“It surprised me, Danny. It really did. I would have been ready to bet the book was hidden in Morris’s house in Coral Gables, just like I told you, and the Roswell trip was one big wild-goose chase. Not entirely, of course. There were always the specimens. It would have been worth going to Roswell just for the chance to see the specimens.
“We spent three days in that motel. Travers Motel, it was called. I haven’t forgotten any of the names, though I saw enough New Mexico motels during those three weeks to last me a lifetime.
“It was the morning of the fourth day that I went out to the car, just to get—I think it was a map we’d left in the glove compartment. I was thirsty, and I remembered they had a Coke machine in the motel office, and I thought, Well, I’ll go get a couple of Cokes for Tom and me. So in I went. And there they were.”
“The three men?” I said.
She nodded.
“You know that expression?” she said. “About how when you’re scared suddenly, your heart goes down into your shoes? Well, right then I understood that expression real well. Because that’s what happened to me.
“Three days before, driving in the car, I’d argued and argued with Tom till I persuaded him not to go back and pick the men up. And I was so relieved when he listened to me finally. And now it was as if the men had tracked us down and come after us.”
“Had they seen your license plate, do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was pure coincidence. Maybe they just happened to have stopped by the motel. All I know is, they’d made real good friends with the desk clerk. They were talking at the top of their voices and laughing, the big tall one slapping the counter while he laughed, he thought it was all so funny. He was the one with that awful face, with the pockmarks.
“The minute I walked in they got quiet. They were looking at me. Grinning. Looking me over, the way men always did. And the big one, with the pockmarks, called out to me, ‘Hey there, little lady!’ And they all started laughing again, doubled over with it, as if that were just about the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
“My heart was pounding so hard I thought it’d burst out of my chest. But I tried to stay calm. I walked over to the Coke machine, as slowly as I could manage. I put in a dime, and choonk, the Coke bottle came tumbling down. And then another dime. And all the time I was trying to look like I was ignoring them, and still hear everything they said. Look away from them and still see them out of the corner of my eye.”
“Was the thin one there too?” I asked. “The one with the snaggletooth?”
“Snaggletooth. Yes, that’s what you call it. I’d forgotten the word. He was there, all right. Meanest-looking man I’ve ever seen. And there was the third one. He was the only one they called by name. Jemi. They all called him Jemi. Even the motel clerk did. How the clerk knew those three men, I’ll never begin to imagine.”
“ Jemi!” I said. “That’s—”
“Yes, yes. One of the three Gypsies, or whatever they were, who wrote their notes in Morris’s book. There was Mr. A. and Mr. B. And there was Jemi.... The minute I heard that name, I thought of Morris. I thought of how Tom was right, that Morris did want to find those three men, talk with them, learn from them the secrets of UFOs and invisibility and how it all fit together. Then I remembered Morris dead in his car. In the park in Coral Gables. Suffocated, his eyes bugged out in terror. And I knew they were here, and I had found them. Without quite trying to. And something awful was going to happen. To Tom. To me. To somebody.
“I took the Cokes and headed for the door. I was still trying to walk slow and easy. But you can’t keep yourself from sweating. That’s a fact, Danny, and it doesn’t matter how hard you try. I was wearing my white summer dress, and it was all soaked, in two great streaks down from my armpits. Of course they noticed. The skinny one said something to the others, too soft for me to hear, and they all laughed. And the one with the pockmarks yelled, ‘Don’t get yourself all hot, now, little lady!’
“I marched out, and the screen door slammed behind me. I could still hear them laughing and laughing, all the way to the car.
“I only stayed in the car a few minutes. Just long enough to get hold of myself. I held on to the wheel hard, and I shivered and shook. I sobbed and sobbed. I had this awful impulse just to drive away, and not stop driving till I was back in Pennsylvania. I didn’t, of course. I went to the room and said, ‘Tom, we’ve got to get out of here.’ And I told him why. And this time he didn’t argue.”
“So you didn’t see them again?” I said. “Until the last night?”
“We never saw them again, Danny. Or I didn’t anyway. I can’t vouch for what Tom saw or didn’t see at the very end. But they weren’t among the men who stopped our car. I’m sure of that.
“They must have been in Miami by that time. Or on their way to Miami. And they couldn’t be in two places at once. They’re very strange, and they can do a lot of things you wouldn’t imagine, just to look at them or hear them talk. But I don’t think they can be in two places at once.
“We left the motel as soon as we thought it was safe and found another place to stay. From then on we never stayed in one place for more than two nights.
“The first week or so we spent most of our time just hanging around Roswell. Tom sat for hours in diners and coffee shops, pretending to read the paper, listening to conversations. At first I did the same thing, though in different places. But of course I couldn’t just blend in with the background, the way Tom did. So after a few days I got a job waitressing, and then it was easier. The customers liked to talk to me. The men, I mean. At night I’d go to the bars and flirt like mad with anybody in uniform.”
“From Roswell Air Force Base?” I said.
“Walker Air Force Base. Roswell Army Air Field was the old name. It was located just outside the town. They were young men, and there were lots of them, and they were lonely. Half of Roswell made a living off their loneliness. And I—well, I used to be pretty.”
