quarter!

Sandra turns to Dina (who is indeed both a redhead and a cutie). “What are you going to name your new bear?” she asks her.

The guy running the Wheel of Chance grins. “Confidence!” he cries. “Sweetheart, that's the best thing in life!”

“I'll name him Rinaldo,” Dina says promptly. “If you win him.”

“Oh, I'll win him, all right,” Sandra says. She takes a quarter from her purse and surveys the numbers, which run from one to thirty-four and include such ringers as FREE SPIN, BYE-BYE NICE TRY, and double zero. She looks at the concessionaire, who is checking out her bod in a way that is thorough without being creepy. “My friend,” she says to him, “I want you to remember that I'm only putting a floor under you. From this point, your season is only going to get better.”

“Gosh, you are confident,” he says. “Well, pick your number and I'll let er rip.”

Sandra lays her quarter down on seventeen. Three minutes later the concessionaire is watching with wide eyes as the pretty lady and her pretty young friend continue to walk down toward the Wonder Wheel, the pretty young friend now in charge of a pink teddy-bear almost as big as she is.

“How'd you do it, Aunt Sandy?” Dina wants to know. She is all but bursting with excitement. “How'd you do it?”

Aunt Sandy taps her forehead and grins. “Psychic waves, sweetheart. Call it that. Come on, let's see what the world looks like from way up high.”

Sometimes life exhibits (or seems to exhibit) an observable pattern. This is certainly one of those times. Because, as the two of them begin to skip hand in hand toward the Wonder Wheel, Sandra Jackson begins to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and Dina quickly joins in.

April 4, 1981 490 Park Avenue South
9:55 A. M.

Gosh and fishes, gee whillikers, and Katie bar the door! What a time old Iron-Guts is having! Talk about making the best of your time! Talk about your gauzy moon-drenched madhouse dreams made real!

At first he felt some doubt. Disquiet, even. For a few moments there, after he picked the lock of the hallway door (no problem there, he could have done it in a doze) and stepped into the Zenith House reception area, something in the back of his brain actually tried to flash a Code Red. It was as if all those alligator instincts which served him so well in three wars and half a dozen brushfire skirmishes had sniffed something out and were trying to warn him. But a command officer didn't call off a mission simply because of a little trench-fright. What a command officer did was remind himself of his objective.

“Designated Jew,” Hecksler murmured. That was his objective. The liar who had led him on and then stolen his best ideas.

Nonetheless he continued to feel that electric tickle of unease, that sense of being watched. Being watched by the very walls, it seemed.

He looked sharply along those walls, keeping his gaze above eye-level and peering with special penetrating attention into the corners. No surveillance cameras. So that was all right.

He sniffed sharply, spreading the wings of his nose, really flaring the old nostrils.

“Garlic,” he muttered. “No question. Known it and grown it. All my life. Ha! And...”

Something else, there was definitely something else, but he couldn't get it. Not, at least, in the reception area.

“Damn garlic,” he said. “Like a bore at a party. A bore with a loud voice.”

At the portal which lead into the editorial offices, that interior warning voice spoke again. Only two words, but Hecksler heard them clearly: GET OUT!

“Not happening,” he said, and issued the Saturday-silent world of Zenith House a tight and unpleasant grin that likely would have turned Herb Porter's blood if he'd seen it. “Screaming lone eagle. Suicide mission, if that's what it takes. Nobody goes home.”

A step further and the smell of garlic was gone, as if someone had rubbed the stuff around the doorway. What replaced it was an entrancing odor Hecksler knew well and loved above all things: the tangy, bitter smell of burst gunpowder. The smell of battle.

The General, who had hunched over a bit without even realizing it (the first impulse when going into an unknown and possibly dangerous area, he knew, was to protect the family jewels), now straightened up. He looked around with a mad glare that would have done more than turn Herb's blood; it would have sent him fleeing in a blind panic. After a moment he relaxed. And now, below the bulging eyes, the lips first parted and then began to draw up. They reached the point where you would have said lips must stop and still they continued, until the corners seemed to have reached the level of Hecksler's bulging blue eyes. The smile became a grin; the grin became a bigger grin; the bigger grin became a grimace; the grimace became a cannibal's leer; the cannibal's leer became an insane cannibal's leer.

“Zenith House, I am here!” he thundered into the empty corridor with its faded gray industrial strength rug and its framed book jackets of bosomy maidens and marching giant bugs on the walls. He struck his chest with a closed fist “You house of mockers, I am here! You den of thieves, I am here! Designated Jew, I AM HERE!”

His first impulse, curbed only with difficulty, was to remove his not inconsiderable penis from his pants and urinate everywhere: on the carpet, the walls, even the framed jacket covers if his admittedly aging piss-pump could fling the stream that high (twenty years before he could have washed the ceiling tiles, by God), like a dog marking its territory. Sanity didn't reassert itself because there was none left in the haunted belfry of his brush-cut-topped head, but there was still plenty of guile. Nothing must appear out of place here in the hallway. Chances that the D. J. would come in first on Monday were mighty slim.

“Goddam slacker is what he is,” Hecksler said. “A goddam commissary cowboy. Ha! Seen a thousand of em!”

And so he walked down the main corridor as decorously as a nun, passing doors marked WADE EDITOR IN CHIEF, KENTON, and GELB (that one another Jew, undoubtedly, but not the Jew) before coming to one marked... PORTER.

“Yessss,” Hecksler said, bringing the word out in a long and satisfying hiss, like steam. There wasn't even any need to pick the lock; the D. J. 's door was open. The General stepped in. And now... now that he's in a place where he no longer has to be careful... gosh!

