Lost Friday

by Michael Bronte

  I thought, wasn’t this some shit? “Are we done? I gotta take a shower and get to work.”

  Skin Head said, “Have a good day, Mister Pappas. We’ll see you around.” He smiled and headed for the door.

  That couldn’t have been less subtle. Big Brother was on me. They left, and I felt like I needed to punch something. Wait until Romano heard about this. Then, I took it down a notch. The president knew damned well what I would do. Was I being set up for a second time? And, why me? I was a pipsqueak reporter at a regional newspaper. Surely there were some national guys writing about Lost Friday who could put more pressure on the president than I could. I headed for the shower and figured I’d call Romano right away, then I remembered this was the day Roy and I were supposed to stake out the teachers. Man, when it hit the fan, it really hit the fan.

  * * * * *

  “Why are you yelling into the phone?”

  “I’m not yelling. “What’s the matter, Remington? Are we a little hung over this morning?”

  Pause. “Sort of.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “I don’t know yet. After last night, I think I’ve got Corvissi pretty softened up. I’ll find out this morning.”

  “By that you mean you’re meeting with him again?”

  “If he shows.”

  “Where are you supposed to meet him?”

  “At a Ramada off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.”

  “A Ramada. Uh-huh.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means: did you pack your knee pads?”

  “He’s not a pig like you, Pappas. Besides, he’s married. Showed me pictures of his kids and everything.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you call just to bust my chops?”

  I filled Remington in on the visit from Skin Head and Bull Neck, glancing into my rearview mirror every few seconds to see if they were following me. The air was cool this morning, with more than a hint of fall in the air, but the sun was glorious; looked like it was going to be a perfect day for teacher-watching. I had the top down on the ’Vette, on my way to the high school to meet up with Roy and some of his men. If someone, or some thing, from the year 2194 was going to pay a visit to Allison Kovar or Scott Reemer today, Roy was determined to get a look a look at it. I’d already talked to Romano, who agreed that the visit from the two Secret Service guys sounded strange, but he didn’t see it the same way I did.

  “Politicians step on their dicks all the time,” he’d said. “Maybe these guys were just doing damage control.”

  But Romano hadn’t seen Skin Head and Bull Neck. I wish I’d gotten their names. Didn’t think of it in the heat of the moment. That was pretty inexcusable for a reporter, and Romano didn’t fail to remind me of that.

  “No way!” Remington said when I finished telling her about the incident.

  “Yes, way, at 5:30 this morning.”

  “But, why would the president do that? Wouldn’t it look bad for him if it ever got out that he ordered a couple of Secret Service goons to intimidate you? Hell, if you hadn’t reported the story, someone else would have.”

  “Looking bad is putting it mildly. Romano doesn’t think—”

  “Screw Romano. What do you think?”

  I had to chuckle. I mean, Remington was into it. “I think the president is trying to cover something up, all right.”

  “Iran Contra and Watergate all over again.”

  “Do you think Corvissi knows enough to point us in the right direction on this?”

  “I don’t know,” Remington replied. “His knowledge might be pretty limited. I’m working on him, but he’s pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing, or he just doesn’t know any more than what he’s telling me.”

  “Booze and sex didn’t work?”

  “I didn’t offer him sex—yet,” she added with a distinct upturn in her voice. “You want me to work him on this Secret Service cover up angle, see if I can get lucky?”

  “Yeah, but don’t spend too much time on this with Corvissi. I think you might have to wiggle your way back to the White House. There’s something there. You have to find out who knows something about any possible cover-up, and get under his skin. You might wanna call Romano and ask him to work some of his connections. Maybe he knows someone who knows someone, who might be able to get you a few minutes with the press secretary himself. If you get that far, I’d hit him right between the eyes with it. If he so much as coughs the wrong way, you’ll know something’s cooking inside the hallowed walls.”

  Remington said, “Got it. Where you gonna be today?”

  I told her about the teacher stakeouts.

