Firestarter

“Come on, big boy,” this one said. “Little walk.”

Andy smiled foolishly, but inside, the terror had begun. Something had happened. Something bad had happened; they didn’t send guys like this if it was something good. Perhaps he had been found out. In fact, that was the most likely thing. “Where t0?”

“Just come on.”

He was taken to the elevator, but when they got off in the ballroom, they went farther into the house instead of outside. They passed the secretarial pool, entered a. smaller room where a secretary ran off correspondence on an IBM typewriter.

“Go right in,” she said.

They passed her on the right and went through a door into a small study with a bay window that gave a view of the duckpond through a screen of low alders. Behind an old-fashioned roll-top desk sat an elderly man with a sharp, intelligent face; his cheeks were ruddy, but from sun and wind rather than liquor, Andy thought.

He looked up at Andy, then nodded at the two men who had brought him in. “Thank you. You can wait outside.”

They left.

The man behind the desk looked keenly at Andy, who looked back blandly, still smiling a bit. He hoped to God he wasn’t overdoing it. “Hello, who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Captain Hollister, Andy. You can call me Cap. They tell me I am in charge of this here rodeo.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Andy said. He let his smile widen a little. Inside, the tension screwed itself up another notch.

“I’ve some sad news for you, Andy.”

(oh God no it’s Charlie something’s happened to Charlie)

Cap was watching him steadily with those small, shrewd eyes, eyes caught so deeply in their pleasant nets of small wrinkles that you almost didn’t notice how cold and studious they were.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Cap said, and fell silent for a moment. And the silence spun out agonizingly.

Cap had fallen into a study of his hands, which were neatly folded on the blotter in front of him. It was all Andy could do to keep from leaping across the desk and throttling him. Then Cap looked up.

“Dr. Pynchot is dead, Andy. He killed himself last night.”

Andy’s jaw dropped in unfeigned surprise. Alternating waves of relief and horror raced through him. And over it all, like a boiling sky over a confused sea, was the realization that this changed everything… but how? How?

Cap was watching him. He suspects. He suspects something. But are his suspicions serious or only a part of his job?

A hundred questions. He needed time to think and he had no time. He would have to do his thinking on his feet. “That surprises you?” Cap asked.

“He was my friend,” Andy said simply, and had to close his mouth to keep from saying more. This man would listen to him patiently; he would pause long after Andy’s every remark (as he was pausing now) to see if Andy would plunge on, the mouth outracing the mind. Standard interrogation technique. And there were man-pits in these woods; Andy felt it strongly. It had been an echo, of course. An echo that had turned into a ricochet. He had pushed Pynchot and started a ricochet and it had torn the man apart. And for all of that, Andy could not find it in his heart to be sorry. There was horror… and there was a caveman who capered and rejoiced.

“Are you sure it was… I mean, sometimes an accident can look like-”

“I’m afraid it was no accident.”

“He left a note?”

(naming me?)

“He dressed up in his wife’s underwear, went out into the kitchen, started up the garbage disposal, and stuck his arm into it.”

“Oh… my… God.” Andy sat down heavily. If there hadn’t been a chair handy he would have sat on the floor. All the strength” had left his legs. He stared at Cap Hollister with sick horror.

“You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you, Andy?” Cap asked. “You didn’t maybe push him into it?”

“No,” Andy said. “Even if I could still do it, why would I do a thing like that?”

“Maybe because he wanted to send you to the Hawaiians,” Cap said. “Maybe you didn’t want to go to Maui, because your daughter’s here. Maybe you’ve been fooling us all along, Andy.”

And although this Cap Hollister was crawling around on top of the truth, Andy felt a small loosening in his chest. If Cap really thought he had pushed Pynchot into doing that, this interview wouldn’t be going on between just the two of them. No, it was just doing things by the book; that was all. They probably had all they needed to justify suicide in Pynchot’s own file without looking for arcane methods of murder. Didn’t they say that psychiatrists had the highest suicide rate of any profession?

“No, that’s not true at all,” Andy said. He sounded afraid, confused, close to blubbering. “I wanted to go to Hawaii. I told him that. I think that’s why he wanted to make more tests, because I wanted to go. I don’t think he liked me in some ways. But I sure didn’t have anything to do with… with what happened to him.”

Cap looked at him thoughtfully. Their eyes met for a moment and then Andy dropped his gaze.

“Well, I believe you, Andy,” Cap said. “Herm Pynchot had been under a lot of pressure lately. It’s a part of this life we live, I suppose. Regrettable. Add this secret transvestism on top of that, and, well, it’s going to be hard on his wife. Very hard. But we take care of our own, Andy.” Andy could feel the man’s eyes boring into him. “Yes, we always take care of our own. That’s the most important thing.”

