The Plant. Part 3

So that was that.

I looked at Tyndale.

Tyndale looked back at me.

After a moment or two he softened. "For whatever it's worth, Mr. Kenton, that particular photo did look real...real as h.e.l.l. But so do the effects in some of these horror movies. There's one guy-Tom Savini-and the effects he does-"

"So they let him go." A dread was surfacing inside my head like one of those little Russian submarines the Swedes are never quite able to trap.

"For whatever else it's worth, your a.s.s is covered with three sets of skivvies and four sets of pants, the middle two sets iron-clad," Tyndale said, and then added, with a sobriety that was positively Alexander Haigian: "I'm speaking legally-wise, you understand. You acted in good faith, as a citizen. If the guy could prove malice, that would be one thing...but h.e.l.l, you didn't even know him."

The submarine came up a little more. Because I felt right then like I was starting to know him, Ruth, and my feelings about Carlos Detweiller were not then and are not now anything I would describe as jolly or benign.

"Besides, it's never the informant they want to sue for false arrest anyway-it's the cop who came and read them their rights and then took them downtown in a car with no doorhandles in the back doors."

Informant. That was the source of the dread. The submarine was all the way up, floating on the surface like a dead fish in the moonlight. Informant. I didn't know Carlos Detweiller from a psychic begonia...but he knew something about me. Not that I was the head of the Brown University literary soci ety, or that I'm prematurely balding, or that I'm engaged to marry a pretty miss from Pasadena named Ruth Tanaka...not any of those things (and please G.o.d, not my home address, never my home address), but he knows I'm the editor who had him taken into custody for a murder he did not commit.

"Do you know," I asked him, "if Iverson or anyone else at the Central Falls Police Department mentioned me to him by name?"

Tyndale lit a cigarette. "No," he said, "but I'm pretty sure no one there did."

"Why not?"

"It would have been unprofessional. When you're building a case- even one that dies as fast as this one did-every name the perp doesn't know or even might not know becomes a poker chip."

Any relief I might have felt was short-lived.

"But the guy would have to be pretty dumb not to know. Unless, that is, he mailed the photos to every publisher in New York. Think he might have done that?"

"No," I said dismally. "No other publisher in New York would have responded to his query letter in the first place."

"I see."

Tyndale was up, clearing away the styrofoam coffee cups, making those end-of-the-party gestures that meant he was hoping I'd put an egg in my shoe and beat it.

"One more question and I'll get out of your hair," I said. "The other photos were obvious fakes. Pitiful. How come they look so bad and these other fakes look so d.a.m.n good?"

"Maybe Detweiller himself set up the 'Sakred Seance' photos and someone else-Central Fall's answer to Tom Savini, say-made up the 'sakrifice victim.' Or maybe Detweiller did them all and purposely made the other ones look bad so you'd take these more seriously."

"Why would he do that?"

"So you'd stub your toe just the way you have, maybe. Maybe that's how he gets off."

"But he got arrested in the process!"He looked at me, almost pityingly. "Here's a guy who's in a bar, Mr. Kenton, and he's got these cigarette loads. So just for a joke, he loads up one of his buddy's cigarettes while his buddy's in the john or picking out some tunes on the juke. Seems to him like the funniest idea in the world at the time, even though the buddy's sense of humor only begins when a load explodes in someone else's cigarette, and the guy doing the loading now should know it. So the buddy comes back, and pretty soon he gets to the loaded pill. Takes two puffs and ka-bang! Tobacco all over his face, powderburns on his fingers, and he spills his beer in his lap. And his buddy-his previous buddy-is sitting there on the next stool, just about laughing himself into a hemorrhage. Do you see all that?"

"Yes," I said reluctantly, because I did.

"Now the guy loading the cigarette was not a feeb, although I got to say that in my own personal estimation a guy who thinks loading another guy's cigarette is funny is a little bit deficient in the sensa-yuma department. But even if his sensa-yuma starts with some guy getting the s.h.i.+t scared out of him and spilling his beer all over his b.a.l.l.s, you'd think a guy who wasn't a feeb would be at least interested enough in keeping his teeth inside his head not to do it. Yet they do. They do it all the f.u.c.king time. Now, being a literary man-"

(He obviously didn't know about Gash Me, My Darling, Ants from h.e.l.l, and the forthcoming Flies from h.e.l.l, Ruth) "-can you tell me why he goes ahead, and ends up picking his teeth up offa the bar on account of he might be able to hawk the fillings?"

"Because he has no sense of futurity," I said dismally, and for the first time, Ruth, I felt as if I could really see Carlos Detweiller.

"Huh? I don't know that word."

"He doesn't know-isn't able to see ahead to the outcome."

"Yeah, you're a literary man, all right. I couldn't have said it that good in a thousand years."

