The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,90

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.

"Think we hit the jackpot, Rid?" Bill asked, grinning. "I think we hit the jackpot. In fact, I think you're a fucking genius."

There was a length of yellow tape strung around the cluster of blue capsules, with KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT repeating endlessly in big black letters. Stuck to it with a lick of electrical tape was a note written on a piece of cardboard in big hasty letters. I got out and read it by the glow of the panel truck's weak headlights:

TURK! These are the ones I told

you about, City of Para. Please get that

damn Mintz off my back and CRUSH

THESE SOME-BITCHES MONDAY

1st thing! Thanks Buddy, "I owe you 1."

FELIX

Bill had joined me and was also reading the note. "What do you think?" he asked.

"I think Carlos Detweiller is going to rejoin the universe as part of a City of Paramus Port-a-Potty reject," I said. "Early Monday morning. Come on, let's get it