slipped some LSD into my drink. Since we're not on the record,
what was your one interrogatory? Let's start with that."
"All right," Cheyney said. "How did you get into the broadcast
complex, and how did you get into Studio C?"
"Those are two questions."
"I apologize."
Paladin smiled faintly.
"I got on the property and into the studio," he said, "the same way
I've been getting on the property and into the studio for over
twenty years. My pass. Plus the fact that I know every security
guard in the place. Shit, I've been there longer than most of them."
"May I see that pass?" Cheyney asked. His voice was quiet, but a
large pulse beat in his throat.
Paladin looked at him warily for a moment, then pulled out the
lizard-skin wallet again. After a moment of rifling, he tossed a
perfectly correct NBC Performer's Pass onto the coffee table.
Correct, that was, in every way but one.
Cheyney crushed out his smoke, picked it up, and looked at it. The
pass was laminated. In the corner was the NBC peacock,
something only long-timers had on their cards. The face in the
photo was the face of Edward Paladin. Height and weight were
correct. No space for eye-color, hair-color, or age, of course; when
you were dealing with ego. Walk softly, stranger, for here there be
tygers.
The only problem with the pass was that it was salmon pink.
NBC Performer's Passes were bright red.
Cheyney had seen something else while Paladin was looking for
his pass. "Could you put a one-dollar bill from your wallet on the
coffee table there?" he asked softly.
"Why?"
"I'll show you in a moment," Cheyney said. "A five or a ten would
do as well."
Paladin studied him, then opened his wallet again. He took back
his pass, replaced it, and carefully took out a one-dollar bill. He
turned it so it faced Cheyney. Cheyney took his own wallet (a
scuffed old Lord Buxton with its seams unravelling; he should
replace it but found it easier to think of than to do) from his jacket
pocket, and removed a dollar bill of his own. He put it next to
Paladin's, and then turned them both around so Paladin could see
them right-side-up-so Paladin could study them.
Which Paladin did, silently, for almost a full minute. His face
slowly flushed dark red ... and then the color slipped from it a little
at a time. He'd probably meant to bellow WHAT THE FUCK IS
GOING ON HERE? Cheyney thought later, but what came out
was a breathless little gasp: -what-"
"I don't know," Cheyney said.
On the right was Cheyney's one, gray-green, not brand-new by any
means, but new enough so that it did not yet have that rumpled,
limp, shopworn look of a bill which has changed hands many
times. Big number 1's at the top corners, smaller 1's at the bottom
corners. FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE in small caps between the
top 1's and THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in larger ones.
The letter A in a seal to the left of Washington, along with the
assurance that THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER, FOR ALL
DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. It was a series 1985 bill, the
signature that of James A. Baker III.
Paladin's one was not the same at all.
The 1's in the four corners were the same; THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA was the same; the assurance that the bill could be
used to pay all public and private debts was the same.
But Paladin's one was a bright blue.
Instead of FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE it said CURRENCY OF
GOVERNMENT.
Instead of the letter A was the letter F.
But most of all it was the picture of the man on the bill that drew
Cheyney's attention, just as the picture of the man on Cheyney's
bill drew Paladin's.
Cheyney's gray-green one showed George Washington.
Paladin's blue one showed James Madison.
Stephen King
The Crate
First appeared in:
Gallery magazine 1979
Available in comic book form in:
Creepshow
Dexter Stanley was scared. More; he felt as if that central axle that
binds us to the state we call sanity were under a greater strain than
it had ever been under before. As he pulled up beside Henry
Northrup's house on North Campus Avenue that August night, he
felt that if he didn't talk to someone, he really, would go crazy.
There was no one to talk to but Henry Northrup. Dex Stanley was
the head of the zoology department, and once might have been
university president if he had been better at academic politics. His
wife had died twenty years before, and they had been childless.
What remained of his own family was all west of the Rockies. He
was not good at making friends.
Northrup was an exception to that. In some ways, they were two of
a kind; both had been disappointed in the mostly meaningless, but
always vicious, game of university politics. Three years before,
Northrup had made his run at the vacant English department
chairmanship. He had lost, and one of the reasons had undoubtedly
been his wife, Wilma, an abrasive and unpleasant woman. At the
few cocktail parties Dex had attended where English people and
zoology people could logically mix, it seemed he could always
recall the harsh mule-bray of her voice, telling some new faculty
wife to "call me Billie, dear everyone does!"
Dex made his way across the lawn to Northrup's door at a
stumbling run. It was Thursday, and Northrup's unpleasant spouse
took two classes on Thursday nights. Consequently, it was Dex and
Henry's chess night. The two men had been playing chess together
for the last eight years.
Dex rang the bell beside the door of his friend's house; leaned on
it. The door opened at ast and Northrup was there.
"Dex," he said. I didn't expect you for another--"
Dex pushed in past him. "Wilma," he said. "Is she here?"
"No, she left fifteen minutes ago. I was just making myself some
chow. Dex, you look awful."
They had walked under the hall light, and it illuminated the cheesy
pallor of Dex's face and seemed to outline wrinkles as deep and
dark as fissures in the earth. Dex was sixty-one, but on the hot
August night, he looked more like ninety.
"I ought to." Dex wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Well, what is it?"
"I'm afraid I'm going crazy, Henry. Or that I've already gone."
"You want something to eat? Wilma left cold ham."
"I'd rather have a drink. A big one."
"All right."
"Two men dead, Henry," Dex said abruptly. "And I could be
blamed. Yes, I can see how I could be blamed. But it wasn't me. It
was the crate. And I don't even know what's in there!" He uttered a
wild laugh.
"Dead?" Northrup said. "What is this, Dex?"
"A janitor. I don't know his name. And Gereson. A graduate
student. He just happened to be there. In the way of... whatever it
was."
Henry studied Dex's face for a long moment and then said, "I'll get
us both a drink."
He left. Dex wandered into the living room, past the low table
where the chess table had already been set up, and stared out the
graceful bow window. That thing in his mind, that axle or
whatever it was, did not feel so much in danger of snapping now.
Thank God for Henry.
Northrup came back with two pony glasses choked with ice. Ice
from the fridge's automatic icemaker, Stanley thought randomly.
Wilma "just call me Billie, everyone does" Northrup insisted on all
the modern conveniences... and when Wilma insisted on a thing,
she did so savagely.
Northrup filled both glasses with Cutty Sark. He handed one of
them to Stanley, who slopped Scotch over his fingers, stinging a