The urine which General Hecksler withheld in the hall goes into Herb Porter's desk drawers, starting with the lower and working to the upper. There is even a final squirt for the keyboard of typewriter.

There's an IN/OUT box filled with what look like submission letters, manuscript reports, and a personal letter (although typed) which begins Dear Fergus. Hecksler tears it all up and sprinkles the pieces on top of the desk like confetti.

Next to the IN/OUT is an envelope marked GOTHAM COLLECTIBLES, addressed to Mr. Herbert Porter care of Zenith House, and marked CONFIDENTIAL. Inside, the General finds three items. One is a letter which says, in essence, that the folks at Gotham Collectibles were mighty glad they could find the enclosed rarity for such a valued customer. The rarity is a Honus Wagner baseball card in a glassine envelope. The last enclosure is a bill in the amount of two hundred and fifty American men. The General is astounded and outraged. Two hundred and fifty dollars for a yid baseball player? And of course he is a yid; Hecksler can pick them out anywhere. Look at that schnozzola, by the jacked-up Jesus! (Unaware that Honus Wagner's schnozzola is pretty much identical to Anthony Hecksler's own.) Iron-Guts takes the card out of its envelope, and soon the image of Honus Wagner has joined the other, considerably less valuable, confetti on Herb's desk.

Hecksler begins to sing softly, a beer jingle: “Here's to you... for all you do... you des-ig-NAYY-ted Jew...”

There are the file cabinets. He could tip them over, but what if someone below heard the thud? And it seems meaningless. If he opens them, he knows what he'll find: just more paper. He's ripped enough of that for one day, by God. Also, he's getting a little pooped. It's been a stressful morning (a stressful week, a stressful month, a stressful goddam life). If he could find one more thing... one more meaningful thing...

And there it is. Most of the stuff on the walls is uninteresting—covers of books the D. J. has edited, photos of the D. J. with a number of men (and one woman) who the General supposes are writers but look to him suspiciously like wankers—but there's one picture that's different. Not only is it set off from the others, in its own little space, but the Herb Porter in it has an actual expression on his face. In the others, the best he's managed is a sort of oh-fuck-I'm-getting-my-goddam-picture-taken-again squint, but in this one he's actually smiling, and it is a smile of unquestionable love. The woman he's smiling at is taller than the D. J. and looks about sixty. Held in front of her is the sort of large black satchel purse which by law only woman of sixty or over may carry.

Hecksler croons, “I see me, I see you, I see the mother, of a designated Jew.”

He pulls the picture from the wall, turns it over, and sees the sort of cardboard backing he would have expected. Oh yes, he knows his man: sly tricks in front, cardboard backing behind. Yowza.

Hecksler pulls out the cardboard, then the picture of Herb and his beloved Marmar, which was taken at the twenty-fifth anniversary party Herb organized for his parents out on Montauk in 1978. Iron-Guts drops trou (they go down fast, perhaps because of the large fold-up knife in the right front pocket), grabs one skinny butt-cheek and gives it a brisk sideways yank, the better to present the back door, the tan track, the everloving dirt road. Then the former United States General, who was personally decorated by Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, rubs his ass briskly and thoroughly with this picture which Herb loves above all others.

Gosh, what a time we're having!

But good times wear a person out, especially an older person, especially an older bonkers person. Enough be enough, as Amos might have said to Andy. The General hauls up his pants, squares himself away, then sits down in Herb's office chair. He did not pee in this chair, mostly because it never occurred to him, so the seat is nice and dry.

He swivels slowly around and looks out Herb's window. No view; just a few feet of empty space and then the windows of another office building. Most of those are covered with venetian blinds, and where the blinds aren't drawn, the offices are perfectly still. No doubt somewhere in that building, as in this, executives are squeezing in a little overtime, but not in sight of Herb Porter's window.

The sun comes slanting in on General Hecksler's face, cruelly spotlighting his age-roughened skin and the burst veins at his temples; another vein, this one blue, pulses steadily in the middle of his deeply lined forehead. His eyelids are folded and wrinkled. More and more of them become visible as the General, who has dozed but not really slept in weeks, moves to the border which divides the land of wakefulness from that of Nod.

They close all the way... remain so, looking smoother now... and then they open again, disclosing faded blue eyes which are wary and crazy and most of all tired unto death. He has reached the border crossing—temporary peace lies beyond—but does he dare use it? Does he dare cross? There are so many enemies still, a world filled with scheming Jews, violent Italians, craven homosexuals, and thefty dance-footed Negros; so many sworn enemies of both the General and the country he has sworn to uphold... and could they be here now? Even now?

For a moment his lids take on their former wrinkled aspect as the eyes they guard open all the way, shifting in their sockets, but this only lasts a moment. The voice that warned him in the reception area has fallen silent, but he can still smell a lingering effluvia of gunsmoke, as soothing as memory.

Safe, that odor whispers. It is, of course, the odor and the voice of Zenith, the common ivy. You're safe. Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and you're safe for the next forty hours and more. Sleep, General. Sleep.

General Hecksler knows good advice when he hears it. Sitting in his enemy's chair, turned away from his enemy's desk (into which he has poured the piss of righteousness), General Hecksler sleeps.

He cannot see the ivy which has already entered this room and grows invisibly around his shoes and up the walls. Smelling gunpowder and dreaming of ancient battles, General Hecksler begins to snore.

April 4, 1981 490 Park Avenue South New York City Skies fair, winds light, temperature 55 F.
10:37 A. M.