  “Good luck,” she said before coming back with, “Pappas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really think we’re onto something?”

  I let a couple of beats go by, and said, “I think we’re onto the biggest thing since the discovery of fire.”

  She went silent for a few seconds, and said, “I’ll catch up to you later, Pappas. I’m running late.”

  She sounded tight as a piano string, and I needed her to be loose and nimble, able to think on her feet. Trying to lighten the mood—okay, and fantasizing at the same time—I said, “Hey Remington.”

  “What?”

  “What are you wearing?”

  She caught on, and said, “Nothing but high heels and a smile, Pappas. Just look into the phone.”

  And I did.

  * * * * *

  The school was a typical rambling brick-and-stucco structure. If viewed from the air, it would look like a triple-H on a pad of black asphalt. I spotted Roy’s truck right away, parked illegally in a fire lane and sandwiched by two of Sea Beach’s five police cruisers. I located Roy a few minutes later, camped out in Coach Lucas’s office near the gymnasium. The two of them were hunched over the coach’s desk whispering back and forth like they were telling dirty jokes.

  Roy got up as soon as I came in. “Just in time.”

  “For what?”

  He held up a couple of key rings and said, “Hide-and-seek.”

  Oooo…kay. About face, out of there. “I thought we were supposed to stake out the teachers,” I said, wondering if I should tell Roy about the visit from Skin Head and Bull Neck. I decided to hold off seeing as, for the time being at least, it seemed like newspaper business and none of Roy’s business. “Is that still the plan? I mean, they aren’t supposed to be abducted until tomorrow.”

  “I know that,” he said, “but I’ve got two men in plain clothes stationed outside their classrooms today, just in case. My guess is that it won’t happen here, however.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. If I were a kidnapper, I wouldn’t be doing it in front of dozens of people.”

  “My men will escort them home after school, and that’s where we’ll be waiting. I figured we’d check out the houses beforehand.” We walked into the sunshine as Roy continued. “I’ve said all along that one of those futuristic bastards has been among us the whole time. This might be the opportunity to get a look at him.”

  “They just took twelve more people, Roy. There could be more than one.”

  Roy nodded. “Could be, and we’re gonna have eyes on those teachers twenty-four-seven until something happens,” he said as we hopped into his smelly truck.

  Roy was determined to make his plan work. Having kept the future newspaper a secret had prevented the predictable three-ring enforcement agency circus that would have resulted had its existence been revealed, but I had no clue as to whether Roy and his men by themselves had a chance of stopping anything that was destined to happen. Hell, the government knew about the NASA abductions—and possibly a shitload more, for all we knew—and they hadn’t done a damned thing to avoid Lost Friday, or the twelve other abductions that had just taken place. Of course, the assumption was that they would have tried to prevent the abductions if they could have. Maybe that was a bi
g assumption.

  Roy zigged and zagged through the streets, hitting a huge pothole as he turned onto Nassau Street, which was out by the water tower on the north side of town. One of Roy’s big striper lures dropped down off the visor in front of me as we hit the pothole, its razor-sharp hooks snagging on my pants and digging into the skin beneath. “Oow! Shit!”

  Ignoring me, Roy said absently, “I just wish I had a better story to plant with those teachers when they go bye-bye.”

  “I thought you had a handle on that?” I said as I yanked the hook from my thigh. A blood spot immediately began soaking through my khakis. “Damn it, this was a perfectly good pair of pants.” I chewed on Roy’s last comment for a moment, and said, “I might have something for you. I know it would get my attention if I were one of the bad guys.”

  “What?” Roy asked as we pulled into a driveway.

  Given the blue birdbath, I figured it was Allison Kovar’s house. “Tell Kovar and Reemer to tell the kidnappers that we know about the president.”

  Roy turned. “What about the president?”

  “Nothing. Just trying to figure out a way to mess with their heads.” Right, I thought as Roy got out of the truck and pulled Kovar’s keys from his front pocket.

