Firestarter

“I’ll keep it to myself,” Puck agreed. “You going to play some golf while you’re out there? I know of at least two great courses on Maui.” Cap fell silent. He looked thoughtfully at the top of his desk, through it. The phone sagged away from his ear slightly.

“Cap? You there?”

Low and definite and ominous in this small, cozy study: Sssssssssss

“Shit, I think we been cut off,” Puck muttered. “Cap? Ca-”

“You still slicing the ball, old buddy?” Cap asked.

Puck laughed. “You kidding? When I die, they’re going to bury me in the fucking rough. Thought I lost you for a minute there.” “I’m right here,” Cap said. “Puck, are there snakes in Hawaii?” Now it was Puck’s turn to pause. “Say again?” “Snakes. Poisonous snakes.”

“I… gee, damn if I know. I can check it for you if it’s important…” Puck’s dubious tone seemed to imply that Cap employed about five thousand spooks to check just such things.

“No, that’s okay,” Cap said. He held the telephone firmly against his ear again. “Just thinking out loud, I guess. Maybe I’m getting old.”

“Not you, Cap. There’s too much vampire in you.”

“Yeah, maybe. Thanks, goodbuddy.”

“No trouble at all. Glad you’re getting away for a bit. Nobody deserves it more than you, after the last year you’ve put in.” He meant Georgia, of course; he didn’t know about the McGees. Which meant, Cap thought wearily, that he didn’t know the half of it.

He started to say good-bye and then added, “By the way, Puck, where will that plane be stopping to refuel? Any idea?”

“Durban, Illinois,” Puck said promptly. “Outside Chicago.”

Cap thanked him, said good-bye, hung up. His fingers went to the note in his pocket again and touched it. His eye fell on Hockstetter’s memo. It sounded as if the girl had been pretty upset, too. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt if he went down and spoke to her, stroked her a little.

He leaned forward and thumbed the intercom.

“Yes, Cap?”

“I’ll be going downstairs for a while,” he said. “I should be back in thirty minutes or so.”

“Very good.”

He got up and left the study. As he did so, his hand stole to his breast pocket and felt the note there again.

8

Charlie lay on her bed fifteen minutes after Cap left, her mind in a total whirl of dismay, fear, and confused speculation. She literally didn’t know what to think.

He had come at quarter of five, half an hour ago, and had introduced himself as Captain Hollister (“but please just call me Cap; everyone does”). He had a kindly, shrewd face that reminded her a little of the illustrations in The Wind in the Willows. It was a face she had seen somewhere recently, but she hadn’t been able to place it until Cap jogged her memory. It had been he who had taken her back to her rooms after the first test, when the man in the white suit had bolted, leaving the door open. She had been so much in a fog of shock, guilt, and-yes-exhilarated triumph that it was really no wonder she hadn’t been able to place his face. Probably she could have been escorted back to her apartment by Gene Simmons of Kiss without noticing it.

He talked in a smooth, convincing way that she immediately mistrusted.

He told her Hockstetter was concerned because she had declared the testing at an end until she saw her father. Charlie agreed that was so and would say no more, maintaining a stubborn silence… mostly out of fear. If you discussed your reasons for things with a smooth talker like this Cap, he would strip those reasons away one by one until it seemed that black was white and white black. The bare demand was better. Safer.

But he had surprised her.

“If that’s the way you feel, okay,” he had said. The expression of surprise on her face must have been slightly comical, because he chuckled. “It will take a bit of arranging, but-“At the words “a bit of arranging,” her face closed up again. “No more fires,” she said. “No more tests. Even if it takes you ten years to ‘arrange” it.”

“Oh, I don’t think it will take that long,” he had said, not offended. “It’s just that I have people to answer to, Charlie. And a place like this runs on paperwork. But you don’t have to light so much as a candle while I’m setting it up.”

“Good,” she said stonily, not believing him, not believing he was going to set anything up. “Because I won’t.” “I think I ought to be able to arrange it… by Wednesday. Yes, by Wednesday, for sure.”

He had fallen suddenly silent. His head cocked slightly, as if he were listening to something just a bit too high-pitched for her to hear. Charlie looked at him, puzzled, was about to ask if he was all right, and then closed her mouth with a snap. There was” something… something almost familiar about the way he was sitting.

“Do you really think I could see him on Wednesday?” she asked timidly.

“Yes, I think so,” Cap said. He shifted in his chair and sighed heavily. His eye caught hers and he smiled a puzzled little smile… also familiar. Apropos of nothing at all, he said: “Your dad plays a mean game of golf, I hear.”

Charlie blinked. So far as she knew, her father had never touched a golf club in his life. She got ready to say so… and then it came together in her mind and a dizzying burst of bewildered excitement ran through her.

(Mr. Merle! He’s like Mr. Merle!)

Mr. Merle had been one of Daddy’s executives when they were in New York. Just a little man with light-blond hair and pink-rimmed glasses and a sweet, shy smile. He had come to get more confidence, like the rest of them. He worked in an insurance company or a bank or something. And Daddy had been very worried about Mr. Merle for a while. It was a “rick-o-shay.” It came from using the push. It had something to do with a story Mr. Merle had read once. The push Daddy used to give Mr. Merle more confidence made him remember that story in a bad way, a way that was making him sick. Daddy said the “rick-o-shay” came from that story and it was bouncing around in Mr. Merle’s head like a te

But before Daddy fixed him up, Mr. Merle had looked like Cap did now.

She was suddenly positive that her father had pushed this man, and the excitement in her was like a tornado. After hearing nothing about him except for the sort of general reports John sometimes brought her, after not seeing him or knowing where he was, it was in a strange way as if her father were suddenly in this room with her, telling her it was all right and that he was near.

Cap suddenly stood up. “Well, I’ll be going now. But I’ll be seeing you, Charlie. And don’t worry.”

She wanted to tell him not to go, to tell her about her dad, where he was, if he was okay… but her tongue was rooted to the bottom of her mouth.

Cap went to the door, then paused. “Oh, almost forgot.” He crossed the room to her, took a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket, and handed it to her. She took it numbly, looked at it, and put it in her robe pocket. “And when you’re out riding that horse, you watch out for snakes,” he said confidentially. “If a horse sees a snake, he is going to bolt. Every time. He’ll-”

He broke off, raised a hand to his temple, and rubbed it. For a moment, he looked old and distracted. Then he shook his head a little, as if dismissing the thought. He bid her good-bye and left.