When Frank DeFelice arrives at 490 Park Avenue South, stepping out of a Checker Cab and tipping a perfectly precise ten per cent, he's not in the same buoyant mood as George Patella the soft-drink fella, but he's every bit as preoccupied. DeFelice works at Tallyrand Office Supply on the 7th floor, and he has forgotten some paperwork he needs in order to be ready for the pre-inventory meeting at 9 A. M. on Monday morning. His intention is to simply dash up, grab the inventory summaries, and head back to Grand Central. DeFelice lives in Croton-on-Hudson, and plans to spend the afternoon doing yard work. This Saturday trip down to the city is your basic PITA: pain in the ass.

He takes some vague notice of the man in the sand-colored business suit standing to the left of the door; the man is holding a large attache case and checking his watch. He is young for the suit, but good-looking and well-groomed: blond, blue-eyed. Certainly Carlos Detweiller, who has his mother's Nordic genes, doesn't look like anyone's idea of a spic, designated or otherwise.

As DeFelice opens the lobby door with his key, the young man with the attache case sighs and murmurs, “Hold it a sec, would you?”

Frank DeFelice obligingly holds the door and they cross the lobby together, heels clicking and echoing.

“People shouldn't be allowed to be late on Saturdays,” the young man says, and DeFelice gives an agreeable, meaningless little smile. His mind is a million miles away... well, forty, at any rate, dwelling on various spring bulbs and fertilizers.

Perhaps this run of thought is why he notices a certain odd smell about the young man as they step into the elevator together—a certain earthy smell, almost like peat. Can that be some new aftershave? Something called Spring Garden or April Delight?

DeFelice pushes for seven.

“Hit five while you're at it, would you?” the young man in the sand-colored suit asks, and DeFelice notices an interesting thing: there's a combination lock on the guy's attache case. That's sort of cool, he thinks, and that thought leads to another: Father's Day isn't that far off. Hints dropped in the right location (to the mother of his children rather than the children themselves, in other words) might not go amiss. In fact—

“Five?” the young man in the sand-colored suit asks again, and DeFelice pushes five. He then points at the attache case.

“Abercrombie?” he asks.

“Kmart,” the young man replies, and offers a smile that makes DeFelice slightly nervous. It has an emptiness that goes beyond daffy. The two men journey silently after that, rising in the faint smell of peat.

Carlos Detweiller steps out on five. He walks to the wall where there are arrows pointing the way to the various businesses: Barco Novel-Teaz, Crandall & Ovitz, Attorneys at Law, Zenith Publishing. He is examining these when the elevator doors slide shut. Frank DeFelice feels a momentary relief, then turns his mind to his own affairs.

10:38 A. M.

General Hecksler has sprung the lock instead of forcing it, and Carlos enters Zenith House without considering the unlocked main door suspicious—he's a gardener, a writer, and a Psykik Savant, after all, not a detective. Also, he's spent so many years getting what he wants that he's come to expect it.

In the reception area he smells garlic and nods briskly, like a man whose suspicions have been confirmed. Although in truth, they are rather more than suspicions. He is in touch with certain Powers, after all, and they've kept him ahead of the curve (as mid-level executives such as Frank DeFelice and George Patella might say) in most respects. One of the respects in which they have been a trifle behind the curve has to do with Iron-Guts Hecksler's current presence in the Zenith offices. Drawing conclusions in matters supernatural is always a risky business, but we might assume from this that the Powers of Darkness enjoy a giggle as much as the rest of us.

Yet does Carlos not smell something other than garlic out here? Certainly a frown clouds his blandly handsome face. Then it clears. He dismisses the faint whiff of the General's insanity which his trained nose has picked up as no more than a lingering trace of the receptionist's perfume. (What, one wonders, would such a perfume be called? Paranoia in Paris?)

Carlos moves across the room and pauses. Here the smell of garlic is stronger. She told them how to keep it in its place, he thinks, meaning the late Tina Barfield. Did she also tell them that, given a taste of the right blood, such precautions would be useless? Perhaps. In any case, it doesn't matter. He could care less at this point. Zenith would likely take care of John Kenton given time, but “likely” isn't good enough for Carlos Detweiller, and he doesn't have time. There probably won't be time to make John Kenton his zombie slave, either, but there should be enough time on Monday morning to cut Kenton's lying, misleading, thieving heart out of his chest. Carlos has plenty of knives in his Sakred Case, not to mention a new brush-cutter from American Gardener. He hopes to use this to remove Mr. John “Poop-Shit” Kenton's scalp. He can wear it like a hat while he snacks on “Poop-Shit's” valves and ventricles.

Carlos steps into the hall beyond the reception area and pauses again. He stands exactly where Hecksler stood when he proclaimed his presence to the empty offices. He notes (not without admiration) the framed book jackets: a giant ant poised over a screaming, half-nude woman; a mercenary shooting down a squad of charging Oriental soldiers while a city that appears to be Miami flames in the background; a woman in a slip in the embrace of a bare-chested pirate who appears to have an erection the size of an industrial plumbing fixture inside his colorful pantaloons; a red-eyed lurker watching the approach of a young lady on a deserted street; two or three cookbooks, just for spice.

Carlos thinks with some longing that in a better world, where people were honest, the jacket of his own book might be up there, as well. True Tales of Demon Infestations, with a photo of the one and only Carlos Detweiller on the cover. Smoking a pipe, perhaps, and looking Lovecrafty. That is not to be... but they will pay. Kenton, at least, will pay.

The hall looks empty except for the framed covers and the doors to the editorial cubicles beyond them, but the newcomer knows better. “Carlos, you weren't born yesterday or even the day before,” as Mr. Keen might have said in happier times, times when people didn't forget who was supposed to win all the card games.

Looks, however, can be deceiving.

