[all-xf] NEW: "The Beginner's Guide to Tightrope Walking"
Kel /Ckelll
NEW: The Beginner's Guide to Tightrope Walking (1/2)
by Kel
ckelll@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: I created former FBI agent Jerry Luskin, but he's probably not the reason you're reading this story. Mulder, Scully, Skinner et. al. belong to another.
PG, for a few bad words and mature concepts
MSR, Mulder/Scully married with child
Sincere thanks for my betas: To Michelle, who's been hearing bits and pieces forever. To Amanda, who read it so many times I was afraid she was going to block me. To Marasmus, who once again pointed out some *minor* structural defects. To Linda, my personal Underwriters Laboratories.
Spoilers: Breaks with canon after "Requiem." Seasons 8 and 9 never happened. Mulder and Scully have a son named William, but he wasn't born in a ghost town or adopted by farmers or anything stupid like that.
Summary: "Mulder left the FBI about a year after me, but where I got the gold watch and the pension, he got the royal screw."
The Beginner's Guide to Tightrope Walking
Part 1 of 2
My retirement from the FBI didn't work out the way I planned. My kids grew into wonderful adults, but not exactly financially independent. My mother-in-law wouldn't be safe living on her own, and I sure as hell didn't want her living with me. My portfolio, such as it was, took a dive down the toilet. What the hell, I never was much for golf. I "retired" into the private sector.
Jerry Luskin, FBI, became Luskin Associates. I was Luskin Associates back when it was just me and my answering machine. Now it's me, my office manager, and Fox Mulder.
Six years ago when I hired Mulder, I told my wife how the FBI had sacked him, stripped his benefits, and screwed with his security clearance. And my wife looked me right in the eye and asked, "So when did Mulder's problems become your problems?"
"He's good. I can use him."
"He knocked up his girlfriend and then vanished."
We were sitting at the kitchen table, the remains of our dinner pushed to the side. I knew that out of everything, Roz would focus on Dana going through pregnancy alone. "He can't support his kid if he doesn't have a job," I said.
"He ran out on her," she said. "What was his excuse?"
"He doesn't like to talk about it," I said. I tried to smile, but she was really steamed now.
"He finds out there's a baby on the way, he disappears for months, he has nothing to say for himself, the FBI figures out he's a worthless louse, and *you* give him a job."
"Roz, listen. If he really was a louse he would have come up with a story. He didn't say a word, and that means something else. Remember the old days? Back in New York, or in DC after my transfer?"
She cooled down and took a minute before she answered. "I remember how your first ASAC said you'd never last if you couldn't even keep your wife from working. I remember late at night, waiting for you to come to bed while you sat in the kitchen smoking cigarettes. I remember you saying we could read whatever we wanted from the newsstand, but we couldn't have any subscriptions."
I'd forgotten about that. "*TV Guide* was okay. *Reader's Digest.*"
"It was like the ghost of Joe McCarthy moved in with us. You never told me, but I was afraid to sign a petition or answer a survey, and I didn't even know why. Is that what you mean?"
"That and more." I couldn't speak about it while it was happening, and afterwards it was ancient history. For the first time I told her what used to happen to FBI agents who got noticed in the wrong way. How guys would lose their job and get blackballed from ever getting another. There was no way to defend yourself.
"J. Edgar Hoover is dead, Jerry," she said quietly.
"Hell, yes. You think I'd have the guts to give Mulder a job if he was still around?"
She relented: "Far be it from me to tell you how to run your business."
Mulder left the FBI about a year after me, but where I got the gold watch and the pension, he got the royal screw. It's one thing to fire a guy, but when you actually try to ruin him--well, I hadn't seen that kind of crap since Hoover died. It pissed me off.
Mulder happens to be a top-notch investigator. "Spooky" Mulder, they used to call him, and it was a compliment until the suits found a way to turn it against him. Normally he would have had more job offers than Kraft's got cheese, except the Bureau got him branded as a security risk. He was adjudicated as unfit for even the lowest clearance, "by reason of one or more of the following: questionable allegiance to the United States; criminal conduct; personal conduct; substance abuse; mental disorder." It's a crock, but I'm stuck with it. I can't use him on *sensitive* cases, and *sensitive* has a broad definition these days.
Even so, he pulls his weight. Even when he decided to go back to school and I only saw him a couple of times a week, he earned what I paid him, and now that he's around more, he's a bargain. Still, it stinks when I have a *sensitive* case where I could use his spooky help and I'm forced to muddle through on my own.
I was working on something like that for my premier client, an international construction firm. One of their mid-level sales drones was spinning tunes on the wrong jukebox, and they needed to find out who it was. It was a little case, in the scope of things, but it was a big case to me, and it burned that I couldn't use Mulder.
This case was perfect for him. One of those web-of-lies things where a poor slob like myself could tear his hair out for weeks to learn what Mulder would see in the first five minutes. True, it would still take a week of tedium to back up whatever it was that Mulder pulled out of the air, but I wouldn't be working in the dark.
Then I got an idea. My client had given me a tape of a conference so I could get a look at the possible suspects. I popped it into the VCR and called Mulder in to watch with me. In the interest of national security, I turned off the audio. I was bending the rules, sure, but I figured it would be worth it. I thought it would make my life easier. Ha ha ha.
Mulder slouched in the chair next to me. Either he had already guessed what I wanted from him, or he was too bored to ask. After about ten minutes I hit the "pause" button.
"You can't tell me who they are," Mulder said. "Or what they do."
"No."
"You want me to finger someone."
"Yeah. Use your Mulder magic and tell me who's gone bad."
I was ready for some high-octane sarcasm, but he was very quiet that day.
"I want to watch the rest," he said, and so we did. I pulled my chair back so I could watch Mulder watching the tape. He was stuck with only the video to watch, but every once in a while he snuck a glance back at me.
An hour later, the tape wound to an end.
"Well?" I asked. I really didn't like the look on his face. He was taking way too long to decide what to tell me.
"There is no Mulder magic, and you haven't given me anything to go on," he said.
"What about the stuff from your thesis? *The Neurophysiology of Intuition*?"
"People reveal themselves, if you know how to watch." He scowled. "And *listen.*"
"I'm aware of that, *Doctor* Mulder," I said.
He wasn't usually this temperamental, but I'd managed to hit him in a couple of sore spots. Spooky Mulder was bad enough; now he was Spooky Mulder, Ph.D, who was such a threat to the USA that he had to watch my video with the sound off. His own research was classified higher than he was.
He dismissed the title with a wave. "Okay, here's what you want, except I don't really know because you didn't tell me anything. Everybody on that tape is hiding something from somebody. But you're a penny ante little operative, and they're not going to hire you to hunt down Ali Atwa. So you're looking for some low-level schmuck who's not as smart as he thinks he is. And that would be--" He took the remote from me, rewound and froze the tape. One man was standing at the front of the room behind a lectern, and everyone else was seated. "--that one."
"Thanks. I'll focus on him," I said.
"That's nice. I'd hate to think you'd have him killed on my account."
"You know me better than that, Mulder."
"Yeah, I do. Spooky, isn't it?"
He got up and left, which was fine with me. I have no problem with him setting his own hours.
I spent the rest of the day following up on Mulder's low-level schmuck, and by the time I went home I was reasonably sure I had the right man.
I didn't see Mulder for the next couple of days, although Marthe, our office manager, said he came in once while I was at lunch. Late on Friday I answered a call from Mulder's home phone, but it was his wife, Dana Scully.
I'd worked with her too, back at the FBI. I once told Mulder that she was the Michael Jordan to his Scottie Pippen, and he'd laughed and agreed with me.
"Oh, hi, Jerry," she said.
We exchanged the usual chitchat, with a few awkward pauses, and once we'd established that everyone was healthy, I took pity on her and mentioned that Mulder wasn't in the office.
"Anything I can do for you?" I asked.
"It's not important."
"I can give him a message, if I see him."
