Millennium (29 page)

*    *    *

But by then I was down to pretty slim possibilities. I flew back to Washington for the weekend, and on Monday I made the rounds of the wire services.

I wasn’t peddling a story to them; that first night had shown me the futility of that. In fact, I was careful to ask my few friends
in the news media to keep this very quiet and unofficial. I asked for their stills and videotapes of that first press conference in Oakland.

I got Louise three separate times, twice in stills and once on a tape. None of them were very good, but I had the best picture blown up and I took it over to the FBI, where I still had a few friends who owed me favors.

A week later I got my answer. The picture had produced nothing. Her fingerprints on the highball glass I’d managed to save were not on file with any Federal agency. A search of the computers revealed several dozen Louise Balls, but none of them was her.

If you live in Washington long enough you can make a lot of acquaintances. I had one in the Central Intelligence Agency. I gave him the picture. He didn’t promise me anything, but two weeks later he got back to me. He cautioned me to remember that we’d never met, that he’d done me no favors—but that it really wasn’t important, since he’d come up with nothing at all.

*    *    *

After about a month I was getting unpopular at the Oakland headquarters. Even Tom was going out of his way to avoid me. I knew Gordy saw me as a liability. So far, no one had challenged my authority to run the investigation, but some people were starting to clamor.

It hadn’t gone over well when I’d dragged my feet on releasing the corpses. At the best of times it takes quite a while to get them all released to the next of kin. As things stood, I didn’t want to release
anything
related to the investigation. Tom finally convinced me I had to let them go.

And there had been raised eyebrows when I’d decided to reconstruct the 747. I’d have done the DC-10, too, but even in my present state I could see that would be going too far. But I stood my ground, and it
is
NTSB policy that reconstructions are sometimes useful in midair collisions; it’s just that no one else agreed that it might be useful
this
time.

The call back to Washington came in the middle of January.

*    *    *

I woke up in a smelly bed with the sun shining through a yellowed window shade. I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was. I got up, found I was wearing only a pair of shorts. The smell came with me; I realized I hadn’t washed in a while. I rubbed my chin and felt several days’ growth of beard.

I looked out the window and saw I was on the second floor of a hotel on Q Street. Across the way was a familiar massage parlor. There was some snow in the gutters.

I remember the meeting in general terms. All the Board members had been there, trying their best not to be angry. All they really wanted was an explanation, they had said, and that was the one thing I couldn’t give them.

But what the hell? I was going to be fired anyway, I could see that, so what could I lose by trying?

I talked to them about it for half an hour. I tried to think of myself as a cop on the witness stand, to phrase myself in that precise, unemotional way they have, doing my best not to sound like a nut. It didn’t do any good; I sounded like a nut even to myself.

They were gentle about it, I’ll give them that. I seemed harmless, beaten, a drunk who had broken under pressure. I felt like I ought to have a couple of ball bearings to roll around in one hand to complete the atmosphere.

It was almost as if I had watched the proceedings from outside.

That feeling persisted even after I got to the bar. I dispassionately watched myself hoist the first few, then finally settled down into my body, to find it was sweating and shaking. Still, it felt good to be back. For a while there I think I really was crazy. I might have done anything.

What I
had
done, apparently, was drink for two or three days and end up in a flophouse on Q Street. Like a dog returning to its vomit, I’d known where to go.

My pants were draped over a chair. I took out my wallet. There were a couple of twenties in it.

Somebody knocked on the door. I pulled on the pants and opened it.

It was a girl from the parlor. I’d been with her a couple of times. I reached for the name, and came up with it.

“Hi, Gloria. How did you know I was here?”

“I put you here, last night. Didn’t think you could get home.”

“You were probably right.”

She sat on the bed as I put on my shirt. Gloria was a tall, skinny mulatto with tired eyes and yellow hair. She was wearing a black leotard and pantyhose. I wondered if she’d run across the street in that outfit.

“What do I owe you for the room?”

“I took the money out of your pocket,” she said. “Some of them girls, they say I ought to take it all, but I don’t go for that.”