With the garlic-rubbed portal behind him, Carlos can easily smell the Tibetan kadath ivy he has sent John Kenton, and he smells its true aroma: not popcorn, chocolate, coffee, honeysuckle, or Shalimar perfume but a darker odor, strict and sharp. It isn't oil of clove, but perhaps that comes closest. It is a smell Carlos has detected emanating from his own armpits when he has been being strenuously psykik.

He closes his eyes and murmurs, “Talla. Demeter. Abbalah. Great Opoponax.” He breathes deep and the smell intensifies, filling his head, making it swim with visions that are dark and full of gusty-cold flying. They are visions of the land to which he will soon be going, the place where he will make his transition from earthy mortal to tulpa, a creature of the invisible world fully capable of returning to this one and possessing the bodies of the still-living. Perhaps he will use this power; perhaps he will not. Right now, such things do not matter.

He opens his eyes again and yes, there is the kadath. It is growing all over the walls and the carpet, thinning as it advances toward the reception area, thick and luxuriant further down the corridor. Somewhere down there, Carlos knows, is the place where the original pot still resides, buried in billowing drifts of green which would be invisible to all those who don't believe in the plant's power. The far end of the corridor looks as impenetrable as a rainforest jungle, buried in growth right up to the fluorescents, but Carlos knows people could walk blithely up and down that corridor with absolutely no idea of what they were walking through... unless, of course, Zenith wanted them to know. In which case it would be the last thing they'd ever know. Basically, Zenith House is now a large green bear trap, spring-loaded.

Carlos walks down the corridor, Sakred Sakrifice Case held at chest level. He steps over the first trailing strand of Zenith, then an entire clot of entwined branches and rhizomes. One stirs and touches his ankle. Carlos stands patiently, and after a moment the strand drops away. Here, on the left, is the office of WADE EDITOR IN CHIEF. Carlos glances in without much interest, then passes on to the next door. Here the ivy-growth is much thicker, the strands covering the lower part of the door in zigzag patterns and twining around the knob in a loose lover's knot. One strand clings to the upper panel, which is glass, and streaks across the name like a stroke of green lightning.

“Kenton,” Carlos says in a low voice. “You mocker.”

10:44 A. M.

In Herb Porter's office, General Anthony Hecksler opens his eyes. The thought that he may have dreamed the voice never so much as crosses his mind. What he has heard is this: Kenton, you mockie.

Someone else is in the Zenith House offices.

Someone else on a Saturday morning.

Iron-Guts has a pretty good idea who the someone else must be.

“Tick-tick,” he whispers, his lips barely moving. “Designated spic.”

In his doze, Hecksler has slid down a bit in Porter's chair. Now he slides even farther, wanting to make absolutely sure that the top of his head won't show if the D. S. should wander a few yards farther down the hall. It's okay for “Carlos” to see the mess in here as long as he doesn't see the man in here.

Silent as a sigh, Hecksler eases his hand into the pocket of his pants and pulls out another of his Army-Navy store purchases: a bone-handled hunting knife with a seven-inch tungsten blade.

There is the faintest click as the General unfolds the blade and locks it into position. He holds it against his chest, the tip nearly touching the undershelf of his stringently shaved chin, and waits for whatever comes next.

Central Park Skies fair, winds light, temperature 60 F.
10:50 A. M.

Bill Gelb is so excited about his planned excursion to Paramus that he hardly slept at all last night, and still he feels energized this Saturday morning, totally jazzed. He couldn't stay in the goddam apartment, just couldn't. The question was, where to go? Ordinarily he'd think movie, Bill loves the movies, but he couldn't sit still in one today. And then, in the shower, the answer came.

On a Saturday morning in Central Park, especially on a pretty spring morning like this one, there'll be a veritable Olympic games going on, everything from skateboarding and pick-up softball to chess and checkers.

There will also be a crap game going on at the edge of the Sheep Meadow; of this Bill is almost sure. It may have been closed down, but he can't imagine why the cops would bust such an innocuous game: low stakes, young white guys pretending to be cool dudes rolling the bones. Seven come eleven, baby needs a new pair of Adidas sneakers. A bottle or two of cheap wine will make the rounds, allowing the players to feel totally raffish, not to say decadent, shooting craps and drinking Night Train at eleven o'clock in the morning.

Bill has played in this game maybe half a dozen times over the last two years, always in warm weather. He likes to gamble, but shooting craps in Central Park when the temperature is below forty? No way. But today WINS radio says the mercury may shoot all the way up to an unseasonable seventy degrees, and besides... what better way to see if the force is still with him?

Which is why—as Riddley's train approaches Manhattan, as Sandra and her niece continue their whirlwind tour of Cony Island's early-season amusements, as Carlos Detweiller begins inspecting “Poop-Shit” Kenton's files, and General Hecksler sits slouched in Herb Porter's office chair, knife gleaming in the sunlight—we find Bill Gelb down on his knees in a circle of yelling, laughing white guys who are happy to fade his heat. Lucky son of a bitch got in the game, bet two guys to crap out (and won), then took the dice himself. Since then he's rolled five straight sevens. Now he's promising them a sixth, and further promising them it'll be sixty-one. Dude is crazy, so of course they're happy to fade him. And Bill is happy, as well. As happy as he's ever been in his life, it seems to him. He showed up here on the Meadow with just fifteen dollars in his pocket, deliberately leaving the rest of his cash at home; he's already tripled that. And this, by God, is just the warmup! Tonight, in Paramus, he will sit down to the main course.

“God bless that crazy houseplant,” he murmurs, and rolls the dice onto the painted hopscotch grid that serves as the pit. They bounce, they roll, they tumble—

—and the Saturday morning yuppie crap-artists groan in mingled disbelief, despair, and amazement.

It's six and one.

Bill snatches up the wad of currency lying on the HOME slot of the hopscotch grid, smacks it, and holds it up to the bright blue sky, laughing.