"But you're not expecting him."
"Not really." I waited a minute or two in silence. "Well, it was nice talking to you," I added, mostly to see of she was still on the line.
"Oh, uh, tell him to get milk."
On Monday I went over to present my findings to my client and found the place in full-crisis mode. One of their VPs was dead in a massive house fire. A suspicious fire. Investigators were sifting through the rubble, trying to find enough of the victim to bury.
It wasn't the guy Mulder had fingered, but it was one of the guys from the tape.
I can't even say why, but it gave me a scare. Nobody's ever called me "Spooky," but I had a bad feeling about Mulder, and I had to check it out. Only I don't have that Mulder magic, so I was going to have to find the facts.
=================
I didn't see Mulder that day or the next, and when I got him on the cell he shook me off. Wednesday one of his clients phoned in a low boil because Mulder hadn't been returning his calls.
This wasn't just any client, it was Mulder's biggest account, and it took me half an hour to unruffle his feathers.
Then I did something I should have been ashamed of; I checked the activity on Mulder's credit cards. What I found looked innocent enough, but it took me by surprise. Friday night, a charge from Applebee's. More on Monday and Tuesday, and two more from today. He was there right now, running up a tab. Do I care where he eats his lunch? Not really, but I drove over anyway.
At night Applebee's is all kids. My wife likes the Weight Watchers menu, but I tell her we don't have enough piercings between us to get in. In the day time they get the geezer crowd. The parking lot was less than half full when I drove up. I parked next to Mulder's Honda, and I went on in. It would be awkward if he was there with another woman. Hell, it would be awkward even if he was there with his wife.
Well, he wasn't with his wife, and it wasn't hard to spot him. He was shooting darts with a big man in cowboy boots.
I sat down at the bar where I could watch them and I ordered a soda.
"Good one, Mulder! Best two out of three?" Cowboy-boots had a booming voice, but no drawl.
"Barry, you won. You can't say *two out of three* after you win," Mulder explained.
"But I want to play again."
"Say *double or nothing.* That means if I win I owe you nothing, but if I lose I owe you twice as much."
"*Best two out of three* gives me two more games. This *double or nothing* is only one more."
"Sorry, bud, that's how it works."
"Okay, *bud,* then double or nothing it is."
I never saw a man get more pleasure from a game of darts. Mulder seemed pretty jolly himself, until he caught sight of me.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Sorry to bust in on your man-date," I said.
"Give me some space here, okay? I'll call you later."
If I didn't know his wife and kid, I think I might have fired him on the spot.
"Prentice Farm Poultry," I said. "Sound familiar?"
"Yeah, got it covered."
"Mr. Prentice doesn't think so."
"He's an idiot."
"No, I'm an idiot. I'm actually paying you to piss off my clients for me," I said.
"Give me a week."
Mulder's friend ambled over with a dart in his hand.
"Hello, bud. Would you like nexts?" he asked.
"Not now, Barry," Mulder told him.
"Hi, bud," I said, offering Big Barry my hand. "Come here often?"
Barry shook my hand, but then Mulder took him by the arm and steered him back to the dart board.
"Who's your pal?" I called.
"I'll see you later, boss," he called back.
I got off the bar stool and grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Excuse me. Do you work for me or don't you?"
"Of course I do, but this is personal."
"Oh! You're the boss!" Barry put down his dart and turned to study me.
"I am," I said. "Say, what kind of work do you do?"
"I'm a tourist. By any chance, do you bowl?"
"Do I bowl?" I echoed.
That's when I figured it out. Barry had some kind of brain damage. Mulder has a soft spot for people like that, and maybe a professional interest as well. I used to sit in on his lectures, and I remember one where he challenged the class to define what it meant to be human. Whatever traits they named, he could come up with someone who lacked them.
"There's a bowling alley nearby. I would be honored if you two would join me for a game," Barry said.
"Jerry's a busy man," Mulder said.
"No, I have time. It sounds like fun."
I could say I felt sorry for the guy, with his big, open face, but mainly I did it to tweak Mulder. Either way, the three of us actually went bowling. At first I thought Mulder was trying to let him win, but finally I decided he just wasn't very good. I won the first game, and then I made my excuses and left them alone with each other's company.
"I'll see you tonight, Mulder. I'll be following a poultry truck, and if you still work for me you'll be there too."
"Nothing's going down tonight," he said, but I walked out before he could finish.
===============
That night I was hiding in a Prentice Farm van watching some men load pallets into a reefer truck. If they finished without any incidents, I would switch to my own car and follow it to its destination. I hadn't heard a word from Mulder.
This was dumb. I didn't have back up, and my mind was on Mulder a lot more than it was on any chicken-parts hijackers. My safety wasn't the issue, because if it comes down to it I'm going to protect my own neck before some chicken's. But there's a right way to do things, and this wasn't it. I was acting as if nothing was going to happen. I was acting as if the only reason to be there was to see if Mulder was going to show.
The truck pulled out and I waited for the loading dock to go dark before I went back to my car. I guess I was relieved when I found Mulder there waiting for me. I unlocked the door and he got in. I flipped on the tracker and I started to drive. I like the forced confinement of a long car ride when you need to ask tough questions. Neither of us spoke until I pulled onto the highway.
"I know who it is," Mulder said.
"Yeah? Any reason you're keeping that nugget from the man who paid us to find out?"
"It's his son."
"Damn," I said.
"Next Wednesday, the New York shipment. I'll catch him on tape."
"Make it good." With airtight evidence, we might be able to get the kid to come clean to his old man, but we'd still lose the account.
"Mr. Prentice will want to make it go away," Mulder said.
"He's got the bucks." Don't we all wish we had the means to smooth the way for our kids?
"Anyway, he's not going to hit tonight."
The GPS showed I was within a mile of the Prentice Farm truck. I wanted to get close enough to see it, then I could fade back and follow just out of sight.
"The old man doesn't have a clue?" I asked. I was stalling now, putting off the moment when I'd have to ask Mulder about the dead guy.
"He may have," Mulder answered, "but it goes against everything he wants to believe."
"Yeah. I got a problem like that myself," I said.
"Mark."
"What?"
"Take it easy, Jerry."
"What the hell does my son have to do with this? I mean you, Einstein."
"Me? What about me?"
How do you ask your employee if he's murdered anyone recently? Same as any other interrogation--you come at it sideways.
"You blew off work for a week," I said.
Mulder shrugged. "So?"
"So I'm kind of wondering if you blew off work so you could barbecue a guy you saw on a certain videotape."
"I don't know what you're talking about." The right words, and I really wanted to believe him. Only I didn't.
"That videotape from the construction company. One of those men is dead."
"I didn't barbecue anyone, and you're the one who showed me the tape," he said.
Mulder's the human polygraph, the doctor of intuition, but I know a thing or two about bullshit myself. His answer was too flat, too deadpan. I'd taken this guy in after the FBI put him out with the trash, and I had only myself to blame if it turned out they were right.
"If you think I'd keep quiet to cover my own sorry ass, you don't know me very well," I said.
My high-beams caught the "Prentice Farm" logo on the back of the trailer. *Always fresh! Always delicious!* I eased my foot off the gas.
"I do know you, Jerry," he said. "Hell, you know me too. I'm not a killer."
The bullshit was gone from his voice, but he wasn't giving me any answers.
"I want to know what's going on with you," I said. Then I remembered Dana's phone call. "I think your wife does too."
I took my eyes off the road to catch his reaction. It was gone in a second, but what passed across his face was desperation.
"Back off," he barked. "And stay away from my wife."
"I'm not going to cover up your torch job!"
"Look up the police report." His voice was strained, almost ragged. "I bet they're not even calling it arson."
I had. It was all about hazardous materials, improperly stored. But I hated the weasel way he was answering me.
"But you know something about it," I said.
