The Pandora Directive: A Tex Murphy Novel (20 page)

“Glad you enjoyed it.” I put my elbows on the table. “So, tell me, what’s your philosophy of love?”

Regan stared into her Pinot Noir and bit her lower lip. “I… Dance With Love — until it tries to lead.” She looked up seductively. “And I love to dance.”

“What a coincidence. I used to give lessons. Dance lessons.”

Regan cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. Old family tradition. I know ‘em all — tango, samba, watusi, Charleston — “

“How about the Forbidden Dance of Love?”

“I know it, but I quit doing it. Kept throwing my back out.”

Regan smiled and sipped her wine. I thought of something I’d been meaning to ask. “So… where did the name Madsen come from?”

Her smile became less sincere. “I was married.”

Turnabout was fair play. “What was he like?”

“Oh, you know… handsome, intelligent, sexy… and rotten to the core.”

“What a coincidence.”

Regan cradled the Pinot in her hands. “He was my tequila. Now I drink wine.” She took a sip. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

“What do you mean?”

Regan set the glass down and leaned back. “I let myself be controlled by someone. I didn’t like it. Now I’m in it for myself.” She looked back at me, defiantly.

I raised my mug. “Here’s to looking out for number one, and sticking our necks out for nobody.”

Regan relaxed and smiled, then lifted her glass to my coffee cup. “To us.”

She was a piece of work. I was tempted to spend a few more hours looking into that flawless face, but I’d fallen enough for one day. My attraction to Regan wasn’t the warm, comfortable kind that I felt towards Chelsea. Instead, it was a fierce, primal craving that ached in my gut. She was a backdraft of desire, dancing, writhing, a mass of exploding embers they could easily blind anyone foolish enough to stare too long.”

I excused myself and placed a call to Fitzpatrick at the Savoy. He was still working on the boxes, but no luck. I hung around the vid-phone for a few minutes, going over the game plan. Pernell was handling the anagram problem, but it was way too soon to find out what he’d learned. Regan was going to go through Malloy’s notebooks. Hopefully she’d turn something up. It seemed like all I could do was hurry up and wait. I decided to fly back to my office.

I couldn’t see any nefarious loiterers on Chandler Avenue, so I parked and entered the Ritz brazenly. No surprises. It was good to be home. I flipped on the light, hoping that a co-operative brownie had come in and cleaned up, but the place was as trashed as I left it. Whoever had broken in the other night must have felt short-changed. Half the fun of breaking into a place is getting to ransack it.

I went straight to the shower, then shaved. After changing my clothes, I went to my desk and checked my voice messaging unit. There were two messages. I pressed the playback button and dropped into my chair.

“Hi, Tex. Lavercan Kimbell here. I just wanted to touch base with you on the PI Pension/401k, now that we’re past the first quarter. Boy, it’s been crazy.” my investment adviser laughed nervously. “Well, anyway, I just thought I’d let you know that not all the news is bad. I mean, we did lose quite a bit, but that’s really the best thing that could have happened. Now we can buy more shares, and when we hit an upward swing, we’ll make up for the past four or five years. Well, that’s about all. Call me if you’ve got any questions.”

Lavercan was a sincere man, with no apparent talent for investment strat-egy. At this rate, I’d soon own more worthless stock than anyone in the world. Luckily, I still had my Franklin Mint Civil War chess set — my true nest egg. The thing had to be worth a fortune. Hell, all the pieces were made of fine pewter.

The second message came up in hushed tones. “There are ears everywhere. I’ve got something to show you. Stop by as soon as you can.”

Ellis. I wondered what he had to show me. Probably a touched up still from Plan Nine From Outer Space. But, since I didn’t have anything better to do, I figured I’d drop by.

“Clearly, Kennedy knew about the alien infiltration of the government. Extraterrestrial contact was made by the Russians all through the ‘50s. It’s well-documented. The way I see it, the aliens had to get rid of Kennedy before he exposed them. LBJ was certainly under their control, if not actually one of them. Vietnam was nothing more than a ruse to divert the attention of the American public.”

Ellis took a sip of mineral water and gave me a knowing wink.

