“I’m looking for a toad.”
I knew the dame was trouble the
nanosecond she walked in the door. She was a long, tall blonde with
legs like scissors and lips that would embarrass a cherry. That fact
that she looked not only classy but confident in the seediest office
in the seediest part of LA told me as much I needed to know. That
fact that she was into amphibians was of purely superficial import. I
studied the rest of her with perhaps a tiny smirk.
“Hello? Did you hear what I said? I’m
looking for a toad.”
Right away I didn’t like her tone.
And I didn’t like her attitude.
“There’s pet shop down on the
corner,” I said, going back to the Times Crossword. “If you’re
lucky, you’ll beat the Chinese restaurant to them.”
“No, I’m looking for a different
type of toad. You know, an alien.”
I looked up at her over my reading
glasses. Yeah, I’m short, balding and myopic, but those are the
only three faults that are immediately apparent. The rest have to
grow on you in varying speeds. Reluctantly I put down the paper.
“Yeah? An alien. Now maybe I can help you. We talkin’ Mexican,
Cuban, Guatemalan?”
“I think you know what I mean. You
know, an alien alien.”
I laughed and reached for the paper
again. “An alien alien. You mean, like ET? Right lady, you didn’t
look crazy when you walked in here, but the happy house is full
today.”
She took two staccato steps on those
stiletto heels and slapped both palms down on my Times. “Look, Mac,
I may be blond, but I ain’t stupid. I asked around. I was told you
were the one to see concerning these matters.”
We stared at each other for a long
minute. There was nothing romantic in those eyes. She was all
business. I was all stubborn.
“Did I mention I was rich and I have
references?”
Maybe it was the way she said Mac--an
old school reference for sure. Or maybe it was the way her v-neck
exposed a helluva lot of round, smooth cleavage when she leaned over
the desk. Or maybe it was simply the word rich—one of the more
beautiful sounds in the English language. Whatever. I blinked first,
leaned back in my chair and said casually, “I doubt you have the
kind of references that would interest a guy like me.”
She stood back up with a smirk on her
face knowing she had hooked me good. “Mac, I think I have a lot of
things that would interest a guy like you.”
* * *
Her name was Susie Bigalow. She didn’t
look like a Susie to me—unless it was the kind of cute, sweet and
ironic nickname you gave to otherwise dangerous creature. Like Susie
the man-eating shark. Or Susie the foul-tempered grizzly bear. She
was from Laguna Hills. It was a tony neighborhood. The kind of
neighborhood where the weirdest people were movie types—not folks
with gills and webbed feet. If she was really looking for a toad,
she’d been slumming far from daddy’s loving care and money.
Didn’t surprise me though. I’d seen it before.
I told her I had to check her out and
ushered her unceremoniously to my “waiting room”-- a folding
chair outside in the grungy, poorly lit hallway—and gave her a cup
of lukewarm, barely potable, barely palatable java. She didn’t much
like it, but she wanted to speed things up. She was desperate; that
much was clear. Otherwise she wouldn’t be messing with a guy like
me.
I went back into my office and picked
up my cellphone and contacted the cricket. Every good dick in this
business has their snitches and mine was just a phone call away 24/7. I didn’t even have to dial. Just
picked it up and turned it on.
“So… Did you check out the dame?”
“Yeah, nice gams.”
Despite the nickname, the cricket
didn’t have a squeaky, high voice. Neither was it low or husky. It
was the kind of whiny sarcastic voice you sometimes got in mediocre
stand up comics. I always wondered about that voice. See, the cricket
wasn’t on the other end of the phone. He was in the
phone. Literally. He was some kind of microscopic alien for whom the
inside of my empty cell phone was like the Taj Mahal or something.
What the cricket lacked in size, however, he more than made up for in
knowledge. He seemed know everything. Anything, anywhere, as it
happened. I don’t know how he did it, but the little geek was
instantly connected to any information database on the planet. And
then some. Somehow he knew everything that was going on around him,
too, even though he was, apparently the size of an electron or
something. Thus his instant appraisal of the woman in my hallway. Not
only had he checked out her legs, but he had probably already run a
comprehensive background check and personal history.
“So is she okay?”
“Okay? No. There are several
definitions of the English word okay and the lady would fail to meet
any of them. She is into some seriously kinky—“
“I don’t give a shit about her sex
life. Is her money good?”
“Money? Oh yeah, the dame is loaded.”
“Good enough for me.”
I snapped the phone closed—which was
kind of rude considering—and stepped back in the hallway.
“I get a thousand a day plus
expenses,” I told her.
“Get real, Mac. Five hundred plus
travel and lodging. I ain’t paying for your massage parlors and
poker games.”
“Alright seven fifty but all
expenses. You get billed for a massage—it's because somebody there
knew something I needed to know. You know?”
“Fine. When will you start?”
“Soon as you tell me the toad’s
name.”
* * *
The toad’s name was Alexander. That’s
it. Just Alexander and apparently he passed himself off as some New
Age self-help guru. He was a public figure of sorts so I figured it
wouldn’t be difficult running him to the ground. Then I figured
there had to be a catch. Because, if it was that easy, the dame
wouldn’t have been so desperate and she wouldn’t have come to me.
And, because in my business--
There’s always a catch.
I put the cricket on his cyber trail
while I laid a little groundwork myself which involved taking out the
trash. I emptied my office wastebasket on the desk, retrieved the
discarded coffee cup with the red lipstick on the rim and headed down
the street to the doc’s.
