The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,20

CHAPTER FOUR
Dear Ruth,

Just lately you've been harder to reach on the phone than the President of the United States-I swear to God I'm getting to hate your answering machine! I must confess that tonightthe third night of "Hi, this is Ruth and I can't come to the phone right now, but..."-I got a little nervous and called the other number you gave me-the super. If he hadn't told me he'd seen you going out around five with a big load of books under your arm, I think I might have asked him to check and make sure you were okay. I know, I know, it's just the time difference, but things have gotten so paranoid here lately that you wouldn't believe it. Paranoid? Weird is a better word, maybe. We'll probably talk before you receive this, making ninety per cent of this letter obsolete (unless I send it Federal Express, which makes long distance look like an austerity measure), but if I don't narrate it by some means or other I think I may explode. I understand from Herb Porter, who is nearly apoplectic (a condition I sympathize with more than I would heretofore have believed, following l'affair Detweiller), that General Hecksler's escape and the murders which attended it have made the national news the last two nights, but I assume you haven't seen it-or didn't make the connection-or I would have heard from you via Ma Tinkerbell ere now (prolix as ever, you see-would that I could be as succinct as Zenith's faithful custodian Riddley!). If you haven't heard, the enclosed Post clipping (I didn't bother to include the centerfold photo of the asylum with the obligatory dotted line marking the dotty General's likely route of escape and the obligatory X's marking the locations of his victims) will bring you up to date as quickly and luridly as possible.

You may remember that I mentioned Hecksler to you in a letter only six weeks ago-something like that, anyway. Herb rejected his book, Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers, and provoked a barrage of paranoid hate-mail. Joking aside, his bloody escape has created a real atmosphere of unease here at Z. H. I had a drink with Roger Wade after work tonight in Four Fathers (Roger claims that the owner, a genial man named Ginelli with a soft voice and these odd, gleeful eyes, is a mafioso) and told him about Herb's visit to me that afternoon. I pointed out to Herb that it was ridiculous for him to be as frightened as he obviously is (it's sort of funny-under his steely Joe Pyne Exterior, the resident Neanderthal turns out to be Walter Mitty after all) and Herb agreed. Then, after a certain amount of patently artificial small talk, he asked me if I knew where he could get a gun. Mystified-sometimes your ob'dt correspondent is amazingly slow in making the obvious connections, m'dear-I mentioned the sporting goods store five blocks from here, at Park and 32nd.

"No," he said impatiently. "I don't want a shotgun or anything like that." Here he lowered his voice. "I want something I can carry around with me."

Roger nodded and said Herb had been into his office around two, feeling him out on the same subject.

"What did you say?" I asked him.

"I reminded him that the penalties for carrying concealed weapons without a permit in this state are damned severe," Roger said. "At which point Herb drew himself up to his full height [which is, Ruth, about five-seven] and said, 'A man doesn't need a permit to protect himself, Roger. '"

"And then?"

"Then he walked out. And tried you. Probably tried Bill Gelb as well."

"Don't forget Riddley," I said.

"Ah, yes-and Riddley."

"Who might just be able to help him."

Roger ordered another bourbon, and I was thinking how much older than his actual forty-five he is coming to look when he suddenly grinned that boyish, winning grin that so charmed you when you first met him at that cocktail party in June of '80-the one at Gahan and Nancy Wilson's place in Connecticut, do you remember? "Have you seen Sandra Jackson's new toy?" he asked. "She's the one Herb should have gone to for black market munitions." Roger actually laughed out loud, a sound I have heard from him very seldom in the last eight months or so. Hearing it made me realize again, Ruth, how much I like and respect him-he could have been a really great editor somewhere-perhaps even in the Maxwell Perkins league. It seems a shame that