Uncollected Stories 2003 Read online

  "You say that," Paladin said, "but I'm no lawyer.

  But...Convince me, his eyes said. Yeah, let's talk about this, let’s see if we can't get together, because you're right, something is weird.

  So...convince me.

  "Is your mother alive?" Cheyney asked abruptly.

  "What – yes, but what does that have to – "

  "You talk to me or I'm going to personally take two CHP motorcycle cops and the three of us are going to rape your mother tomorrow!"

  Cheyney screamed. "I'm personally going to take her up the ass! Then we're going to cut off her tits and leave them on the front lawn! So you better talk!"

  Paladin's face was as white as milk: a white so white it is nearly blue.

  "Now are you convinced?" Cheyney asked softly. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not going to rape your mother. But with a statement like that on a reel of tape, you could say you were the guy on the grassy knoll in Dallas and the Burbank police wouldn't produce the tape. I want to talk to you, man. What's going on here?"

  Paladin shook his head dully and said, "I don't know."

  In the room behind the one-way glass, Jacoby joined Lieutenant McEachern, Ed McMahon (still looking stunned), and a cluster of technical people at a bank of high-tech equipment. The LAPD chief of police and the mayor were rumored to be racing each other to Burbank.

  "He's talking?" Jacoby asked.

  "I think he's going to," McEachern said. His eyes had moved toward Jacoby once, quickly, when he came in. Now they were centered only on the window. The men seated on the other side, Cheyney smoking, relaxed, Paladin tense but trying to control it, looked slightly lowish through the one-way glass. The sound of their voices was clear and undistorted through the overhead speakers – a top-of-the-line Bose in each corner.

  Without taking his eyes off the men, McEachern said: "You get his lawyer?"

  Jacoby said: "The home number on the card belongs to a cleaning woman named Howlanda Moore."

  McEachern flicked him another fast glance.

  173

  "Black, from the sound, delta Mississippi at a guess. Kids yelling and fighting in the background. She didn't quite say I'se gwine whup you if you don't quit! , but it was close. She's had the number three years. I re-dialed twice.”

  "Jesus," McEachern, said. "Try the office number?"

  "Yeah," Jacoby replied. "Got a recording. You think ConTel's a good buy, Loot?"

  McEachern flicked his gray eyes in Jacoby's direction again.

  "The number on the front of the card is that of a fairly large stock brokerage," Jacoby said quietly. "I looked under lawyers in the Yellow Pages. Found no Albert K. Dellums. Closest is an Albert Dillon, no middle initial. No law firm like the one on the card."

  "Jesus please us," McEachern said, and then the door banged open and a little man with the face of a monkey barged in. The mayor had apparently won the race to Burbank.

  "What's going on here?" he said to McEachern.

  "I don't know," McEachern said.

  "All right," Paladin said wearily. "Let's talk about it. I feel, Detective Cheyney, like a man who had just spent two hours or so on some disorienting amusement park ride. Or like someone 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.

  174

  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.

  175

  AN EVENING AT GOD’S

  An unpublished one-minute play auctioned off at the Hasty Pudding Theatre on April 23, 1990 to benefit the American Repertory Theater's Institute for Advanced Theater Training .

  DARK STAGE. Then a spotlight hits a papier-mache globe, spinning all by itself in the middle of darkness. Little by little, the stage lights COME

  UP, and we see a bare-stage representation of a living room: an easy chair with a table beside it (there’s an open bottle of beer on the table), and a console TV across the room. There’s a picnic cooler-full of beer under the table. Also, a great many empties. GOD is feeling pretty good.

  At stage left, there’s a door.

  GOD – a big guy with a white beard – is sitting in the chair, alternately reading a book (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) and watching the tube. He has to crane whenever he wants to look at the set, because the floating globe (actually hu
ng on a length of string, I imagine) is in his line of vision. There’s a sitcom on TV. Every now and then GOD chuckles along with the laugh-track.

  There is a knock at the door.

  GOD ( big amplified voice) Come in! Verily, it is open unto you!

  The door opens. In comes ST. PETER, dressed in a snazzy white robe.

  He’s also carrying a briefcase.

  GOD Peter! I thought you were on vacation!

  ST. PETER Leaving in half an hour, but I thought I’d bring the papers for you to sign. How are you, GOD?

  GOD Better. I should know better than to eat those chili peppers. They burn me at both ends. Are those the letters of transmission from hell?

  ST. PETER Yes, finally. Thank GOD. Excuse the pun.

  He removes some papers from his briefcase. GOD scans them, then holds out his hand impatiently, ST PETER has been looking at the floating globe. He looks back, sees GOD is waiting, and puts a pen in 176

  his out-stretched hand. GOD scribbles his signature. As he does, ST.

  PETER goes back to gazing at the globe.

  ST. PETER So Earth’s still there, Huh? After All these years.

  GOD hands the papers back and looks up at it. His gaze is rather irritated.

  GOD Yes, the housekeeper is the most forgetful bitch in the universe.

  An EXPLOSION OF LAUGHTER from the TV. GOD cranes to see. Too late.

  GOD Damn, was that Alan Alda?

  ST. PETER It may have been, sir – I really couldn’t see.

  GOD Me, either.

  He leans forward and crushes the floating globe to powder.

  GOD ( immensely satisfied) There. Been meaning to do that for a long time. Now I can see the TV…

  ST. PETER looks sadly at the crushed remains of the earth.

  ST. PETER Umm...I believe that was Alan Alda’s world, GOD.

  GOD So? ( Chuckles at the TV) Robin Williams! I love Robin Williams!

  ST. PETER I believe both Alda and Williams were on it when you..umm...passed Judgment,

  sir.

  GOD Oh, I’ve got all the videotapes. No problem. Want a beer?

  As ST. PETER takes one, the stage-lights begin to dim. A spotlight come up on the remains on the globe.

  ST. PETER I actually sort of liked that one, GOD – Earth, I mean.

  GOD It wasn’t bad, but there’s more where that came from. Now –

  let’s drink to your vacation!

  177

  They are just shadows in the dimness now, although it’s a little easier to see GOD, because there’s a faint nimbus of light around his head. They clink bottles. A roar of laughter from the TV.

  GOD Look! It’s Richard Pryor! That guy kills me! I suppose he was...

  ST. PETER Ummm... yessir.

  GOD Shit. ( Pause) Maybe I better cut Down on my drinking. ( Pause) Still...It was in the way.

  Fade to black, except for the spotlight on the ruins of the floating globe.

  ST. PETER Yessir.

  GOD ( muttering) My son got back, didn’t he?

  ST. PETER Yessir, some time ago.

  GOD Good. Everything’s hunky-dory, then.

  THE SPOTLIGHT GOES OUT.

  (Author’s note: GOD’S VOICE should be as loud as possible.) 178

  Document Outline

  Jhonathan and the Witches

  People, Places and Things

  In a Half-World of Terror

  The Glass Floor

  Slade

  The Blue Air Compressor

  The Cat From Hell

  The Crate

  Squad D

  The King Family & the Wicked Witch

  The Night of the Tiger

  Before the Play

  Man With a Belly

  Skybar

  The Leprechaun

  Keyholes

  For the Birds

  The Reploids

  An Evening at God's

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 8e294994-67eb-49c9-9677-c4f52857ee29

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 20.3.2012

  Created using: calibre 0.8.10 software

  Document authors :

  Stephen King

  About

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