“Sure,” Andy said dully.

There was a lengthening moment of silence. After a little bit Andy looked up, expecting to see Cap looking at him. But Cap was staring out at the back lawn and the alders and his face looked saggy and confused and old, the face of a man who has been seduced into thinking of other, perhaps happier, times. He saw Andy looking at him and a small wrinkle of disgust passed over his face and was gone. Sudden sour hate flared inside Andy. Why shouldn’t this Hollister look disgusted? He saw a fat drug addict sitting in front of him-or that was what he thought he saw. But who gave the orders? And what are you doing to my daughter, you old monster?

“Well,” Cap said. “I’m happy to tell you you’ll be going to Maui anyway, Andy-it’san ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody good, or something like that, hmmm? I’ve started the paperwork already.”

“But… listen, you don’t really think I had anything to do with what happened to Dr. Pynchot, do you?”

“No, of course not.” That small and involuntary ripple of disgust again. And this time Andy felt the sick satisfaction that he imagined a black guy who has successfully tommed an unpleasant white must feel. But over this was the alarm brought on by that phrase I’ve started the paperwork already.

“Well, that’s good. Poor Dr. Pynchot.” He looked downcast for only a token instant and then said eagerly, “When am I going?”

“As soon as possible. By the end of next week at the latest.”

Nine days at the outside! It was like a battering ram in his stomach.

“I’ve enjoyed our talk, Andy. I’m sorry we had to meet under such sad and unpleasant circumstances.”

He was reaching for the intercom switch, and Andy suddenly realized he couldn’t let him do that. There was nothing he could do in his apartment with its cameras and listening devices. But if this guy really was the big cheese, this office would be as dead as a doornail: he would have the place washed regularly for bugs. Of course, he might have his own listening devices, but

“Put your hand down,” Andy said, and pushed.

Cap hesitated. His hand drew back and joined its mate on the blotter. He glanced out at the back lawn with that drifting, remembering expression on his face.

“Do you tape meetings in here?”

“No,” Cap said evenly. “For a long time I had a voice-activated Uher-Five thousand-like the one that got Nixon in trouble-but I had it taken out fourteen weeks ago.”

“Why?”

“Because it looked like I was going to lose my job.”

“Why did you think you were going to lose your job?”

Very rapidly, in a kind of litany, Cap said: “No production. No production. No production. Funds must be justified with results. Replace the man at the top. No tapes. No scandal.”

Andy tried to think it through. Was this taking him in a direction he wanted to go? He couldn’t tell, and time was short. He felt like the stupidest, slowest kid at the Easter-egg hunt. He decided he would go a bit further down this trail.

“Why weren’t you producing?”

“No mental-domination ability left in McGee. Permanently tipped over. Everyone in agreement on that. The girl wouldn’t light fires. Said she wouldn’t no matter what. People saying I was fixated on Lot Six. Shot my bolt.” He grinned. “Now it’s okay. Even Rainbird says so.”

Andy renewed the push, and a small pulse of pain began to beat in his forehead. “Why is it okay?”

“Three tests so far. Hockstetter’s ecstatic. Yesterday she flamed a piece of sheet metal. Spot temp over twenty thousand degrees for four seconds, Hockstetter says.”

Shock made the headache worse, made it harder to get a handle on his whirling thoughts. Charlie was lighting fires? What had they done to her? What, in the name of God?

He opened his mouth to ask and the intercom buzzed, jolting him into pushing much harder than he had to. For a moment, he gave Cap almost everything there was. Cap shuddered all over as if he had been whipped with an electric cattle prod. He made a low gagging sound and his ruddy face lost most of its color. Andy’s headache took a quantum leap and he cautioned himself uselessly to take it easy; having a stroke in this man’s office wouldn’t help Charlie.

“Don’t do that,” Cap whined. “Hurts-”

“Tell them no calls for the next ten minutes,” Andy said. Somewhere the black horse was kicking at its stable door, wanting to get out, wanting to run free. He could feel oily sweat running down his cheeks.

The intercom buzzed again. Cap leaned forward and pushed the toggle switch down. His face had aged fifteen years.

“Cap, Senator Thompson’s aide is here with those figures you asked for on Project Leap.”

“No calls for the next ten minutes,” Cap said, and clicked off:

Andy sat drenched in sweat. Would that hold them? Or would they smell a rat? It didn’t matter. As Willy Loman had been so wont to cry, the woods were burning.