Little Green Men (21 page)

He counted his uneaten money. Nine dollars and change. That would get him to the airport. But then he would have to present a credit card and photo ID.

"Checking out," he said to the night clerk sitting behind the bulletproof glass in the Majestic lobby. You can tell a really first-class hotel by the bulletproofing around the front desk, and the buzzer locks on the double doors to the lobby. Scrubbs slid his room key and credit card through the slot with a show of nonchalance.

The clerk was a chain smoker; he was enveloped in a miasma of his own smog inside the Plexiglas booth. He looked like an exhibit at a tobacco trade show. All that was missing was a sign: if smoking is so bad for you. why is this man still alive?

Without taking his eyes from his TV which was showing a documentary about sharks eating unsuspecting seabirds, the clerk pointed to a sign that said,
payment by cash only, no credit cards, checks, food

stamps, personal effects. no exeptions.

"Oh," Scrubbs said, affecting mild surprise, "then I gotta go to the cash machine."

The clerk, absorbed by a great white shark's attempt to fit an entire Tasmanian muttonbird - or was it a tawny frogmouth? - into its mouth, said, "Lemme see yo' cash card."

Scrubbs held it up to the glass, as if displaying travel documents to a twitchy border guard with a machine gun.

"Leave yo' bag and wallet here."

The problem with this arrangement was that the ATM machine would only laugh hysterically if Scrubbs asked it for money. He had cleared out his account. He was therefore reluctant to part with his last remaining personal effects - how far can one go in life with the clothes on one's back and nine dollars?

"Is the manager around?"

He realized immediately that his petition to a more exalted member of the Majestic's managerial hierarchy had been an error, for now the clerk turned his attention wholly back to the shark and the unfortunate pelican.

"Uh uh."

Scrubbs examined his options. Alphabetically, they ran the gamut from abominable to atrocious.

"That's okay, I'll have the money wired to me in the morning. Just give me my room key back."

The clerk shook his head. "You already checked out."

"Yeah, and I'm checking back in."

"Nope."

"Why?"

"Room's taken."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Pay fo' yo' room."

There was one other option: wait for the clerk to die of lung cancer.

"Lemme make a call," Scrubbs said. His training was kicking in.
Faced with an intractable situation, create a diversion to buy yourself time to evaluate alternatives.

Scrubbs went to the pay phone, dropped in coins, and punched the number for the time recording. He listened. Nothing. Not even a dial tone. No matter. He went through the motions, speaking loudly for the benefit of the clerk.

"Fred? Yeah, hi, it's Nate. How are you? Listen, I'm in a ridiculous situation here, can you bring, hold on" - he called out to the clerk -"how much do I owe you?"

"Two hunnerd fo-teen dollars."

"I need two hundred and fourteen dollars. Could you bring it down? I'm really sorry to do this to you. You can? That's great. The

Majestic, on tenth, between E and F. Can't miss it. It's got a huge Mobil Five Diamond Award outside. The Queen of England stays here when she's in town. Thanks, you're a pal."

Scrubbs hung up and with an air of aggrieved triumph announced, "He's coming with the money. Okay?"

"Phone's broke," said the clerk, not looking up from his TV.

Banion awoke on the couch with a crick in his neck and a hangover. He hadn't drunk that much - since college, probably. Outside he could see the Shenandoah frosted with moonlight, but he was more interested in another sight, through the opened door to the next room: Roz, asleep, alone, on the bed. She looked like a partially unwrapped alabaster statue, lying there in a tumble of sheets. He yearned to be there in bed with her. But he had hopes. Apart from the disastrous appearance of the waiter, it had all gone so well, even afterwards, in the suite, as they talked - through the door - while she soaked in the Jacuzzi. Maybe it was even better this way, he mused, more romantic not to have
...

He heard the voice of Andy Crocanelli saying, "You fuckin' WASPs! You get a babe like this in a hotel room and say to yourself,
Oo, how romantic not to
fuck her!"

"I wasn't trying to run out on my hotel bill," Scrubbs said as he sat in the back of the police car, handcuffed.
"1
was trying to get to the cash machine."

"I told you to shut up."

"You should be arresting that asshole clerk. It was his rats that ate my money. Two thousand dollars. It's there, in my room. It's proof."

After hours of enduring the night clerk's baleful glare, punctuated by occasional taunts of "Yo fren' with the money musta died on his way here," Scrubbs couldn't stand it any longer. When the clerk buzzed someone in, he made his move, a bold lunge for the opened door. Unfortunately, the person coming in turned out to be not a resident of the Majestic but a narcotics detective.

"If you don't shut up, I'll spray you in the eyeballs with pepper gas and say you resisted arrest."

Scrubbs had never had the pleasure of being thrown into the Central Detention Facility. He had read that the best thing you can do, on finding yourself in a holding cell with a dozen or so of the most frightening human beings on the planet is
–
show
no
fear!
Viewing the minatory specimens circling him, who appeared to be calculating which of Scrubbs's bodily orifices to make merry with first, this advice seemed impractical.

"Yo, whitemeat, get over here and suck my dick."

Show no
fear!

"I
said,
get over here and
suck
my dick."

Scrubbs knew some rudimentary karate, a neat, two-fingered stab to the Adam's apple. He could probably incapacitate the man currently extending this thoughtful invitation. It was the dozen others chortling who worried him. They might take exception to Scrubbs's leaving their friend choking on the floor. On the other hand, Scrubbs thought, perhaps being swiftly beaten to death by a savage mob was preferable to the looming evening of amorous rapture.

"Fuck
you
," Scrubbs said.