The doc had a little lab in the bad
part of town. See, he used to cook meth but found it unhealthy, both
literally and figuratively, so he'd started a little laboratory
service on the up and up. He mostly just tested DNA. Had billboards
all over town. Are you the daddy? 1-800-Prove-it! He
even had a reappearing guest spot on the Jerry Springer Show. He also
did a few side jobs for me and people like me. Which just went to
prove There was more than one way to make a legal living on the
margins of society. In that we had common ground.
“Doc,” I greeted him.
“Julie,”
he replied.
Yeah, most people call me Julie.
Whatsit to ya? Frankly I preferred the girl's name over my real
one—Julius Caesar Kryzhinsky. My pap, the drunken sop, had
apparently wanted me to be a Polish emperor. One of the many friggin'
things we disagreed on.
“We touched knuckles briefly. Like a
lot of health professionals, he didn’t like to shake hands
“Whatcha got for me today?”
“Got a rush job.”
“It’s always a rush job.”
“Cash up front,” I said, slapping
down the franklins. "Triple the rate.”
“Rahsheek, we got a rush job!” he
shouted, handing off the cup to a little Indian man with one hand and
pocketing the bills with the other. “Contact you at the usual
place?”
“Yep.”
I stopped off at the thrift store next
door, immediately found what I was looking for and settled in across
the street at a seedy little dive called “Beer.” For the next 90
minutes or so I nursed a beer in Beer and read a rather sappy,
pointless book called “Happy.” If anybody had seen me reading it
in Beer, they would’ve been happy to beat me up. As it was, the
joint remained empty—as was the meaning of the pathetic drivel
written by one Alexander Toad. An exert : Life is an illusion.
Therefore all your problems are not real. Redefine your reality and
seize your happiness. If I'd had anything besides the beer in my
stomach, I would've retched over myself. After five chapters and two
semi-flat beers I the only thing I was happy about was when Doc sat
down across from me and pushed the results across the table.
“Tell me its human DNA.”
“Oh it’s human all right,” he
said with a tiny smirk. “That all you want to know?”
“She ain’t my sister. And she damn
well ain’t my daughter,” I growled. “So otherwise I don’t
give a damn.”
The guy sat back and shrugged. I pushed
the book across the table as I rose to leave. “Don’t worry, be
‘happy,’” I told him. “Got a plane to catch.”
* * *
Sedona, Arizona: you will never find a
more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Oh sure, it all looks pretty
from the outside. All those gorgeous red rocks and desert sun and
deep, blue high-altitude sky, but, scratch the surface, and nothing
but alien weirdness oozes forth. The New Agers were a kooky bunch but
they weren’t far off when they claimed the Sedona area was full of
energy vortexes. In point of fact, the area contained several alien
energy matrix generators-- a kind of energy wi-fi—that helped the
aliens keep their disguises in place and fed, nourished and soothed
their scaly, reptilian psyches.
Yeah, that's right. Sit down and hold
on to the table. We ain't alone. The world is full of
extraterrestrial beings. Only because of some top secret hush/hush
treaty, they remain incognito. Which is damn lucky for us because
most of them are butt ugly. The sight of one would pucker your
sphincter for a month.
Most of them aren't free to roam
around, however. They live on reservations—usually near these high
tech, top-secret energy zones. Ever wonder why some places are just
plain frickin' weirder than other places? Yeah, now you know. The
alien weirdness in these places just seemed to create a freak vortex
where misfits from all species just kind of congregated, Venice
Beach, Key West, Portland, Santa Fe, Greenwich Village, the French
Quarter-- these are all alien ground zeroes, a turbulent mix of space
warp, time distortion and insanity. I hated them all. But Sedona was the
worst.
Aliens, especially those suited to
warm, dry climates like toads and lizards, naturally migrated to
desert areas like Santa Fe and Sedona. Warm, wet climate-loving
species like frogs and snakes, went to similar generating areas in
Key West and New Orleans. All of this was supposed to be top secret,
hush-hush, but some artistic, sensitive types, like the New Age
hippies, seemed to get an inkling of something and were drawn to the
subliminal hum of the generators and, maybe, just a little residual
radiation.
Good for them.
Myself, I wasn't there for the vibes. I
needed to find an alien toad disguising himself as a New Age author.
Even if I didn’t have the cricket, even if I didn’t have the IQ
God gave earth toads, I still would’ve hopped a plane to Arizona.
It’d been a while since I’d been
on the hunt in Sedona. In fact, if my faulty memory served me, after
the last time I was there, I vowed never to return. All my snitches,
contacts and acquaintances seemed to have gone to ground. Or were in
the ground. I was there five minutes when it was apparent I was
starting from square one. No matter. The goddamn town was full of low
class aliens-- a large percentage of them were jeep tour drivers and
time share salesman--so all I had to do was pick one and put the
squeeze on.
I stood on the sidewalk in Uptown
Sedona and bided my time. “Uptown” was a motley collection of
trinket stores and tourist come-ons that was plopped down shamefully
in the middle of national park-like grandeur. Throngs of sun-burned
and pot-bellied tourists thronged the shops eager to buy something to
satisfy their boredom. This was an alien smorgasbord. Though ETs
didn’t eat people (that was the official position anyway), they
loved to fuck around with their heads: Tricks, pranks, mindfucks and
even gentle harassing delighted the alien sense of humor. In places
like Uptown Sedona, we were like a poor retarded kid surrounded by a
gang of smart-ass teenage boys. Today, though, the retard was gonna
fuck back. Like any good predator I knew the best strategy was to let
the victim come to me. Sure enough, I wasn’t there ten minutes when
a faux cowboy strolled up to me and gave me the once over.
