Well, there was not much harm done. He’d given Cramer his chance. He’d put another man out there and let the bastard have his fling, but when he came back, hung over and sick, he was going to get hell. Flores would put him onto the hottest, most back-breaking piece of machinery on the job.
Late that afternoon, just ahead of the whistle, he left the job, pushed the Scout as fast as it would go, and to hell with the local fuzz, drove to the island. The new kid on the dozer there was an eager beaver. He wasn’t neat and he wasted a lot of motion, but judging from his progress he’d had the Cat moving all day. He was still at it after four o’clock when Flores arrived. The kid had to be waved down.
“How’m I doing?” the kid asked, coming up to Flores.
“You ain’t gonna get no prize for neatness,” Flores said.
“Well, I was going to go back and clean it up after,” the kid said.
“Clean it up as you go,” Flores said. “And be here at seven tomorrow, O.K.?”
“Sure,” the kid said.
“You drink?” Flores asked.
“I’ve been known to take a drink,” the kid said.
“You don’t drink until you’ve finished this job, O.K.?”
“Well, hell, Flores.”
“You wanta work for me, or anyone else in this fucking business, you are a goddamned teetotaler until you knock down every mothering tree in this cut, you hear?”
“I hear,” the kid said sullenly.
“You got a girl?”
“Now look,” he began.
“I asked if you got a girl. You don’t like my questions, there’s the road.”
“Well, shit. No, no one special.”
“Just pick-ups, like the rest of these bums,” Flores said. “Well, until you get that cut clean, you’re also not interested in girls, you understand.”
“You’re coming on strong,” the kid said, bristled up.
“I had three good men walk off this job,” Flores said. “We ain’t pushed, but I’m gonna see to it that we’re not. We are going to put diggers on this cut in a week and you are going to have it as bald as a whore’s cunt after a case of crabs in four days, you understand?”
“Sure, sure,” the kid said glumly.
“You wanta pile up a little time and a half, you work on for a while. Just turn it in. Take Saturday, if you want. That is if you’re interested in making a buck.”
That was different. The kid grinned. “Hell, yes. Thanks, boss.” He went back to the dozer and was neatening things up when Flores left.
The kid who had been ordered not to drink or chase girls obeyed part of the order. He didn’t drink. He didn’t care too much for it anyhow, unless it was at a party. But about the other, well, hell, when a gal comes out to the site in a set of hotpants and promises you a little if you’ll go down into the woods with her, well, hell.
And while the kid was dying, (he died badly, the shot missing his throat and knocking off his lower jaw, leaving him screaming through gurgling blood, and then he wasn’t dead, after the second shot, but smothered under wet sand and leaves), George was having a talk with Dr. Irving King. He’d gotten involved on the previous Friday and hadn’t taken the machine back to King, but this Friday he had to go into town for supplies and he carried the polygraph in the pick-up, and delivered it to King, and then demonstrated that it was working. This led to long, involved experiments with the equipment, and he found that King was one sharp fellow and knew a lot about polygraph work. After a complete rundown on the machine and its various functions, and after they’d called in the grumbling office assistant, hooked the electrodes onto her aging carcass and played around for an hour, well into the doctor’s nap time, George started telling King about his experiments with the plants. King was fascinated. He asked technical questions and examined the tapes, which George had saved. They hooked into a rubber plant which was kept alive in the outer lobby by the office assistant and got some interesting readings.
When Irving King finally lay down for his nap he was so tired he fell asleep instantly. The assistant waked him in time for his last appointment of the day and he told the woman, who was a first-timer, that what she needed was a marriage counselor, not a psychiatrist. “You keep running them away,” the assistant grumbled.
“Who needs them?” King asked, putting away his papers for the day. The rubber plant was still in his office. He looked at it and mused on what George had told him and on what he, himself, had seen on the polygraph when George crinkled one of the large leaves in his hand. Very interesting. If he were younger, he’d definitely explore it further. But he was eighty-two going on three and he was tired.
Nice kid, that George Ferrier. Smart. Fixed the damned machine so that it was working perfectly. And his wife, a nice kid, too. Too bad she had decided to drop out of treatment. She wasn’t a mental basket case, but she needed help. But with a husband like George, she’d probably make it.
More interesting to speculate on those plants. Wild thought, to believe that they could receive thoughts telepathically. Opened up whole new fields of investigation. He’d have to write to Gerheart and see if he’d read anything about it.
“I’m leaving,” the assistant said, sticking her head in the door. He waved impatiently. He heard the door slam and then he rose, ponderously and tiredly, stretching and feeling the weight of his body on his brittle bones. Another day. How many more? Not enough, surely. Not enough to accomplish all that he’d like to do. There was the book, for example. Every headshrinker wrote at least one, and, although he was in an area where he didn’t get too many glamor cases, he’d had his share of interesting ones.
He was still thinking about the book as he drove his big car slowly toward his riverside apartment. If he had time, he would write it for popular consumption, because frankly, he didn’t have the unique cases in his file to interest the profession, but he could wow the public with some of the sexual fantasies some of his patients had come up with over the years. Not exactly the height of professional ethics, but he wouldn’t be the first psychiatrist to capitalize on the miseries of his patients to make a dollar. The woman who had literally split herself jamming an ivory elephant’s tusk up her, rich, a member of an old family. The young girl sent to him after taking on all of the local high school football team and then bringing herself to the attention of the authorities by yelling rape. Twenty-three boys, testifying that she’d told them it was their reward for winning the big game. Twenty-three. In sheer volume, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever run across. Then all the hang-up cases. Like Gwen. Nothing spectacular there. But, although it had never come out in his talks with her or in his chats with George, that was the reason behind it all, the woman’s attitude toward sex. Natural to be hung-up a bit, with her mother putting on exhibitions the way she did. Not natural for her to drop out of analysis and live a completely happy life after only three or four visits. But George had said things were going great and he’d looked fat and sassy. No sexual frustration there, not in that boy. He literally glowed with contentment.
Speaking of books, if he were younger he could get a good one out of that plant business. Very interesting. The boy had invited him to visit and bring the machine and try it on the Venus-flytraps. He said the readings obtained there were spectacular. Might not be a bad idea, at that. A day away from the office and the apartment would do him good. Where was it they lived? Somewhere over in Ocean County. Oh, yes, on the island. Pine Tree Island. Nice name. He’d run into it before. A patient?