“Yeah.” Huddy feigned disinterest. Board meetings gave him plenty of practice at that. “Yeah, I’d like to see some more. You going to get some more bottles?”

“Naw. You’ve seen that trick.” Pickett leaned on the barrier. It creaked, the vandalized “dead end” sign threatening to fall permanently from its moorings. He nodded toward the Eldorado. “Your car’s awful dirty.”

“It’s a dirt road.” He wondered what Pickett was leading up to. At the same time he was irritated that the old man had noticed. There was mud coating the front end of the big car and the wire wheels were plastered with light brown.

“C’mon,” Huddy urged him, “what are you going to do?”

“Already done it.” Pickett stood up against the barrier. “Looked at your car lately?”

Huddy glanced over his shoulder and the sight hit him like a brick between the eyes. The mud and dirt had disappeared; not just from the front of the car but from the underside and the wire wheels as well. Slowly he walked around the Eldorado. Even the underside of the back end was spotless.

The soda pop trick had intrigued him. The business with the beer bottles had really piqued his curiosity. Now he just stood there stunned, gaping at the car. Easy, he told himself. Don’t rush things. Look for the logical explanations. Don’t go off half-cocked.

“How did you do that?”

Pickett shrugged. “Like I said. It’s a trick. It’s nothing special.”

“I don’t see any water. There’s no air hose. How did you do it?” His tone was running away with itself and he forced himself to relax, to calm down. “Mr. Pickett, would you mind taking a medical exam?”

“Now I told you, sonny,” the old man reminded him, “I’m not interested in your guard job or any—”

“No, no.” Huddy hastened to reassure him. “Nothing like that. Forget about Security Masters … Masters Security,” he hurriedly corrected himself. “What I mean to say is, the exam date is already set up for you. The doctors involved are company. If you don’t show for the exam the doctor in charge will just get a couple of hours off. Seems a shame to waste it. I meant to mention it to you before. You’d end up with a complete rundown on your general physical condition, at no charge.”

“I don’t like hospitals.” Pickett frowned uncertainly.

“Neither do I.I use these same doctors,” he lied feverishly. “You’d get executive care.”

Pickett chuckled then. “Sounds like fun. I haven’t been to the doc in quite a while. Medicare and Medicaid don’t like to pay for general checkups. Don’t guess it would hurt me none.”

“Of course not, not at all. Like I say, it seems a shame to waste the opening. Don’t worry about the money. It means nothing to the company.”

“I still feel a little funny about it, Huddy. Me not accepting the job and all.”

“Look on it as a repayment for the beer,” Huddy said soothingly. “My company likes to do things for senior citizens. If we can’t persuade you to take the job, at least we can leave you as healthy as when we found you. We do this sort of thing all the time.”

“Can’t you give some other guy my spot?”

Huddy shook his head. “Our appointments aren’t set up that way. Either you use this one or it goes to waste. Come on, Jake. Our company doctors make enough as it is without having to work for it.”

That hit a nerve. Pickett had seen plenty of what went on and didn’t go on in the offices of physicians who accepted many Medicare recipients.

“Sonny, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Thanks, Jake. You know, seeing you living here like this, above a chemical dump, there’s no telling what might’ve gotten into your system. Our doctors are a cut above the kind the county works with. If there’s anything that’s gunked you up inside, they’ll find it and fix it.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve sold me. You sure there won’t be no charge, now?”

“Not a dime,” said Huddy briskly. “I promise you.” He hefted the bottle and took another swallow as if to demonstrate his good intentions.

“Well, when’s my appointment?”

“Couple of days. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Don’t you have it down with those papers?" Pickett nodded toward the clipboard.

“Uh, no. No need to carry that information around with me. Why? You planning to be out of town?”

Pickett laughed. “I’ve got more time than anything else, Huddy. Where do I have to go?”

“I’ll send you all the information as soon as I get back to my office.” He looked around the dead end. “Do you have a car?”

Pickett turned and pointed to an ambiguous blue frame parked down the street. “That’s mine. She’s old so she’s hell on gas, but she runs. Just because I ain’t got no room for a garage doesn’t mean I’m afoot. Remember, sonny, I’m a native Angelino.”