“Howdy partner,” he said in an
accent that was so awful it would've embarrassed a transgender John
Wayne impersonator. I could tell by the way he blinked his eyes real
slow and lazy that he wasn’t entirely human. “Howz about it? You
ready for the ride of your life?”
I played stupid. “You mean one of
those crazy Jeep tours? I dunno… Sounds kind of scary.”
“Aw, it ain’t so bad. I’d take
real good care of you.”
“How much? It’s just me.”
“It’s 75 per person. And I’m sure
we’ll get a full jeep in no time.”
“No. How much for just me? I don’t
like people all that much.”
“Well then. It’d be 250 to rent the
whole jeep.”
I reached in my pocket and peeled off
three more franklins. Hell, it wasn’t my money.
“You promise not to hurt me?” I
said handing him the cash.
“Ain’t killed no one yet.” he
said, and smiled slyly as he pocketed the cash.
* *
*
Riding in the jeep in slow motion down
a red rock cliff face was like slowly pounding a tree trunk up my
ass. Why anybody did that for pleasure, I could not fathom. The
driver prattled on about geology, ancient seas and petrified sand
dunes while interspersing it with lame jokes. I hung on until I could
hang no longer. When I Jeep trail leveled out, I put my hand on the
guy’s shoulder and asked him to pull over for a minute.
“Need to stretch my legs.”
“Sure, sure. Enjoy the scenery. Take
a few pictures. We’re in no hurry here.”
I climbed out of the jeep grateful for
the sudden quiet and calm although my body was still vibrating from
the jolting it took. I walked a little ways to a rise where I had a
panoramic view of the red rock wilderness. Of course, the view was
spoiled by the knowledge it was all fake—a pretty screen designed
to cover alien machinery.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” The jeep
driver asked joining me on the rock.
“Amazing,” I said curtly. I fished
into my pocket and pulled out a cigar. “Mind if I smoke?”
The guy quickly took one step back.
There were two kinds of aliens: those who hated smoke of any kind and
those who loved it—way too much. “Actually… You’re not
supposed to smoke. Forest fires, you know.”
I shrugged and lit up anyway. “So
what about all these New Age vortexes I keep hearing about?”
The guy smiled nervously and shrugged
with one shoulder. “Some people believe that the area contains
energy vortices—natural places in the earth’s crust where
electromagnetic and others energies are close to the surface. Some
people claim to be able to tune in to those energies in certain
spots.”
“Sounds like a lot of bullshit to
me.”
He smiled greasily. “I make no claims
either way.”
“What about aliens? I heard there was
a lot of extraterrestrial activity in the area.”
The smile quickly faded. “What? like
flying saucers?”
No, I said, taking a step towards him.
“Like fucking lizards who parade around like jeep tour drivers.”
“Who are you? You aren’t a tourist.
You don’t even have a camera.”
I kept coming. He turned to run but I
grabbed his shoulder, spun him around and ,with a nifty trip/kick,
had him flat on the ground in a couple seconds. I put one knee on his
chest, took a puff of my cigar, and blew smoke in his face.
“This can go hard. Or this can go
easy.”
The guy winced at the smoke. “What do
you want?”
“Ever hear of a toad named
Alexander?”
The guy shook his head with his eyes
closed.
I bounced once on his chest. “No?”
“Come on, dude,” he pleaded, his
phony cowboy accentsuddenly gone. “Am I supposed to know every toad
in town?”
“This one’s pretty famous. He’s
written some books. New Age crap.”
“I don’t know! I don’t hang out
with that crowd!”
I bounced again, harder this time, and
picked up a rock.
“Ooff. Hey man, what are you doing
with the rock?”
“Listen up lizard,” I said. “I
know exactly what happens when one of you people die. The disguise
melts pretty fast. And the men in black suits show up real quick and
haul away the carcass. Do they investigate your murder? Not if nobody
saw nothing.”
“All right. All right,” he said. “I
heard of the guy. He hangs out in the Village. Does a morning
meditation on Bell Rock every day for the suckers. I mean tourists.
Or used to anyway. That’s all I know.”
I looked at the rock as if considering
something. “Anything else I should know about this guy? Any
hobbies, preferences or special abilities I should know about?”
“No. I don’t know. I told you I
don’t hang out with that crowd.”
“What crowd would that be?”
“You know. Them.”
“Them?” I asked, hoping I'd
misheard. “Them?”
“Yeah. Them them. Heavy
hitter. Way out of my league. And, I might suggest—ever so
respectfully—out of yours too.”
I sat back and thought about it.
The lizard sat up a little. “If that
rock is your best weapon, you’d better go home right now.”
“Good advice,” I said and slapped
him upside the head with the rock. It was a big rock, size of a navel
orange, and it made a satisfying wet, smacking noise as the guy flew
backwards towards the ground. Probably would’ve killed a human. As
it was, Newt there was gonna have a helluva headache when he woke up.
I walked back to the jeep and started
to climb into the driver’s seat when I realized I was still
carrying the rock. It was dripping with blood. I tossed it aside.
“Damn the red rocks,” I muttered to
myself.
* * *
“We got a problem,’ I picked up my
phone and told the cricket. “Alexander is a them.”
“A them?”
“A them. A they.”
“Oh… one of those.” The cricket
lapsed into an uncharacteristic and overly dramatic pause. They
were the people who ran things. No one was sure who they were.
