The Everborn (19 page)

Throughout most of Jessica’s life, she had envisioned writers (ignorantly enough) as whimsical introverts or housewives with bottle glasses sporting turtleneck sweaters or stodgy blouses or stressed newsroom types with frenetically loosened ties, heralding from upper/middleclass preppie families in American Suburbia, or as wealthy drunkard yacht cruisers of the Mediterranean, or for that matter demented hermits from Maine.

Ralston Cooper left this vision in downright, pitiful desolation. He was reckless, handsome, occasionally innovative, kickback and sly, and utterly cool. He dressed well, the way (in Jessica’s eyes) a successful mid-twenties celebrity should. He was a show-off, which at times had its downfalls, but he was definitely not reclusive or nerdy or eccentric and he was never immersed in his work. He knew how to show a woman a good time. And his woman... hell, as far as good times could go, Ralston knew who he was with and how to treat her, which was more than any man she ever knew.

Except for a few unspoken, questionable episodes. At parties, during get-togethers, whenever.

So what: women wanted him. Jessica had a right to be jealous. But Ralston would always have the last word, the concluding explanation.

The fact of the matter was, Ralston Cooper was her solitude, her shoulder to lean on, her sanctuary. He had money, he had love, he had status, and he was the man.

Like his agent, William Behn, that slob sonofabitch of a man who bore a hard-on for her the size of Alaska. Like that genuinely introverted recluse-of-a-misfit Andrew, who edited and did who-knows-what with whatever project Ralston was working on. Like the movie-makers and production teams who produced and created the mega-movie-made-for-TV-mini-series off-shoots of his famous novels.

Ralston was standing now, having ingested the Rock Island Line of speed from the hand mirror he’d just then set back down upon the dresser. He approached the bed where Jessica lay and she raised her gaze toward him, expectantly, almost,
almost
beckoningly except for the newfound energy and temptation to rise from the bed and meet him midway.

He towered over her, lowered himself onto her. Skin against skin, pushing, retracting. Her legs wound about his.

Pushing....

Pushing the manuscript of
The Everborn
aside, pages sliding, falling across the bed, onto the carpet.

Pushing...pumping....

16
.

The UFO Detective

-
August 28th, 1994
—

The forthcoming of rain heralded across the late morning skies and the heavens were like a vast celestial canopy tainted with a mirk and gloom which stretched across the atmosphere in a limitless barrier between unseen endless universe and the world below. It was a foreboding forecast in itself, this display of mounting storm, though in much the same manner its shifting menace paralleled an even more profound and impending destiny for Maxwell Polito. It was an omen, a foreshadowing which, like the sky, could only be seen as a massive grey area of the unpredictable certainties of things to come.

An alien grey area.

Max had eased his pale-brown Mustang over the blistered erosion of parking space asphalt only minutes ago, had silenced his car’s engine and stepped out, emerging to fully face the dormant neon structure of
The Crow Job
sign below the stormy vista. There he now stood, and as he did so he reached into the inner pocket of his beige leather jacket and withdrew a hard pack of Marlboros. He cast a guilty surveillance about him, as though fearful he’d spy his wife’s disapproving observance, slid a smoke from the pack, and lit up. He breathed in its vapors, exhaled, inhaled the frosty chill of early morning air.

He locked and shut the car door, activated the car alarm, zipped up his jacket, and enjoyed another drag. He took in the scene around him and the eerie strangeness he associated with it all, until the passing moments afterwards brought him away and across the corner intersection and into the direction of the curious streetside motel, which beckoned his arrival.

Max was scarcely afforded no more than a rapid rundown of reasons for the urgent summons...a murder...a missing reverend’s daughter, an unexplained link to Ralston’s
Crow Job
gig...each reason as insightful as a pocketful of posies tattooed upon the rubbery-white ass cheek of an alcoholic social worker. But the very fact that his police lieutenant informant and long-time friend had never been known to cry wolf with these matters was enough in itself to get Max out of bed and come running.

