“But one of the calls was from—”
“I said everything, Shawna. I’ll get to them as soon as I can.”
“Whatever you say, sir.” She watched him curiously until he’d disappeared into his office.
Beyond the glass windows, endless waves of homes and concrete stretched off into the smog. On a clear day you could see the Pacific from Huddy’s west-facing window. But today was not a clear day. Late summer days in Los Angeles rarely are. Like most of his fellow citizens, however, he’d acclimated himself to the brown-yellow haze which passed for air in the L.A. basin. The view was old-hat anyway.
He spent a moment behind his desk contemplating the grain in the walnut, then thumbed the intercom. “Shawna?”
“Yes, Mr. Huddy?”
“Ring Ruth Somerset for me, will you?”
“Yes sir.” A pause, then, “No answer, sir.”
“Damn. Forget it.” He flipped off the com and turned to the computer terminal which occupied the left side of his desk. Carefully he activated the screen. Ruth could do this much faster, he knew, but since she wasn’t available he’d try locating the information himself. He was too anxious to wait for her return. Nothing else mattered now. Not the calls he was supposed to return, not Ruth, not their planned vacation. All that mattered was finding an explanation for Jake Pickett’s little parlor tricks.
The computer responded promptly to the secret key which protected the information concerning the site clean-up project. Discreet codes brought forth a list of several hundred names. A list very dangerous to CCM. It gave the names and backgrounds of everyone who had lived in close proximity to the dump whose illnesses the toxicologists believed were directly attributable to that proximity.
It took only seconds to find Pickett’s name among them. Some would have taken longer. Those who now lived in Mexico, for example.
PICKETT, JAKE. Black letters on a white screen stared back at him. Huddy balanced his chin in his left hand, the index finger slowly stroking the slight cleft there as he studied the readout.
The information was not new but he reread it anyway. Pickett had grown up next to the dump. So had his parents. That was something of a surprise. The stucco house didn’t look that old, but it wasn’t hard to stucco over older materials. Stone, for example, or adobe.
This time he paid particular attention to the history of the sister Pickett had mentioned. She’d moved away subsequent to the death of both parents. Ended up in Houston, where she’d married. One daughter, apparently normal (so far, anyway, Huddy thought). Divorced. Died. The basics of one’s life can be compressed into a very small space. Huddy read on.
The daughter’s name was Wendy. She would be Pickett’s niece. Moved out of Houston and eventually married the part owner-operator of a commercial fishing boat, an Arriaga Ramirez. Two children: a son Martin, currently a junior at Texas A & M, and a sixteen-year-old daughter named Amanda. Both children likewise apparently healthy and normal.
That is, they had been born that way. The daughter had been paralyzed in both legs since a bus accident at the age of ten. Tough, Huddy thought. It’s a tough world.
Both of Pickett’s, parents had died young. Three deaths from cancer in the same family, the source of which might lie in the now sanitized dump. Huddy felt no remorse over the deaths of Pickett’s mother and father and sister. That had all happened before he’d come to work for CCM. He bore no moral responsibility for what had happened to them. He was sorry for the grandniece, though. A lousy thing to happen to any kid.
What was important was that there was ample evidence for the theory that living so close to the dump for so long had affected the bodies of the Pickett family. Why be afraid of it, he told himself? Where there’s evidence of genetic damage there can also be genetic improvement. Since the cleansing of the Cadillac a single word had erupted in his mind. It was still pulsing strongly there, still waiting to be denied.
Telekinesis. The ability to move objects without touching them physically, through the use of some sort of mental energy. Scientists scoffed at it, magazines drew readers by mentioning it, tests regarding it were often maddeningly inconclusive. What sort of tests? Bottle caps slipping untouched from their bottles? Dirt tumbling from the underside of a mud-spattered car? Were those valid tests, on which industrial empires might be raised? Hardly.
El hombre magico, the neighborhood kids called Pickett. The magic man, who amused them with his tricks and thereby made life a little easier for their parents. Huddy doubted a single adult had ever taken the time to witness any of Pickett’s tricks. They were for children, after all. Even if they had, what would they have seen? A little stage magic, that’s all.
But Huddy wasn’t so easily fooled. What about the niece, this Wendy? Could she perform parlor tricks too? There was no indication of it in the records, but then there’d been nothing of the kind of Pickett either. It wasn’t the sort of thing information gatherers would bother to report.
The Ramirez family lived in the town of Port Lavaca. That meant nothing to Huddy, who was much more familiar with the suburbs of London and Hong Kong. The fact that Port Lavaca lay on the South Texas coast between the cities of Houston and Corpus Christi meant more to him. CCM had considerable interests in Houston.
He switched to a different body of information. Yes, there it was, the big refining plant that was part of CCM’s petrochemical division. It was located south of Houston on Matagorda Bay, not far from Port Lavaca itself. Interesting, but not particularly useful.
He studied the screen as he reactivated the intercom. “Shawna, try Ms. Somerset’s office for me again, will you?” A longer pause than last time before a new, familiar voice sounded over the speaker. It was cool and polite, all business. It had to be. Others were listening.
“Mr. Huddy? Ruth Somerset here.”
Huddy smiled to himself. “I have some questions for your division, Ms. Somerset, that I’d rather not discuss over the intercom. I know you’re busy, but could you possibly spare me a minute or two?”
“You’re certain it’s important?” There was a sigh of exasperation. “You’re right about my being busy.”
“I’m very sorry, but I need your services urgently.” He could see her grinning at the other end of the line.
“If it’s really urgent, then. I’ll be right up.”
He contemplated procedures while he waited for her. It wasn’t long until she strode into his office. Neat and formal, as always. Black skirt, off-white blouse and black vest. Ruffled sleeves, dark hose, single gold necklace. Black shoes. Professional as all get-out. He wondered what his colleagues, who considered Somerset something of the local ice queen, would have thought if they could have seen the kind of underwear the assistant chief of computer operations usually wore beneath her business suits and dresses.
Her gaze shifted quickly to the still lit terminal. “Found something in myjiles?”
“I can always find something in your files.” He forced himself to turn serious. “Have a seat.”
“Really, Benjy, this had better be important.” She pursed her lips. “I have a lot to catch up on.”
“Important’s not the word. I’m preparing to sound the abyss. To run out on a limb and see how far I can go before it breaks under me. Getting ready to make a three-meter dive into a bucket of murky water.”
“You’re also being obscure.”
“Not intentionally. It’s just that I’m a little overwhelmed by some recently unearthed possibilities.”
“What kinds of possibilities?” She crossed perfect legs, waiting for him to get to the point.
“You recall the one possible troublemaker I was concerned about when we were up at the site several days ago?”
She thought a moment, then shook her head.
“His name was Pickett. Jake Pickett.”