“Good for you,” I said, and meant it. Just then, I couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone had done me a favor.

“Will you marry me, Gloria?” I asked her.

She made a shushing motion, and chuckled. “I told you I’m already married.”

I tied my shoes, got out my wallet, and pressed a twenty into her hand. She didn’t make a fuss about it; just nodded her head.

“You want to party? You wasn’t feeling so hot last night.”

“You mean I couldn’t get it up? No, I’ll pass. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Last night, you said you lost your job.”

“That’s right.”

“And you been drinking mighty heavy. Is that why?”

“No, Gloria. I’m drinking because I’m being chased by spooks from the fourth dimension.”

She laughed, and slapped her knee.

“That’ll do it,” she said.

*    *    *

I couldn’t remember where I’d left my car. No doubt the police would inform me where it was in a few days. I took a cab
back to Kensington. The house was very cold. I got the furnace roaring, took a long soak in a hot tub, shaved, had a bowl of cereal, and by the time I was ready for bed it was nice and warm.

I sat there on the edge of the bed, wondering what came next. I really doubted I could get any aviation-related job, and I didn’t know anything else. I wasn’t ready to die. Drinking myself to death didn’t sound like a great idea, though it might look better in the morning.

The phone rang.

“Is this Bill Smith, of the Safety Board?”

“Formerly of,” I said.

“That’s what I heard. I’ve been talking to some of your former associates. They’re trying to keep it quiet, but I’ve heard you’ve got quite a story. Something about UFO’s causing those planes to crash last month in California. If we could get together sometime tomorrow I can guarantee you a hearing you won’t get from the
New York Times.
”

“You’re a reporter?”

“Didn’t I say that? I’m Irving Green from the
National Enquirer.
All I want is half an hour of your time. We could work it up, I’ll write it, don’t worry about that. If it’s good, there’s a chance of a book, and then who knows? The movies are pretty hot on this sort of thing right now—”

I hung up. I wasn’t even angry. But I couldn’t see the point of getting my story to the world right next to the latest cure for cancer and the affairs of Jackie, Burt, and Charlie’s Angels.

But the call had reminded me of something. I had to look for a while, but I found it soon enough. I called American Airlines, because it was the first carrier in the phone book that might be going where I wanted to go.

Five hours later I was on a red-eye flight to Los Angeles.

*    *    *

I rented a car at LAX and headed out toward Santa Barbara. I hadn’t called ahead to see if he was home, because I didn’t want to admit to myself what I was doing, and on what thin motivation.

Arnold Mayer had quite a place. I knew how to find him because, a few days after he’d questioned me at the press conference, he’d sent me a business card with his address and phone number. That was back when I still thought I could develop something someone would listen to. Now I was down to him. He’d wanted to know if I had come up with anything unusual, and I was ready to bend his ear.

I drove by a few times before I got up the nerve to stop. It was out in the country, on a couple overgrown acres. There was a high antenna that looked to me like ham equipment, a bank of solar heat collectors, and a large and quite expensive satellite dish sitting in his front yard, aimed into the morning sky.

He didn’t seem worried about pleasing the neighbors—not that he had to; the last house I’d seen had been a mile back down the road. His yard had gone to seed. There were things here and there, like the fuselage of an old Air Force F-86 with a rusted-out engine sitting beside it. There were automotive hulks, too, and old television sets and a big pile of all sorts of electronic equipment, from ancient UNIVAC machines to the guts of a fairly recent videotape recorder.

It sounds like I’m talking about a Georgia sharecropper’s yard, and that was certainly the atmosphere it gave off. But this was high-tech junk, and the house that stood in the middle of it all was sturdy red brick, two stories high. Antennas sprouted from every cornice and gable.

The sidewalk was cracked, and the varnish had long since vanished from his front door. Yet everything still looked basically sound. I decided he just didn’t give a damn for fancy finishes.

I took a deep breath, and pushed the doorbell. Somewhere inside, I heard that silly little five-note theme from
Close Encounters.
I hoped it was a joke.