“You want to pass the dice, Mr. Lucky?” one of the other players asks.

“When I'm on a roll like this?” Bill Gelb leans forward and snatches the dice. “No fuckin way.” The bones feel warm in his hand. Someone hands him a bottle of Boone's Farm and he takes a hit. “No fuckin way am I passing,” he repeats. “Gents, I'm going to roll these bones until the spots fall off.”

11:05 A. M.

The kadath has infiltrated Kenton's office right through the cracks at the edges of the door, growing exuberantly up the walls, but Carlos barely notices. The ivy is nothing to him, one way or the other. Not now. It might have been fun to sit back and watch it work if not for Tina Barfield, but the bitch stole his owl's beak and time has grown short. Let Zenith take care of the rest if it wants to; Kenton is his.

“You mocker,” he says again. “You thief.”

As in Herb's office, there are pictures on the walls of Kenton with various authors. Carlos cares nothing for the authors (they look like wankers to him, too), but he looks fixedly at the repetitions of Kenton himself, memorizing the lean face with its shock of too-long black hair. What does he think he is? Carlos asks himself indignantly. A damned old rock star? A Beatle? A Rolling Stone? The name of a rock and roll group Kenton could belong to occurs to him: Johnny and the Poop-Shits.

As always, Carlos is startled by his own wit. He is serious so much of the time that he's always shocked at what a good sense of humor he has. Now he barks laughter.

Still chuckling, he tries Kenton's desk drawers, but, unlike Herb's, they are locked. There is an IN/OUT box on top of the desk, but, also unlike Herb's, it is almost completely empty. The one sheet of paper has several lines jotted on it that Carlos doesn't understand in the slightest:

Leper hockey game: face off in the corner

7: 6 to carry the coffin, 1 to carry the boombox

Never mind the jam on your mouth, what's that peanut butter doing on your forehead?

“Fuck the mailman, give him a dollar and a sweet roll.”

Orange manhole cover in France=Howard Johnson's.

What in the name of Demeter is all that crap about? Carlos doesn't know and decides he doesn't care, either.

He goes to Kenton's file cabinets, expecting them to be locked as well, but he has a long weekend ahead of him, and if he gets bored, he can open both the desk and the files. He has plenty of tools in the Sakrifice Case that will do the job. But the drawers of the file cabinets turn out to be unlocked—go figure.

Carlos begins searching the files with a high degree of interest that quickly fades. Poop-Shit's files are alphabetized, but after CURRAN, JAMES (author of four paperback originals in 1978 and '79, with titles like Love's Strange Delight and Love's Strange Obsession), comes DORCHESTER, ELLEN (six brief manuscript reports, each signed by Kenton and each attached to a rejection letter). There's no file marked DETWEILLER, CARLOS.

Such a file by then existed, of course, and it contained material that might well have caused Detweiller to explode with rage, but it was in the publishing house safe, behind a picture in Roger Wade's office. Neither Hecksler nor Detweiller so much as entered that office. That file also contained material concerning the General and the company's new mascot.

The one item of interest Carlos discovers is in the bottom drawer, lying behind the few hanging files marked W-Z. It's a framed photograph which undoubtedly graced Kenton's desk until recently. In it, Kenton and a pretty young Oriental woman are standing on the rink at Rockefeller Plaza with their arms around each other, laughing into the camera.

A smile of surpassing nastiness dawns on Carlos's face. The woman is in California, but for a genuine Psykik Savant, a few thousand miles presents absolutely no problem. Miss Ruth Tanaka is already discovering that she has backed the wrong horse in the Romance Sweepstakes. Carlos knows she'll be back in New York before long, and thinks that she may stop by Zenith House shortly after she arrives. Kenton will be dead by then, but she will have questions, won't she? Yes. The ladies always have questions.

And when she comes...

“Innocent blood,” Carlos murmurs. He tosses the framed photo back into the drawer and the glass front shatters. In the quiet office, the sound is satisfyingly loud. Across the hall, General Hecksler jumps slightly in Herb's chair, almost pricking himself with his own knife.

Carlos kicks the file-drawer shut, goes across to Kenton's desk, and sits down in Kenton's chair. He feels like Goldilocks, only with a pretty decent stiffy. He sits there for a little while, drumming the fingers of one hand on the Sakrifice Case and idly boinking his hardon with the fingers of the other. Later, he thinks, he'll probably masturbate—it is something he does often and well. Not knowing, of course, that his days of self-abuse are now gone.

In the office across the corridor, Iron-Guts has taken up a position against the wall to the left of Herb Porter's door. He can see a reflection of the office across the way in Herb's window—faint, but good enough. When “Carlos” comes out to further recon the area, as sooner or later he will, the General will be ready.

11:15 A. M.

It occurs to Carlos that he's hungry. It further occurs to him that he has forgotten to bring any food. There might be candy bars or something in Kenton's desk—gum, at least, everyone has a few sticks of gum lying around—but the jeezly bastardly thing is locked. Prying open the drawers in search of something that might not be there seems like too much work.

What about the other offices, though? Maybe there's even a canteen, with sodas and everything. Carlos decides to check. He has nothing but time, after all.

He gets up, goes to the door, and steps out. Once again the ivy in the hall touches his shoes; one strand curls around his ankle. Once again Carlos stands patiently until the strand lets go. The words pass, friend whisper in his head.

Carlos goes to the next door down the hall, the one marked JACKSON. He doesn't hear Herb Porter's door as it opens squeaklessly behind him; doesn't sense the tall old man with the knife in his hand who's measuring distances with cold blue eyes and finding them acceptable.

