MacKenzie pursed his lips. “Yep. Got me, pal. But you are going to help me check this stuff out, aren’t you?”
“I said I would, and I will, Mac. And you know that I’m a man of my word.”
“You bet I do.” MacKenzie got up and hauled out two more bottles of Grolsch. He handed one to Scarborough. “So you’ve been fed and watered. Come on up to my den of iniquity. There’s work to be done.”
Mac’s office was on the second floor. Two months after his wife, Tama, had left him, he’d had a weekend-long party to which he had invited Scarborough, as well as other male friends from around the country, and male friends from the town and the university. Student crashers were welcome. During this party, Mac produced gallons of booze and played Charlie Parker records nonstop—Tama had hated jazz. At the height of the bacchanalia, he’d revealed to the attendees his plan. With their help, they’d dragged the king-size nuptial bed of the MacKenzie’s, mattresses and sheets and all, into the backyard. The guests were then charged to scour the premises. Anything they found remotely feminine—perfume, scented toilet paper, tampons, makeup, etcetera—was tossed onto the bed. At midnight, Mac doused the bed and its occupants with gasoline, and a lit wooden match was tossed into its center, producing a marvelous bonfire.
The next day, the remaining guests helped move Mac’s typewriter, desk, filing cabinets, and chairs into the master bedroom. “My writing is my life,” he’d said that day, as they toasted the new digs with a magnum of champagne. “And now it’s my wife!”
He immediately broke his new office in by writing one of Scarborough’s favorites, The Immolator #53: Death to the Matchmakers, in which Harry Diggs, the detective-cum-mercenary—cum—vigilante, uncovers a crooked dating service operated by the Mafia and the KGB, and firebombs an entire New York City skyscraper’s floor that’s filled with adulterous wives.
“Hey,” said Mac, “since you were here last, I’ve got myself a new rug.” He ushered his friend in and pointed toward the floor, where a lovely maroon-and-blue-and-gold Persian rug lay, supporting most of the room’s furniture. “From India! Hand woven!”
“Quite nice,” said Scarborough, admiring the weave and the intricate almost mandala-like patterns.
Mac’s office was unquestionably the most comfortable room in the house—and certainly the neatest. It was the place, after all, where he spent most of his time and energy. The big bay windows afforded a pleasant view of the countryside, framed by tasteful drapes Tama had bought, which had somehow survived the purge. A couch and two Eames chairs sat on the rug, surrounded by filing cabinets, a desk, and, of course, Mac’s new pride and joy, the latest-model IBM PC, which he used almost entirely as a word processer, along with a Hewlett-Packard laser printer. Against the walls were bookshelves overflowing with books, both hard-and soft-bound. One whole case was devoted to Mac’s work. Above this was an acrylic portrait by Boris Vallejo of Harry Diggs, The Immolator himself, a trademark flamethrower in his hand, his Clint Eastwood teeth clenched around a cigar, his veins popping from bare traps and delts, and a face in profile so that only a hint of the spider-web burns which covered half his face could be seen.
Harry Diggs was a Vietnam vet, who’d been burned by napalm in the war. With no more Vietcong to fight when he returned, he turned to fighting other bad guys, book by book, when he returned to civilian life. These conflagrations were the subject matter that Mac dealt with or plotted—he didn’t write all the Immolators, he farmed some out to other writers—in a series that had lasted a dozen years and spanned over a hundred titles. Oh, Mac wrote other books, but “Ol’ Firebug” Diggs was his bread and butter. Scarborough kept and read only the ones that Mac had written himself—autographed of course—a stockpile of them on the back of his commode for toilet reading. They were entertaining little hunks of mayhem, their garish covers depicted explosions and weapons amidst running screaming men, with Diggs in the foreground, puffing on his stogie. Smoke and flame were usually in the ilIo somewhere—indeed, with the new string of re-issues, the graphics proclaiming the words The Immolator sprouted tiny fires themselves.
Appropriately, Mac kept his pipe collection, matches, and tobacco atop his Immolator books. It was to this that he repaired immediately, taking down a fairly new briar and stuffing it with fragrant leaf. “Park your butt over there,” he said, nodding at the couch. “I’ll haul down the stuff in just a minute.” He struck a safety match and puffed, sending the aromatic smoke pluming into the room.
