The Everborn Read online

  Melony sat at her desk with a cup of coffee. His emergence startled her; she swiveled in her chair to face him as he sped past her to his own desk, dumped his armful of important this-and-thats before an array of keyboarded PC hardware.

  “Any calls?” he asked her in a hurry.

  “I missed you, too,” came her reply.

  “Did Matt McGregor call?”

  “How was your trip?”

  “Did Matt call? Did anyone call?”

  “Phil Hubert of the...” Melony sighed, gazed at her notes. “...the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Susan called from Fairway. Mark Deltmore wants a lunch date, soon, and Ruben Whitfield’s agent called about a booking at the Fall convention. The Cleggs down the street want to know if we can attend their dinner party on the night of the eighth....”

  “We don’t have time. Any faxes?”

  “They’re on your desk. Oh...Matt sent an acknowledgement that he received your two faxes....”

  “Any mail? Packages? E-mail when I was gone?”

  “Would you stop?” she said with a calm sort of irritability and she took another sip from her coffee.

  Max found his mail, shuffled through an assortment of manila envelopes and subscribed periodicals and junk mail. He turned momentarily to her, absently. “Would I stop what?”

  “Interrogating me.”

  For Max, the curious disposition of his wife sparked a fleeting display of concern, stifled the next moment by the distracting urgency of a busy schedule and the matters at hand. He was interested only long enough to ask, “What are you talking about?”

  Mel lowered her coffee mug onto her lap slowly, swiveled within her desk chair to face her husband, leaned forward and gazed squarely across the short stretch of office area and directly into his eyes. “You never used to treat me like this, you know, bark at me like this. Without you even asking, you’ve always been able to count on me to let you know what’s going on. I’m your wife, for chrissake. Show a little affection, a little appreciation once in a while. I missed you when you were gone. I always do.”

  Melony had barely begun to speak when Max was already reverting to the task of sorting papers and files into a stack, after which he gathered them up and approached Mel with them.

  Melony turned her attentions away in an instant effort of restraint from growing anger, then just as instantly lifted her head to face him again; he was right before her now, arching downwards for a kiss to make things better. For a moment the kiss seemed to erase the friction between them, make things right again.

  “You know I love you,” he told her and he said it in such a way that Melony could have mistaken these words for an offering of warm sincerity...if it wasn’t for how he hurried them so. And if it wasn’t for the stack of papers he then planted upon the desktop space beside her. “Now, you’ve got to understand, Mel, the profound and likely importance of what we’re getting ourselves into here, with this Erlandson project. We’re gonna blow the lid wide open on something that you and I have been working extremely hard on and we’ll lose it like we’ve lost it before...only this time we’ve never been so goddamn close to it.”

  He continued, “I know it’s difficult, but we have to wait, our relationship pales in the light of what we’re about to uncover. You should know that. We’ll have a nice dinner tonight, you and I...how about that? But we must get to work and I’d like you to take care of these papers I’ve brought you, you know what to do with them. And in a little while, I’d like to know everything about Ralston Cooper’s gig last night and about your investigations there. Meanwhile, there are a few things waiting for me to do. I love you, dear...you’re wonderful.”

  ***

  Over the course of the afternoon, Max had gone about his business feverishly, with Melony obeying his instructions without another word.

  Max phoned Matt McGregor and spoke to Matt’s wife, after which he paged Matt two or three times before his calls were returned. McGregor was an L.A. County law enforcement official of many years and advancements of rank and even for much longer, a personal friend of Max. More importantly, McGregor was the primary informant to Max in the Erlandson saga and in particular was the very man who contacted Melony regarding the discovery of young Nigel’s body behind The Crow Job.