As Carlos opens the door to Sandra's office, Iron-Guts springs. One forearm—old, scrawny, hideously strong—hooks around Carlos's throat and shuts off his air. Carlos has a moment to feel a new emotion: utter terror. Then a lightning-bright line of heat prints itself across his lower midsection. He thinks he has been burned with something, perhaps even branded, and would have screamed if not for his closed windpipe. He hasn't the slightest idea that he's been partially disemboweled, and has only avoided the total deal by staggering to his left, bumping the General against the edge of Sandra Jackson's door, and causing him to slash a little high and nowhere near as deeply as he intended.

“You're one dead SOB.” Hecksler whispers these words in Carlos's ear as tenderly as a lover. Carlos smells Rolaids and madness. He throws himself to the right, against the other side of the door, but the General is ready for this trick and rides him as easily as a cowpoke on an old nag. He raises the knife again, meaning to open Carlos's throat for him. Then he hesitates.

“What kind of spic has blond hair and blue eyes?” he asks. “What—”

He feels the moth-flutter of Carlos's hand against his thigh an instant too late. Before he can draw back, the designated spic has grabbed his testicles and crushed them in the iron grip of one who is fighting for his life and knows it.

“YOWWW!” Hecksler cries, and for just one moment the armlock on Carlos's throat weakens. It isn't the pain, enormous though it is, that causes the death-grip to weaken; Iron-Guts has devoted years to living with pain and through it. No, it's surprise. The D. S. is being choked, the D. S. has been slashed, and still he is fighting back.

Carlos throws himself to the left again, slamming the General's bony shoulder against the doorjamb. Hecksler's grip loosens a bit more, and before he can re-establish it, Zenith—more in the spirit of puckish good humor than anything else—takes a hand.

It's actually the General's feet the ivy takes, wrapping a loose green fist around both and yanking backward. Although the branches are still new and thin (some are pulled apart by Hecksler's weight), Z's grip is surprisingly strong. And surprise, of course, is the key word. If Iron-Guts had expected such a cowardly sneak attack, he almost certainly would have kept his feet. Instead, he thumps heavily to his knees. Carlos whirls in the doorway, gasping and gagging and hacking for air. He still feels that band of heat across his belly, and it seems to be spreading. The bastard shocked me, he thinks. He had one of those things, those illegal laser things.

He has to get back to Kenton's office, where he has foolishly left the Sakrifice Case, but when he starts forward, the General slashes his knife through the air. Carlos recoils just fast enough to keep from losing his nose. The General bares his teeth at Carlos—those that have survived the Shady Rest Mortuary, at least. Bright color blazons his cheeks.

“Get out of my way!” Carlos squalls. “Abbalah! Abbalah can tak! Demeter can tah! Gah! Gam!”

“Save your spic gabble for someone who gives a rip,” the General says. He makes no attempt to get off his knees, simply sways from side to side, looking as mystic (and as deadly) as any snake ever piped out of a fakir's basket. “You want to get past me, son? Then come on. Try for it.”

Carlos looks over the old man's shoulder and sees there are still green boughs of ivy looped around the old man's ankles.

“Kadath!” Carlos calls. “Cam-ma! Can tak!” These words mean nothing in themselves. They are invocatory in nature, Carlos Detweiller's way of shaping a telepathic command. He has told Zenith to yank the old man again, to pull him right down the hall into the main growth and crush him.

Instead, the knots around the General's ankles untie themselves and slither away.

“No!” Carlos bawls. He cannot believe that the Dark Powers have deserted him. “No, come back! Kadath! Kadath can tak!”

“Better take a look at yourself, son,” General Hecksler advises slyly.

Carlos looks down and sees that his sand-colored suit has turned bright red from the coat pockets on down. There's a long, tattered rip across his midsection; the end of his tie has actually been lopped off. He can see something shiny and purple in the slash and realizes with disbelieving dismay that those are his guts.

While he's distracted, Hecksler lunges forward and swipes with his knife again. This time he opens Carlos's shoulder down to the bone. “Olay!” Iron-Guts screams.

“You crazy old fuck!” Carlos screams back, and lashes out a foot. This sends a terrible dull cramp of pain through his belly and a freshet of blood down the front of his pants, but the shoe catches General Hecksler square in the skinny beak and breaks it. He goes flopping back. Carlos starts forward but the evil old bastard is up on his knees again in a goddamned flash, slashing everywhere. What is he made of, iron?

Carlos dodges back into Sandra's office, panting, and slams the door just as Hecksler curls the fingers of his free hand around the jamb. Hecksler utters a howl as his fingers are crushed, and it is music to Carlos's ears. But the old son of a bitch won't stop. He's like a robot with its selector switch frozen on KILL. Carlos hears the office door bang open behind him as he staggers across Sandra's office with the left arm of his jacket turning crimson and one hand on his slashed midsection, trying to keep those purple things in where they belong. He hears a harsh, doglike panting as air rushes in and out of the madman's old lungs. In a moment the robot will be on him again. The robot has a weapon; Carlos has none. Even if he had his Sakrifice Case, the robot would give him no time to work the combination.

I'm going to die, Carlos thinks wonderingly. If I don't do something right away, I'm actually going to die. He has known that death was coming, of course, but until this minute it has been an academic concept. There is nothing academic about having a crazy robot after you while blood pours down your arm and legs, however.

Carlos looks at Sandra's desk, which is a cluttery, paper-strewn mess. Scissors? A letter-opener? Even a damned nail-file? Anything— Good Demeter, what's that?