Scarborough noticed the pile of quality paper stacked on a shelf near the IBM. He examined the title page—Until The Dawn, it said, by Eric Landon MacKenzie. Most of the times that Mac used his own name, he just kept it to Mac MacKenzie. But Dawn was special—he’d started it two years ago, with Scarborough’s assistance. It was going to be his “quality breakout” book, a carefully written book based on his experiences in the Air Force as a young man. Scarborough was gratified to see that it was thicker than when he’d last seen it. He desperately wanted to read it, but Mac insisted that he had to finish the whole thing first, before he let anybody read it. He returned to the sitting area, not wanting Mac to know that he was snooping.
Scarborough recapped his Grolsch and set the bottle on top of the copy of Guns and Ammo that lay atop a carved Spanish coffee table. Copies of Soldier of Fortune peeked out from gun catalogues and almanacs, all part of Mac’s steady stream of research material, most of which he kept on a bookshelf close to his word processor. He could just scoot his wheeled chair over on a whim, and pull down a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica or a copy of Jane’s Ships. “Hardware!” the big man had growled once. “My readers demand hardware. They want to know the details right down to the millimeter measurement of the slugs that rip through the viscera of the bad guys and spray gouts of blood across the walls!”
“You have a discerning readership,” Scarborough had commented.
“Naw, not really. It all has something to do with men’s penises, did you know that? This gun stuff.”
Scarborough had grinned. “No!”
Now, he watched as his friend went to the bank of stolen file cabinets, opened a drawer, searched for a moment, ahh-ed, and pulled out several tattered folders jammed with documents and notes. “Here we go, pilgrim,” he said, putting the stuff on the coffee table. “We just have to cross Red River here, and get the cattle safe to Dodge City.”
“You’ve got the copy of the Blue?” asked Scarborough.
“I sure enough do, partner.” Mac feigned a bowlegged, spur-jangling walk to a bookcase. He pulled out a dog-eared copy of the Government Printing Office’s edition of The Abridged Report on Project Blue Book and plopped it onto the table beside the files. “A yellow copy of the Blue Book,” said Mac. He sat down beside his guest, and opened the file. He lifted his oversized beer bottle, bubbled it, and then put it down again. “I was looking over this stuff last night, Ev, and some other interesting stuff came up about that Iowa farm we investigated in ‘68.”
“I’m all ears, Mac,” said Scarborough, ready to dig in and work.
Chapter 19
When Diane Scarborough and Tim Reilly picked up Jake Camden, Diane regretted their call to him immediately. Camden came off the Piedmont flight smelling of gin and cigarettes, wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and jeans. His handshake was damp and cool, and his greetings were glib and phony. The only thing genuine about him was the Leica camera that bounced on his chest—and Diane had doubts about that.
Tim, however, took to him right away.
“Kids, ya gotta feed me first,” Camden said, after picking up his luggage—a patched brown leather carryall—off the treadmill. “We’ll get your story down on some tape, and then we’ll go out and click off some shots of the spot where you saw this UFO.”
“Well, we’ve got a nice Denny’s down the road,” said Tim, grinning, knowing that that wasn’t what the journalist had in mind.
“Ah, c’mon—treat me to one of your famous Kansas City strips. I hear that the
best place to get ‘em in these parts is in a bar.” He winked at Tim, who nodded and allowed that he knew the kind of place that Camden wanted. Tim, a drinker himself, instantly saw a kindred spirit here. Tim was also the kind of guy who was fascinated with characters. He was at his happiest when life was a Dickensian feast, filled with broad and fascinating people, gilt-edged with drama. And lo, here before them was a veritable Mr. Macawber with a press pass.
They took Camden to a dark hole named The Hideaway that had a bar dating from the Gay Nineties, genuine slate pool tables in the backroom, and steaks as thick as a brick.
When they were ushered into a booth by the waitress, Camden took out his Sony tape recorder, lit a Camel, and ordered a steak, baked potato, and a boilermaker.