“Without question, the Depression of ‘98 was a veiled attempt by the aliens to throw our political system into chaos. Fortunately, the administrations of Dole, Gingrich, and Linderman recognised the threat and purged most of the aliens from high-ranking positions. Now we’re in what I call a “secondary state of checks and balances.”

“That’s fascinating.”

Ellis had started babbling the minute I stepped into his shop. He was like a drum solo — there was nothing to do but wait for it to end. It looked like he’d finished.

“So what was it you have to show me?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I just get a little hyped when I find someone who understands what’s really going on. I’ve got a lot of, well, I think they’re brilliant, theories, but it’s hard to find people you can trust.”

He got up and walked to a file cabinet. As I watched him remove a key from the chain on his belt, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of ambivalence. On the one hand, Ellis was obviously lonely, isolated by his intensely conspiratorial beliefs, yet eager for companionship and shared vision. I felt a pang of empathy for this misguided, but sincere, nerd. All he needed to be happy was a crackpot pal, someone to share in his convoluted skein of warped theories. On the other hand, he was too annoying for me to ever be his pal.

“Here it is.” Ellis handed me a manilla folder called Roswell: Alien Equipment. Inside were a handful of reproduced drawings, photographs, and faxes. As I leafed through the contents, Ellis spoke with the air of someone watching someone else open a gift.

“After you left, I got to thinking about how you seemed pretty interested in what Malloy had said about Roswell. At the time, it didn’t occur to me to show you the pictures I’ve collected of the alien equipment.”

He paused excitedly. “What do you think?”

The pictures looked like the kind you could find in the centre of any old alien-encounter paperback. The objects depicted resembled everything from salad spinners to art-deco staplers. Out of politeness, I looked through most of the pictures before handing the folder back to Ellis. It looked like I’d made a wasted trip.

“Good Stuff. Where’d you find it?”

“Here and there. Most of it came from a safe deposit box belonging to a certain Major Barrett. He worked on Project Blueprint and catalogued almost all the alien artefacts. When he died last year, he willed access to the safe deposit box to Elijah Witt, who personally sent me copies. They arrived yesterday.”

“They certainly make a nice addition to your collection.” Ellis beamed self-importantly. I glanced down at my watch. “Well, it’s late. Well thanks for showing me the file. I’ve got to get back to work.”

Ellis’s eyes darted around the shop, as though he were looking for something else to show me. I made my way quickly to the door.

“See you later, Archie. I’ll let you know if there’s anything else you can help me with.”

Ellis looked over at me with a hint of desperation. “You sure you have to go? I could make up a nice pot of herbal tea.”

“I’ll take a rain check.” I was antsy — and out of things to do. I decided to fly back to the office and kill some time cleaning the place up, a last resort if I ever heard one. As I stepped into the lobby of the Ritz, Nilo looked up sourly from his magazine.

“Someone here to see ya.” He jerked his head toward the corner. I was surprised to see Fitzpatrick seated primly in one of the ragged lobby chairs, his hands folded over a small cardboard box. As I approached, I could discern a hint of excitement beneath the refined veneer.

“Good evening, Mr Murphy.” I looked down at the box and had a pretty good idea what was in it.

“Come on up to my office.”

“Would you mind?”

Fitzpatrick extended the box toward me. He then reached for his hat and slowly rose to his feet. Several minutes later, we were seated amid the rack and ruin of my office. Fitzpatrick was more animated than I’d ever seen him. “At last, I met with some success.”

Both metal boxes were inside the cardboard one, along with what appeared to be a small lamp. I pulled out the contents and placed them in front of me on the desk. Fitzpatrick was like a proud parent on baby’s first Christmas, smiling eagerly and barely containing himself. I examined the boxes — they didn’t look any different than before.

“I don’t get it. Did you find a way to get these open?”

“One of them. I won’t bother you with all the details. Suffice to say that I tried various methods without success. I finally wondered if Malloy might have used the equivalent of invisible ink on the boxes. When I purchased this ultraviolet scanner and ran it over them, certain markings became visible.” He smiled and waved toward one of the boxes. “Police. Try it for yourself.”

I switched on the UV scanner and moved it slowly across the box. Two parallel lines appeared, running horizontally across one side of the box, divid-ing the side into three sections. There were also three circles about the size of nickels, one on each of three sides. I touched the circles and traced my finger over the lines. Nothing happened. I looked up at Fitzpatrick’s beaming face. “So what’s the secret?”

