Scarborough regarded the officer for a moment. All of Dolan’s body language seemed involved in some symphony of sincerity. His eyes never veered to the floor, the expression all rang true—but that Southern accent! Dolan always had a hint of it, but never had Scarborough heard it poured on so thick. The colonel was acting like some kind of Ocean City time-sharing condo salesman. And Scarborough wasn’t buying.
“If you could just examine this information, Walt—as soon as you can—and report to me, in writing, an official explanation, I’ll include it in my next book.” Scarborough sipped at the brackish coffee and cleared his throat. “Of more immediate concern to me, though, is the matter of my missing files.”
“Yeah, you mentioned something about that on the phone.” Dolan gave a dismissive gesture. “Those files are twenty years old, fella. You must’ve either lost or misplaced them.”
Scarborough shook his head. “No. I checked. And my late wife was the person who organized my files, and she specifically created folders for those documents.” Scarborough leaned forward, frowning. “Walt, I think those files were stolen!”
Colonel Dolan held his hands out in a helpless gesture. “Why would anyone want to steal some yellowing old reports on sightings of aircraft that don’t exist!”
“My question exactly.”
“Now hold your horses a moment, boy. I’m starting to get the drift of your insinuations.” He flapped the Xeroxes contemptuously. “These reports don’t match the Blue ... Cousin Mac sees a nigger in the woodpile and comes bellowin’ to his buddy the UFO expert. The doc thinks his are stolen. Sounds like you guys have been chewin’ on some paranoia for breakfast!”
“Maybe,” said Scarborough. “And when you wouldn’t talk to me this morning—well, that didn’t help.”
“Cripes, Ev! I’m a busy man! Sorry about that, but I am talking to you right now, aren’t I?”
“True.”
Dolan shook his head and ran his fingers through his shock of white hair, leaning forward in a confidential manner. “Hell, Ev. You know that the bozos in this business can’t even pull off a decent procurement-contract cover-up. Big business gets the crafty sorts—the military is lucky if the new officers can wipe their asses and pick their noses at the same time.” Dolan snorted. “So you think that we sent over one of those James Bond sorts to lift a stupid UFO report. Sheesh, maybe there is something weird in the drinkin’ water out in Bethesda!”
“I’ll admit, it does sound farfetched. But the fact remains, you’ve got this discrepancy here—I want you to tell me who wrote up that part of the Blue Book report. And I want to know why my report wasn’t followed.”
Dolan shrugged. He examined the bent documents for a moment, then scanned the open book in front of him. “Hmm. Yes. I see what you mean. There are differences. Green lights in the report, red in the book ... Yeah ... well, maybe you’re right, Ev. I’ll get to work on this. We do go back a long way, so I figure l owe that to you. But as far as these disappearing files of yours go ... well, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree on that one.”
“Could be. Nonetheless, thanks, Walt. I hope you’ll be equally cooperative on my next request.”
Dolan rolled his eyes. “Lordy help me! He wants the keys to the officer’s massage parlor!”
Despite himself, Scarborough chuckled. “Not quite. This whole business with the gunman at my lecture has postponed my tour. I’ve got some time on my hands. I’ll be leaving tomorrow for a trip to Iowa. I’m going to reopen the investigation on UFOs out there with my friend Captain MacKenzie. I’d appreciate Air Force aid and support where and when necessary.”
Dolan’s cheek filled as he probed the inside of his mouth with a tongue thoughtfully. He gazed down at the rumpled report a moment, then looked back up at Scarborough. “Twenty years is a hell of a long time, Ev. What do you hope to accomplish?”
“I want to get the record straight. I pride myself on correct research for my books. I want to make sure that the facts are correct. Also, MacKenzie wants me to visit—maybe we’ll do some fishing.”
“So I take it that I can send you anything I find to his address—you don’t happen to have it on hand, do you?”
Scarborough got up. “He’s a retired air force officer, Walt. I should think that you’ve got his address and his phone number on a Rolodex somewhere.”
Dolan smiled softly and bobbed his head. “Yep. Yep, I guess we do at that.”