“Might I say what a handsome couple you two make. You look like you are definitely in love. And Diane—you truly are a bee-u-tee-ful woman.” Camden smiled at her a bit whimsically, lust sparkling in his rheumy eyes. “Yep. I’m so happy you called,” he said. “You know, I guess maybe the Intruder has got a bad rep amongst you intelligentsia. But did you realize that all the reporters have college degrees? Shit, I’ve got one myself! Look, let’s face it—we all got to make a buck. And what the Intruder is, is a rag ... A tabloid meant primarily for entertainment. Okay, so we stretch things a bit! Our readers know that, and fuck everyone else if they can’t take a joke.” He tapped the damp Formica topped table with a forefinger. “But I ask you, how many papers with our circulation and our resources actually are investigating this kind of phenomenon? Zip ... I mean, seriously—something is going on. It’s gotta be checked out.” He looked at Diane and she could tell he noticed her skeptical expression. “Look, I just want to say thank you for entrusting me with this story. I have years of experience in this kind of thing, and I’m going to do my damndest to help find out what the hell you saw last week.” He smiled, showing yellowed teeth, then reached under the table and gave Diane’s thigh a reassuring squeeze that lasted just a moment too long to be chaste.
His boilermaker arrived. He took the shot of whiskey, dropped it, glass and all, into his mug of beer, sipped, and sighed. “Ah. That’s good. So let’s start at the top. Tell me just what happened.”
They ran through the story for him, Tim doing most of the talking, since Diane was suddenly feeling a little nervous about the whole thing. This guy was a sleaze. All her alarms were going off around him. No wonder Daddy got so upset when he heard that they were thinking of bringing Jake Camden into the story. She really hadn’t checked out the Intruder at all—the man’s book had looked reasonable enough, if slightly sensationalistic, and Tim had assured her that he was tops in the field. Jeez, if this was the top, she’d hate to look at the bottom! She’d assumed that her father hated Camden just because he was on the other side. Now she knew different.
Three boilermakers and a saucer-story later, Jake Camden emitted a burp redolent of the onion rings he’d been munching. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, “Gotta water the old porcelain with me one-eyed trouser snake.” He winked at Diane. “That’s Australian you’ll never hear in a Crocodile Dundee movie!”
The reporter stumbled back toward the john.
“Wow!” said Tim gleefully. “What a character! This is great!”
“Ti ... im!” she whispered between her teeth. “This guy’s a sleaze-ball of the first water! This guy groped me underneath the table! This guy makes yellow journalism seem like the New York Times!”
“Ah, so he had a few drinks on the plane. Did you hear the questions he asked? Did you hear the comments he had? This guy knows his UFO stuff all right. We’re going to get someplace with him. And jeez, what a character. And I saw it, he didn’t grope you, he just squeezed your thigh.”
“Like a prime piece of meat! He smells like sperm! Tim, he’d been drooling all over me. Can’t you see the way he looks at me?”
“Look, you’re beautiful! I look at you that way all the time! I can’t stop other guys from doing it. But c’mon, Diane, we’re just going to deal with this guy a short time, he’s going to help us investigate—and that’s it! So just grin and bear it.” Tim chuckled and sipped at his beer. “Whew, though. What a character. Whew!”
“Yes, well, just stay between me and him, okay, Tim?” she said. “And I don’t want my real name used in any story in his newspaper.”
“What—you think I got into a psych graduate program by being stupid? Give me some credit.” He patted her hand placatingly, but when Camden came out, dragging a length of toilet paper sticking to his heel, Tim was lost again in mirth and admiration.
Jake Camden plopped down beside them again, zipping up his fly. “Yo! What do they have in this dump in the way of after-dinner liqueurs?”
She had to give him credit. Just as soon as he got out into the field, Jake Camden seemed to sober up. He darted about the field and forest where they’d seen the hovering lights like some bloodhound trailing spoor. He checked exact angles, took rolls of photographs and made Diane and Tim retrace, as precisely as they could, their path from the car through the woods, and pinpoint exactly where they stood in their last moments of consciousness.