"What would I know?" His voice was a monotone. "I'm the one who suffered a psychotic break, probably related to learning of the pregnancy of my partner. I've never been able to give a satisfactory explanation for my subsequent disappearance, and my wildly bizarre accounts of that time are evidence of paranoid delusions possibly enhanced by the ingestion of psilocybin or similar compounds."
Old news. He was the ex-agent unfit for even ordinary-level security clearance, and I was the jack-ass who hired him.
"You've had seven years to rehabilitate yourself," I said. "Tell me what's going on."
The minutes dragged on while he ground his knuckles into the palm of his left hand like he was trying to break in a mitt. Finally he leaned forward and turned on the radio.
"I was looking for something," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"And?"
"The fire got to it first."
"What kind of something?" I asked.
Mulder reached for the radio again and turned up the volume. "Maybe I should begin at the beginning."
=========================
On September 10, 2001, I was working in the FBI bullpen with a telephone to my ear and a cruller in my mouth. On September 12, the bullpen had doubled in size and I was in charge. Anyone who'd worked air piracy or counter-terrorism, anyone who seemed bright and ambitious, those guys were all reassigned. Their places were filled by the deadwood from other departments. Cuba watchers, mostly, even a cluster of weasels who'd made a career out of Yoko Ono. I was supposed to teach them how to use the phone; fortunately, most of them knew.
But on 9/11 there was only one thing that mattered, and that was getting hold of my son. My wife was okay--going to a blood drive, never mind that I ordered her to stay home. I woke my daughter, because I didn't care what time it was in California and I had to hear her voice. But my son was in New York and I couldn't get through. Three thousand people in the Towers, nine million people in the city, three hundred million in the country, and I didn't give a damn.
When John F. Kennedy was shot you knew LBJ would be president. With 9/11, you didn't know anything. You went to bed one night feeling safe, and the next morning you learned that your kids, your wife, anyone you loved could be crushed to dust while you watched on TV. My son was okay, but I didn't hear from him until night time. It's not something I'll forget. And now here was Mulder, filling me in about an army from outer space on stand-by to invade the earth.
But if Mulder was playing Paul Revere, he was Paul Revere on acid. Everything he told me had a twist, a condition. Maybe they wouldn't attack, but without a doubt they had the capability, and I needed to know that. Actually any number of planets had contemplated taking us over, and loads of them had scouted us out. So far nobody wanted to make the first move--some kind of stand-off. What did they want from us? How the hell did he know? He still hadn't figured out why we were in Iraq.
And you can forget "one if by land," because it wasn't like that. They might be coming from the polar regions, or under the sea. In fact they were already here, and had been for a very long time.
Resistance was. . . futile? possible? unnecessary? irrelevant?
These were things he'd learned while he was missing, or worked out for himself, as best he could, in the years he'd been back.
"Before you decide I'm paranoid, think about this: If one of the Aztecs found out about Spain and tried to warn Montezuma, what do you think they would have said about him?"
Mulder sounded crazy all right, and I was finally weighing the possibility that the psychotic break and the paranoid delusions might be the real deal.
"Come on, Jerry, you know I was missing. Did you think I was hiding out in Disneyworld?" he asked.
Now I was the one jacking up the volume on the radio. "I thought it was black ops. They used you for something they needed to bury."
"Get out! You thought I was a secret agent?" I think he liked the idea. He straightened his collar and smoothed back his hair.
"More likely I figured you for the fall guy," I said. The radio was blasting oldies and we both had to shout.
Mulder shook his head. He twisted the volume down, his mouth set in a grim line. "Black ops isn't the only thing they cover up."
"Right. There's that secret cure for cancer, the car that doesn't need gas--oh, and alien abduction."
He looked at me and shrugged. "Then I guess I have nothing else to tell you."
"Okay, I'm listening. What did they want from you? What did they do to you?" He shut his mouth and turned away. "Hey, we're trying to figure out if you're nuts. Maybe something they did left you that way," I persisted.
"I could be crazy and still be right," he said.
"Were you tortured?"
The silence stretched on, and finally he broke it. "No," he said very quietly. "Not by their standards."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"As long as they don't do anything worse to us than we've done to each other, it isn't torture," he explained.
"That leaves a lot of leeway," I said.
"It's not a major concern," he said. "We have a short lifespan and a quick breeding cycle."
He sounded so matter of fact I could believe he was quoting them.
"Like lab rats?" I asked.
"Yeah, sure. Close enough."
"Oh, come on. Can you prove this?" I asked.
"I had the proof in my hands, but I didn't realize it. The X-Files. Scully and me, stumbling on different mutants everywhere we looked. I was so busy arguing about them, I never saw the pattern." He shook his head. "Meanwhile she studied them one by one. She saw so many freaky things she forgot they were freaky."
Freaky, yeah. He said enough wacko stuff to make "Twilight Zone" seem like a documentary. I guess I should have been reaching for the butterfly net, but my spider senses were signaling me to keep cool and pay attention. There was another reason I had to keep listening and keep him talking, and that was his family. Part of me was wondering if it was possible for him to be totally Froot Loops without Dana picking up on it. The rest of me was thinking that maybe I'd have to be the one to make her see it.
At least I had a direction for my follow-up: Dana Scully. She'd seen what he'd seen, but she was still with the FBI and still certified sane and rational. I would have to talk to her.
"Just promise me you didn't start the fire," I said.
"I told you, no."
"And you didn't kill that man?"
"There's no body. Check it out with the arson squad."
A weasel's answer, but I let it pass.
"And Dana can back you on the freaks and mutants?" I asked.
The look he gave me was pure panic this time. "No. You can't talk to her," he said.
"I thought you said she saw them too."
"I'll try to get you the files, okay?"
"What's the matter, Mulder? You don't think Dana will remember stretchy-man or the poison-dart brain-sucker?" I asked.
"I told you to leave her alone," he insisted.
I caught a glance at the speedometer and realized I was pushing ninety. I eased off the gas and took a deep breath. "Why, Mulder? Why can't I talk to Dana?"
"Because I say you can't. Because it has nothing to do with you and you don't know what you're doing." His face was red and his voice cracked. I looked right into his eyes as I took out my phone, and when he knocked it out of my hand I couldn't help jerking the wheel.
"Fuckin' maniac!" I shouted, dragging the car back into the lane.
"Fuckin' asshole!"
I was done with him. As soon as I could get him out of my car I'd call his wife.
"You can't tell Scully," he said. His voice was back to his normal monotone but I didn't bother responding. "Telling her is the same as telling them." He found my phone on the floor and picked it up, setting it down on the console. "There's a microprocessor in the back of her neck, Jerry. She's under their control."
============
When did Mulder's problems become my problems? I guess it was the day I hired him. And right now, either Mulder was my problem, which was terrible, because he was probably a killer and definitely insane. Or else it was Mulder's problems that were my problems, and that was worse.
I really needed to know which.
I know Mulder's story about aliens and abduction sounds crazy, but there's something my wife discovered that gave it some weight A few years ago, while Mulder was working on his PhD, he started bitching and moaning about eye strain and I dragged him out to see her. She's an optometrist, so it made perfect sense to me. She has an office set up at home, but mostly she practices for VisionsInc, which is where I took him. The look she gave me wasn't exactly, Thanks, hon, for bringing me new business, but she let him fill out her paperwork and took him inside.
I was hanging around the waiting area when Mulder came flying out of the room.
"What the hell?" I asked.
"Could you stick around?" he mumbled.
"What?" I couldn't believe I'd heard right. Roz followed him out.
"Why don't you come in with us, Jerry," she suggested. She pulled off her white coat and tossed it on a chair.
"What about his right to privacy?" I asked, but really what I wanted to do was roll on the floor and laugh. My hard-boiled P.I. partner had a doctor phobia, which was even funnier because he was married to one.
"I'll waive that," he said. He looked like a ghost, and I was wondering if I'd have to hold his hand. I didn't connect Mulder's problem with his captivity, not until later. Then it wasn't so funny.