"And that's my answer?"

"That's your answer." He clapped me on the shoulder and led me toward the door. "Go home, Mr. Kenton. Have a drink, a shower, and then another drink. Watch some TV. Get a night's sleep. You did your duty as a citizen, for Christ's sake. Most people would have just tossed those pictures aside...or saved them for their sc.r.a.pbooks. That sounds weird, but I'm a police-type guy, not a literary-type guy, and I know that some people do that, too. Go home. Forget it. And content yourself with this-if the guy's book is as bad as you said, you just sent him one h.e.l.l of a rejection slip."

So I did just what he said, m'darling-went home, had a drink, had a shower, had a meal, had another drink, watched TV, went to bed. Then after about three hours in the rack with no sleep-I kept seeing that picture, with the slit in the chest and the dripping heart-I got up, had about three more drinks, watched a John Wayne movie called Wake of the Red Witch on TV (John Wayne looks a lot better in a GI helmet than he does in a diving helmet, I want to tell you), went to bed again, and woke up with a hangover.

It's been a couple of days since all of this went down, and I think- think-that things are beginning to return to normal, both at Zenith House and inside my head. I think (think) it's over-but it's going to be one of those Incidents that haunt me all my life, I guess, like the dreams I used to have as a kid in which I stood up to salute the flag and my pants fell down. Or, even better, there was the time Bill Gelb, my ill.u.s.trious co-editor at Zenith, told me about. He said he told this joke to a guy at a c.o.c.ktail party: How do you stop five black guys from raping a white chick? Answer: give them a bas ketball. "I thought the guy I told it to just had a good tan until he threw his drink in my face and walked away," Bill said. That's the kind of story I could never tell on myself, which may be one of the reasons I haven't lost all of my respect for Bill, although he's a bigoted, lazy, horse's a.s.s. All of which is to say I feel sort of like a horse's a.s.s...but at least it's over. If all of this seems to make me a hysteric-someone who would eagerly testify at the Salem witch-trials-please write and break our engagement soonest...because if that's the case, I wouldn't marry me either.

As for me, I'm sort of clinging to what Tyndale said-that I acted in good faith as a citizen. The one thing I'll not do is send you the photos, which were returned to me today. They might give you the sort of dreams I've been having-and those dreams are definitely ungood. I've come to the conclusion that all special effects wizards must be frustrated surgeons. In fact, if Roger gives me the okay, I'm going to burn them.

I love you, Ruth.

Your adoring horse's a.s.s, John

from the office of the editor-in-chief

TO: John Kenton DATE: 2/2/81

MESSAGE: Go ahead and burn them. I never want to hear about Carlos Detweiller again.

Listen, John-a little excitement's fine, but if we don't start some action here at Zenith, we're all going to be looking for jobs. I've heard that Apex may be hunting buyers. Which is like looking for dodo birds or pterodactyls. We've got got to have a book or books that will make some noise by this summer, and that means we better start looking yesterday. Start shaking the trees, okay? to have a book or books that will make some noise by this summer, and that means we better start looking yesterday. Start shaking the trees, okay?

Roger

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

t o: Roger f r o m: John r e: Tree-shaking

What trees? Zenith House exists on the Great Plains of American publis.h.i.+ng, and you d.a.m.ned well know it.

John

from the office of the editor-in-chief

TO: John Kenton DATE: 2/3/81

MESSAGE: Find a tree or find a job. That's all there is, sweets.

Roger

February 4, 1981 Mr. John "Judas Priest" Kenton

Zenith a.s.shole-House, Publishers of Kaka

490 Avenue of Dog-s.h.i.+t NewYork, New York 10017

Dear Judas, This is the thanks I get for giving you my book. Okay, I understand. I should have known what to expect. You think you are SO SMART. Okay. I understand. You are really nothing but a dirty betraying b.a.s.t.a.r.d. How much have you stolen. Plenty, I would guess. You think you are SO SMART but you are nothing but a "Warped Plank" in "the GREAT FLOOR OF THE UNIVERSE." There are ways to deal with GUYS LIKE YOU. You probably think I am going to come and get you. But I am not. I would not "dirty my hands with your dirt," as Mr. Keen used to say. But I can fix you if I want. And I want! I WANT!!!!

Meantime you have spoiled everything here so I suppose you are satisfied. That doesn't matter. I have gone West. I would say "f.u.c.k you" but who would. Not me. I wouldn't even if I was a girl and you were Richard Gear. I wouldn't if you was some really neat girl with a good build.

Well I am going away but my material is copywright and I just hope you know what copywright is even if you don't know "s.h.i.+t" from "shoe-polish." So you just put that in your pipe and smoke it all the day long Mr. Judas Kenton. Goodbye.

I hate you,

Carlos Detweiller

In Transit U.S. of A.