Just as he came running long ago, almost three decades ago, when a young Matthew’s desperate screams echoed from within the bowels of a ramshackle building condemned by both the imminent wrecking ball and the widespread rumors of a ghost child inhabiting its treacherous inner sanctum. A handful of roving children knew Max only as
the s’curity man
back then, but on that fateful day he became a belated savior. He was enough of a savior to come running when he did, driving away the wicked monsters young Matthew claimed to have seen moments before Max’s arrival; he was belated long enough for those same elusive terrors to seize the opportunity and steal away an even younger Nigel who lay dying in Matthew’s arms, taking him with them into a dark and timeless realm far beyond the material reaches of Max and their decadent lair.

The fate folks upstairs, as Max often later referred to them (if there
were
any), had initiated a web of impact and influence upon both Matthew and Max which sparked a unique closeness between the two and each of the years which followed found Max increasingly aware of the boundlessly epic saga taking place in secret all around him, a secret he found himself able to reveal in part to an older and more prepared Matthew in later years, to later still share and discover together with him.

This was an ancient saga straight from the storybook of God, who, if we all behave ourselves, may likely come down to tuck us in our beds and read it to us just before He bids the earth good night. Max was of the restlessly curious breed who simply could never stand to wait that long and who made it their quest to get their hands on an advanced copy. Even if they had to obtain it page by page. What transpired from the events that came down that day in the Fall of ‘68 was to Max, like a succession of pages from that secret saga falling from the sky, Max’s lap being the lucky recipient time and again from that day forward.

Matt McGregor, on the other hand, hadn’t quite been able to face, nor develop, an appreciation for this sort of thing until his teens, which to him was no less boring than the meaning of life...and no less feared...even though the “God’s storybook” metaphor was originally his. For awhile, what he had experienced with Nigel and the monsters that took him was a nightmare, was something he did not want answers to, had no desire to rediscover. In those days, Maxwell was like a father figure or big brother who often dropped by for family dinners or for outings with himself and Matt. In consideration for Matthew, Max managed to keep any details of his struggles for the truth surrounding Nigel to himself until later years when Matt wanted to know. Otherwise, Max shared with him as often as he could the comparatively down-to-earth exploits of a ufologist’s efforts to make a living and a claim to fame.

The decision made by Matt’s parents to move out of state arrived with the summer of Matt’s junior high graduation, their idea of a safer and more affordable home in Nevada taking a heat-stricken toll and a plunge into regret, which returned them to their L.A. hometown three years later.

A two-year college endeavor began soon after high school was conquered and the need for income brought him an unarmed surveillance position at Captain Security in Norwalk. Three days after receiving his guard card, he was enticed from his night post when Max showed up with a tailored job offer with his cable documentary production crew effective at once. During this short time, Max disclosed certain remarkable case discoveries, information, and insights into his continuing escapades concerning what came to be the Erlandson case. By the time he turned twenty, Matt McGregor had earned an associate degree in Criminology and was well on his way through police academy training, heading at breakneck speed towards his prized role in life, towards tremendous change and achievement, towards a loving wife and the three sons she would bear for him.

As far as Max Polito was concerned, Matt was no longer the brilliant mischievous youth to look down to, but an adult to look up to with mutual respect, a hard-nosed expert in the arts of interrogation and investigation who, after all this time, was still stubborn enough to intrude into the dark treacherous passageways of the curious and the dangerous in a high-wire dare-walk between truth and lies.

And Matt McGregor had been there more often than not, calling Max’s attention each time a page of God’s storybook would fall and then positioning him directly below it, just like the way it all began.

***

Since the call a little more than an hour before, Max inwardly anticipated this urgent meeting, though outwardly he contained his hopes with speculation and trained sensibility; he couldn’t deny that this excursion could promise exciting revelation for all he knew, whispered hints of unearthly clues which could back the Erlandson/Nigel saga further into the corner where the show-and-tell spotlight would keep them there, would keep them there for Max to show and tell all.