My wife put him through the works that night, even the stuff that normal people don't like. She figured he would never be back, and she wanted to cover it all. She cajoled and chatted, and while he never actually relaxed, he let her continue. Read this, point to that, how many do you see, which is brighter. On and on and on.
"I think there's a lollipop with your name on it," I said when he lived through the glaucoma test. All the while Roz was asking him about his family, about school, as if he was ten instead of forty. She got him back into the chair, and I thought his troubles were over.
"These drops will dilate your pupils so I can get a better look," she said, squirting them in before he could object. "They sting a bit." Mulder's knuckles were white as he gripped the arm rests.
"Jeez, honey, all he wanted was some reading glasses," I told her.
"We're almost done," she said. She got him talking about his little boy, which kept him happy until she started shining lights in his eyes.
"When did you have eye surgery?" she asked him.
"I didn't," he said.
"Hm," she said.
"Brain surgery," he offered.
"Something happened to your retinas," she said. "A blow to the head? A fall? A car accident?"
"It's possible," he said.
"This would have been a violent event. You would know about it."
"Then I guess it happened."
Roz kept up the questions, but he stopped answering. Finally she was finished, and he chose his frames at random, without even trying them on. I drove him home.
About a week later Mulder made it a point to rave to me about his new glasses.
"They've got prisms or something. I don't get headaches when I read."
"Great," I said.
"Apparently I had eye surgery."
"What kind of surgery?" I asked.
"Some repair. She made me an appointment with an ophthalmologist."
"When are you going?" I asked.
His answer was kind of a snort. "Great glasses, though. I can read all night," he said.
Usually Roz doesn't talk about her patients, but Mulder had told her it was okay. What she saw was impossible, unheard of. She didn't come out and say that Dr. McCoy had done the job with his tricorder, but she came close.
"You've got to get him to see a specialist," she said.
"I'll work on that," I promised.
If you put it all together, it almost made sense. Mulder said he was taken by aliens, and whatever happened to his eyes was out of this world. If the dumb schmucks had only fixed his presbyopia, we would never have known.
But alien abduction didn't prove that nasties had come to earth and planted freaks all around. It didn't prove that Dana Scully had a microprocessor in her neck. For that I'd need more than my wife staring into Mulder's big green eyes. Logic said I should talk to Dana, but Mulder made it sound like that could bring the end of the world.
That left me with Walter Skinner. I didn't have much use for him before I retired, and I lost all respect when he wouldn't testify at Mulder's hearing. Wouldn't or couldn't, because the official explanation is that he was sick. The guy used to run marathons and throw barbells around the gym, and then the day Mulder's ass hit the pavement, he retired on full medical disability. Does that smell like roses to you?
I called around for Skinner's number, but nobody I knew was in touch with him, and I know a lot of people. I finally tracked him down through his phone company. I figured he'd turned into a hermit, but I called him anyway and he invited me over. Maybe he was curious about what I wanted, or maybe it was because we had Mulder in common. It turned out Skinner lived in a luxury building by the Metro station. Right by the train, but I bet he used to have a bureau driver take him to work.
The building was elegant and his apartment was refined, but as soon as I stepped in the door, I knew. Even before I saw the walker folded against his chair or the oxygen tank in the corner, I could smell it.
"How've you been?" I asked. He wasn't using the walker, or the oxygen, and he was slow but steady as we walked back to his living room.
"Treatments three times a week. Plasmapheresis. And these." He rapped his knuckle against the side of his leg and I heard the hollow knock of plastic. "How are you?"
"Can't complain," I answered. I sat down on the sofa, and he lowered himself into the armchair.
"You thought I was full of shit," he said mildly. "You thought they paid me off to watch Mulder go down in flames."
There was no point in denying it. "I'm sorry, man."
This guy used to silence a room full of rowdy lawmen by scowling at them the way he was scowling at me now. I hoped he couldn't read my pity.
"Water under the bridge," he said, turning away. "What's on your mind?"
"You were the AD in charge of the X-Files," I began, and he snorted.
"In charge of the X-Files? Sure, on the organization chart."
"Some of the things Mulder told me sounded kind of hard to believe."
"Yuppie-eating garbage creature?" Skinner asked. "Demon dog from China?"
"Uh, no, actually. This was about mutants."
He nodded. "He and Scully encountered a surprising number."
"These cases were documented and confirmed?" I asked.
"Many of them, yes. The dog-tailed shapeshifter, the hibernating liver-eater, the humanoid fluke, the mothmen. . ."
"Confirmed?"
"Confirmed entirely or in part, yes," he said.
"Oh," was all I could say. It would have been so much easier if he'd told me that Mulder's claims were unfounded or at least unprovable.
"The best way to walk the tightrope is to pretend you're on the sidewalk," he said. "Don't look down."
"I like my feet on the ground," I said--and stopped short. The moment would have passed smoothly if I hadn't realized what I'd said, but now he was studying his fingernails and I was feeling like a schmuck. I was sure that every sentence I uttered from now on would manage to include something about legs or feet, and I decided to cut to the chase.
"How did you get sick?" I asked.
He scowled and looked away. "Nanocytes," he said, but I thought I must have heard him wrong.
"Parasites?" I asked.
"Nanocytes. Advanced technology," Skinner explained. "Extremely advanced."
I guess I was getting used to life on a tightrope, or I couldn't have asked the next question. "Advanced technology, like Dana Scully's microprocessor?"
He shook his head, eyes downcast. "I have something in my blood, like sickle-cell anemia on steroids," he said. "Scully has a microchip in her neck."
"Same origin, though?"
He hesitated a second, but this time he nodded. "Yeah."
I blinked. "So. . . the aliens did this to you?"
"It's alien technology." His voice was tight. "Alien technology wielded by human beings."
"No offense, but this sounds kind of strange."
"None taken," Skinner replied. "But what is it you really want to know?"
"Dana Scully's microchip. The way Mulder tells it, they can control her with that thing."
When he talked about his own troubles, he sounded good and pissed, but as he answered my questions about Dana, he sounded sad. "It happened," he said.
"Against her will?"
"Against her will," he confirmed. "Without her knowledge."
"But if it's removed, she'll get cancer?"
"Yes," he said. "Exactly."
So there I was with Skinner vouching for Mulder's sanity, and me wondering if Skinner wasn't nuts himself. We just looked at each other for a while.
"Next time you come, bring beer," he said. "And remember, don't look down."
=============
The alien stuff had gone from wacko to possible, but it was still hard to overlook the probability that Mulder had made the choice to break into a house and kill the man who lived there.
Mulder wasn't admitting it, but he didn't deny it either. He swore he had nothing to do with the fire, but when it came to the dead man, he just hammered on the fact that they never found a body. Mulder let me check his gun, and I could tell it hadn't been fired recently. Or cleaned, for that matter. But that didn't prove a thing.
I could split hairs and say that I didn't actually tap Mulder's phone, since his office line belongs to me and cell transmission is fair game. Suffice it to say I was sharing in some of his calls. Very few, really, since most of Mulder's conversations were with his wife. Cozy stuff, but I didn't need to listen.
His other calls were mainly work-related. There was the gallery owner who found some reason to ring him up nearly every day, but I guess his soft, sexy voice was enough to keep her paying our fee. In Dover a little watering hole was getting the shakedown by some petty mutts when Mulder convinced the owner to offer free drinks for off-duty cops. The boys in blue were happy, but the barkeep kept calling to bitch that paying protection would have been cheaper.
Then one day a guy called to rant about the internet. "They see it all! Wikipedia's the worst, they read every word!" I would have called him a crackpot except that Mulder kept listening.
"If they get their facts from the internet, they'll get a lot of things wrong," Mulder said.
"It's not just wrong and right. They learn our language. They learn to blend in."
"Did you have time to study what I gave you?" Mulder asked.
"It looks perfectly simple."
