“And maybe there’s one I’m not seeing for what this Pickett can do. Come on, Ruth, you know me. I’m the strictest pragmatist you’ve ever met. I’m not given to flights of fancy and I require hard evidence before I’ll believe a plane can fly or a new employee can do the job. But dammit Ruth, I saw this! It happened. It happened right in front of my eyes. I hadn’t been drinking and I wasn’t high.”
“You saw what happen?” Her voice was calm now, careful. She didn’t want to antagonize him, and he was so positive.
“I saw him remove bottle caps from tightly capped beer bottles without touching them. I was holding the bottles, and I’d tried the caps first. They were on tight.”
Somerset leaned back in the chair. The white blouse and black skirt were suddenly pulled taut over a deceptively voluptuous body and for a moment Huddy had another kind of tight on his mind.
“Bottle caps. For bottle caps you drop everything and run around shouting that the sky is falling?”
“Not just that, no,” he said, unmoved by her sarcasm. “After that he asked if I wanted to see another trick. I said that I did. So he cleaned my car.”
“What?” She frowned at him.
“He cleaned my car, the Eldo,” Huddy repeated, pleased by her reaction, “without touching it.”
For the first time there was a hint of real interest in her voice. She wasn’t patronizing him now. “He did what?
Huddy rose and began pacing back and forth behind his desk. As he talked his hands stirred the air like those of an Italian traffic cop. He was full of nervous energy and excitement and managed to convey some of both to Ruth.
“I stood there and he volunteered to show me another trick. He said, ‘Your car’s dirty,’ and I said yeah, and the next time I looked at it there wasn’t a speck of road dirt on it. Even the wire wheels looked like they’d just come through the wash. I couldn’t have turned my attention away from it for more than a few seconds. A few seconds. I’d just climbed a filthy dirt road. The underside of the Eldo was all gunked up. This old man grins at it and it’s showroom neat.
“He didn’t wash it off, somehow. I checked for that right away. It was as dry as morning. God knows where any water could’ve come from anyway. I’m thinking about this, thinking hard, all the way back on the Freeway. And the only explanation I can come up with is that somehow he moved that dirt without touching it. So help me.” He stopped pacing and stared at her expectantly.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said slowly.
“Very clever. Move two squares forward. Do not pass Go.”
“Shut up and let me think, lover. You said there were a lot of kids around and that this Pickett plays with them a lot. Maybe they had something going together. Maybe the kids jiggled the car somehow when you weren’t looking.”
“That road grime was caked on, Ruth. To knock it loose you’d have had to drop the car from ten thousand feet. But your choice of words is propitious. Only I don’t think the car was jiggled. I think the dirt was.”
She considered his attitude as well as his words. She knew Benjamin Huddy pretty well by now. She doubted he was playing some kind of elaborate trick on her. He wasn’t the practical joker type and even if he’d been so inclined, this wasn’t the kind of joke he’d choose to perpetrate.
“I studied all the medical records relevant to site-proximates,” she reminded him. “There are no suggestions of, uh, paranormal abilities in any of the personal histories.”
“Maybe not, but there’s plenty of mention of other kinds of abnormal developments. Premature deaths among children born to site-proximate parents. Physical deformities. Why not mental deformities as well? If Pickett’s the only one, it’s hardly surprising that nothing would appear on his chart.”
“Funny,” Somerset murmured, “if anyone was likely to develop paranormally, Pickett’s family would be the likely place to look for one.”
“Exactly,” said Huddy. “Both of his parents and his sister developed cancer. I’m surmising that the same carcinogens that killed them also affected Pickett, but in a non-fatal and highly unique fashion. He has heart trouble. That’s probably traceable to site exposure. He also has something else.”
“You really think this is worth pursuing, Benjy?”
He nodded slowly. “And then some.”
“Alright. How do you intend to proceed?”
“First I need to make arrangements to have Pickett watched. Particularly when any of the local kids gather around him. We should be able to monitor him fairly tightly even at a distance. Use Foraker’s people. They’re pros and they’re patient, and they won’t ask unnecessary questions.”
Somerset nodded, making mental notes. “What am I supposed to tell them to look for?”
“Parlor tricks. Sleight of hand. Anything out of the ordinary. I want anything he does for those kids videotaped. This is all superficial anyway. We’ll really find things out when Pickett arrives for his tests.”
“He agreed to submit to testing?” Somerset’s eyebrows lifted.
“He thinks he’s coming in for a free medical exam. Which he’ll receive. Only it’ll be a lot more extensive and sophisticated than he thinks. Why shouldn’t he come in? There’s no reason for him to think we have an unusual interest in him.”