“Yep,” Camden said finally, nodding to himself as he pocketed a finished roll of Kodak film, and pulled a fresh one from his camera case. “What we have here, my friends, is a classic. A veritable classic.”
“You believe us then?” said Tim.
“Look, if you were pulling some kind of hoax, guy, you’d have a hell of a lot more proof.” Camden chuckled. “Shit, you got nothin’. Absolutely zip! No photos, no footprints, no burned spot where a saucer could have landed. But I’ll tell you what you two do have. You’ve got sincerity. And you got pedigree. That counts a lot with me.” Camden filled his camera with the fresh film, keeping up his monologue. “Like Diane here—I can hear the gears clicking in her head. Geez, here comes a guy in a cheap suit, snapping photos and sucking down juice like there’s no tomorrow. Cripes, she’s thinking. My daddy warned me about losers like this. Looks like a demoted paparazzo! Well, listen, I gotta tell you kids, I’m a good newspaperman. And the field that I deal with may be unorthodox, but I’m dedicated to dig out the truth. And listen—I’m an ambitious motherfucker.” He grinned and clicked the back of the camera closed. “When and if the aliens actually choose to land officially, I’ll be there, lens cap off. Meantime, though, I gotta dig. Lots of stuff I dig up turns out to be bullshit, but that’s just a part of the game.”
“What’s next?” asked Tim enthusiastically.
“Well, I’ve just about leached you clean of information about what happened. Stuff you remember, anyway. And I’m no psychologist and I don’t mess with hypnosis. When did you say that you’re supposed to go in for a session, Tim?”
“We’ve got an appointment on Thursday.”
“That may break the case. In the meantime; I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”
They piled back into the car, and drove back toward Tim’s apartment, tape recorder running and questions firing from the back seat.
“Okay, Diane, here’s a whopper for you. Do you think that having an old man like Everett Scarborough influenced this whole business?”
Diane was nonplussed. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there have been flying saucers buzzing around your ears all your life—I mean metaphorically. I know enough about the business to know that a large percentage of what people see in the skies starts out in their heads.”
“Are you saying I’m lying to you, Mr. Camden?” Diane said, getting angry.
“No. I told you, I think you’re telling me the truth.”
“He’s got something there, Diane. Kind of a mini-mass delusion between you and I—like maybe you conjured it all up in your head and projected a psycho-image that night,” Tim said.
“Tim! How can you say that! You know what happened to us ... And it wasn’t any fantasy that I conjured up!”
“Don’t get your panties on fire, Diane,” said Camden. “I’
m just covering possibilities. I told you, I’m a serious UFO investigator. “
“He’s right, Diane. Think it over.”
“I’m turning this recorder off. What comes up next is just between us and the gearshift.”
She thought it over, while Camden smoked his foul-smelling Camels in the back seat. Could it be possible? Was she some kind of psychic Carrie, troubled by a relationship with a father obsessed with proving the nonexistence of flying saucers? She knew exactly what Camden was suggesting here, and she was surprised by the intelligence it revealed in the man—there was a dimension to this whole flying saucer/Visitor business that ranged much further than the one in which most people cared to dabble. Certainly, her father only touched upon the psychological factors briefly, and merely scoffed at the farther-fetched philosophical theories put forward by such men as Jung and Strieber. He much preferred stomping fallacies with hard cold facts and logic.
Her father. Yes, perhaps there was something there.
“I guess that is an interesting suggestion, Mr. Camden,” she said coolly, not looking back at him in the rear. “My father and I do have our differences, but I don’t think it would cause me to see flying saucers and undergo an abduction experience.”
“Good. I’ll go with that, and thanks for giving it some mental waves, Di.” Camden slapped the seat and lay back, chuckling. “Wow. I think we’re onto something big here. I feel it in my gut! I can’t wait to get hold of the transcript of your hypnosis session ... You will let me have a look, won’t you? Privacy guaranteed, of course.”
“Sure,” said Tim. “But what do you think you’ll find there?”
“I think, kids, that if you were abducted by something or someone—that this may actually be a legitimate contact with something very strange and wonderful.”
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 24