Whether they were alien or human or a combination of the two. No one
knew when or why or where they came about, or what precisely they
hoped to accomplish. We just knew they ran the alien affairs on earth
and no one crossed them. Ever.
“Well, if it's true,” the cricket
said, “The smart thing to do would be to give the dame her money
back and let’s take a long vacation somewhere.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.
That’d be the smart thing.”
“But you never do the smart thing, do
you?”
“You know, I was hired just to find
the toad. I don’t have to mess with him. I don’t even gotta talk
to him. I just gotta find him. What could that hurt?”
“Something tells me you’re going to
find out. And my guess is, it’s going to hurt plenty.”
“Just check out this meditation
thing, will you?”
“Already have,” said the cricket.
“There’s nothing advertised in any form of local media. Must be
one of those word-of-mouth type things.”
“Yeah, so I guess the thing to do
would be to take an early morning hike around Bell Rock.”
“You? hike?”
“Hey I’m driving a jeep, ain’t
I?”
“Yes, you’re a regular Crocodile
Dundee.”
* *
*
Usually I believe it is simply impolite
to enter the day before the sun was standing upright, but the next
morning found me out at dawn, trudging across the sandstone
“slickrock” at the base of Bell Rock in my sport coat, tie,
fedora and a jumbo large coffee from the local Circle K. Bell Rock
was a big humongous rock—a small mountain really—that was shaped,
surprise, like a bell. It sat on the very outskirts of an upscale
Sedona bedroom community called the Village of Oak Creek—or simply
the Village to locals. Because the rock was right next to town,
conveniently located next to a state highway and was reportedly the
strongest Sedona vortex in the area, it attracted a large assortment
of tourists, pilgrims and wackos. At 5:30 a.m. there were already
several people wandering around the bottom of the bell.
And if they thought a guy in a suit
and fedora stomping through the desert vegetation at that time of day
was unusual they didn’t seem to let on.
I wasn’t expecting to find Alexander.
I was sure he’d moved on. But people were like sheep. Once they
were accustomed to doing something, they usually kept on doing it. If
he’d started a prayer group that met here every morning, my bet was
that some of them still came. And maybe one of them might know
something about where he went.
It didn’t take me long to find the
likely group. They were above me, higher on the rock, a half dozen or
eight people in karate-type robes and were sitting in a row facing
the rising sun. They were softly chanting something. It sounded like
Happy, happy, joy, joy. Happy, happy, joy, joy.” Give me a
break. Crappy, crappy, hoi polloi.
I climbed higher. Close enough to hear
any conversations, but not so close they’d feel bothered by me. I
sat on a chair-sized rock and pretended to blissfully take in the
morning sunrise and meditate on the wonderfulness of life all the
while guzzling my coffee and dreaming of the of a nice cozy bed.
They broke up after another thousand
happy, happy, joy, joys and, one by one, they drifted away,
down the rock and to their cars. One of them, however, stayed behind
putting away and carefully arranging things in a duffel bag. He was
a tall, blond, pretty boy with a perfect tan and a lean physique. If
he were 500 miles to the west I would’ve categorized him as a
surfer. He looked over at me a couple times, then, when his bag was
properly packed, he walked over as I suspected he would.
“Hello, friend.”
“Hi,” I said toasting my coffee cup
towards him and giving him a blank smile.
“I couldn’t help but notice you
sitting there. You’re not from around here are you?”
“No,” I shook my head sadly. I’d
had a few minutes to come up with a great story, so I let him have
it. “Twenty four hours ago, I was just another schmo stuck in
traffic headed to a job I despised. Something just snapped. Now I’m
here. Not sure how it happened…Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Not really. This is Sedona. I’ve
seen it a hundred times. You’re sitting on Bell Rock. It’s the
beacon vortex. It calls out to everyone seeking enlightenment.”
“Really? I didn’t feel anything.”
“Oh but I think you do. It has
summoned you here. In the next couple of days you’re going to learn
a great deal. Much will be illuminated. Right now, though, you need
to get happy.”
“I’m kinda happy…”
“No, you need to get happy.” He
reached into his duffel and pulled out the Alexander book.
“What’s that?” I asked, thinking
this was too easy..
He stepped towards me, waved the book
in front of my face and his expression suddenly changed.
“This is the real reason you’re
here. Alexander is the person you want to find.”
I tried to step backwards but the rock
was there I sat down abruptly and the surfer boy suddenly towered
above me.
“Nobody finds Alexander,” he
snarled. “Alexander finds them.”
Too late I noticed the other nuts
hadn’t disappeared at all. They had circled back and were now
emerging from out of the sparse vegetation and surrounding me. One
against twelve. Not good odds. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I could
take surfer boy by himself.
“Okay,” I said. “You made your
point. I get it. I’m off the case. Gimme three steps and I’ll be
out of town in ten.”
“Had your chance,” a voice said to
the left. “I told you exactly who he was and yet you continued on.”
I turned and recognized the jeep
driver. He was wearing a Japanese style scarf around his head to hide
the goose egg I’d left him. Shit, I thought glumly. It was
all a set-up. Too late I remembered that the jeep driver had
approached me not visa versa. Stupid! I had walked right into
it. I damn well deserved what was about to happen to me.
I’d been in my business for a long
time. I’ve doled out and taken my share of beatings. When cornered
like this I knew there was only one thing to do…
I ran.