For just an instant her hand went to her eyeglasses. I wanted to tell her she was still pretty, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I wanted to ask what had happened to her contact lenses, why she didn’t wear them anymore. I only nodded and swallowed.
“Lonely people talk,” she said. “That’s something I’ve always known, ever since I was a little girl. They’ll talk unless there’s no one for them to talk to or unless they’ve got three men watching over their shoulders to make sure they don’t. When that happens, the talk dies inside them, and they die with it.
“That I didn’t know. I’ve had to learn it over these last three years.
“It paid off pretty quickly, my flirting. Though it didn’t feel that way at the time. It felt like forever. I spent every minute of the day terrified that the next man who’d come into the diner or the bar would have pockmarks or a snaggletooth. Or be named Jemi.
“At the end, things moved very fast. You were with Julian that afternoon, weren’t you, when he telephoned me? And I told him I didn’t have the book, couldn’t get the book, the whole trip had been a waste? That was three o’clock. By nine that night it had all turned around. I’d seen the book. I’d recognized it at once as the one Morris had with him when he died. That nice young boy, the lieutenant, had gone to the bathroom just long enough for me to do my switch.
“I took their Case for the UFO, the one with all the annotations, and left in its place a perfectly ordinary copy. Which, I’m sorry to say, I’d stolen from the Albuquerque Public Library a few weeks before. If you ever see Julian again, by the way, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention that part. That was the one thing that always made Julian livid, people stealing things from public libraries.
“By nine that night I had the book in my hands, and I was sewing it into the lining of my suitcase. I already had my flight booked for Miami the next morning.
“Tom wasn’t going with me. He had business in southern California, and he was going to drive out the next day, after he�
�d left me at the airport. I’d tell you what his business was, but I honestly don’t know myself. That was one thing about the SSS: we did keep secrets. Mostly to protect one another. Those were mean people we were tangling with. They could do some awful things to us if they got their hands on us. But you know that now, as well as I do.
“Anyway, it was mission accomplished, our last night in New Mexico, and we both felt pretty hilarious. We took a pillow from the motel room and hopped into the car. And the next thing I knew Tom was behind the wheel, and we were tearing out into the desert.”
A party of tourists, two elderly women and a man, had appeared at the top of the rock-cut steps leading down to where we sat. They walked down a few steps, then stopped and looked around them, blinking in bewilderment. Then they went back up. One of the women, who seemed to have difficulty climbing, held tightly to the man’s arm. We didn’t start talking again until we were sure they were out of earshot. I watched two bright yellow butterflies play tag with each other in the sunlight, around and around my wounded foot.
“Rochelle,” I said at last, “you mentioned the specimens in Roswell. What did you mean by that?”
“Specimens,” she said. “It is an awful word, isn’t it? The people from the base used it all the time, and I suppose I just fell into the habit. We really ought to come out and say ‘bodies,’ shouldn’t we?”
“So it’s true?” I said. “There really was a UFO crash at Roswell?”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I’ve known about it so long it’s hard to remember most people have never heard of it. Even the UFOlogists haven’t, most of them. Or it’s just a rumor, which they never know quite what to do with.
“I need to tell you one thing. I never saw the bodies. To get down into the vaults, you have to do more than drink a few beers with a second lieutenant. I did see some photos, though, in the archives, that they’d taken back in ’47, when they first found the wreckage. And I must say—”
“What?” I said, after I’d waited for her to finish the sentence.
“They were children, Danny.”
“Children?” I felt as though something spidery were crawling around the inside of my stomach.
“Uh-huh. You wouldn’t think of them being children or even having children, would you? All this talk of little green men, or small humanoid entities, as the UFOlogists so love to say, distracts us from it. But I saw the photos, and now I’ve seen her, and it all fits together. It all makes sense—”
Again she stopped. She seemed lost in thought. “You needn’t look so nervous,” she said finally. “I haven’t lost track of the time. Our appointment with Dr. Talibi isn’t till five thirty. We don’t have to stop by the apartment either. I told Jameela to bring her to the doctor’s office, meet us there.”
“I’m not nervous,” I said. And since I didn’t know what I was feeling and I sure wasn’t ready to talk with Rochelle about it, I asked: “And this archive?”
“Top secret, in theory. In practice, even the junior officers—some of them anyway—come and go as they please. They like to use it, actually, to show off to their girls.
“I don’t know just when it was established. Probably the late forties, a year or two after the crash. Somebody had the idea there ought to be a research center on the base, right next to the vault, so people could work from the resources to the specimens—sorry, there I go again; the bodies—and back again. Library and lab in adjacent buildings. You see what I mean?”
“I think so,” I said.
“We’d had indications for some time that the air force was sending its most important UFO materials to the archive at Roswell. Not the Project Blue Book headquarters in Ohio. That was their official UFO project. But I think it was mostly window dressing, at least after the early fifties.
“So it seemed at least possible that the Dade County police—well, I don’t know exactly what they did with Morris’s book, after they took it away from me that morning. But somehow it got into the right channels and was forwarded to the archive. That was what brought me and Tom out to Roswell. That possibility, I mean. And it turned out—I was surprised; I told you that—to be true.