“Silly of me. You think you can find the office I’ll direct you to?”

“Just because I live out here in the boonies doesn’t mean I don’t get around, Huddy. I’ve driven this country all my life. You just have your people shoot me the instructions and I’ll find my way.”

“Fine. I’ll be in touch, then. You’re doing a right thing, Jake.”

“I try to.” He reached out to shake the younger man’s hand, waited until Huddy switched the bottle to his left palm. “Hey, don’t get the idea I’m not appreciative. I am. Just wanted to make sure you don’t plan to have some young fool standing by to point out what great medical care I’d get if I accepted your job.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Huddy softly. “I promise you that your exam will be a completely relaxing experience.”

V

The young executive had to restrain himself from challenging the limits of the dirt road, but once back on the Riverside Freeway he quickly pushed the speedometer up to eighty. He’d hold it there so long as the fuzzbuster on the Eldorado’s dash remained silent.

Likewise the engines of thought were working at high speed. Again and again he uncapped beer bottles in his mind’s eye: tiny little circles of metal sliding off glass rims as easily as if both had been coated with teflon. Pickett just standing there enjoying his astonishment, grinning that dumb ignorant old man grin of his as cold beer foamed over Huddy’s right hand. Huddy looked at his sleeve, was glad of the stain that darkened it. That much, at least, he had not dreamt.

Then the Eldorado sitting at the end of the road, one moment coated with road grime and grit, the next selling-lot clean. The car had shed its dirt, the bottles their caps, and Huddy some strongly held preconceived notions.

Now the cautionary warning signs which had often saved him before began to come to life in his mind. He slowed the car, dropping back down to just above the speed limit. No matter how promising a project seemed at first, there were inevitably hidden flaws, concealed problems not readily apparent at first sight.

Think carefully, he admonished himself. Could there be any other explanations for the bottle cap trick? Ten minutes later he had to admit there were several. But what about his suddenly cleansed Cadillac? Try as he would he could not conceive of a single method whereby Pickett could have removed encrusted dirt from the sides and undercarriage of the car. That left only inconceivable methods, and that’s what had excited Huddy and kept his mind working furiously.

There was something at work here he didn’t understand. It was not magic, it was not sleight-of-hand. Evidently Pickett didn’t understand it either. That didn’t matter. What mattered was what use could be made of it.

Huddy prided himself on staying abreast of current events and developments outside the narrow circle of CCM’s interests. He read more than just Forbes, Business Week and Fortune, tried to see beyond the trade journals that were required reading for CCM management. He read for entertainment as well as business, and he’d matured in an age when the impossible was only a microchip away from reality. So he had an idea, if he wasn’t going completely mad, what Jake Pickett’s tricks might portend, where a less widely-read individual might have shrugged them off indifferently.

Maybe he was going off the deep end, he told himself. Maybe he’d make a fool of himself by pursuing his suspicions and hopes because he was overlooking something painfully obvious. Maybe. But the success of the site clean-up had gained him so much credit within the company that now was the time to chance a small failure. If he was wildly wrong about Pickett, and there was a perfectly good chance that he was, then he’d swallow his embarrassment and put it quickly behind him. Anyway, it would all be done so quietly that his superiors and colleagues ought not to notice what was going on. He had an excellent chance of announcing his success or smothering any failure. It was definitely a risk worth taking.

He was thinking so hard that he missed his off-ramp, had to take Overland and double back on Pico. He swung up Century Boulevard and vanished into one of the subterranean parking lots whose exits lined the street like the maws of so many ant lions. The security guard waved at him as he drove past.

He slipped into his spot, took the express elevator to the twenty-eighth floor, and headed for his office, barely acknowledging the waves and comments of his coworkers. Shawna, his secretary, was waiting for him.

“Hello, Mr. Huddy. You’ve been missed.” She checked a pad. “There are six calls you have to return. The first was from Mister—”

“Hold everything.” He waved a hand at her, the hand holding the clipboard.