Lying beside her blotter, partly obscured by a framed photo of Sandra and Dina taken on their trip to Nova Scotia two years before, is a large silver object which looks like a gunshell. Sandra, her mind full of books and plants and manuscripts and tales of elderly Rhode Island zombies, has forgotten to put the gunshell in her purse when she left on Friday afternoon. Also, it's now easy for her to forget: the plant has given her a new sense of security and well-being. This object no longer seems so vital to her.

It's vital to Carlos, though.

Carlos has spotted Sandra's Rainy Night Friend.

11:27 A. M.

“What's the matter, Aunt Sandra?” Dina asks. A moment before they were been walking down the boardwalk together, eating the delicious grilled franks you can only get at Cony. Then Sandra stopped, gasped, and put a hand to her stomach. “Is your hotdog no good?”

“It's fine,” Sandra said, although a sudden pain had, in fact, just ripped through her belly. It wasn't the kind of pain she associated with food-poisoning, but she turned and deposited the remainder of her dog in a trash barrel just the same. She was no longer hungry.

“Then what is it?”

It was a voice in her head, calling. But if she told Dina that, her niece would probably think she was crazy. Especially if she told her it was a green voice.

“I don't know,” Sandra said, “but maybe I ought to take you home, hon. If I'm going to get sick, I don't want to get caught all the way out here.”

11:27 A. M.

John Kenton has been scrambling eggs in his little kitchen, whistling “Chim-Chim-Chiree” from Mary Poppins as he stirs with his whisk. The pain comes like lightning out of a blue sky, ripping across his middle, there and gone.

He cries out and jerks backward, the whisk pulling the frypan off the stove and splattering half-congealed eggs on the linoleum. Both the eggs and the pan miss his bare feet, which could almost qualify as a miracle.

The office, he thinks. I have to get to the office. Something's gone wrong. And then his head suddenly fills with sound and he screams.

11:28 A. M.

Roger Wade is already headed for the door of his apartment when the unearthly yowl of Sandra's Rainy Day Friend fills his head, threatening to burst it open from the inside out. He drops to his knees like a man who's had a heart attack, holding his head and uttering screams he can't hear.

11:28 A. M.

On the edge of the Sheep's Meadow, the little cluster of Saturday morning gamblers watch the fleeing man with bemused surprise. He was cleaning them out, righteously and in record time. Then, suddenly, he gave a scream and lurched to his feet, first clutching his gut and then slamming the heels of his hands against his ears, as if assaulted by some monstrous sound. As if to confirm this, he had gasped “Oh God, turn it off!” Then he fled, staggering from side to side like a drunk.

“What's up with him?” one of the crap-artists asked.

“I don't know,” said another, “but I know one thing: he left the gelt.”

For a moment they simply look at the untidy pile of bills beside Bill Gelb's vacated spot. Then, quite spontaneously, the six of them begin to applaud.

April 4, 1981 Somewhere in New Jersey
Aboard the Silver Meteor
11:28 A. M.

In his seat by the window, Riddley is asleep and dreaming of other, younger days. He is dreaming, in fact, of 1961. In his dream, he and Maddy are walking to school hand in hand beneath a brilliant November sky. Together they chant their old favorite, which they made up themselves: “Whammer-jammer-Alabammer! Beetle Bailey, Katzenjammer! Gi'me back my goddam hammer! Whammer-jammer-Alabammer!” Then they giggle.

It is a good day. The Cuban stuff, which scared everybody near bout to death, is over. Rid has drawn a pitcher, and he thinks Mrs. Ellis will ask him to show it to the rest of the kinnygarden. Mrs. Ellis likes his pitchers.

Then, suddenly, Maddy stops. From the north comes a rising rumble. She looks at him solemnly. “Those are the bombers,” she says. “Hit happened. Hit's World War Three.”

“Naw,” Riddley says. “Hit's over. The Roosians backed down. Kennedy scared em honest. Bald Roosian fella told his boats to turn around and go home. Mama said so.”

“Mama's crazy,” Maddy replies. “She sleeps on the riverbank. She sleeps with the copperhaids.”

And as if to prove it, the Blackwater air-raid siren goes off, deafening him—

11:29 A. M.

Riddley straightens up and stares out at New Jersey: stares, in fact, at the exact swampy wasteland he will that night be visiting.

The man across the aisle looks up from his paperback book. “Are you all right, sir?” he asks.

Riddley cannot hear him. The air-raid siren has followed him out of his dream. It is filling his head, bursting his brains.

Then, suddenly, it cuts off. When the man across the aisle asks his question again, this time with real concern, Riddley hears him.

“Yes, thanks,” he says in a voice that's almost steady. In his head, the old rhyme beats: Whammer-jammer-Alabammer. “I'm fine.”

But some folks are not, he thinks. Some folks most definitely are not.

490 Park Avenue South 5th floor
11:29 A. M.

In 1970, a large number of American brass were celebrating at a Saigon bar and whorehouse called Haiphong Charlie's. Word had come down from Washington that the war would certainly continue for at least another year, and these career soldiers, who had gotten the ass-kicking of their lives over the last twenty months or so and wanted payback more than they wanted life itself, were raising the roof. The miracle was that something in the bomb the anonymous waiter planted was defective, and instead of spraying the whole room with nails and screws, it only sprayed those soldiers who happened to be near the stage, where it had been hidden in a flower arrangement. One of those unfortunates was Anthony Hecksler's aide-de-camp. Poor sonofabitch lost both hands and one eye while he was doing the frug or the Watusi or one of those.

Hecksler himself was on the edge of the room, talking with Westy Westmoreland, and although a number of nails flew between them—both men heard their whining passage—neither suffered so much as a nicked earlobe. But the sound of the explosion in that small room was enormous. Iron-Guts hadn't minded being spared the screams of the wounded, but it had been nine full days before his hearing began to come back. He had about given that sensation up for dead when it finally returned home (and still for a week or so every conversation had been like a transatlantic phone call in the nineteen-twenties). His ears have been sensitive to loud noises ever since.

