On the table by the Mr. Coffee was a Maxwell House coffee container bannered with the sign: Coffee Contributions. 25 cents suggested. You Too, Jake.
Purely out of habit, Jake Camden looked behind him to make sure nobody was about, then poured out the collected quarters in the can into his palm and pocketed them.
Enough work for today, anyway. He needed a drink, goddammit!
Too much of this virtue nonsense was making a boring guy out of him. A guy had to have some fun!
He went back and stuffed the Scarborough article into a briefcase. Not that he intended to work on it at home by any means—he just didn’t want it lying around here at work, available for the many snooping eyes of his colleagues.
Just as Jake Camden hit the door and pounded down the stairs, eager to hit the Palm Branch Lounge, the phone on his secretary’s desk began to jangle.
However, Jake did not hear it ringing—his thoughts were turned toward a few glasses of joy, a couple games of pool, and maybe some pretty tourist on her way down to Disney World.
Chapter 6
Goddamn it, answer the phone!
Everett Scarborough let it ring for the eleventh time and then hung up. Coins clattered down into the public phone box.
Well, he should have called Camden earlier.
Wait a minute. Didn’t he also give him a phone number?
There it was, on the other side of the hotel stationery. Scarborough put the coins into the slot again; got the long distance operator, and placed the call. He didn’t dare use his Sprint FON card, for the same reason he couldn’t use his credit cards. He was dealing with high-tech people here, and he couldn’t rely on things that he used to take for granted. They could trace him too easy.
Everett Scarborough, low-tech refugee from justice. If he survived this ordeal, Hollywood could use this story for a series. Too bad David Jannsen was dead—but then, Don Johnson might do.
The operator came on and helped him with the call.
The connection was made on the third ring.
“Que pasa!” came Camden’s voice, hoarse from too much booze and too many cigarettes. “I can’t come to the phone now; I’m setting up my machine-gun nest to deal with burglars. If you saw a green man from Mars, call my secretary at my office. If you have money for me, leave your name, address, and phone number. If you want money from me, come on over. I wanna test out this machine gun. Oh yeah, in just a very short time I’m going to say a filthy word and the phone company’s gonna beep me out. You got a message, let it fly then.”
BEEP!
Scarborough hung up.
It he got the chance, he’d try later.
He was outside a 7-Eleven store in a town called Imperial, close to Pittsburgh.
Everett Scarborough had been traveling since about two in the afternoon, still keeping to back roads, still toeing the speed limit, still keeping the lowest road profile possible. Now that he knew exactly where he was heading and what he was doing, his pace was frustrating. Before, he hardly noticed. He was too busy thinking, weighing the situation, and above all trying to get his emotions in control.
He went inside the store and bought a paper and a Snicker’s Bar. He’d have some dinner later—right now, his low-sugar level needed a boost, and so did his mood. At home, in this kind of funk, it would have been scotch time. Now, he couldn’t afford the luxury of drinking.
“Hey—haven’t I seen you before?” said the clerk, a skinny guy with limp, long hair and a large Adam’s apple.
Scarborough shrugged, hiding the sudden lunge of his heart. Before, he had luxuriated in recognition. Now, he cringed at the very thought.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, “Have you?”
The young man squinted at Scarborough for a long time. “Naw, you just look like him, I guess.”
“Oh? Who do I look like?”
“This state official I seen on TV. Can’t remember his name. Thanks.” Change was handed over, and the guy went back to studying the black-and-white screen on a portable TV, its aerial augmented by Reynolds Wrap.
Scarborough grunted and left.
He went back to the group of three phones to the right of the entrance, by the large icebox. He was going to try another call—a call to a man he’d counted out at first, but now, upon reconsideration, who just might be willing to help him.
He pulled his pocket address-book out of his back pocket, consulted the section marked ‘M’, and started to dial a 703 area-code number. He remembered Ed’s voice just last year as he pushed the business card into his hand. “Ev, thanks. I owe you one. You ever get into trouble, here’s my private consulting number. Phone in the basement, separate line-registered pure and untapped.”