I think I caught them off guard too. I
ran straight at surfer boy and then veered at the last second. I
almost made it, but he got a leg out just in time to trip me up. I
stumbled and fell face first down the slickrock. Slick rock like
hell. That shit was like coarse grit sandpaper. And my skin was a
piece of un-sanded pine. By the time I raised myself to my knees,
they were on me. Kicking and kidney punching. Turns out the karate
robes weren’t just for show. Turns out they really were a happy
bunch of fellows as they thoroughly seemed to enjoy themselves.
Thankfully, I blacked out before they could have too good a time.
* * *
When I came to, I was face down on the
red stone and everyone was gone. I tried to move but, nothing, at
first, would respond. My first thought was paralysis, but even as I
thought that, I half-rolled over and immediately wished I was
paralyzed. My whole body felt like it’d been bounced on by bears
with pogo sticks. I half sat up and realized half my face was covered
in blood. Tiny sandstone pebbles were lodged in my mouth. I spat them
out on the bloody ground.
“Damn red rocks,” I muttered.
I felt like shit. Worse than the
physical pain and injury was the mental one. I’d been stupid,
played for a sucker, and taught a very simple lesson. Don’t mess
with your betters. Even a dimwit like me knew what to do now. I had
to quit the case, refund Suzie’s money in full and get the hell out
of town. The trick in this business was to know when to say when and
not let pride get in the way.
Pride, however, was getting in the way.
I did not like getting beat up. Rather
than humble me, it pissed me off. And when I got angry, I did mean,
stupid things.
I stood painfully, dusted myself off,
and picked up my crumbled fedora. The suit was ruined, but I’d
charge the client enough to replace it twice. The hat, though,
concerned me. It wasn’t easy finding a fedora these days and this
one was just broke in. I carefully dusted it off, attempted to
reshape it the best I could, then carefully put back on my already
swelling head. I vowed to wear it damaged. Maybe it would serve as a
reminder of my own stupidity.
Once standing, I felt in my pockets for
my keys (check), wallet (check) and phone—
Son of a bitch. They’d got my
phone. They’d taken the cricket. Just to be sure I hunted around
the area in a frantic kind of panic. Without the cricket I was
doomed. Without the cricket…
I was alone.
* * *
I must’ve passed out again at my
motel because when I woke up I was lying on the bed in my clothes and
it was dark. I lay there still as could be. I knew when I moved it
was going to hurt. A bunch. Maybe I could lay there stock still for a
couple weeks until I could move again without pain. Or maybe I could
sit up, down a bunch of OTC painkillers and wash them down with the
pint of bourbon I’d bought on the way back. I really can’t
recommend that form of self-medication to everyone, but I can tell
you, in my case, it seemed to work. Within a few minutes I was able
to stand up and make my way into the bathroom and a nice hot shower.
By the time I stepped out, I was feeling within a stone’s throw of
human.
I managed to dry off without looking at
all the welts and bruises in the mirror, wrapped myself in a towel
and walked back into the room, wearing nothing but a cheap motel
towel and a partial grimace, That was when I heard the knock at the
door: soft, hesitant but incessant. Immediately I looked around for
a weapon. I know, I know. You’re thinking every good dick should
have a piece. But I wasn’t no ordinary detective. In my experience,
guns only pissed ETs off. So I didn’t carry one. Besides, I usually
had the cricket who helped me think my way out of these situations.
The cricket could’ve scanned whatever was outside the door for me
in a second and told me, nine times out of ten, what they wanted.
I wasn’t going to be able to do this
without the little bug.
Right then, though, I didn’t have
time to feel sorry for myself. I grabbed the lamp off the bed stand,
cord and all, and walked softly to the door where the knocking
continued. I peered out the little peephole but couldn’t see much
in the dim light. Still how dangerous could they be? I finally asked
myself. If they were going to hurt me they wouldn’t have bothered
knocking. I left the security chain on and opened the door a crack.
And braced myself against the door just in case they were going to
try to kick it open.
“Open up,” said a husky but
feminine voice. “It’s me, Mac.”
My first instinct was to slam the door
in her face. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe it was because I
was feeling lonely and sorry for myself. Maybe it was the booze and
painkillers. Maybe it was the high-heeled shoe and gorgeous leg that
showed through the crack in door. I don’t know. But I slid the
chain off the door and she walked into the room.
“Kinda dark in here, Mac” she said
casually.
She turned and in the light from the
bathroom, saw the shape I was in. She gave a little gasp.
“They hurt you.”
“How did you find me?”
She ignored the question and stepped
closer. Ran a soft hand down my bruised ribs. “They didn’t have
to hurt you.”
“I think you owe me an explanation. I
think you need to tell me what’s really going on…” I tried to
sound angry and mean, but her hands were very distracting.
“I know, I know,” she said sadly,
tenderly. “I need to make this up to you. I’ll tell you
everything…in the morning.”
I’d like to tell you I had willpower,
moral resolve and righteous indignation. I’d like to tell you I
wasn’t an easy mark for a pair of legs and a set of red lips. That
I had professional ethics and a strict code of conduct. That I was
through being played.
I will tell you the lamp hit the floor
about the same time as the towel.
* * *
The combination of drugs and booze and
sex and beatings combined for, ultimately, the best night’s sleep I
had in a long, long time. I slept like the proverbial dead and when I
woke up some 14 hours later, I had a smile on my face. Sure, I was
still bruised and battered, more than a little hung over, but somehow
the night had turned things around for me. Somehow, I felt like I had
done something right for a change.