"Thank you." There was more than gratitude in his voice, there was profound relief.
"Perfectly simple once you have the gazinta."
"Don't. Just don't."
"You know, the part that *goes into* another part?"
"All right. Where do we get the gazinta?"
"They don't actually call it that. . ."
"I don't care what they call it. Where can we find one?"
"I'll let you know."
It sounded to me like the crackpot was stringing him along, and that surprised me, because usually Mulder has no trouble sounding nonchalant and uninterested.
The same guy called the next day.
"Sousa," he said.
"Corny, Al," Mulder answered.
"Don't call me that! Sousa, got it?" the guy asked impatiently.
"I think so," Mulder said.
Then the informant exploded with a list of numbers. Maybe Mulder had time to write them down, but I sure didn't.
"Then this is it? This is the gazinta?" Mulder asked, but he got no answer and the line went dead.
I hurried out of my office to the reception area, so that Mulder would have to pass me on his way out. Marthe was at her desk, and I realized I'd have to play it cool if I didn't want to involve her in our drama. Only there was no drama, because Mulder didn't leave his room.
"Need something?" Marthe asked me.
"Could you pull up our phone records for the last two months," I improvised. Figured I'd check for other calls from Mulder's crackpot. Her eyebrows climbed and her shoulders hunched, and I made a quick guess that she'd been using my lines for something other than business. I'd have to look into that, but not right now.
"Change that. Just get me the calls coming in," I said. She smiled and her shoulders relaxed.
I waited while she worked on her keyboard, waited while the printer hummed to life. I should have barged in on Mulder as soon as the call ended, but I'd missed that chance. The whole thing was making me kind of crazy. Then, when Mulder finally did emerge from his office, he didn't look wild or excited. Truth was, he looked grim.
"I need these notarized," he told Marthe.
"I'm doing something for Jerry," she said.
"When you're done," he said.
"What have you got?" I asked.
"Loads of papers, for Billy. Guardianship, trusts, that kind of thing."
"You should have done that years ago," Marthe said.
"Yeah, Scully's been hounding me," he said.
"Who'd you pick?" I asked. Dana had wanted her brother named as primary guardian, in case something happened. Mulder's list had started with his mother-in-law and wound through Skinner and a trio of bachelor software consultants. It was an old argument, and I was curious to see who budged.
"Her brother."
"The asshole?" Marthe asked. Marthe was about my age, with steel-gray hair and a powder-blue cardigan. She pronounced it "ess-hole."
"His wife is nice," Mulder said. "The kids get along."
"Don't sign it yet. You have to wait until I am watching," she said.
"I know. And I have my ID," Mulder said. "Jerry, can you witness for me?"
"Sure."
"And I'd like to keep a copy in your safe," he added.
By now I was wondering if the crackpot's message was a threat.
"Anything wrong?" I asked.
"Just being responsible," he said.
Marthe took her position as a notary very seriously. Mulder and I signed our names and she wielded her seal, stamping neatly and carefully. I saw that the bachelor software consultants who washed out as guardians ended up being executors.
"Last chance, Jerry. If you take my kid I'll give you my fortune," Mulder said.
"Him? He is much too old," Marthe opined.
Then I had to go into my office to handle a call from the Treasury Department, and when I was finished, Mulder had left for the day.
"So many accounts and policies. A millionaire," Marthe said. "He's taking the afternoon off."
"I don't think he's a millionaire," I said. He didn't live like one, but what the hell did I know?
"A crazy millionaire. Look what he did to the shredder."
She had the cover off, and she was pulling chunks of paper from between the blades.
"His documents?" I asked.
"No, the newspaper. He stuffed the Washington Post into my shredder."
I went back to my office and closed the door. Remember "A Beautiful Mind," where Russell Crowe is a schizophrenic genius who thinks he's getting coded messages from the newspaper? I thought of that, but I also thought about the crackpot informant. Maybe he was the madman. And I thought that if Mulder wanted to keep the newspaper out of my mitts, all he had to do was take it home with him--except then his wife might see it.
So Mulder was making arrangements for his child in the event of his death... only it wasn't really that kind of arrangement. It was in case Billy lost both his parents.
It seemed like a good time to follow up on that suspicious fire in Maryland.
=======================
I called the Chevy Chase PD, where my great personality and old connections got me through to the detective squad. Still no body--the new theory was that the guy torched his own house to fake his death. "No proof yet, but the guy was their VP for finance. I think what we got here is another Enron," the lead investigator said.
Nobody else was blaming Mulder, but nobody else knew what I knew. I was stuck in some very dark calculations, and what broke me loose was a call from an old friend. Well, not exactly a friend.
Winston Canaday was a semi-legit gunsmith. Not quite a mutt himself, but most of his friends were mutts. Of course the rest of his friends were cops. Apparently he and Mulder had business together.
"He wanted to know if anybody else was looking for a gizmo like yours," Canaday said.
"Like mine?" I asked.
"That gizmo I got for you. That crazy shiv your boy was looking for."
"Okay," I said. When you're trying to play along, keep it simple.
"He does work for you, right?"
"Didn't he tell you?" I asked.
"He mentioned your name, but I couldn't figure what you'd want with an ice pick."
And now I was thinking of Mulder's gun, that hadn't been fired, and wondering if he was packing a stiletto. I reached for my Tums but I kept the sick feeling out of my voice.
"Winnie, if I told you everything, then you'd be as smart as me," I said.
"Yeah, if you were so smart, I'd be in prison," Canaday said.
"Nah. I told the prosecutor we couldn't afford to feed you." Winston Canaday weighed about four hundred pounds last time we crossed paths.
"I forgot you're a comedian," he said.
"Hey, man, you think I'd send Mulder your way if I didn't trust you? You're old-school, Winston. I'm old school too."
"Do me a favor. Keep your babbo away from me. And I'll give you a little tip--he's not the guy you should send when you're buying a weapon."
"Oh, no. What did he do now?"
"Just not very sharp, that's all. Too eager," he said.
"Winnie, why don't we get together and talk this over in person?" I suggested. "You still out by the airport?"
"Nah, not for years."
I left a message for my wife saying not to count on me for dinner and I made a quick stop before I headed to Canaday's new place. My GPS got me all screwed up, but I finally found it. He was doing business out of a workshop between a warehouse and a transmission rebuilder. He trundled around the premises on an electric scooter.
"Neat," I said.
"Pretty cool, huh? Whatcha got there?"
"Couple of sausage parm heroes--you interested?"
So we talked business over our little snack.
"You finally retired from the FBI," he said.
"A few years ago."
"Not connected at all? You still got friends, though," he said.
"Hey, I don't judge you by your friends," I said.
"And this Mulder, he's not a feeb?"
"Not any more," I said.
"Here's the thing. He wanted me to call if I heard about anyone else looking for that special ice pick. He was willing to pay. Hot to pay. Pushy." Mulder usually knows how to turn on the charm, but you can't get on Canaday's good side unless you feed him.
"Not good," I agreed.
"Seriously, Jerry, what's the deal with the ice pick? It's more like a spike than a blade. And nobody spring-loads a knife that way--you could get hurt."
"Must have been hard to find," I commented.
"Find it? It's custom made. And then he wanted to know if anyone else was looking for a spring-assist stiletto. I figured, fat chance someone else wants a crazy thing like that."
"Custom made? How many did he want?" I asked.
"Just one." Canaday raised his eyebrows.
"How many did you get?" I asked. Unless it was made entirely by hand, they'd cranked out more than just the one.
"Got a dozen. And no luck unloading them, until that second buyer showed up."
"No skin off your ass. Mulder paid for the whole run," I said. "If you found a buyer to take the rest, that's pure gravy."
"Mulder could have bought them all, Jerry. He just didn't ask the right questions."
"So the second buyer bought the rest?"
"Just one. If you want the whole lot of 'em, I could give you a very nice price."