Fitzpatrick moved closer to the desk. “For one person, it requires a certain amount of manual dexterity. With both of us, it will be considerably simpler.”

Fitzpatrick picked up the UV scanner and ran it over the surface, revealing the nickel-sized circles. “Press on two of the circles.”

I did. Fitzpatrick positioned the UV scanner so that it was aimed at the side of the box with the two horizontal lines. He then pressed on the third circle. A small arrow symbol appeared in the centre of the top section. Fitzpatrick then placed his thumb against the top section and pushed to the right. It slid sideways about half an inch. “You can stop pressing now.”

He leaned back in his chair and produced a Cubana from his pocket. I turned the box so that the three-sectioned side was facing me. “Now what?”

The old man held an expensive lighter to the end of his cigar and puffed for several seconds. I could barely wait. “Slide the top section back about half way, then slide the centre section to the right.”

“OK.”

“Now slide the centre section all the way to the left. Then slide the lower section to the right about one quarter inch.”

“Done.”

“Slide the top section to the right.” When I followed the final instruction, I could hear a small spring release. The top of the box popped open. I glanced up at Fitzpatrick, whose smile was visible through a cloud of Cubana smoke.

“I must apologise for making you go through this little ritual. I’m afraid I have a theatrical streak.”

“No need to apologise. Foreplay is healthy. Not that you should take that personally.” I looked down at the box and flipped the lid open. I expected to find some kind of bizarre alien object or maybe a chunk of kryptonite. At the very least, there should have been a mechanical gadget, a piece of the Pandora Device. Not even close. The contents consisted of a long, thin metal pin and a photographic slide. With more than a little disappointment, I looked up at Fitzpatrick.

“Is this it?”

Fitzpatrick nodded, still smiling. I reached into the box and pulled out the slide. Holding it up to the light, I saw a drawing of a not-very-interesting-looking object, tube-shaped, with metal caps on either end, and what appeared to be a light source in the centre. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. The metal pin was about the length of a pencil with a smaller diameter. There were several notches in the stem with a large head on one end. Fitzpatrick reached for the slide and examined it.

“What do you make of this drawing?”

“Looks like a space age Coleman lantern to me.”

Fitzpatrick looked out at me from behind the slide. “You sound as though you consider it meaningless.”

I shrugged. Fitzpatrick set the slide down. “To quote Shakespeare, Mr Murphy, all that glisters is not gold. Malloy would not have included the slide if it were meaningless.”

Fitzpatrick was right. I sat back in my chair and thought it over. I’d seen the object somewhere before. Suddenly, I remembered. It had been in the file Ellis had showed me. “If Malloy put the slide in the box, he must have meant for someone to locate this object.”

Fitzpatrick flicked a large ash off his cigar. “That is a reasonable assump-tion.”

“I think I might have a lead on where to find it.”

“Excellent.”

I picked up the UV scanner and ran it over each side of the second box. The only markings that appeared were two squares, about the size of stamps, on opposite sides of the box. “You couldn’t get this one open?”

Fitzpatrick shook his head.

“Possibly the metal pin from the first box is needed to open a box we have not yet located. I would imagine that whatever is to be used on those squares will also be found in another box.”

“I wish I knew how many boxes we were looking for.”

Fitzpatrick ground the stub of his cigar into an ashtray, then slowly lifted himself out of his seat. “I’ll leave you to your investigations. Shall I leave the boxes with you?”

I returned everything but the slide to the cardboard box. “You’d better hold on to them for awhile. I’ve had too many uninvited guests in my office lately. If you don’t mind, I’ll keep this slide.”

Fitzpatrick nodded and picked up the box. “You’ll let me know about any new developments.”

“Sure thing.”

Fitzpatrick had taken a taxi to my office. I gave him a lift back to the Savoy, then flew to Ellis’ shop. It was getting late, and the sun was peeking out behind the skyline of New San Francisco as I landed in front of the Cosmic Connection. The Closed sign was out, but I knocked on the door anyway. After a few moments, Ellis came out from the back and opened the door for me. “Change your mind about the herbal tea? It’s great for insomnia.”