I sat up slowly and pushed an empty
bottle of wine away from me. This isn’t one of those cheesy romance
stories, so I won’t bore you with sugary details of the previous
night’s passion. Neither is it soft-core porn. So no explicit
details. I will tell you this. Susie was special. Sometimes, once in
a great while, sex becomes more than just animal pushing and
thrusting. It transcends the act itself. I’ll stop short of using
the “L” word, but I will tell you this. As I carefully swung out
of bed that morning and pulled on my shorts, I was…
Happy.
Imagine that. I look back at that
moment and try to recreate the feeling, but how do you construct
something so ethereal and fleeting? You can’t define it. You can’t
recreate it. You just are. Enjoy it while it lasts, friends, because
the feeling is brief. Sometimes oh so very brief.
“Susie?”
I rubbed my eyes and looked around the
dimly lit motel room. Small streaks of sunlight leaked in through the
shades and I could see well enough that the small room was emoty and
thrashed. I smiled again. Things had gotten a little physical last
night… Lamps lay on the floor, clothes were scattered and draped
about the room, pictures had fallen and a brassiere hung from the
fire detector. I stood up, found my land legs and called out again.
“Susie?”
The door to the bathroom was open but I
couldn’t hear any water running. No sounds at all. Maybe she had
gone out for coffee. The idea that she had just used me and left
never occurred to me. Somehow I just knew she’d never do that. Not
now. Not ever. I got up and padded towards the bathroom intending to
relieve myself and wait for breakfast…
I stopped dead in my tracks in the
doorway refusing to believe what I saw. The entire bathroom was
splattered in blood. Streaks of it arced across the mirror, pools of
it puddled on the floor. Bloody hand prints covered the tile walls. A
blood covered corkscrew lay on the vanity. And in the bathtub, draped
with a bloody shower curtain…
I fell towards the toilet and vomited
up everything that was inside of me. Every good feeling, every good
memory I ever had was instantly and sickeningly repulsed from my
being. I puked and puked and when I could puke no more…
I looked over at her.
She had been stabbed, it looked like,
at least a hundred times. Where the skin wasn’t punctured and torn,
it was shredded like some kind of meat you'd see in third world
butcher shop. Her face, though, hadn’t been touched. Somehow that
made it worse. That beautiful face stared up at the sky, the skin
totally white, drained of its last drop of blood……
I vomited some more.
I stood up shakily and turned my back
on her. My legs and hands were now covered in sticky blood from the
floor. But it didn’t matter. There was no help for her. There was
no help for me. I knew I was as doomed as she was. I wandered back
into the motel room in a complete fog. I sat down on the bed and, I
guess, I intended to sit there until they came for me. I just didn’t
care anymore.
I don’t know how long I sat there
staring at the dirty carpet and my bloody feet. Min utes, hours… I
don’t know. After a while though a new feeling arose in me. It
burned slow, but ti burned hot. Anger. Vengeance. I knew that I was
doomed, but I could damn well hurt them somehow. I could damn well go
down swinging.
Quickly I got dressed. Ignoring the
blood I threw on my clothes, gathered my keys and wallet, and
prepared to flee the scene.
Someone knocked on the door. It was a
hard knock that could only come from one kind of person. A cop. Of
course. My mind reeled with too many conflicting thoughts and surging
emotions. Whatever else I was thinking. I knew this was because of me
and I knew I was in trouble. Through all the trauma and chaos,
however, I had enough present of mind to act.
There was no back way out of the
place—not even a small bathroom window. So I did what I had to do.
I opened the door a crack.
The man identified himself as a police
officer.
“Can I see some identification
please,” I stalled. When the guy flashed his badge, I shrugged and
opened the door. He and his partner did what every cop always did
when entering a room. They cleared it visually. Their eyes quickly
scanned the entire room, checking for other entrances, exits, and
closets… And while they were doing that I went out the front
door—post haste.
I knew I wouldn’t have much of a head
start and was just beginning to formulate the next part of my getaway
plan when a Billy club entered it. My mind I mean. I came out the
door, made a sharp turn to my lef,t and blam. The blow came out of
nowhere. As I melted slowly to the ground, I foggily counted three
more cops standing outside the building…
Of course it could’ve been triple
vision.
* * *
I sat at their table and answered their
questions.
“Why did I kill Susie Bigalow?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why was her DNA all over her
body?”
“We’d had intercourse.”
“But you didn’t kill her.”
“No.”
“Where were you while she was being
killed?”
“I was sleeping.”
“You were sleeping while a woman was
stabbed a hundred times in the next room and you didn’t see or hear
anything?”
“I think I was drugged.”
A sad shake of the head.
“Why did you kill Susie Bigalow?”
Four stanzas of that song and dance and
even I didn’t believe my story. I clammed up and clammed up good. I
asked for my attorney. My attorney from North Hollywood. Wouldn’t
say another word until he got there. Which would be a while because
he didn’t fly.
Sure, they tried all their little
police tricks, but in the end, they had no choice but to transfer me
to lockup. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I figured the more
they shuffled me around, the more likely someone would make a
mistake, and I’d get my chance. Yeah, I planned to run—first
chance I got. My case was so weak even Johnny Cochrane couldn’t get
me off. I was headed straight to the long walk, the green mile, the
dead man’s shuffle—or whatever rattlesnake pit version Arizona
had.
Still, I wondered as the deputy helped
lower my head under the back door of the cruiser. Why all the
trouble? If they wanted me out of the way, why not made me disappear?