Show no fear! Nothing to it.

They had been kicking him in his kidneys and other sweetbreads for what seemed a very long time when Scrubbs became aware of electrical sounds and shrieks as the guards broke up the soccer game.

"You Scrubbs?"

He made a gurgling noise.

"You're free to go."

As, hunched over in pain, he retrieved his possessions from the desk sergeant, Scrubbs was informed that the charges were being dropped. He was handed a manila envelope. Scrubbs opened it. It was a page from the day's newspaper, the stock market report. No note was attached.

"Who gave you this?"

"He didn't say."

Scrubbs examined the stock report. Various letters and numbers had been circled in blue ink. It took him a few minutes to figure out the sequence

Mj122442044

A phone number.

He made the call from an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from the station.

A cheery female voice, entirely out of place at this time of night, answered. "Creative Solutions, how may I route your call?" "It's Scrubbs."

"One moment please," she chirped. Scrubbs waited. MJ-12 did not entertain callers on hold with classical music or the weather station. She came back on. "What number are you calling from?"

Scrubbs gave the number on the pay phone. He heard clicking over the line.

"Hang up please, and stand by."

Less than a minute later, the phone rang. It was a male voice, tired, unhappy at being awake at this hour, but in command, a voice accustomed to giving the orders.

"Is this Agent Double-0 Seven?"

"Who is this?" Scrubbs said.

The voice yawned. "Two unauthorized abductions of a leading media figure, unauthorized removal of official equipment, absent without official permission, and now this career capper - arrested for trying to run out on the bill at a fleabag hotel. We're all real proud of you, Nathan."

"You shut me down. I thought -"

"No
, no, no. Do not use the words
I
and
thought
in the same sentence. They don't go together in your case." "What was
I
supposed to do?"

"Don't get me started. Let me see. Contact us on your field communicator, your laptop computer. Speaking of which, where is it? You don't have it with you."

How did he know that?

"You didn't pawn it or anything stupid like that, did you? Scrubbs, you with me?"

"No, I still have it." "Where?"

'At my apartment."

"Negative that. We'll get along a whole lot better if you don't blow smoke up my ass."

So they had been to his apartment.

"Why are you so interested in the computer?"

"Another brainteaser. Because it's government property. It's not a piece of equipment that should be floating around in the civilian world. And I'm conducting the interview."

"It's in a safe place," Scrubbs said.

"You know, we could have left you in lockup with your boyfriends. There were some who wanted to do that."

Okay, he had something they wanted. It was a start. "Then why didn't you?"

Another yawn. "We're going to bring you in."

"Bring me in? Is that normal procedure?"

"Nothing in your case qualifies as 'normal,' Nathan. But you've made such a pig's breakfast of everything, the only thing to do is stick you somewhere where you can't do
t
oo
much more damage." "Like where?"

"One of our desert facilities." "Nevada?"

"What did you have in mind? Paris? I guarantee you it's an improvement over t
hat Hotel Majestic - Majestic, J
esus, Scrubbs - and jail. I need you to bring in your computer. We can't leave that on the outside. So where is it?"

"I buried it in a public park."

"Man, it's one thing after another with you."

"I didn't want it in my apartment. I thought you were going to set it off."

"If we wanted to, we could have done a CE-Six on you at any time." "CE-Six?" The MJ-12 Close Encounters Playbook only went up to five - rough sex with aliens.

"Close Encounter of the Final Kind. Where's the computer?"

"Theodore Roosevelt Island."

'At least you didn't bury it at the Lincoln Memorial. It's five-ten now. Go to the island. You have nine dollars, that's enough cab money to get you there. There's a parking lot and a bridge to the island. Retrieve the machine, walk back across the bridge to the parking lot, there will be a car waiting for you."

"How will I know which car?"

The voice sighed. "I'll have your driver hold up a sign with your name on it. How many cars are going to be in the Teddy Roosevelt Island parking lot at six o'clock in the morning? I don't think you're cut out for fieldwork. To be honest, I don't know what you're cut out for, at this point. Maybe washing aircraft in the desert. The car will take you to the safe house in Virginia. From there, you'll proceed to an air base where we can fly you out west to the facility. Prior to that, I will debrief you. I'll see you at the safe house in one hour and a half. Try not to get arrested for something stupid."

Dawn was just starting to break when Scrubbs reached the entrance to Theodore Roosevelt Island. The gate at the end of the pedestrian footbridge was locked, so he had to climb around it, which made him feel like a criminal for the second time in twelve hours. No one watching his awkward, crablike exertions - due to his still aching kidneys - would have mistaken him for a professional cat burglar. Mr. Majestic had been right about that: Scrubbs was no field man. He thought about his future as he finagled his limbs around the gate spikes, trying to avoid Bobbitting* himself on them. What dreary job in the Nevada wasteland were they preparing for him? UFO groups had romantic names like Dreamland for the mysterious installations out in the desert, where the U.S. government was supposedly reverse-engineering captured alien spacecraft so that they could build their own. But these sites, from the inside, were anything but dreamy. Security was so intense you weren't allowed to leave, except for two weeks a year. It was the worst post in the organization. In the MajestNet chat rooms, people spoke with shudders of the stints they'd served in these top-secret Potemkin villages, where all they did, day in, day out, was turn lights on and off and drive mock-ups of flying saucers around on the sizzling tarmac in order to keep Russian spy satellites and UFO nuts with telescopes goggle-eyed with excitement. Maybe, Scrubbs thought, almost impaling his calf on a nasty spike, if he worked hard and kept his nose clean, they'd