“Fine.” Scarborough stabbed a finger at the copy of Mac’s files. “You get someone on that, Walt. Right away. There’s no way that I can prove those files of mine were stolen. In all probability they weren’t. However it’s a fact that there’s some serious discrepancy between that report and Blue Book. Explain it or correct it. Good day.”
He turned and marched for the door.
“Ev!” said the colonel, just as his hand touched the knob.
“Yes?” Turning.
Colonel Walter Dolan stood up and leaned against the desk, a broad smile on his face. “Ev, I do believe you are upset.”
“I am upset,” Scarborough said, annoying the attempt at ironic humor.
“Doctor Ev! How long have we been working together. What, almost twenty-five years now? Hell, I bounced that little baby girl of yours on my knee, we’ve burned tons o’ barbecue, and we must a’ put away a hundred cases o’ beer and maybe a few kegs of that fine Scotch liquor o’ yours. Ev, we’re friends! And now, you come in here like a firehouse on fire, bangin’ my desk and makin’ demands. What gives?”
“Just do what I ask, Walt. We’ll work this out later, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. You’ve been under pressure, friend. That business Friday night must have put you over the edge. You’re flirtin’ with a nervous breakdown; I can see it in your eyes. And hell, you’re twitchin’!”
The colonel was right, Scarborough knew. Not about the nervous breakdown—but with this past weekend’s problems, he did feel the strain. Nonetheless, it wasn’t time to talk about it—especially not when Dolan was talking like some used snake-oil seller.
“Must go, Colonel. Just get me what I want, and I won’t barge in on you anymore.”
“Sure, Ev, sure. You take care now, hear?”
Scarborough closed the door behind him and left, ignoring the dirty look from the corporal.
He had to go home and make that phone call to Mac.
And then he had to pack for his trip to Iowa—and, God help him, to Kansas University.
Colonel Walter Dolan waited three minutes after Scarborough left for his blood pressure to go down.
Then he made the phone call.
“Richards?” he said, his voice low and slightly trembling.
“Yes.”
“We’ve got to talk. Scarborough was just here. Big problems.”
Dolan didn’t get specific. It wasn’t good to talk on the phone about specifics in matters involving Brian Richards. The man was absolutely top-level, with clearances up the wazoo—but with the era of technology the way it was, phones could not be trusted to be untapped.
“Okay. I’m still in town. Think you can make it up the George Washington Parkway in about twenty minutes?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“This Scarborough guy—are we going to have continuing difficulties with him? He’s a cornerstone of the whole operation!”
“I don’t know,” said Dolan. “We’ll talk when I see you.”
“Right.”
The phone hung up at the other end.
Colonel Walter Dolan tapped onto another line. “Transportation? Colonel Walter Dolan here. Think you can have a chopper ready for me in about five minutes?” Dolan fumbled out a cigarette from a stale pack in his desk. He’d quit smoking for the nth time two months ago. But it was time to start again. “I only need a quick hop. Where?” He lit the cigarette. “Just up the road. Central Intelligence Agency building.”
He sucked in the smoke and coughed violently.
Chapter 17
“Fuck me,” she said, making small provocative motions with her hips, her new jewelry of love jangling. “Fuck me, lover. Do it good.”
“Sure, baby. Sure,” Justine said, pulling off his jockey shorts, standing buck naked on the side of the bed. “Lemme just check one thing.” He leaned over and took the key out of the handcuffs attaching her right arm to the solid brass of the backboard. “Don’t want it to fall out,” he explained. “Might lose it.”
He placed the small silver key by the muted light on the nightstand.
The woman stopped squirming sensuously, and lay back limply, mouth set in a cynical sneer. “C’mon, Woody, you wanna get on with business?”
He slapped her full in the face, and her head swung back, throwing a spray of blonde hair over the pillow. “Shut up, bitch.”
Her voice was low and monotone. “That’ll cost you a hundred extra, Wood. You know the rules.”