For that matter, why beat me up then go to the considerable trouble
of killing someone in my room? It didn’t add up. No matter how
badly I counted it. What was the angle? I was nobody to them, about
as much a threat as a flea. The girl had to be the key. She was on to
something, had something on them, and was using me as a pawn against
therm. Well, they’d skipped right over the pawn and taken the
queen.
Leaving the pawn dead by default..
There were two police officers in the
front of the car, a heavy-duty cage in between us and doors that
locked from the outside and hands cuffed behind my back. Not much
chance of escaping, so I sat back and enjoyed the ride. They were
taking me from Sedona to another town that housed a central county
jail complex some twenty-five miles away. The Sedona scenery crawled
by but, knowing what I did about the place, I couldn’t really enjoy
it. Thinking hurt, too, but all thoughts returned to last night and
Susie Bigalow. So, numbed by pain and circumstance, I simply stared
out the window at nothing at all—my mind a complete and utter
blank. At least I still had a talent for something.
“Do you believe this shit?”
I looked up and saw that our progress
down the hill out of Sedona was being held up by bicycles. A lot of
bicycles. They filled the entire two lanes of traffic as the Lycra
clad men and woman pumped furiously down the hill. Must’ve been
some kind of race, since they were using the entire highway. But, if
so, the cops apparently didn’t know anything about it. The driver
braked and cursed.
“Give ‘em the siren,” the other
cop suggested.
The driver gave a little whoop of the
siren and turned on the flashers. The mass of bicycles began to part
and peeled off on both sides of us. Still there were bicycles in
front blocking our progress through the pack. I began to have a bad
feeling about this. I think the police were beginning to feel the
same way. They turned the sirens back on and the driver gunned the
engine. If anything, though, the pack closed in tighter.
I looked back out the window and
thought that maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe that smack in the head
with the Billy club had shaken something loose. The bicyclists seemed
to waver—the bright colors of their jerseys began to bleed, bend
and pull together. Then—stretch apart…
“What the hell?” the policeman
braked and swerved.
Suddenly the bicyclists had
transformed. Instead of Lycra clad bike geeks, they were now brightly
colored and scaled snakes. Giant, fanged-snakes with wings.
The worst kind.
They swarmed the police cruiser. Their
fanged mouths open wide and their cruel reptilian eyes focused only
on me. I think I might have screamed like a girl. For the record, the
policemen did also. The driver gunned the engine and flying snakes
flew off the hood of the car in various states of assembly. But more
kept falling on us. Suddenly the driver’s door flew open and the
officer disappeared in the huge maw of a snake. The police car seemed
to pick up speed without the driver. We hit a guardrail without
slowing. Then we were airborne—a feeling of weightlessness then—
The impact threw me some distance from
the crumpled wreck. No blackout this time as I landed somehow on my
ass. And with my hands cuffed behind my back, rolled freely through a
prickly pear cactus patch. I came to a stop and brushed it off. Even
though I was a human pincushion, I scrambled to my feet. I glanced
back at the crumpled car already buried in writhing, ravenous, winged
snakes. Apparently, they hadn’t noticed I’d been thrown from the
wreckage and I didn’t intend to wait. I ran.
With hands cuffed, I couldn’t dodge
out of the was of all the prickly vegetation that grew there. Thorny
mesquite limbs, ocotillo and other spiny plants raked my face and
body, but I didn’t slow down. I was a terrified bull in a knife
shop and I only hoped when it was done there’d be something left
for the meat-cutter.
I ran and stumbled over a rock. With no
hands to protect my fall, I fell face first on the rough stone and
donated yet more of my precious plasma to the rock coloration.
“Damn the red rocks.”
I got back up and jogged some more. I
don’t know how long I ran when I finally came to the conclusion
that nobody and nothing was following me. I slowed to a fast walk,
then a slow one. Finally I just stood there and looked around. I was
in a dry sandstone wash. The red stone terraced down into what would
be mini waterfalls in the rainy season. As it was, I thought I heard
the giggling, gurgling sound of running water. Then again, maybe my
ears were still ringing from the car crash and subsequent cardio. I
stood there and regained my breath and my composure. I picked a few
of the larger cactus needles out of my person. My heart slowly
stopped thumping in my chest and gradually I could hear again.
Then it came again. Voices on the wind.
In the water. Whispers that appeared out of the desert like an audio
hallucination. I started walking down the wash towards the faint
sounds.
Soon a trickle of water did appear. It
flowed softly but musically over the smooth rock. As I followed it
downhill, the voices seemed to grow stronger. Now the gurgle really
did transform into a giggle and damned if I couldn't hear the clink
of crystal.
I strolled around a bend in the creek
bed and suddenly it opened up into a little slickrock grotto—a
virtual stone patio in front of a panoramic red cliff background. In
the middle a table was set with tablecloth, china and crystal. Two
well-dressed people sat in chairs, eating hors d'ouerves ad drinking
champagne. The man was dressed in white slacks and a kind of white,
puffy tunic. I recognized him, of course, from the book jacket.
Alexander at last.
The woman had her back to me. She wore
a backless white evening gown and her hair was up in a formal
arrangement. Though Alexander made eye contact with me and smirked,
she didn't turn. Didn't have to. I knew damn well who she was.
Susie Bigalow.
“Please,” the guy said, “Have a
seat. You look thirsty.”
My handcuffs magically fell to the
ground. At this point, I just accepted that fact. I was was beginning
to accept a lot of things. Why not the champagne as well? Casually as
I could with cactus needles sticking out of tender places, I seated
myself at the table. As Alexander poured the glass of bubbly, I
looked over at Susie.
