The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy

by David Bischoff

  True, he had decided to go with Dr. Picardo’s new diet, with all those damned vegetables and damned fresh fruit. But tomorrow—not today.

  Today he was going to let go. Just let go. Tomorrow he’d bite that bullet.

  After he’d had lunch, he felt some excess energy, so he tooled on up to the Reston Country Club, where he found Jim Mason and Dick Hagerty, a couple of retired cronies, hanging out. They’d played golf, and he came out with a game two under handicap with only one double bogie after a few solid hours of bliss.

  Home. A big steak with the missus. And now, here he was settled down with a big tumbler of Scotch and soda and NBC’s Thursday night stretched out ahead of him. “Cosby,” “Cheers,” “L.A. Law.” Damned good shows. He gave the other shows a miss, switching them off with the remote control and picking up the latest Dick Francis or Golf magazine or newspaper.

  Nope. He didn’t even want to think about Brian Richards today. He’d prefer not to think about him at all, forever—but there were pipers that had to be paid.

  “Walter!” His wife’s gnarly New Jersey accent boomed down from the top of the stairs. “Walter, you down there?”

  Dolan cringed. Gladys was a touch deaf, and she couldn’t hear the television. Or maybe she could. The bitch did like to yell. She said it was because she was hard of hearing, but actually Walter thought it was because she enjoyed intimidating people.

  “Yes, dear. I’m down here. You know it’s my TV night.”

  He heard the thump of feet on padded carpet, the sway of a long dress; he saw the flash of varicose-veined legs. You’d think she was wearing combat boots that way she clumped down those steps, thought Dolan glumly.

  Gladys didn’t come down all the way to talk to him; no, she bent over, her string of pearls bowing like a swing from the bosom of a goddess, and ducked her hairdresser brown hair underneath the ceiling. She was a fearsome-looking woman in her sixties, Gladys Lamont Dolan was. That hawkish nose in her twenties and thirties had been striking, even handsome—now its beakish qualities seemed to stab at the person she was addressing with that cruel, pursed mouth.

  “I’m going out shopping, Walter!” she crowed.

  Dolan shuddered. Mother of his children! How had he ever sired offspring with this Sherman tank on legs! No wonder for real sexual enjoyment he’d always had mistresses or call girls—part of the perks of the considerable extra money he made in his association with Richards and the Publishers. God! She looked like a Japanese Kabuki woman in all that horrid makeup!

  “All right, dear.”

  “Tysons Corner. Lord and Taylor, I think. And maybe I’ll stop at Bloomingdales there, too. Do you need anything?”

  A new heart. A new wife. A new life. A different past. “No dear. I’m just fine right here where I am.”

  She sniffed the air. “Walter! Are you drinking that awful Scotch again? I thought the doctor told you if you’re going to drink alcohol, you had to drink something weak. And not much of it! And what’s that? Popcorn! Butter! Lord help us, you’re going to drop dead as soon as you step up from that chair!”

  “Just one more night, Gladys, and I’m on Picardo’s diet!”

  “Well, you can bet I’m going to make sure you stick to it, Walter! I’m not old enough to be a widow yet!”

  “I hope I don’t make you a widow for a long time yet, Gladys.”

  “It’s inevitable, I know. We have to face that, Walter. I do, anyway. I’m healthy as a horse... And you... Well, men tend to fall apart, don’t they?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  She started back up the steps, then stopped as though she were reconsidering something. She turned and humphed and clumped down the steps, looming over him like Death’s Big Sister. “Maybe you’ve had enough of this, Walter. Maybe you can start now.” She grabbed the bowl of buttered popcorn; she clawed the tumbler of Scotch and soda. “Maybe you should do a new batch. Air popped. And there is plenty of soda and fruit juice in the fridge.”

  He looked up at her, for a moment angry and determined to say something. But the look of Thatcherite iron will in those steely gray eyes gave him pause.

  It wasn’t worth the battle.

  “Maybe you’re right, Gladys.”

  “You bet I’m right. And have you been exercising?”

  “Eighteen holes at the club today!”

  “Good. I trust, now that you’re retiring, you’ll be golfing more. It’s your one good habit, Walter.”