“Oh, yeah. The rules.” He vaulted over and landed between the V of her legs, which were handcuffed to the frame at the base of the bed. The scent of her snatch and her sweat, however, did not excite him as it usually did. He hovered over her, squatting, looking at the way her big breasts oozed down her rib cage. He needed this one, needed it bad, after that business in D.C. But for some reason, the usual rush of excitement wasn’t coming. His cock hung limp just inches from a sexy, naked woman, which was about like Old Faithful deciding to stay put in the ground and not gush out of Yellowstone Park. A few preliminaries were needed. Yeah. He began to kiss her knees, working his way down her thighs. “Sorry, babe. I’m a little uptight. You’ll get more, I promise.”
“Okay, hon. Just don’t forget the raincoat when you go drilling.”
He picked up the cellophane-wrapped condom from beside her and whacked her left nipple playfully. Her name was Candy and she was a low-priced call girl. but she let him tie and handcuff her and that’s what he liked, so he put up with her nasal, New York accent and snide comments. He’d gotten back that afternoon, and had been restless as soon as he’d walked into LAX. Women relaxed him. Women who knew their place, anyway.
He began to kiss her big, dark nipple, began to rub himself against her. A small tingle answered in his groin. Hey, maybe we got something cooking after all, he thought, un-tensing a bit.
Control. Woodrow Justine felt in control again. and slowly he began to forget the terror that had hung on him since D.C. like stink. This chick was his ‘cause he had money. Afterward, he’d do some push-ups, take a long soak in his hot spa, and then crash into some deep sleep. Tomorrow morning, he’d hit World’s Gym and drip about three hours of serious perspiration.
Yeah. He could feel his penis beginning to stir, stiffen. The sight of Candy stretched out and helpless began to do its old magic.
He could do anything he wanted to her, now, if he pleased.
Anything.
“Woodrow!” a voice whispered from the shadows. “Tell us about the UFOs. Tell us!”
Justine’s head shot up. “Who’s that?! Who said that?”
The shadows seemed to stir by the window. He thought that, for a moment, he could make out the dim form of a man.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” asked Candy,
Justine jumped off the bed and dived at the shadows. He came up with fistfuls of curtain, and nothing more. There was no one there. “Christ,” he said. He could feel something unhinging in his head.
“Go to church and talk to Christ. How about finishing up and then getting me out of here.”
He realized that his hands were starting to shake, and his breaths were becoming ragged and uneven. Get on top of the bitch and screw your brains out and you’ll feel better, he told himself. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said crawling back onto the bed.
He tried, and tried again, but it was no good.
Candy snarled contemptuously. “Face it, Wood. You can’t get it up. Now let me go. I got other things to do.”
Justine was shuddering as though a blast of frigid air had just swept through the room—but his face and chest were sheened with perspiration. Gotta get outta here, he thought. Get out!
He got off the bed and got dressed.
“So let me go, lover,” said the call girl, rattling her cuffs.
Justine barely heard her. He turned and walked toward the door.
“Hey! Where you going? You walk out of this room, I’ll scream my head off, Woodrow Justine!”
“Shut up!” he yelled, grabbing at his ears to cut off the noise. “Just shut up!” He ran back and stuffed her mouth with balled-up sheet. She struggled, but the cuffs were secure.
Her muffled yells followed him out of the house.
Gotta get outta here. Gotta get some air.
He walked down Grand to Venice Avenue, heading through the brisk night air toward the beach. When he had troubles, he walked on the beach. The salt air and the crash of the breakers helped him usually, and he needed it now, bad.
Venice Beach’s boardwalk has no boards. It’s just a strip of asphalt with cheap concession stands and bars on one side; and a bicycle path, a long stretch of sand, and the beach on the other. Justine passed the famous Muscle Beach workout bin, where old weights rusted quietly. He never worked out there. Unlike many weight lifters, Woodrow Justine was not an exhibitionist. The routine of strength training was just as important as the results.