“Hello, Mac.”
“I found the toad,” I said, cocking
my head at Alexander. “I'll send you my bill.”
She gave me a small but heart-breaking
smile. “Bravo, Mac.”
I took the glass and started to raise
it, then stopped. “One thing I don't get. How are you even alive--”
But then it came to me. The way Doc had
told me she was human all right. What else did I want to know. Yeah.
I nodded to myself. “Clones.”
“Very good,” she said, with what
could've been a slight blush.
So which one are you? Are you real or
are you Memorex?”
“Does it matter,” she asked, but
looked away.
“What matters is that we are finally
all here,” said Alexander, raising his champagne glass. “To a
successful case!”
I raised my champagne glass but didn't
drink. Instead another question occurred to me. The one that had been
bugging me for the last 24 hours.
“Why?” I asked. “Why go to all
the trouble? I am nothing. Why even bother with me?”
“Think about it,' Alexander said.
“And don't be so hard on yourself. What is the one thing that makes
you special. What is the one thing that propelled you headfirst into
this whole business?”
It must've been all the beatings I took
because nothing came to me. If I'd proved anything the past couple of
days, it was that I was average or below in mental and physical
acuity. They'd proven that every step of the way. As far as I was
concerned, there was nothing special about me.
Alexander frowned at my defeated
expression. “Come, come, Julius. You possess, or used to possess
one thing that kings would kill to have.”
The light bulb went off in my bruised
noggin. “But you took that. Like the first fucking day.”
Alexander grinned like a proud parent
of a performing ape. Gingerly he took my cell phone out of his pocket
and carefully laid it on the table. “Do you have any idea how rare
this particular alien is in the universe? You call it a cricket. But
they're really more like hermit crabs. They move from shell to shell,
many times found in everyday objects, but rarely do we know they're
even there. Even rarer do they communicate with anyone outside their
species.”
It all suddenly came clear to me. I
grinned and lifted the champagne glass. “What you're saying is, he
won't talk to you.”
Alexander shrugged. “As I suspected,
it will only communicate with you.”
“So you need me.”
“And you, us.”
I took a long gulp of champagne. It was
all clear now. They set me up for murder, so they could leverage me.
“Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. Maybe I'm
the kind of pug that likes the joint. Maybe I'd rather walk the long
walk than help someone like you.”
Alexander shrugged again. “That is
your prerogative. We would, of course, destroy your cricket. What we
can't used, we don't need. And for what? You think you're free? You
think you're not already in a cage?”
My eyes began to water and blur. My
head swam. I peered at Alexander and his sneering face seemed to
waver and ripple. I got a glimpse of something very dangerous
underneath.
“Let me tell you something about your
proud and superior species. You, the few that actually know about us,
presume that you somehow allowed us to share space on your planet.
Not even remotely correct. You were almost extinct when we got here.
The entire planet was an abomination. Tactical nuclear wars,
industrial accidents, over population, global warming... We could
have just let you go for a few more generations and it would've all
been over for you. That's what we should've done. Instead, the more
liberal among us, yes we have bleeding hearts too, convinced the
committee to embark on this elaborate zoo project. We rolled back
your little minds to the last time in your history that you were
prosperous and... happy.”
I was hearing his words just fine, but
my vision was dimming. My stomach was convulsing like epileptic in a
strobe factory.
“What's the matter? Feeling a little
disoriented?”
A little. I rubbed my fists in my eyes
while a red hot poker jabbed into my ears. The little shit had
drugged me and it was apparently ripping apart my entire body.
“Don't worry, the feeling passes.
Since, I presume you'll be working for us, it's important you see how
the world really is. It's important you have no illusions
whatsoever.”
Suddenly the pain abruptly stopped. My
eyes flew open almost on their own. I stared at what lay before me.
Alexander was still sitting there at
the table, but now he was an eight foot tall orange scaly creature
with sinister yellow eyes. Despite the freakishness of his alien
appearance, I could tell he was smiling at me. Behind him, the
landscape was transformed. A vast wasteland stretched out endlessly
behind him. A cracked and parched desert dotted by wreckage of a long
dead civilization. Here and there I could make out alien vehicles
crawling across the scene of destruction. Purple lightning flashed
across a yellow sky. I looked over at Susie, who was still human, and
saw that she was softly crying.
You should've finished my book,”
Alexander the Toad grinned. “It concludes by saying if everything
is an illusion, then happiness is a choice.”
I guess all the cliche's could describe
what I felt then. My mind reeled. My reality snapped. My world was
turned upside down. And yet... And yet, I can't say that I was
shocked. I can't say that I felt any different than a man who'd been
finally handed proof that his old lady was cheating on him. I was
mad, sure. I was sad, absolutely. But there was also some sense of
relief that now I knew the worst.
The toad hiccuped. I guess he was
laughing at me. “So. What's it going to be, Julie?”
I picked up the champagne glass and
downed the rest of it. “Yeah, you got me, but I got one condition.”
The toad grinned. “
You want the girl.”
“Hell no. I want the illusion.”
“Most people do,” Alexander said.
“The drug will wear off in a few hours. The world will then appear
as it did before. We'll be in touch.”
Our business seemed to be concluded. I
stood up and pocketed my cell phone. I walked away into a strange,
ruined world I no longer knew. Knowing nothing about my destination,
knowing nothing about the world.
And knowing more than I ever wanted to
know.
-30-