  You could bet on it, thought Dolan. Out of here every chance I get. “Oh, I think that can be arranged.”

  “Excellent.” Like some kind of military prison mistress, Gladys spun about and marched back up the stairs. Clump, thump, clump. Pause. “Oh, and tape “L.A. Law” for me, would you, Walter? I might stop at Penelope’s for some tea on the way back.”

  Good. He’d have the evening to himself.

  “Be happy to, Gladys.”

  Satisfied at last, she completed her ascension. Dolan waited till he heard the roar of her Caddy and the rise, then fall of the garage doors before he even dared get up again. He didn’t care to hazard more buttered popcorn. Somehow, the gorgon had an eagle eye lately for butter and meat supplies. But drink supplies—well, he was the master of his bar. He had such a large collection of Scotches and bourbons, to say nothing of rums and vodkas and every other spirit imaginable, that there was simply no way the old lady could keep track of the quantities in the bottles.

  No way would she get rid of that bar, either. She liked her cocktails, too. And a well-stocked bar was absolutely vital for entertaining the crew of boozers that Gladys traveled with. What would a bridge party be, after all, without your vodka collins or martini? Why, a total wash-out, that’s what!

  “Cosby” had a good fifteen minutes before it was on, so Walter Dolan put down his copy of Golf, and took a hike on over to the wet bar, yes sir. He got out a bottle of Glenlivet, twenty-year-old. He put some ice inside a cut crystal glass (might as well go first class, since he was going to have to cut down). Then he poured himself three—no, make it four—jiggers of amber heaven over the ice. He pulled out the seltzer bottle, looked at it good and hard, thinking. No. Scotch over ice tonight. He lifted the glass, toasted his newly departed wife, and let some of the stinging stuff trickle down over his gullet. The familiar warmth flowed through his system. He was just damned glad the doctor had not taken away his booze. “Just cut down to a couple drinks a day, max.”

  Dolan wasn’t an alcoholic, no sir. But he wasn’t exactly dry either, and he sure would miss the stuff if he had to give it up. Maybe the steaks could take a walk, and maybe the doc was right, he’d get used to a low-fat diet. But no drinks?

  Maybe that wasn’t really a life worth living.

  He took another tipple, and then trotted on back to his copy of Golf, perusing an article on 9-irons while he waited for his TV evening to start up. He couldn’t concentrate though, not really. He kept thinking back to the sixties, back to when it had all begun. Richards. Scarborough. The whole UFO mess. Back then, he’d been plenty upset, thinking about there being creatures from another planet roaming around Earth, doing God-knew-what. It had given him the worst paranoia imaginable, disoriented him, expanded the whole way he looked at things... but ultimately, it had scared him so much that he’d been happy to sign on to Richards’s whole program. Funny though. Now, after so long, he felt a little bit jaded about the whole business…. He didn’t start awake at night after nightmares anymore. He could enjoy his golf and his drinks—hell, even the “Cosby” show, with its familiar drone and Cosby’s droll delivery and mugging; he was settling down into normal things, even knowing the strangeness that was out there.

  The human mind could only take so much before it was forced to domesticate even the wildest possibilities.

  No, once these few weeks he’d allowed for Richards were over, he’d be able to slip into a retirement without qualm or conscience, just let the comfortable stuff of life layer him over like soothing sod over a well-ap
pointed grave with hot and cold running booze, situated on a bluff overlooking the fifteenth hole of a beautiful golf course.

  By the time “Cosby” came and went, his drink was gone. “Different World” got turned off. He went and got himself another drink, and by the time the 9-iron article was finished and “Cheers” was on, Colonel Walter Dolan was feeling very little pain.

  Perhaps that as much as any reason was why he didn’t hear the door opening in the house above.

  Also, maybe because he was laughing. This evening’s “Cheers” episode was a particularly amusing one, centered around Norm, the fat barfly played by George Wendt. Norm always had great one-liners, and there was a wealth of them in tonight’s show. When the commercial came, Walter Dolan lifted his glass and got only a mouthful of ice. He went over to the wet bar and poured himself some more Scotch Gust a squiggle-he couldn’t let his wife see him too squiffed, or there’d be hell to pay), and then walked past the pool table to sit back down in his most comfortable chair.