It was late, and there were only a few stragglers on the beach. The strains of an electric guitar wailed from a bar nearby. The smell of rancid gyros and popcorn, dead fish and decaying seaweed, marred the freshness of the breeze coming off the white crash of the waves. Palm trees lolled listlessly, as though exhausted from the constant daytime sun. A half-moon hung over the Santa Monica mountains like a dead, ruined eye.
Rubbing his arm, Justine walked out onto the white, trash-littered sand ten yards, and then dropped to his knees, moaning softly.
They’d said it was harmless, those doctors. The needle had only left a tiny prick, and the solution that he’d brought back had been tested Sunday. Tap water, the lab had announced. “You’re in absolute top physical form,” the doctors had told him, and he’d been shipped back home to rest for a while. He’d been debriefed, and the powers-that-were listened to his tape stolidly, pronouncing Klinghoffer a solo agent, with no contacts to other organizations. He was thanked, given the usual bonus for the extreme-prejudice job. “The guy was a total schizo,” they’d told him. “Don’t worry about it. Good job.”
Why was he hearing these voices then? Why was he seeing things, lurking in the shadows at the comers of his eyes? Why did his arm throb from time to time? They didn’t have to tell him that Klinghoffer was a certified kook, that the only orders he was receiving were from some diseased corner of his own cerebellum. Why, then, did the images, the sounds, the wretched smells of that desiccated house haunt him still? Why did he feel as though Klinghoffer hadn’t just injected water in him—he’d shot him up with something far more sinister. Like maybe his soul.
Justine had taken his medicine as usual that day, hoping it would calm him down. No luck. But now, kneeling before the mighty Pacific Ocean as though in supplication, he began to calm down. The familiar lulling scents and rhythms of Venice Beach made him feel better, and he felt that he was getting a grip back on things.
Yeah. Sit here for a while, get steady. Then go back, let Candy out of those ‘cuffs.
The thought of the whore spread—eagled there on his bed amused him. He chuckled a bit, and watched a seagull pick at a MacDonald’s Big Mac Styrofoam box near an overstuffed litter basket.
“Jesus,” he said to himself, shaking his head and laughing as the breeze scuffed a napkin in front of him. “I’ve got to get out of this UFO business. Like, maybe they’ll assign me to somewhere safe and sane, like a marine barracks in Beirut.”
He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes, concentrating on pleasant memories. Art shopping in Carmel; riding Route 1 down the California coast in a convertible, being startled by the aquam
arine water embracing the rugged rocks. Feeling free, feeling alive, feeling in control ...
It started as a sigh of the breeze, and slurred into the vague beginnings of a whisper: “Jusss ... Jusss ... “
He looked up, every muscle in his body clenching again.
“Jusss ... Jusss ... Jusss ... tine”
At first the sound was as omnipresent as the air, and then it found a location. Justine snapped his head toward where it was emanating.
Twenty yards away, ten behind him, a public lavatory and changing-room stood, whitewashed cinder blocks perched on a foundation of raised cinder blocks. The front of the structure was surrounded by a fence, which was locked at this late hour. Behind this, a figure leaned against the wall, outlined in the pale moonlight. The figure wore a long black raincoat.
“You’re ... one ... of ... ussssss ... Now.” The voice said. “Justine. One of us!”
He hadn’t noticed anyone there before.
Woodrow Justine shot to his feet, a desperate rage filling him. Kicking up a spray of sand behind him, he ran to the figure. The man in the black coat did not move, nor did he say another word.
Justine grabbed the man by the throat and threw him to the ground. He squeezed hard, banging the man’s head against the sand, anger filling his entire world. “Stop it!” he cried. “Stop it! Who are you? WHO ARE YOU?”
The man groaned and gagged, and an effluvia of unwashed clothing and Thunderbird wine washed up. “Ugghh ... get off me ... You’re crazy, man. Get offa me!”
Justine dragged the man to where the moonlight shown the brightest, and regained enough control to pull his hands away. Below him, the man gasped and gagged, coughing. A bottle sloshed in the pocket of the long black coat, and its long neck glinted in the moonlight. “What’s wrong with you, man? I’m callin’ the police!” He was a dark, bearded man with a broken nose.
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 22