I wasn’t prepared for how tall he was. He’d looked shorter from the podium where I’d stood that night. Most of the top of his head was bald and shiny. What hair he did have was pure white. He didn’t look a bit like Einstein, but I thought of him
anyway. He was wearing a yellow shirt with a little alligator and a pair of paint-stained work pants.

“Bill Smith,” he said, with a sympathetic smile. He put his hand lightly on my shoulder and stood aside, guiding me in with an easy intimacy I wasn’t sure I liked. He closed the door and turned to face me.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said.

“That’s interesting, because I didn’t know until a few hours ago I was coming here.”

“But where else could you come? I’ve heard what happened to you. I’m sorry, though I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“What do you know?”

“Very little. Just that you’ve been behaving erratically. My sources have given me the most fascinating tidbits—nothing but rumors, really. I had hoped you might come discuss them with me. And here you are.”

“I’m not sure why I’m here.”

He scrutinized me, and nodded. “Why don’t you wait in my study for a moment and think it over. I have something on the fire in the other room, and it won’t wait.”

I was going to protest, but he was already gone.

*    *    *

His “study” was weird. I loved it.

One wall was mostly glass. It looked out over a valley. In the far distance was a major highway. A little closer was an orchard of some kind. And up close was his backyard, which couldn’t have been more different from the front. There was a large vegetable garden back there, lovingly tended.

The walls were all bookcases, which were all jammed. Among the books were computer tapes, floppy discs, records, loose manuscripts, magazines, and journals. There was furniture in the room, but to sit in any of the chairs I would have had to move a stack of papers. He had a magnificent old wooden desk. On it was a fancy computer terminal, and behind it was a stereo system cobbled together from laboratory digital components. There were speakers big enough to pulverize Carnegie Hall.

It was a jumbled museum. There were stuffed birds in glass bell jars, a brass astrolabe, a globe that would have made Nero Wolfe turn green with envy. There was also a gas chromatograph with its guts torn out and tools lying around it, an Edison phonograph for playing cylinders, three IBM Selectrics stacked in a corner gathering dust, a giant Xerox machine that stretched through a doorway into another room, and a crystal ball that wouldn’t have made it through an NBA hoop. Sitting here and there on tables were bits and pieces of laboratory glassware.

The only bare wall was over the fireplace—bare in the sense of having no bookcases. There were a few trophies on the mantel, and pictures and diplomas hung on every available square inch.

I’d been looking at one for quite a while before I realized it was a Nobel prize. I’d thought the actual prizes were medals, but maybe he had that tucked away somewhere. This was an ornate parchment, for Physics, and it was dated in the ’60s. I thought I should have known his name, but they give those things away to four or five people every year and usually you’ve never heard of them and have no idea what they were given for. Still, I was impressed.

There was a picture of Mayer with President Eisenhower. Signed: “Regards, Ike.” There was a group picture: Mayer, Linus Pauling, Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller. There was a shot of a
much
younger Mayer shaking hands with Mr. Relativity himself: Albert Einstein. It was unsigned. I was right, Mayer didn’t look anything like him.

“I confess it,” he said, behind me. “I’m a pack rat. I can never seem to throw anything away. I used to, and then a few years later I’d try to find it and it wouldn’t be there.”

He hurried into the room, wiping his hands on a towel. He seemed nervous. I wondered why, until he picked up a plate with a half-eaten sandwich on it and a wine glass with a red stain at the bottom. He kept bustling around the room, not making a dent in the clutter but seeming to feel he had to clean up.

“I have a girl who comes in once a week,” he apologized. “She manages my excesses. Makes sure typhoid doesn’t get a foothold.” He picked up a soiled shirt and a single red sock.

“Doctor Mayer, I don’t—”

“You might wonder how she knows what is excess and what is not,” he said, on his way out the door. I heard him dumping the debris somewhere, raising his voice so I could hear him. “It’s not an easy task, but I have trained her fairly well. She will not disturb the important experiments in progress. She sticks to the spoiled food and spilled coffee.” He was back now, helplessly scanning the room.