Which is why, when Carlos yanks the pull-ring in the center of the silver thing, setting off the high-decibel siren, Iron-Guts recoils with a harsh grunt of surprise and pain—”AHHH?”—and puts his hands to his ears.

All at once the knife is pointing at the ceiling instead of at Carlos, and Carlos doesn't hesitate to take advantage. Badly hurt as he is, as surprised as he is, he's never gone more than half a step over the edge of panic. He knows there are only two ways out of this office, and that the five-story drop from the windows behind him is unacceptable. It must be the door, and that means he must deal with The General.

Near the top of the screaming gunshell, about eight inches beyond the pull-ring, is a promising red button. As The General lunges forward again, Carlos thrusts the gunshell gadget at him and pushes the button. He's hoping for acid.

A cloud of white stuff billows from the pinhole in the very tip of the gunshell and envelops the General. Hi-Pro gas isn't acid—not quite—but it isn't cotton candy, either. The General feels as if a swarm of biting insects (Gnats from Hell) had just settled on the wet and delicate surfaces of his eyes. These same insects pour up his nostrils, and the General suspends breathing at once.

Like Carlos, he keeps control. He knows he's been gassed. Even blinded, he can deal with that, has dealt with it before. It's the siren that's really screwing up his action. It's bludgeoning his brains.

He falls back toward the door, pressing his free hand against his left ear and waving the knife in front of him, creating what he hopes will be a zone of serious injury.

And then, oh praise God, the siren quits. Maybe its Taiwanese circuits are defective; maybe the nine-volt battery which powered it just ran out of juice. Hecksler doesn't give Shit One which it is. All he knows is that he can think again, and this fills his warrior's heart with gratitude.

With luck, however, the D. S. won't know he's got it back together. A little acting is in order. Hecksler staggers against the side of the door, still screaming. He allows the knife to drop. His eyes, he knows, are swelling shut. If Carlos buys his ruse—

Carlos does. The doorway is clear. The man sagging against one side of it is out of action, must be out of action after that. Carlos tries to give him another spray for good measure, but this time when he triggers the button there's nothing but an impotent phut sound and a little gasp of something like steam. No matter. Time to get while the getting is good. Carlos staggers for the office doorway, his blood-sodden pants sticking to his legs. He is already thinking, in a hysterical and unformed way, about emergency rooms and assumed names.

The General is blind and the General is deaf, but his nose hasn't swelled entirely shut and he catches that dark, peaty odor which Frank DeFelice noticed in the elevator. He straightens up and lashes out at the center of the smell. The Army-Navy hunting knife goes into Carlos's chest up to the hilt, skewering the Mad Florist's heart like a piece of beef on a shish kabob. If he had been at Cony Island with Sandra and Dina, Iron-Guts undoubtedly would have won a teddy bear.

Carlos takes two shuffling steps backward, tearing the knife out of the General's grip. He looks down at it unbelievingly and utters a single incoherent word. It sounds like Iggala (not that the General can hear it), but it's probably Abbalah. He tries to pull the knife free and cannot. His legs fold up and he drops to his knees. He is still pulling feebly at the hilt when he falls forward, pushing the tip of the blade all the way out through the back of his jacket. His heart gives a final spasm around the knife that has outraged it and then quits. Carlos feels a sensation of flying as the stained and filthy piece of laundry which is his soul finally flies off the line of his life and into whatever world there comes next.

11:33 A. M.

Iron-Guts can't see, but he knows when his enemy dies—he feels the passage of the son of a bitch's soul, and good goddam riddance. He staggers in the doorway, lost in a world of black space and streaming white dots like galaxies.

“Now what?” he croaks.

The first thing is to get away from the gas the Designated Spic shot into his face. Hecksler backs into the hall, breathing as shallowly as possible, and then a voice speaks to him.

This way, Tony, it says calmly. Turn portside. I'm going to lead you out.

“Doug?” Hecksler croaks.

Yep. It's me, General MacArthur says. You're not exactly looking squared away, Tony, but you're still standing at the end of the fight, and that's the important thing. Turn portside, now. Walk forty paces, and that's gonna take you to the elevator.

Iron-Guts has lost his usually formidable sense of direction, but with that voice to guide him, he doesn't need it. He turns portside, which happens to be directly away from the reception area and the elevator. Blind, now facing toward the ivy-choked far end of the hallway, he begins to walk, trailing one hand along the wall. At first he thinks the soft touch slithering around his shoulders are Dougout Doug's guiding hands... but how can they be so thin? How can there be so many fingers? And what is that bitter smell?

Then Zenith is winding itself around his neck, shutting off his air, yanking him forward into its cannibal embrace. Hecksler tries to scream. Leaf-decked branches, slender but horribly strong, leap eagerly into his mouth. One wraps around the leathery meat of his tongue and yanks it out. Others thrust their way down his elderly gullet, anxious to sample the digestive stew of the General's last meal (two doughnuts, a cup of black coffee, and half a roll of antacids). Zenith loops bracelets of ivy around his arms and thighs. It fashions a new belt around his waist. It picks his pockets, spilling out a mostly nonsensical strew of litter: receipts, memoranda to himself, a guitar pick, twenty or thirty dollars in assorted change and currency, one of the S&H stamp-books in which he wrote his dispatches.

Anthony “Iron-Guts” Hecksler is pulled briskly into the jungle which now infests the rear of the fifth floor with his clothes shredding and his pockets turned out, feeding the plant the blood of insanity, bringing it to full life and consciousness, and here he passes out of our tale forever.