“If it hadn’t, you and Julian and I would have gone after the book in Morris’s old house in Miami. And Tom would still be alive.”
The book had been found. Tom had died for it. Thanks to me it had been lost again, forever. “Rochelle,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are. You’ll always be sorry. And it isn’t really fair, because it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have done anything but drop it.”
“It was either the book or me.”
“Which would have been—”
“The book and me.”
“Exactly. Does it help that you know that?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
“I didn’t think it would.” She looked down at my foot and mumbled a few words, something like “It never does help.” After that she was silent for a very long time.
“Tom and I took the car that last night,” she said, “and we drove out into the desert. And yes, we made love. The three men were telling you the truth, as far as that went. We did it outside the car, in the desert, under the stars.
“What was it you said they told you? That we’d had a blowout fuck, or something like that?”
“A blowout fuck,” I said. I didn’t want to say the words again and was sorry I had repeated them to her in the first place. This was not the part of her story I was most anxious to hear. “They said you gave Tom such a blowout fuck that he was too weak to fight you off when you smothered him with the pillow.”
“Well,” she said. “They do have an imagination, don’t they? But we did make love, and it was lovely. Although one pillow wasn’t enough to be comfortable on. Still, it was marvelous. Under that black sky, no lights within miles, and the stars sparkling everywhere above us.
“But I need to tell you, I’m sorry we did it. Because of what happened afterward. I can’t see a starry sky now without feeling the most horrible sadness. Which is why, I suppose, I spend every night indoors. By myself. Reading. Just reading.
“We got our clothes more or less straightened out and got back in the car, and we headed back to town. We were both feeling pretty wonderful. Tom had found a country and western station on the radio and turned it up full blast. We were singing along at the top of our voices. Tom always loved country and western. And I—well, I hate country and western. But that night I loved it too.
“Then all of a sudden the music went off. In the middle of a song. All we could hear was static, very loud. And Tom laughed, and said, ‘Goddamn transmitter has to go down right in the middle of “Honky-tonk Angels”!’ And I laughed too, kind of sleepily—I remember I’d begun to feel sleepy—and I said, ‘Let’s see if we can’t find another station.’ So Tom started to turn the dial. But the static was everywhere, all over the band.
“I went all cold inside when I heard that. Because I knew what it meant: that we weren’t alone. That we were being watched, and not for the good. That something very bad was going to happen, very soon, though I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be. Tom had no idea. Lucky for him, I guess. He thought it was a problem with the radio, and he started cursing out the damn lousy radio, and the damn lousy car, and the damn lousy rental agency. As if it were all something ordinary you could curse and laugh and joke about.
“And then I heard our brakes squeal, and I almost went flying through the windshield. And we weren’t moving anymore.
“The road was blocked, Danny.
“There was this huge wooden beam dragged across the road. It was so long you couldn’t see where the ends were, to drive around it. It was pretty rough terrain anyway. I wouldn’t have tried leaving the road to get around the block. I don’t think we’d have gotten very far.
“There were six or seven men, wearing orange reflectors, moving around behind the beam. And behind them, farther back down the road, this strange light. I
t was kind of like a bonfire, only you’d expect a bonfire to be yellow or maybe orange. This one was white. I’d never seen a fire like that before.
“So Tom leans out the window and yells at one of the men in the reflectors: ‘What the hell’s the idea, blocking the road like this?’ And the man looks at us and says, in this deep, peculiar voice: ‘Road maintenance.’ Just like that—like a machine talking. No expression at all in the voice.
“He was standing in front of our headlights. And the light reflected off his eyes, just like it would off a cat’s. Not like a human being’s at all. And don’t tell me he might have been wearing glasses, because he wasn’t. It was his eyes that reflected the light.
“I don’t know if Tom noticed that or not. He didn’t sound scared, just mad. He yells at the man, ‘Well, how the hell are we supposed to get back into town?’ And the man doesn’t answer. He isn’t even looking at us anymore, just moving back and forth behind that wooden beam of theirs, with all the other men, doing something or other. I couldn’t for the life of me make out what.
“And then I noticed in the fire, that white fire behind the men, there were dark figures moving around. Very slender, very tall. I don’t know if they were human. They seemed to be twisting and swaying, around and around and back and forth. In pain maybe. But there wasn’t a sound from them. Or from the men in the orange reflectors. Or from anybody. Only that loud, horrible static from the car radio, which neither of us had thought to turn off.
“I said to him, ‘Tom, turn the car around. We’ve got to get out of here.’
“I expected him to argue, Danny. To say something like ‘And go where?’ and I was going to say, ‘Anywhere, just back down the road; with any luck we’ll reach a town before our gas runs out.’ But he didn’t say a word.
“And then I looked at him. I saw his mouth was open. I saw something glittering on his chin, as if saliva were drooling out. I saw his hands moving over the steering wheel. Feeling the wheel. Like a blind man groping his way along a wall.
Journal of a UFO Investigator Page 19