He journeyed down the uneven sidewalk, past an alleyway and rounding the corner of a small building, discarding his spent cigarette as he went.

At once his objective materialized before him, a less-than-average spiritless stretch of one-story refuge, a likely haven of indulgences and wanton deeds, of abusive domestic brawls and stained bedsheets. And, by the looks of things, of murder as well. Now and again. Max shrugged off an impulsive sneer of disregard as he continued his approach towards what now seemed to be a routine drama for this section of neighborhood and he stifled the unwelcomed notion that today’s episode was disappointingly common. He clung to the wish of a connection between this discovery and the recent discovery of Nigel, being that the locations were so close to each other.

He sidestepped into a driveway, onto the motel property, and towards his first view of yellow crime scene ribbon adorning a hedged walkway near the head of the parking lot. A young uniformed officer emerged without warning into Max’s path from seemingly nowhere, his upraised palm commanding a halt. In a voice dry and monotone, the officer instructed him to keep away from the center area of the building, to keep off the property unless he currently occupied a room, and asked him if he occupied one.

The officer was interrupted by a more animate voice from behind him. “Now does this gentleman look to you like the type of sorry, snot-ragged, bottom-of-the-barrel-scraper you’re used to seeing in a room here, officer?”

The officer turned towards the voice, then back towards Max and to the voice again, then apologized and walked away.

Lieutenant Matt McGregor approached, stopped and faced Maxwell Polito cheerfully, and the two exchanged eager handshakes several times before and after a cordial embrace. “Maxy, you marauding, Martian-chasing son-of-a-bitch! Howya doin’? How, was Brazil?”

“Well...you know,” replied Max. “When you see one abductee bitching about a bizarre chunk of metal surgically implanted in an armpit or ankle, you see dozens of them, then you see hundreds over the years and you wonder
how much would all this shit be worth at a recycling center if they could turn ‘em all into soda can tabs?“

They both shared a hearty laugh.

McGregor’s jolliness diminished into an odd moment of silence as he lapsed into a studious gaze upon his friend, a gaze, which vanished as he dug into the inner pocket of his rain-speckled sports jacket and pulled out a pack of Camels. This was a good idea to Max and he retrieved one himself. Matt offered him a light hidden and cupped against the weather.

McGregor returned the pack to his pocket, unmindfully disclosing the butt of a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum cradled into a leather shoulder holster just past his reach deep beyond the jacket’s innards. Matt buttoned the jacket, which tightened into broad athletic shoulders and hung loosely, almost unevenly, over a narrowing torso and tightly-fit slacks. He was an adult now, but to Max his appearance remained the same in many ways, although his wispy straight brown hair now drooped over a brow surprisingly wrinkled for a man a decade younger than he. The look of roughness in his complexion mismatched a narrow mouth which virtually turned lipless when shut, a trait redeemed by a full, deep brown moustache, which worked well in making him handsome.

They shared a moment of quietude as they smoked and prepared to get down to matters at hand.

It was Max who spoke next. “So...it
was
Nigel, it
was
his body, after all this time...?”

“After all this time, I can’t believe it. Those sightings
were
true, then, and it
was
him.”

“But ghosts don’t get cut the hell up and sent to the morgue,” McGregor told him. “I saw him, I saw him after they brought him in on a stretcher. I’ve seen bodies where even dental records went into wishy-washy borderline I.D.'s. This was him. And we let the media get his story...that is, the story on the surface, the discovery of a dead kid. We had to, for positive I.D. reasons, to see if anyone could claim him. In the wait, I dug for the right evidence to persuade the department to close the case to the public and to pursue it further behind closed doors, with the right people. I mentioned your name, but the higher-ups kept quiet and the lower-downs just laughed. When no one claimed the body after only a few days, the Feds came in and closed the case themselves.”