Edward Myers.
Ed worked out of Langley, Virginia, but he wasn’t in his office very often. He tended to travel a lot, training division heads and generally keeping the trench-coated men up on the latest in hardware, software, and wetware pertinent to their calling. In short, he was a career spook. CIA. They’d met at a think-tank sponsored by the government, brainstorming spy satellite operations. Scarborough was an old hand at this, way back since his days at MIT.
As soon as Scarborough started making significant money as the country’s leading UFO skeptic (beating out even Phillip Klass for that title, mostly because he was much more photogenic and charming), he did very little consulting, only enough to keep him abreast in significant aeronautic developments.
He and Myers had hit it off at the think-tank. Myers had come out a few times for one of Scarborough’s infamous weekend-long poker games. He’d met Mac MacKenzie there and even Mac thought he was a neat guy, for a spook.
Their relationship would never have gone any further than poker games and dinner parties (Cynthia Myers was forever trying to fix Scarborough up with some woman), except for David Myers, Ed’s son.
David had, early in life, discovered the entrepreneurial tradition of free enterprise that had made America an economic giant. Unfortunately, David sold drugs. Busted at age sixteen, addicted to coke, various upper and downers, and possibly to alcohol, David had only been kept away from serious discipline by his father’s government connections. Myers got him treatment, but another ingredient was necessary—attention. The CIA agent was gone so much for his job that he never gave David the attention he needed. He tried to make up for that, but he also encouraged David to reach out to other older people as role models. One of David’s sober enthusiasms was science, and one of his favorite authors was Everett Scarborough. Every Saturday afternoon for close to a year, Scarborough had either visited David or had David over, and personally guided him through a tutorial of friendship, reading, and private discussion.
David had proved to have quite a facility for computer science, and that last thing Scarborough had done was to teach him the basics of BASIC, FORTRAN, and C. Now, David was entering the University of Virginia. drug-free, addicted only to computer programming, girls. and rock and roll. Myers had been very grateful to Everett, certainly; but actually, Scarborough did it because he liked David and saw a lot of himself in the boy. Besides, it had all been fun, and he’d gotten a chance to try out a lot of potential lecture-routines aimed at the high school and college age. A healthy percentage of his yearly income came these days from the lecture circuit. Scarborough had never intended to call in the favor.
Until now.
“This is Potomac Consultants, Inc.” came Ed Myers’s answering machine tape. “Please leave your name and number at the sound of the tone.”
Much different and certainly more professional than Jake Camden’s message.
Should he leave a message? Yes, Scarborough decided. He had to take that chance.
“Ed. It’s me. I’m sure you know I’m in deep trouble. Maybe you also know I’ve been framed. I need your help. ASAP. You can reach me through my agent, William Franklin.”
Scarborough rattled off the appropriate 212 number and then hung up.
When he started walking back to hi
s car, he immediately saw the Pennsylvania State Trooper car, and the policemen looking over his car. His heart leapt up to his throat, but he contained the urge to run. Without breaking stride, he continued toward the car. If the cop asked for a driver license, maybe he was screwed, maybe he wasn’t. But if he ran away, the jig was up.
“Can I help you, officer?”
“This your car?” said the man, a pudgy sort, bored-looking, doubtlessly counting his months to retirement. He barely glanced at Scarborough, which was an excellent sign.
“Yes.”
The man in grey lifted a scuffed shoe and tapped the bumper of the Falcon, below the headlight. “Got yourself a busted tum-signal lens, Mister. If I wasn’t off-duty, I’d write you up. Take my advice. Get it fixed.”
“Oh—ah ... thanks officer. I hadn’t noticed.”
The officer grunted, hitched up his gun holster, and waddled into the 7-Eleven store.
Scarborough breathed a sigh of relief, bending over and examining the half-broken-off red signal-cover.
First body-part shop he found, he’d either get a new lens or something to disguise the breakage. He didn’t want to get caught by the authorities for something so petty!