  Standing by the foot of the stairs, hanging back a little in the shadows, was a figure-a figure in black, holding a gun in a gloved hand.

  “Jesus,” said Dolan. His breath seemed to freeze in his lungs. A burglar. The thought didn’t go straight into his action... he could only work his mouth, feeling the fear rumble around inside of him like rolling tar.

  “That’s all right, then, Walter Dolan,” said a woman’s soft, almost reassuring voice, muffled by the black mask. A definite British accent. “Why don’t you just finish that drink and then place it on the table.”

  As Dolan wordlessly obeyed the woman drew out a hypodermic case. “Time to play Doctor, Colonel!”

  Chapter 7

  “You know,” said Jake from his perch behind them, a map of Arizona folded out upon his lap like a destroyed paper accordion. “This is really weird.”

  “What’s weird?” asked Marsha.

  “I think I know what Jake’s talking about,” said Scarborough. He was driving, letting the cool highway air flow over his arm that dangled out the window, enjoying the warm bright Arizona sun flowing through the huge tinted Winnebago windshield. “That tape saying we were near Prescott.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  Jake shook his locks of disheveled hair. “Nope. According to the signs, we were a heck of a lot closer to Phoenix than to Prescott. I kinda wondered, what with that desert stuff around. Cactus and such. And that New River sign. So what do you think, Cap’n? Shall we pull over at that advertised rest stop a few miles up the road and have a conference on the matter?”

  Scarborough gave that notion exactly five seconds of thought. He was about to voice his opinion when Marsha, as though reading his mind, stepped in with exactly his thought. “Well, maybe there’s a reason they mentioned Prescott. Maybe we’re supposed to go to Prescott for some reason.”

  “True... but for what reason?”

  Silence hung in the air between them as Route 17 hurtled along beneath the RV’s wheels. The countryside was amazingly bare. Save for signs and the occasional gas station and such, it was just a very modern highway progressing through very ancient rock and timeless Arizona scrub.

  “Hey! Why didn’t I think of this before?” said Camden. “Hell, I know somebody in Prescott!”

  “So?” said Marsha.

  “No... Someone apropos, if you know what I mean!”

  “No, not really,” said Scarborough. “Please elucidate.”

  “Someone brain-deep in the whole UFO pond, man! None other than Lowell Edmund Davis.”

  For a moment, Scarborough couldn’t speak. It was just too much of a coincidence, but of course Camden was right. Somewhere deep down in his intellect, the factoid that Davis lived in Arizona floated; but the name Prescott wasn’t particularly associated. Lowell Edmund Davis…. How extraordinary.

  “Pardon my ignorance,” said Marsha. “But who is Lowell Edmund Davis?”

  “You’re clearly not a science fiction reader, are you?”

  “No. I like mysteries. Sarah Paretsky, Agatha Christie, Dick Francis. Stuff like that.” She said it assertively and with some pride, as though slightly offended that Camden would suggest that she read weird stuff like science fiction.

  “Well, Davis is a science fiction writer, yeah, but he’s written other stuff, too. Right, Scarborough?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Why do you say that, Ev? He’s written saucer books. He’s one of your enemies?”

  “She’s quick, you know, Doc? She picks up on things damned quick.”

  “Lowell Davis was never and isn’t my enemy!”

  “Right! And neither was I then! Just an intellectual sparring partner, eh, Scarborough!”

  “Look, would you two stop it and let me know who this guy is and why he’s causing all this commotion.”

  “You do the honors, Jake. It’s taking just about all my concentration keeping this monster on the road!” That wasn’t quite true; the Winnebago was easy enough to drive. But then, since Scarborough wasn’t exactly used to driving something with this kind of tonnage, it really would be best to concentrate on keeping the RV within the white lines. Besides, this way he could get Jake to review the information so that he could understand just what the sleazy journalist had in mind.

  “Sure. Lowell Davis is a successful science fiction writer. He sells a lot of books, but he’s not particularly the literary sort, I guess. Still, he’s known for two things. The vividness and realness of his descriptions of other planets and the future—and his ‘They Are Already Here’ theory.”

  “Who are already here?”

