Stephen King - The Plant

Roger nodded. “This guy lives downstairs from you, right?”

“Right. He's a stockbroker. Buying vehicles at auction and turning them over is just a sideline. I think he scams the insurance companies when he can, as well. I could have gotten a hearse, actually, but that seemed... I don't know... ostentatious.”

To me, the idea of taking Detweiller to a Jersey landfill in a hurry-up wagon seemed not ostentatious but downright creepy. I kept my mouth shut on the subject, however.

“And this place in Paramus?” John asked. “It's safe? Relatively safe?”

“According to some of the talk I've heard at Ginelli's game, it's as safe as the grave.” Bill saw our faces and grimaced. “To coin a phrase.”

“All right,” Roger said heavily. “Sandra's office looks more or less okay. Let's clean up Herb's and John's and then get the hell out of here.”

We did it, then adjourned to the cafeteria a block over to get something to eat. None of us had much in the way of appetite, and Bill left early to conclude negotiations with the fellow downstairs.

Outside the cafeteria, on the curb, John took my arm. He looked tired but composed. In better shape than before I left for home, actually. “Riddley, are you okay with this?”

“Fine with it,” I said.

“Want me to ride along?”

I thought it over, then shook my head. “Three's a crowd. I'll call you when it's taken care of. But it may be late.”

He nodded, started away, then turned back and grinned. There was something heartbreakingly sweet about it. “Welcome to the Green Thumb Editorial Society,” he said.

I sketched him a little salute. “Good to be here.”

As it was. And when I got to Bill's place shortly thereafter, the old panel truck was already parked at the curb. Bill was standing next to it, smoking a cigarette and looking entirely at peace.

“Let's pick up some cargo and take it to Jersey,” he said.

I clapped him on the shoulder. “I'm your man,” I said.

We arrived back at 490 around quarter to five. At that hour on a Saturday afternoon, the building was as quiet as it ever gets. Absolutely dead, to coin another phrase. John's nemesis lay where we had left him, neatly tied into his bundle of rug.

“Look at the plant, Riddley,” Bill said, but I already had. Runners had worked their way to the end of the corridor. There they clustered, barely held back by the garlic John and Roger had rubbed on the sides of the door. The tips were raised, and I could see them quivering. I thought of hungry diners looking in a restaurant window, and shivered a little. If not for the garlic, those advance feelers would already have worked their way into the carpet and around the corpse's feet. Zenith is on our side, I feel quite sure of that, but neither a stiff dick nor a hungry belly has much in the way of conscience, I'm afraid.

“Let's get him out of here,” I said.

Bill agreed. “And make a note to refresh the garlic on that door. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“I don't think garlic will hold it forever,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

Because we were back under Zenith's telepathic umbrella, I thought my response at him rather than saying it out loud: It's got to grow. If it can't grow, it'll die. But before it dies, it might—

Get mean? Bill finished for me.

I nodded. Yes, it might get mean. I'm sure that Detweiller and General Hecksler would say it had gotten fairly mean already.

We carried the rolled-up length of rug down the hall to the elevator, which opened at the touch of a button. There was no one else in the building to divert it to another location, of that I was positive. We would have heard their thoughts.

“We're not going to have any problems at all, are we?” I asked Bill as we rode down. Mr. Detweiller lay between us, a troublesome fellow soon to take up permanent residence in New Jersey. “No little unexpected Hitchcock touches.”

Bill smiled. “I don't think so, Riddley. We're going to roll all sevens. Because the force is with us.”

And so it has been.

By the time the truck's headlights picked out the sign on the edge of Route 27—PETERBOROUGH DISPOSAL CO. LANDFILL ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING—it was full dark and the moon was riding high in the sky. High and dreamy. It crossed my mind that the same moon was looking down on my Mama's fresh grave in Blackwater.

There was a chain across the dirt road leading to the landfill, but it appeared to be looped over the posts to either side, not locked. I got out, slipped one of the loops free, and then motioned Bill to drive through. Once he was on the other side, I re-fixed the chain and got back in.

“The mob uses this place, I take it?” I asked.

“That's the rumor.” Bill lowered his voice a little. “I heard one of Richie Ginelli's pals say that Jimmy Hoffa is taking an extended vacation out this way.”

“Bill,” I said, “far be it for Zenith House's most junior editor to tell you what to do—”

“Lay on, MacDuff,” he said, smiling.

“—but a poker game where one hears such odd bits of trivia might not be the place for an inoffensive editor of paperback originals.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said, and although he was still smiling, I don't believe that what came next was a joke. “If the bad boys cross me, I'll just sic my plant on them.”

“That's what Carlos Detweiller thought, and he's making his final pilgrimage in the back of a bread truck,” I said.

He looked at me, the smile fading a little. “You might have a point there, partner.”

I did have a point there, but I doubt it will stop Bill from his weekend poker forays. Just as I doubt that successfully having it off with Sandra Jackson will stop Herb Porter from the occasional clandestine seat-sniffing expedition. We say “so-and-so should have known better” when so-and-so comes to grief, but there is a world of difference between knowing better and doing better. To misquote the Bible, we return to our vices like a dog to its vomit, and when one thinks in such terms, I wonder at our apparent determination to co-exist with Zenith the common ivy. To think that he—or it—can make either our situation or ourselves any better.

After considering what I've just written, I must laugh. I'm like a junkie between fixes, temporarily sober and pontificating on the evils of dope. Once I'm back in range of those humming good vibrations, everything will change. I know it as well as I know my own name.

Knowing better... and doing better. Between them is the chasm.

The dirt road ran through scruffy pine woods for a quarter of a mile and then brought us out into a vast dirt circle filled with trash, discarded appliances, and a stacked wall of junked cars. By the light of a full moon, it looked like the death of all civilization. On the far side was a dropoff, its steep sides covered with more trash. At the bottom, the bulldozers and backhoes looked the size of a child's toys.

“They bulldoze the crap down there, then cover it,” Bill said. “We'll take him twenty or thirty feet down the slope, then bury him. I've got shovels. I've also got gloves. I'm told there are rats in there as big as terriers.”

But all that proved to be unnecessary; as Bill had said, the force was with us and we were rolling all sevens. As he drove slowly toward the dropoff and the actual landfill, weaving between those rusty cenotaphs of junk, I saw a cluster of blue objects off to the left. They looked like man-sized plastic capsules standing on end.

“Go over there,” I said, pointing.

“Why?”

“Just a feeling. Please, Bill.”

He shrugged and headed the panel truck that way. As we got closer, a big grin began to dawn on his face. They were the Port-a-Pottys you see at construction sites and in some roadside rest areas, but all these had had the hell beaten out of them: dented roofs, broken doors, gaping holes in some of the sides. They were standing about forty feet from the maw of a silent machine that could only be a crusher.