He got into the car and, quickly as he dared, got the hell out of there.
Chapter 7
There was a new bartender at the Palm Branch Lounge. Female. Pretty and not a bad body. A little mileage on her, but Jake Camden liked her hairstyle, long on the sides with her bangs moussed to either side of her part in the middle.
“So I says to Steve Spielberg, ‘You get yourself a decent script, we’ll talk business!’” Camden drained the rest of his Moosehead beer, as much for dramatic reasons as for the drink, and then looked deep into Cover-Girl-adorned eyes, mustering every bit of his sincerity. “’Steve, I hate to say it, but Close Encounters and ET were cute, but they were about as close to the truth as Disneyland is to Harlem. You decide to make another film about aliens, it’s gotta be hard-hitting and realistic.’ I gave him my ideas, and he’s getting his writers working on them. They’re what they call ‘in development,’ in Hollywood parley. They’re paying me some nice option money, but who knows what will happen. People don’t want the truth, they want pablum. I don’t deal with pablum, I deal with reality. Speaking of which, Annette, how about a nice brimming shot of Johnny Walker and another bottle of this Canadian stuff?”
The Palm Branch Lounge, a seedy bar with an air of faded gentility, hung over a canal, shielded halfheartedly from the Florida sun by a brace of anemic palm trees. The big excitement for Palm Loungers was whenever Gertie, a nine-foot-long alligator, showed up below the deck; the regulars would feed her barbecued potato chips and marshmallows. The marshmallows were particularly amusing, since they tended to stick to the long teeth. The Palm attracted a lot of well-to-do alkys and bored wives of out-of-town businessmen, which made it a primo shot for pickups and cons for a slick article like Jake Camden.
“That’ll be three-fifty, Mr. Camden,” said Annette.
“Jake, kiddo! Call me Jake, please!” Camden pulled his wallet out, stared at it mordantly. “Gee, Annette. I’m tapped out. Forgot to stop at the Money Mover! Can you put it on my tab? I’m a regular here—but wait a minute, not now ... You wanted to hear about how I got into flying saucers, didn’t you.” He bent over conspiratorially, as though he was about to tell her the Secret Knowledge of Everything. “Have you ever been picked up by aliens, Annette?”
Annette blinked. “Hell, no!”
“Are you very, very sure? You know, they can erase your memory of the event. But there are signs ... Indications. You want me to give you a few, just to make sure you’re right, just to make sure you haven’t been secretly?”
“No way, hon. My necessary equipment went to Mastectomy City!”
“Just joshing with you, Annette. Seriously, though, you want to hear my story?”
She eyed him suspiciously. She was a lot cuter when she was smiling; she lost her dimples when she frowned. “How come, Jake, I get the feeling these phrases have tumbled from your lips before?”
Jake studied her a moment carefully. Wait a sec. Yes, the exterior was hard case enough. This lady had been through enough men and pain to fill a year’s worth of True Confessions. But she couldn’t hide the spark of interest in those still young hazel eyes of hers.
“It’s not just my job, Anny ... The serious journalistic pursuit of Unidentified Flying Objects is my life. You can be certain that I too, was doubtful at first. The truth is that over 95 percent of sightings of flying saucers can be explained as natural phenomenon, delusions, or hoaxes. But what about the three or four percent that can’t be explained? That’s the .question I always asked myself, when I first started doing a few stories for the Intruder on the subject.”
“What, you didn’t see one yourself?” The bartender unwrapped some Wrigley’s Spearmint and stuck it into her mouth.
“Naw, Maybe one day. But you know it doesn’t make that much difference. All this stuff is so much a part of me ... When I hear, first-person, a genuinely sincere encounter of a sighting ... well, babes, it’s amazing. I’m just swept off my feet. I’m there!” Excited, he got off the bar stool, executing dramatic gestures with his hands. “When they tell me they see saucers hovering above power lines in the Midwest, suckin’ up that energy to stoke their energies, I’m there. When John Doe tells me he’s seen short, funny-lookin’ men peering in through his bedroom windows and later a round shape pulsing with red and green lambency—shit, I’m there! When Jane Doe is cryin’, telling me how the aliens are showing her a little child, genetically half-terrestrial, half-otherworldly, yanked from her womb, taken from her loving anus ... shit, Annette. I’m there, too! Blubbering away, often as not!”