  “Aliens. It’s been in a few of his ‘present-day’ science fiction novels—and he wrote a book about it, called Amongst Us. Scarborough gave it a scathing review in the Washington Post Book Review, and then devoted a couple chapters to Lowell Davis and his science fiction and ‘science faction’ in one of his nonfiction efforts. Davis turned around and did probably the best hatchet job on Everett Scarborough’s work ever printed for Omni magazine. A two-part article! There was an exchange of incendiary letters in the letters page which boosted circulation quite a bit, lots of colorful name-calling, and the promise of a debate sometime, which neither party seemed quite willing to really do, so the actual plans by people in the UFO community to stage the event were thwarted.”

  “So what’s this guy’s theory, then?” Marsha was leaning toward Camden, amused eyes nonetheless burning with interest.

  Jake’s voice took on a different tone, not quite his usual self-confident bray, but rather a bit more thoughtful. “It’s an ‘aliens amongst us’ theory—only without a whole lot of flying saucers. And the thing is, the reason why I’m surprised I didn’t think of Davis before, is that it’s astonishingly similar to what we seem to be uncovering. Right, Scarborough?”

  Everett Scarborough bridled at the dig. “I see absolutely no resemblance!” He did, of course, but he’d be damned if he would admit to it.

  Especially to a guy like Camden whom you could trust to ladle a great deal of salt into a wound.

  “You betcha,” said Camden, “which is why, Scarborough, you shouldn’t mind if we paid him a visit!”

  “What?” Scarborough almost lost control of the wheel. The Winnebago slewed to the right, gravelling along the shoulder of the road for a solid three seconds before Scarborough, attention back on his driving, brought it shuddering back into alignment with the highway’s slow lane.

  “Sheesh!” said Camden, knocked off his seat and onto his knee. “You want to have a care there, driver!”

  “You want to put on your seat belt!” Scarborough countered.

  “That’s enough, you two!” scolded Marsha. “And Everett, why did you do that?”

  “Look, I haven’t exactly been to Winnebago school, okay?” He made sure everything was aligned with the RV, then he shot a significant look to Camden via the rearview mirror. “You know that weirdo?”

  “Well, yeah! So sue me! I mean, I’ve done a num
ber of interviews with him, here, at sci-fi and flying saucer conventions and conferences! I’ve read his stuff. And we stay in contact on the phone—he was a good source of interesting and weird stuff. Look, it was my job! Besides, Scarborough, I thought that your infamous ego would be pretty well shattered by now and willing to accept help from wherever it came!”

  “Not from Davis!” Scarborough could feel a flush color his cheeks even as he spoke. “And it will be a cold day in hell before that guy helps me! Not after all the mud slung!”

  Camden chuckled lowly. “Yeah. And the blood let. You guys could turn a vicious phrase, no question about that. I was wondering who could skewer each other worse, and the way I figure, it was about even!”

  “Even! I destroyed him!” It took every ounce of Scarborough’s willpower to keep his concentration on the road. “I tore apart his arguments one by one! And those silly novels of his are beneath consideration!”

  Camden tapped Marsha on the shoulder. “And you were worried about this guy! His ego could weather an atomic blast.”

  “My goodness, yes!” said Marsha, amused but a little flabbergasted as well. “But Everett, if what Jake says is correct, then this man is on the right track. He could have pertinent information!”

  Scarborough could feel the anger bubbling deep down inside of him. Davis! He’d rather be strapped on an African ant hill, naked, than deal with that twerp! He gritted his teeth and saw a Rest Area—1,000 Feet Ahead sign flicking by.

  “You’re saying that we should actually contact that bozo?”

  “I’m saying, Scarborough,” said Camden, “that Davis is a good, trustworthy guy and that he’ll be glad to put us up, hide us, whatever. And I bet you that if you can swallow that pride of yours and listen to him, be might even have some things to say that could not only help you to find your daughter, but bail us out of this particular strange hole we find ourselves in.”

  Scarborough turned off onto the rest area access ramp. He followed the arrow marked Trucks—Trailers, and slotted the Winnebago into the nearest available parking spot. He pulled up the parking brake, then turned off the ignition. “I gather that I am outvoted here. Very well. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps logic dictates that we should go see Mr. Davis. However, I refuse to drive there, and I refuse to see him... Don’t even tell him I’m in the RV!”