The price didn't sound very nice to me, and in the end I took only one. Canaday said he was selling it to me at cost, which was a lie, but I had to have it. I needed to see what the hell Mulder was carrying these days.
"Next lot will be cheaper. Design and die are all paid for."
Canaday putt-putted his scooter over to some shelves at the rear of his shop and used a device on a stick to retrieve a box from an upper shelf.
"So who's the second buyer?" I asked, putting my box on the table next to my sandwich. "Who's the other guy who wants a crazy stiletto?"
"Mulder was going to pay for that info."
I shook my head. "He thinks I'm made of money," I said.
"Look, Jerry, right is right. He was going to cough up five grand."
"So how come you're calling me instead of him?" I asked.
He heaved a wheezy sigh. "It's like you said--I'm old school. I won't sell out a client for a couple of quick bucks."
"It's one of the reasons I respect you," I said.
"From where I sit, it's a simple thing. You like ice picks, he likes ice picks, so maybe you have other common interests."
"That's about the size of it," I agreed. "I don't much care what else he's up to. Like you said, I'm not with the FBI any more."
"He's a little guy, Jerry. He does little favors."
"Little favors for big guys?" I asked.
"Not that kind of favor. Say a guy has some ugly prison ink, or maybe just some big tat that could get him fingered," Canaday explained. "Maybe somebody gets hurt, and they can't take him to a regular hospital."
"Sure."
"True story: This clown sticks a ruby up one nostril, a diamond up the other, and he hops on a plane. Twelve hours later he hops off the plane, out comes the diamond but the ruby is gone. Vanished. He knows he can't go to the emergency room, so all he can do is go to his *sponsor,* shall we say, and explain the situation. Maybe the guy will kill him, but maybe he'll just cut his nose off. Well, the guy does neither. Instead he takes him to this doctor--"
"He's a doctor?" I interrupted.
"He's a doctor," Canaday confirmed. "See, ratting out a guy to the Feds, that's a shitty thing to do. But just telling a friend about a doctor, that's no big deal. Maybe you got a tattoo you don't like."
"Maybe I got a diamond up my ass," I said.
He gave me a wheezy laugh. "Me too, brother, me too." He wrote the name on a scrap of paper, plus an address.
"No phone number?" I asked.
"I don't want it could lead back to me," he said. "Besides, this ought to be enough."
I gave Canaday something for his trouble, but nowhere near what Mulder had offered him.
"If I can get the five thou out of Mulder, we'll split the difference," I said.
He pantomimed spitting on the floor. "Pepsi generation. Who needs them?" he said.
As soon as I got in my car I opened the box and had a look at my new weapon.
If I was ever going to order myself a custom-designed shiv, this wouldn't be the one. It was about as dangerous and impractical as a gas-engine nail clipper. The blade was deadly sharp and the spring was over-powered. I wanted to put it away with the blade extended, only it wouldn't fit in the box. Believe me, I was very careful as I retracted it.
Who would want a weapon like that? Well, Fox Mulder, for one. And also a certain Alvin Kurtzweil, purported medical doctor and performer of favors. I had given my word I wouldn't bring the law down on Alvin Kurtzweil, but that didn't mean I couldn't use my contacts to do some research.
What kind of doctor ends up with friends like Winston Canaday? What kind of doctor needs a spring-loaded ice pick?
==============
I should have gone back to the office, because I couldn't focus on anything at home. Roz was all excited because Mark had landed a role in a real play, in a real theater, and instead of being happy for him I was a jerk.
"I bet he's the waiter."
"He doesn't only play waiters," she protested.
"He was a waiter on *Law and Order,*" I reminded her. "He was a waiter in that stupid commercial."
"He was excellent."
"Honey, he was on the screen for ten seconds. And he is a waiter, so it wasn't exactly a stretch."
"Just don't ask why the kids talk to me instead of you."
"They don't want to talk to me?" I asked. Jenny talks to me; it's her brother who has the problem.
"You should call Mark and tell him you're proud of him."
I tried, and ended up saying it to his answering machine. Probably just as well. I sat down on the couch and kicked off my shoes before swinging my feet up on the coffee table.
"You're working too hard," my wife said.
"This might be a bad time to tell you I'll be late again tomorrow." Tomorrow was our showdown with the chicken bandit.
"If we sold the house. . ."
"We'd still have to live somewhere."
"A condo. Less money. Less work. You could retire for real," she said.
"I like this house. I like my work."
"Sometimes it doesn't look like it," she said.
==========
The next morning I did a computer search on Alvin Kurtzweil before I left for work. Turned out he was a real MD, med school and all. You never know with a mob doc, half the time it's a vet or a podiatrist. This guy was a gynecologist. He had a record, but nothing I would have expected. Multiple arrests for kiddie pornography, no convictions. Hopefully his present duties didn't involve children.
I arrived late at the office, but Mulder was later. I took it on myself to trace the route for the Prentice Poultry delivery, just in case Mulder wasn't on the ball. I was thinking that I really might stop by Skinner's again. He could be the only other man in the world who knew what it was like to spend every waking moment thinking about Mulder.
My electric ear signaled me to a call to Mulder's cell and I slipped on the headphones. It was the same crackpot, "Al." Since my gabfest with Canaday I'd been wondering: Al, Alvin?
"Mencken," Al said.
"I can't play with you today. I'm on my way to work."
"I'm sure this time. The gazinta."
"You'll say anything to get me to do your errands."
"Errands? These are missions. Crusades."
"Forget it, Al."
"Don't call me that!"
"You can call me Betty," Mulder said. "I'm done chasing your half-assed clues."
"Mencken! Seventeen--four--twelve--three; Twenty--"
"I'm hanging up now."
"Mulder!" And then Al blurted out a name and a street address. He was still yammering urgently when Mulder ended the call.
I did not finish my map, I did not finish my coffee. I went to my car and headed for the address. It was halfway between Mulder's house and my office, and there was no way he wouldn't check it out. I didn't even bother turning on the GPS to track his car.
=========================
It was called Gulliver's Travel Agency, and it was located up a flight of stairs between a laundromat and a bail bondsman. I didn't see Mulder's car but I knew he was coming. I parked around the corner and climbed up to meet Gulliver.
Gulliver turned out to be a slightly-built older man, Indian or Pakistani, with wispy white hair combed across his scalp. He was plucking items from his desk and tossing them into a brief case.
"Hi," I called brightly from the doorway. "Looks like you're going on a trip yourself."
"We are closed," he said.
"But this is an easy one. I'm looking for a cruise, five days. Someplace warm."
"Try another travel agent," he said.
I took a couple of steps into the room. "I can just take a few brochures," I offered.
"I have none," he said.
I didn't see any. There wasn't much in the room to make it look like a travel agency, beyond a few posters on the wall. A couch and a TV on a stand made me wonder if the little guy actually lived here.
"I'll help you pack. Maybe we'll find something," I said.
I reached for his briefcase, and he grabbed my arm. His old hand felt like steel.
"Hey, I just wanted to help!" I tried to sound dumb and confused.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Nice way to treat a customer," I complained. "Let go of me."
In one motion he released my arm and punched me in the head. He used his fist, but it felt like a stick and it stunned me like I'd been coshed. I folded up like a string puppet and the little man tossed me out of the way like I was a sack of trash.
Some guys come up swinging, but it's usually safer to stay down. I lay in the corner, watching with very little curiosity while the little old man finished packing. Even when Mulder appeared at the door I was only mildly concerned.
"You must be Gulliver," Mulder said.
"We are closed."
"My friend was going to meet me here. Mind if I use your phone?"
Gulliver's shoulders stiffened, and he turned to the corner where I lay in my stupor. Before my eyes, with the old man staring into my face, Mulder killed him. I saw the flash of something shiny before he plunged it into Gulliver's neck. One blow, and Gulliver went down.
So that's how you use a spring-assist stiletto.
Mulder unplugged the processor from the computer, picked up the briefcase, and then struggled to carry them both from the room.
