Cap talked restlessly of the man’s suicide as they drove to the funeral through a cold, swishing autumn rain; he seemed to be trying to come to terms with it. He said he wouldn’t have thought it possible for a man just to… to keep his arm in there once those blades had begun to chop and grind. But Pynchot had. Somehow Pynchot had. That was when the funeral started being bad for Andy.
The two of them attended only the graveside services, standing well back from the small group of friends and family, clustered under a bloom of black umbrellas. Andy discovered it was one thing to remember Pynchot’s arrogance, the little-Caesar, power-tripping of a small man who had no real power; to remember his endless and irritating nervous tic of a smile. It was quite another to look at his pallid, washed-out wife in her black suit and veiled hat, holding the hands of her two boys (the younger was about Charlie’s age, and they both looked utterly stunned and out of it, as if drugged), Knowing-as she must-that the friends and relatives must all know how her husband was found, dressed in her underwear, his right arm vaporized nearly to the elbow, sharpened like a living pencil, his blood splattered in the sink and on the Wood-Mode cabinets, chunks of his flesh-
Andy’s gorge rose helplessly. He bent forward in the cold rain, struggling with it. The minister’s voice rose and fell senselessly. “I want to go,” Andy said. “Can we go?” “Yes, of course,” Cap said. He looked pale himself, old and not particularly well. “I’ve been to quite enough funerals this year to hold me.”
They slipped away from the group standing around the fake grass, the flowers already drooping and spilling petals in this hard rain, the coffin on its runners over the hole in the ground. They walked side by side back toward the winding, graveled drive where Cap’s economy-sized Chevy was parked near the rear of the funeral cortege. They walked under willows that dripped and rustled mysteriously. Three or four other men, barely seen, moved around them. Andy thought that he must know now how the President of the United States feels.
“Very bad for the widow and the little boys,” Cap said. “The scandal, you know.”
“Will she… uh, will she be taken care of?”
“Very handsomely, in terms of money,” Cap said almost tonelessly. They were nearing the lane now. Andy could see Cap’s orange Vega, parked on the verge. Two men were getting quietly into a Biscayne in front of it. Two more got into a gray Plymouth behind it. “But nobody’s going to be able to buy of those two little boys. Did you see their faces?”
Andy said nothing. Now he felt guilt; it was like a sharp sawblade working in hisguts. Not even telling himself that his own position had been desperate would help. All he could do now was hold Charlie’s face in front of him… Charlie and a darkly ominous figure behind her, a one-eyed pirate named John Rainbird who had wormed his way into her confidence so he could hasten the day when
They got into the Vega and Cap started the engine. The Biscayne ahead pulled out and Cap followed. The Plymouth fell into place behind them.
Andy felt a sudden, almost eerie. certainty that the push had deserted him againthat when he tried there would be nothing. As if to pay for the expression on the faces of the two boys.
But what else was there to do but try?
“We’re going to have a little talk,” he said to Cap, and pushed. The push was there, and the headache settled in almost at once-the price he was going to have to pay for using it so soon after the last time. “It won’t interfere with your driving.”
Cap seemed to settle in his seat. His left hand, which had been moving toward his turnsignal, hesitated a moment and then went on. The Vega followed the lead car sedately between the big stone pillars and onto the main road.
“No, I don’t think our little talk will interfere with my driving at all,” Cap said.
They were twenty miles from the compound; Andy had checked the odometer upon leaving and again upon arriving at the cemetery. A lot of it was over the highway Pynchot had told him about, 301. It was a fast road. He guessed he had no more than twenty-five minutes to arrange everything. He had thought of little else over the last two days and thought he had everything pretty well mapped out… but there was one thing he badly needed to know.
“How long can you and Rainbird ensure Charlie’s cooperation, Captain Hollister?”
“Not much longer,” Cap said. “Rainbird arranged things very cleverly so that in your absence, he’s the only one really in control of her. The father surrogate.” In a low, almost chanting voice, he said, “He’s her father when her father isn’t there.”
“And when she stops, she’s to be killed?”
“Not immediately. Rainbird can keep her at it awhile longer.” Cap signaled his turn onto 301. “He’ll pretend we found out. Found out that they were talking. Found out that he was giving her advice on how to handle her… her problem. Found out he had passed notes to you.”
He fell silent, but Andy didn’t need any more. He felt sick. He wondered if they had congratulated each other on how easy it was to fool a little kid, to win her affections in a lonely place and then twist her to their own purposes once they had earned her trust. When nothing else would work, just tell her that her only friend, John the orderly, was going to lose his job and maybe be prosecuted under the Ofcial Secrets Act for presuming to be her friend. Charlie would do the rest on her own. Charlie would deal with them. She would continue to cooperate.
I hope I meet this guy soon. I really do.
But there was no time to think about that now… and if things went right, he would never have to meet Rainbird at all.
“I’m slated to go to Hawaii a week from today,” Andy said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“How?”
“By army transport plane.”
“Who did you contact to arrange that?”
“Puck,” Cap said immediately.
“Who’s Puck, Captain Hollister?”
“Major Victor Puckeridge,” Cap said. “At Andrews.”
“Andrews Air Force Base?”
“Yes, of course.”
“He’s a friend?”
“We play golf.” Cap smiled vaguely. “He slices.” Wonderful news, Andy thought. His head was throbbing like a rotted tooth.
“Suppose you called him this afternoon and said you wanted to move that flight up by three days?”
“Yes?” Cap said doubtfully.
“Would that present a problem? A lot of paperwork?”
“Oh, no. Puck would slice right through the paperwork.” The smile reappeared, slightly odd and not really happy. “He slices. Did I tell you that?”
“Yes. Yes, you did.”
“Oh. Good.”
The car hummed along at a perfectly legal fifty-five. The rain had mellowed to a steady mist. The windshield wipers clicked back and forth.