“You said he was sharper than he first appeared. Native cunning, you called it. What if he gets suspicious? What if he finds out that you’re interested in him because you think living next to the dumpsite has had some kind of permanent effect on him? Perhaps he already suspects it may have had something to do with the premature deaths of his parents and sister. You do anything to reinforce that belief and he’s liable to go looking for someone official to complain to.”
“You’re right. We’ll have to be careful about that. I wouldn’t worry about it. If he learns too much and it looks like he’s going to make trouble and he’s not worth hanging onto, he can always have a convenient heart attack. He may have one anyway. It shouldn’t be a problem. None of his neighbors are what you’d call close friends. His only relatives live halfway across the country and there’s no indication that he has frequent contact with them. We should be able to do pretty much what we please with him.”
“I’ll do what I can to help, Benjy. You know that. I also want you to know that I don’t buy a word of what you’ve said.”
“Think what it could mean, though, if I’m right about Pickett. If his mind has been altered somehow and it’s connected to his living conditions, we might be able to replicate them in sufficient detail to reproduce the results. Not here, of course, but some of our South American facilities could handle the work. Sure, it’d be dangerous. We’d probably lose some Indian ‘volunteers.’ It’d be worth all the trouble and risk, though, if we could isolate a specific which could induce the same talent in others.”
“If Pickett possesses any such ability,” she reminded him skeptically.
“Sure, sure. It would take several generations to appear. I’d bet that the DNA of Pickett’s parents was affected first, and then the mutation intensified in Pickett and maybe his sister as well. Other factors intervened in the case of the sister. She was a dead end.”
“What good to us is a discovery that may take generations to confirm?”
“All we have to do is prove that Pickett has the ability. We’ll have anything we want while we work to confirm it. Our own division, maybe, autonomous within the corporate structure. All the money and freedom anyone could desire. Our own company. How’d you like living in South America?”
“I’m not sure. I hadn’t given it much thought lately.”
“Think about it. You could be a queen down there.”
“Royalty doesn’t appeal to me. And you’d better slow yourself down until we have some facts to show around. Nothing’s proven yet, remember?”
“So I admit to being enthusiastic. Can you blame me?” He put both hands on the desk. “I take full responsibility. But I need your help, sweetness. We can handle most of it on our own time anyway. The company doesn’t have to know a thing until we decide it’s time to tell them. In fact, it’s better the company doesn’t know. If this turns out to be as important as I think it will, we may want to shop it around.
‘That’s another reason why I want to use Foraker on surveillance. He’ll report directly and solely to you.” He came around the desk, put both hands on her shoulders and spoke with quiet intensity.
“This could do it for us, sweetness. Every dream we’ve ever had, every wish you’ve ever made, could all come true. It’s all tied up in some freak talent an old man has, and I don’t think he even knows he has it. Best of all, if I’m wrong, neither he nor the company is likely to hurt us.”
At the board meeting later that afternoon, Shapeleigh, the Senior Vice-President in charge of general operations, surprised Huddy and everyone else by making a brief but formal speech commending him for his work in the “Riverside matter.” It was one thing to receive commendation on your record, something else to have it spelled out in front of all your colleagues. Huddy enjoyed every word.
Apparently the county inspectors had been all over the dumpsite. They’d evidently expected to find a real sore spot. Instead they’d been forced to leave puzzled and frustrated, much to the delight of the properly outraged company representatives who’d accompanied them. All those reports of terrible smells issuing from the little valley had evidently been exaggerated or plain falsified by the largely immigrant population living nearby.
Oh, there’d been some evidence of soil contamination, but nothing serious. Nothing life-threatening. As for the presence in the area of chronically ill children and adults, well, there was no way to prove their diseases were the result of living next to the valley. Not without spending a lot of money, which Huddy and others within CCM had correctly surmised the county did not have.
There was one inspector who seemed inclined to pursue the matter further, but he was too busy planning his extensive South France vacation to quibble over such minor troubles. No point to beating a dead horse, especially on such slim evidence of wrongdoing.
As for questioning those people who lived near the site, the inspectors had departed in such a disgruntled mood that the company representative who’d accompanied them reported it as unlikely that any questioning would ever take place.
Yes, Huddy and Ruth Somerset were owed the thanks of Consolidated Chemical and Mining’s entire organization. Shapeleigh beamed paternally across the long table at Huddy while delivering this corporate benediction, and Huddy’s colleagues and competitors gnashed their teeth in private frustration. They’d missed this chance and Huddy hadn’t. It grieved them deeply.
Later, when the others had departed, Shapeleigh drew Huddy aside and offered his personal congratulations. There was talk of large amounts of money as well as hints of vacancies to be filled in the near future. Huddy listened politely, appreciatively, but only with half a mind.