Her features were softening. He was getting to her.
Maybe she’d even forget to write his tab down in the tattered black book that Fritz, the owner, kept by the cash register.
He told her—and this was for real—he was genuinely fascinated with the world of UFOs. He’d plunged into the wealth of literature on the subject—in print, or out of print ... He’d actually made a trip to the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., early in his career, just to research there for a solid week. In ringing phrases, he described the sense of awe, the thrill of wonder, he’d felt at the possibility that other life might exist on other planets, and that intelligent beings might actually be observing humans, even secretly mixing it up with us. What Jake Camden did not tell Annette was that this buzz lasted a whole year and a half, before he started to realize that all this stuff was in people’s heads. That, in all likelihood, it was all hokum. But he was too far in by then, making too much money, getting too much attention to back out. By that time he was already working on that cheapie film, the one with the caricature of Scarborough in it.
He’d been hooked.
“Oh shit” said Annette. She was looking down into the black ledger book. Camden had been so busy expounding upon his dramatic, exciting, crisis-ridden life he hadn’t noticed her getting the book. She gave him a hard look. “You asshole. Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been cut off?”
Jake blinked. “Cut off! What, my tab? Here, let me take a look at that. There must be a mistake!” Nonetheless, he quickly finished his draft, even as he looked down at the winged open book. No mistake, of course. He owed Fritz a good three hundred smackeroos, and in big block letters, the Heine’s message was clear: NO MORE TAB FOR THIS BOZO. ALL CASH!
A couple of other regulars at the end of the bar hovering on their stools like vultures behind wavering streams of cigarette smoke chuckled. They’d been waiting for this little confrontation all along. “Hey, Jake!” one of them yelled down. “You owe me ten bucks, too.”
“Twenty here!” cried the other.
“You guys will get your goddamned money!” he yelled, then sweetened up as he turned to Annette. “Tell you what. You spot me for these drinks. and I’ll take you out for dinner and a show down in Orlando
when I get back from New York.”
She glowered at him.
“Okay, okay! What about a weekend in Palm Beach. I know this cute little UFO-nut couple down there. Lovely house ... I’m welcome any time!”
“I can’t afford these drinks! I’m gonna lose my job, you shit! “
“No, no honey. Fritzy won’t know.”
One of the regulars, a wizened old guy with a cackle like a crow, piped up. “Oh yes he will, Camden.”
“Okay, okay, I’ve got my money machine down the street. I’ll see if there’s anything left in my account besides fumes!”
He got off the stool. There was a little money in his checking account, sure ... enough to pay the bill at least. But he needed it, and no way was he gonna come back and pay this broad. Besides, she wasn’t that good-looking anyway. Jake had been getting spoiled on juicy college babes, ever since he’d been booked into that speaking tour last year. Yeah, what do you want to fool around with a dishrag like this, he told himself. Next time you come in, you give her the money and a nice tip, along with some of Fritzy’s money, too. Hey, everything will be absolutely jake then.
Of course it probably wouldn’t, but by the time Jake hurried out of the bar, followed by the new bartender’s hurled obscenities, it didn’t make much difference. Part of the secret of Jake’s ability to seem sincere was that he loved the sound of his own voice so much that while his mouth was yapping, he believed everything that came out.
Weaving a bit, feeling glad to be out of that particular situation, and with a nice little splash of free booze in his system, Jake went around to the back parking lot to get his car. The drive back to his apartment was short; no danger of some cops laying a DWI on him. (He’d gotten two of those last year, and probably would have served prison time, but Kozlowski had the local constabulary in his pocket and he got off with probation before judgment, small fine.)
They were waiting for him by his car.
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 45