He hadn't even seen me. I heard him tramping down the stairs before I realized I should have called to him. I lay on the floor, fairly comfortable except for a sore spot where the old man had decked me. Fuzzy and content until I noticed that the little old man was shriveling up and turning green. Then I got a whiff of something. It wasn't tear gas, but my eyes burned and my nose and throat tightened until every breath was a chore. I remembered about the fire. If this place burned up like the last one, I was going to die. I decided to scream, but it came out more like a suggestion.
"Help. Help me?"
"Jerry? What are you doing here?" Mulder's voice, from the doorway, sounding far more beautiful than I remembered it.
I couldn't open my eyes but I managed to stagger to my feet. "Mulder?"
He was coughing as he stumbled to my corner.
"Shit, you're heavy," he complained as he dragged me down the stairs.
"You came back," I croaked gratefully.
"I wanted to see what else he had."
Mulder shoved me in his car.
"I'm going back to look around," he said.
"No," I warned him. "Fire. Like the house in Chevy Chase. Gonna burn."
"We don't know the time frame. It might take hours."
I fumbled for my phone.
"I'm calling 9-1-1. There are people in there."
Mulder climbed into the driver's seat. "I'll call," he sighed. He found a round-about way to do it, calling someone else and asking him to send the alarm, but he got it done.
He started the car. I wasn't foggy any more. I just felt lousy. "Were you sure he was one of them?" I asked.
"You saw what happened. That was no human," Mulder answered.
"How did you know that before you killed him?"
"I studied them," he said. "While they studied me, I studied them. Then afterward, I studied people."
Holy shit--that PhD he didn't want was a set-up. "The science behind intuition," I said.
"That was the part I could publish," he said. "Most of it was about how to spot a human."
My vision was improving, but my eyes burned more than ever and I was starting to shiver.
"Drop me off at home," I said.
"I'll take you to my place. Let Scully have a look at you."
"She's home?" I asked. Even if I'd lost track of a couple of hours, it was still the middle of the day.
"It's her late class. She leaves after dinner."
"I think I just need to rest," I said. Still, Mulder's offer sounded pretty good. It sounded a lot better than scaring the shit out of my wife.
"How are your eyes?" he asked.
"They hurt like hell," I said.
"Remember, you can't tell her about the alien."
"Great. I'll tell her an ordinary little old man cleaned my clock."
"Did he?" Mulder asked.
"Popped me on the head. He had a fist like a blackjack."
He nodded sympathetically. "We can say you bumped your head, but that won't explain your eyes."
"It feels like pepper spray," I said.
"What if some old lady thought you were trying to mug her? She whacked you with her cane and sprayed you with her mace?"
"That's so flattering."
"You were diving into the salad bar when you hit your head on the sneeze guard and fell into the jalapenos."
"Maybe your cheap aftershave knocked me out and I hit my head when I fell," I said.
Mulder shrugged. "We'll think of something."
"Yeah, we're doing great so far."
What I didn't realize was how much I'd be flying solo when it came to dealing with Dana. Mulder got me in the door and onto the couch, and then he took off.
Dana was too polite to come out and ask me what the hell I was doing in her house.
"I bumped my head and he thought you should have a look," I said. "I told him I was fine."
That explanation worked well enough, and I tried to be as straight with her as I could. She was relieved that I hadn't lost consciousness, but concerned when I described that foggy feeling: Awake, aware, but totally apathetic.
"What happened to your eyes?" she asked,
"I don't know. Allergic to something, I guess."
"You seem sleepy. Did you take Benadryl?"
"Yes." If she thought I was sleepy from getting clocked, she would keep me awake. Instead she washed my eyes with saline and gave me a blanket. I slept like a rock until Billy came thundering home from school. I woke up feeling rotten, but it was my regular rotten--backache, sour mouth, stiff neck, burning knees. The way I feel every morning.
"Uncle Jerry's here!" Billy observed.
"He needs to rest," Dana said.
"I'll help him."
Kids like me. Even babies burst into laughter at the sight of my face. It's a gift. Billy wanted to play basketball, but fortunately for me it was a video game.
"You lose! Play again?" Billy asked.
"Sure, kid. Who wins when you play against your dad?"
"I do, but he plays a lot better than you. You stink."
"My guy won't jump," I complained.
"'Cause you don't know what you're doing."
I was feeling well enough to leave, but I had no idea when Mulder would show up and I didn't want Dana to see that.
"I know you have to teach tonight. I can stay with Billy if you like."
"If it's not too much trouble," she said. She's crafty, though. Just as crafty as her husband.
She gave Billy an early supper, nudged him through his homework, and wrangled him a ride to his cub scout meeting. But meanwhile, on the sly, she canceled her class.
"Feeling better? I made lasagna," she said.
"You didn't have to do that."
"It's Stouffer's," she said. "I was hoping we could talk."
"Sure," I said. We sat down at the table, but I knew this was bad. I hoped against hope she was going to ask me if Mulder was having an affair.
"I'd offer you wine, but you bumped your head. We have root beer, if you'd like."
"Water's fine," I said. I picked up my glass, and she picked up hers. I thought we were going to clink them, but she took a sip and put hers down.
"Mulder's . . . changed," she said.
I stuffed a forkful of salad into my mouth.
"I understand that, after what he's been through. I would understand if he closed down emotionally," she said. "At first I thought that's what it was."
I nodded. It seemed better than saying something pointless.
"He hasn't closed down. Not with Billy. Not with me, most of the time." She pushed the salad around on her plate. "Sometimes it's as if a wall drops between us. He'll turn away, or even walk out the door."
She looked to me. I drank some water.
"I used to think he was crazy, the way he connected everything to conspiracies and aliens," she said. She kept poking at her salad, pushing the radishes into a little pile. "Now he won't even talk about it. He won't even listen."
It was the first time in my life I didn't feel like eating, but I speared a bite of lasagna. "Remember, he lost his security clearance," I said. "Maybe he doesn't want you to get in trouble."
"I hope he discusses it with other people. You, maybe?"
I chewed thoroughly, but she waited me out. "We talk about work, mostly. News, sports," I said. Her eyes were locked on mine, and she was begging me to tell her more. "Family. You. Billy. He loves you, Dana, there's no question about that."
She looked away and sighed. "He was fired from the Bureau, but I never believed that would stop him," she said. "Then you gave him a job, and I was sure he'd find a way to continue the work. Has he?"
My mouth was full. I shrugged.
"All he talks about are cheating husbands and crooked store managers. Ordinary mutts." She smiled, because she was using my word.
"That's most of my business," I said.
"When he enrolled at Maryland, he said we needed another doctor in the house." Again, those piercing blue eyes. "He never uses the title, and he never uses the degree. I thought maybe it had something to do with his search."
"Looks nice on the letterhead," I ventured, groaning a little inside.
"I could surrender my clearance, if that's the problem." She pushed her salad plate away. "I don't want to be the reason he abandoned his quest."
"He loves you," I said again.
"I know."
"Trust him," I said.
"I do trust him. Wait, what do you mean?" she asked, but I had said too much already. All I could do was lie, and it still didn't stop her from hurting. I told her I had to see a man about a chicken and bolted outside to call a cab.
The driver who arrived had one cloudy eye but he had one good eye. I let him drop me off a couple of blocks from where I'd parked my car, and I gave him my idea of an average tip. The streets had enough activity that I could blend in. There's something nice about a place where people just go about their business. Dupont Circle or Georgetown even, sometimes it feels like everyone's putting on a show.
I reached the street with the phony travel agent and saw I'd been right about the fire. The building was still standing but the front of the laundromat was boarded up and yellow tape crisscrossed the door to the staircase.
My car sat where I had left it, none the worse. I drove to my office, unlocked the door, and sat there in the dark. I guess I could have gone chasing after the chicken truck, but instead I played solitaire until midnight, and then I went home and went to bed.