  * * * * *

  The check of Allison Kovar’s house was uneventful. The house was clean, simple, and functional, the most memorable part being her office where an entire wall was covered with snapshots of her with students. There had to be hundreds of pictures there. Clearly, to Allison Kovar teaching math was more than just a job. Roy called the station and said to get someone out there right away to sit on the scene. Then, he said to have another officer meet him at Reemer’s house to do the same thing there. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation for Roy’s guys, and I imagine they told their loved ones not to expect them home for dinner for a few days.

  “Kovar and Reemer must be on pins-and-needles,” I said as we headed over to Reemer’s house.

  “I think telling them about that future newspaper was a mistake,” Roy responded. “Putting them through that kind of anxiety, and all. Then again, not warning them wouldn’t have been good either.” Roy looked at me. “What do you think?”

  “I think if you knew, and you didn’t tell me, I’d be kind of pissed,” I said, wondering about my own solo abduction five days earlier. Is it possible that Roy knew about that as well? I checked him out, trying to detect what was behind his eyes.

  “What are you looking at?”

  I was annoying him. I turned away, and that’s when I saw her. I mean, I’m sure it was her—the babe from the diner, that is, the real live Barbie doll with the religious jacket. I read somewhere that if Barbie were a real live woman, her measurements would be 38-18-34, and this chick…. Wait a minute. Duh! My notes. One of the entries I’d put there in code was Barbie. Could it be? That would shoot the theory that I’d been abducted into the future all to hell—or would it? Roy felt certain that one or more of the terrorists was among us; could she be the one who dropped the future newspaper on Roy’s doorstep? Could this set of tits-on-a-stick be from the future?

  I watched as she jogged toward us on the opposite side of the road. She was wearing spandex—not all that unusual for a serious runner—and from the looks of her lower body, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that this chick had some greyhound in her. Up top, she was wearing a loose-fitting windbreaker, but despite the loose fit she was still nipples-to-the-wind with those big guns of hers forging ahead like heat-seeking missiles.

  “Check this out,” I said, motioning toward her. Roy had been focused on me, wondering why I’d been eyeballing him, I guess.

  We were just coming up on her now, about thirty yards away. “I don’t remember anyone new moving into town,” he said.

  Roy would have known if a stray cat had wandered across the boro limits during the last six days. “Maybe she’s visiting someone,” I said as she jogged by. I noticed that she kept her eyes on us as we passed.

  Roy let off the gas, and the truck’s engine burbled as we coasted. “None of the checkpoint logs showed any visitors being escorted through by residents.” He stepped on the brake and the old truck squealed to a stop. “Where is she?” he asked, craning to get a different angle on his driver’s side mirror.

  I mean, we’d just passed her. I turned and scoped out the landscape through the back window. She was gone—as in ffffhhhttt! Where the hell did she go? “Maybe she ducked into the woods,” I said, answering my own question.

  Roy yanked the wheel and did a quick three point turn. “No way,” he said, indicating the thick brush and the four-foot-deep drainage ditch that bordered the road. “Only a rabbit could penetrate brush like that.”

  Roy was right. It was like she saw us, and vaporized. “How far are we from Reemer’s house?”

  The thought must have dawned on Roy at the same time. “No more than a mile up the road,” he said, yanking the wheel again.

  We were in an undeveloped corner of Sea Beach, off the water, where what was once ocean floor was now a tangled forest of wild blueberry bushes and scruffy pine trees. “Do you think it’s possible?” I asked.

  “I know every other house along here. I don’t imagine she was visiting any of those families.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. The odds of a chick like that having anything to do with some of the poor old-timers who lived in this part of the boro—the ones who’d been living in the three-room shacks along the old state roads for forty years, the ones who thought teeth were optional equipment—those odds were way below slim. As such, the supposition that she’d just come from Reemer’s place wasn’t much of a stretch. Roy eased the truck back onto the roadway, and that’s when I saw it, it being what looked to be a large, white rock right in the middle of the drainage ditch we’d just passed. What the…? It turned out not to be a rock at all, however. Getting out of the truck, Roy and I both approached, seeing the cloud that came off it like gas on dry ice. It kind of hissed at us as we approached.

  I touched Roy on the shoulder. “Frozen helium?”

  “I can feel the cold radiating off it from here,” Roy commented, still several yards away.

  There was no doubt now. We both hightailed it back to the truck, and Roy swerved through the sandy curves toward Reemer’s house, which we knew was a small custom-built A-frame purposely located in this isolated part of town. On the way, he used his radio to call the station to see if the officers he’d dispatched to Kovar’s house had gotten there yet. Evidently not.

  “Find them,” he barked loudly, “and tell them to call me yesterday.” He clicked off. “I don’t know what we’re gonna find when we get there,” he hollered, gunning the old F-150 for all it was worth, “but she sure-as-shit was one of them. Can you give me a detailed description, Johnny? I only saw her for a couple of seconds.”

  I could, of course, but I never got to give it to him, and we never made it to Reemer’s house. At least I didn’t. I don’t know what the fuck happened to Roy.

  Chapter 19… New Friends

  They were across the room, facing the other way, and they were talking real low the way people talk inside a funeral parlor. One of them turned, and I closed my eyes and played dead. The last thing I remembered was bouncing down a back road inside Roy’s musty truck, headed toward Scott Reemer’s house. Wait, and the block of frozen helium: I remembered that, too, and I said, “Shit.” I had a feeling I knew where I was. They must have heard me because, even with my eyes closed, I sensed them coming up to me.

  “Can you hear me, Mister Pappas?”

  My eyes boinged open, and I found myself looking up at two dark and bottomless stares.

  “Take your time, Mister Pappas. We’ll wait for you.”

  The guy doing the talking was on the small side, stubble like black wire covering a thin jaw, his skin taught so that I could see jaw muscles rippling beneath it. The other guy had a dark comple
xion, more than olive, less than African, Indian I’d say, maybe Pakistani, straight hair. “Where am I?” I asked for lack of a better question.

  The dark-skinned one said, “You are in Sea Beach, Mister Pappas. The same place you’ve always been.”

  “But I’m 190 years older, aren’t I?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  The way my body felt, it was like I’d been sleeping on a board that whole 190 years. The two guys hovered over me, and, strangely, I wondered why I was so important that two of them had to call me Mister Pappas and wait for me to wake up. Both their accents were off center, more British than American, hints of English being a second language.

  The one with the razor jaw asked, “Are you coherent?”

  I took a second, or maybe I took a week; I don’t know, this time thing was freaking me out. “Why do I keep falling asleep?” I asked, not really with it. I looked around, noting that I was in what looked to be a hotel room, or something. I mean, it looked normal enough, except that I’d never seen chairs shaped like that before. And the dresser—I guess it was a dresser—looked like it was just drawer fronts built right into the wall. I didn’t see any windows, so for all I know I could have been inside a mountain.

  The dark one replied, “Sometimes it takes a while for one to regain consciousness due to the oxygen deprivation during teleportation. It has to do with the helium, you see.” I guess he saw my confusion because he went on, “The way the time travel device works is that it creates a conduit across time dimensions by freezing atoms inside a designated pathway, a tunnel, if you will. Everything inside the conduit is frozen and condensed, creating an absolute vacuum. Even the air is frozen.”

  “You mean there is no air.”

  “Correct, Mister Pappas. There is nothing, and where there is nothing, there is only time.”

  I thought I understood. “Hence, the blocks of frozen helium where people have been sucked away,” I croaked. I wondered if my notepad was nearby.

  Both men smiled. “Helium is only the freezing agent,” the dark-skinned one said. “When you are looking at one of those blocks, you are looking at frozen history, air that perhaps Alexander The Great could have been breathing.”