=================
I'd overlooked something, and it would have been sticky if my wife didn't prove once again that she's the brains in the outfit. We were eating breakfast, one of her low-calorie productions with egg whites and vegetables and yogurt pretending to be sour cream.
There was a knock at the door, an obnoxious one. Only a cop knocks like that. He wasn't wearing a uniform, but the cheap suit confirmed it even before he showed his badge.
"Is something wrong?" Roz asked. She was steeling herself for what he was going to say, but I knew it wasn't that kind of trouble. There's a different knock when they deliver bad news.
He was from the arson squad, checking out the license plates of suspicious vehicles. He wanted to know why my car spent half a day miles from my job or my house. He referred to the neighborhood as "gritty," which is a good description. The people who live there are mostly solid, but when somebody comes in from outside, they're not looking for yoga lessons or cappuccino.
I was rigging a story in my head. There was a bail bond place downstairs from the travel agency, so maybe I was a bounty hunter. Only it wasn't going to work if I couldn't remember the bondsman's name.
And then Roz jumped in. She's an artist.
"I'm sorry, Jerry. I never told you about this, but it's just one of those things," she said. "There's something you don't know about me."
"Aw, baby," I said.
"I was going for a wax job. Not one of those Brazilian waxes, just what they call a bikini wax."
"I'll need the name of the establishment," the investigator said.
"I don't understand about the Brazilian wax. Why should a grown woman have to look like a child? I don't know how the girls can stand it. Although I've heard you get used to it. Call me chicken, I don't want to find out. I just wanted something so I could wear a swimsuit without the worry. It's not a salon, just an apartment, but the girl does a good job, very professional. And her sister does nails. My girlfriend Barbara found them."
"Then I'll need their names," he said.
"Their real names? They're Korean, I think. Or Filipino? The girl who does waxing calls herself Lucy, and the sister with the nails is Lucille. Stupid, isn't it? Unless they're not really sisters. I don't think a mother would name her children Lucy and Lucille. But those aren't their real names."
"Ma'am, how long did it take for you to get your, um, bikini wax?"
"Oh, you have no idea. You see, when I got back to the car, the warning light was on. Not the oil light, the other one, for the engine. I was going to call Jerry, but then I would have to tell him about the wax. So I called Barbara. She said she would pick me up, and later she would ask her son to come look at my car. Well, there's no way I want *him* touching my car. I couldn't tell her that, so I said we should go to the Olive Garden. When you go at night there's such a long wait."
"Why don't you give the detective Barbara's number?" I suggested. Roz is a character, but Barbara is even worse.
"Barbara started going to them for the nails. Just the tips, at first, but then she started with the acrylics. Remember those crazy nails the girls used to have? One girl at the bank, especially. Two inches long, they must have been. She had to turn her hands sideways to count out the money. I used to wonder--how in the world does she wipe herself?"
"The funny thing was, when I went to pick up the car that evening, the light wasn't even on," I said. I had to jump in because Roz didn't know when the car was moved. "Maybe it was the brake light you saw, honey."
"Jerry, I can tell the brake light from the one where you need a mechanic," she said. "Not that Barbara's son is a mechanic. He can't keep a job, but she puts up with him, so I keep my mouth shut. A bum. And then I see how hard those Cambodian girls work, with the waxing and the nails. I'll be honest with you, I know it isn't legal waxing customers in your apartment. So if you want to arrest me, you go ahead, but I'm not going to get those girls in trouble."
The investigator stood up. He took out his card, as if he was going to tell her to call if she thought of anything else. Then he put it back in his pocket.
"If you have a woman detective, I could show her the wax job. It really came out nice," Roz said.
I walked the investigator to the door.
"Bikini wax," I said. "Who knew?"
Roz waited until the door was closed.
"This is about Mulder," she said.
"Yes. He's in the middle of something big," I said.
"Did he set that fire?"
"No."
"It's Mulder we're talking about. How can you be so sure?" she asked.
"I was there. He didn't set the fire."
"Then you're involved too."
"Yeah."
"It's big and dangerous and you're in the middle, you and Mulder. And I bet you can't tell me anything about it."
When I was in the Bureau, I couldn't tell her anything about what I was doing, and it got me in the habit of keeping work to myself. This was different. The only danger now was that she'd think I was nuts. "I can tell you. I don't know if you'll believe me, because it's crazy stuff. You'll have a million questions, and I won't know the answers. We can talk about it after work."
She frowned. "Just how big is this?" she asked.
"Huge, but maybe it's so big that it doesn't matter. Like... like if you're a mouse in the cellar of the Vatican when they elect a new pope. You wouldn't give a damn."
"You wouldn't give a damn about his views on theology," she said. "You'd sure as hell want to know if he liked cats."
===========
Two things I could have done if I was still trying to decide if Mulder was telling the truth. I could have seen a doctor to make sure my brain was working right, after yesterday's conk on the head. I could have sniffed into the arson investigation, at least to find out what time the fire started. I couldn't alibi Mulder for any time after he dropped me off at his place.
I didn't bother. Instead I sat down and played the video cassette where Mulder had recognized one man for an alien. Now that I'd met an alien up close and personal, maybe I'd be able to spot one on a tape. I knew the name of the dead VP, but not what he looked like. If I could pick him out, the way Mulder had. . . Well, I didn't know where we'd go from there.
I practically dozed off while I watched. I got myself a cup of coffee and tried again. One guy kept sticking out. What was different about him? Nothing, really. Not a movie star, but not a bad-looking guy either. He just looked like he wasn't where he belonged.
It sounded like hocus pocus, even to me, but I figured it was time to find a photo of the dead VP. I guess the man was camera shy, because it took a bit of digging. And . . . yeah, that was him.
When Mulder came in I was set to tell him what I'd done, and grill him about the ice pick and how to use it, but he was full of the latest news about Prentice Poultry.
The plan was for him to catch the heist on video, then give the crooked son the chance to come clean to his dad on his own. "It didn't go quite the way you had in mind," he said.
"What happened?" I asked.
"If the hijack went through, I'd be stuck giving depositions and testimony. Even if it didn't go to court, I could be tied up for weeks."
"Could be," I said. My gut told me that this was going to end up behind closed doors, with lawyers from the chicken farm and the FTC hashing out a deal. Old man Prentice was not going to send Junior to jail.
"So I kind of chased off the hijackers."
"So the shipment kind of went through?" I asked.
"The shipment went through, and then I drove over to visit Josh."
"Josh Prentice?" I asked. In my mind he'd always been "Junior."
"Yeah. We took a walk. I bought him breakfast."
"And he broke down in tears telling you how his father never paid him any attention?"
"Actually, that's exactly what happened."
"He's confessing to the old man even as we speak?" I asked.
"Maybe?"
"All right. What you need to do is call the old man. Tell him his son has something to say, and he'll need to get squared with at least his insurance carrier to make this right. Because Josh is going to forget everything he told you. You've got to move while you have some momentum."
"You have better rapport with the old man. What if you call him while I call Josh," he suggested.
The day before I had learned that aliens are real, that they have a right fist like a wrecking ball, and that they spew green poison when they die. Today I was on the phone with a poultry magnate sympathizing about his wayward boy. I could see how Mulder had picked up his habit of cutting corners.
"You could have been killed, taking on the hijackers by yourself," I mentioned.
"It wasn't a real hijacking. I knew they wouldn't have guns. Anyway, I'm going home to get some sleep."
"What about the aliens?" I asked.
"Jerry, I was up all night following a chicken truck."
"What about the stuff you took from the travel agent?"
"My guys are working on it."
"You have guys?"
"My three friends with the VW van. They're my computer guys," he said. "They'll let me know when they have something."
Mulder was going to bed. I could carry on with my regularly scheduled activities.
I think that was the freakiest thing of all. The aliens have landed, but the chicken parts must go through.
===============
continued in part 2
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Automatic newsgroup posting too! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/all-xf
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
__,_._,___