  While researching the fascinating child abductees by UFO’s in a remote village bordering a vastness of rain forest, Max was first notified of the Nigel discovery by his wife, followed expectedly by a call from Matt. Nevertheless, upon Matt’s returned call that afternoon, Max made certain to give his friend a thorough interview about the subject; Max questioned Mel about the previous evening and Ralston’s celebrated gig, though Mel chose to exclude certain details concerning her personal feelings about Andrew, about her attractions to him, about how her accumulating despair over the condition of her marriage helped conjure up those attractions.

  Melony did, however, explain to her husband her impressions of Andrew, how he came across as far more of an average guy than she had ever expected.

  She told Max about the date she’d planned with Andrew that weekend and Max was thrilled whereas others would in the least prove jealous by some degree. But a date tonight was out of the question, there were other things to be done, preparations to make.

  Melony phoned Andrew not long after Max’s questioning her (or rather, his interrogating her, as she was tempted to put it a second time). Her date was therefore set with Andrew for tomorrow evening, Sunday. Andrew sounded amusingly giddy and excited to her through the course of the call, like a schoolboy struck with the sweet thrill of victory upon asking a knockout babe to the prom.

  With that done, Mel tended to other related matters while Max took a trip to The Crow Job’s backside. He returned with nothing he didn’t already know, with the exception of a general knowledge of the area and a visual familiarity with the scene. He’d requested to view Nigel’s body with McGregor; there were no funeral plans, needless to say, due to a confounding absence of family or friends in any way linked to him, and due to understandable reasons of secrecy....

  ...the matter instantly proved to be perplexing enough to inspire the local P.D. into buttoning their lips permanently.

  The only problem they had in doing that was in the way the discovery gained media attention throughout the stunted pursuit for the child’s identity. Matt McGregor’s experienced insight was largely responsible for the cover-up and the Fed’s intervention.

  In other words, Max’s request to view the corpse was going to take a little while to be granted.

  Max made good of his promise to Mel that they would have dinner together that night, although when they spoke to each other and Melony managed to share a few thoughts, Max simply interrogated her.

  ***

  Later still that evening, Melony caught her husband red-handed (and much to her non-expectations) smoking a cigarette on the front porch, standing candidly beside decorative marble pottery which was empty but for a dozen or so expired butts.

  ***

  The mid-to-late morning of Sunday was uneventful with the exception of an enlivening telephone call from Matt McGregor, proclaiming news of another grisly discovery, made from within the room of a motel down the street from The Crow Job, and of the related disappearance of a certain reverend’s daughter.

  15.

  Ralston and Jessica

  Ralston sat under the dim light in the corner chair, nude, beads of sweat like blisters spread upon a muscular body neglected by laziness and time, his hairless chest rising and then slowly falling from the drags of the redolent fumes of a half-spent Thai joint. The pot was good. It was very good. And very abundant. Its vaporous streams accumulated at the ceiling and drifted languidly out the open window.

  He sat there, his shadow casting a distorted framework of blackness across the carpet, trailing toward the queen-sized waterbed and over the side of a black-and-white-checkered comforter until it arrived at Jessica’s own sleek nudeness resting, almost posing,
spread-eagle atop several bed pillows. In a way, she was tantalizing him, but in a way, she didn’t care. She was just as comfortably numb as her celebrity boyfriend was, feeling pretty goddamn good about herself, about the past day, about the night, about the early morning hours as those hours crept upon the two of them since the concert of the night before.

  Right then, time was slowly creeping upon the early morning hour of two a.m., Sunday morning. They had been partying since they returned from The Crow Job concert to their two-story home in the upper-class section of Brea the morning before. The afternoon after the concert, band members and swarms of friends and friends of friends had flooded their home in celebration of the gig’s success, highlighted by a half-hearted but promising little review of the gig in the Show section of the Orange County Register’s early edition, presented to Ralston’s guests by the band’s bass player and courtesy of the paper boy.

  The party had dwindled considerably soon afterwards, though it had officially ended later that evening. Such was Ralston’s parties...all-nighters and all-dayers...and if it wasn’t for Jessica’s fatigue and Ralston’s own growing yearnings for a peace-and-quiet kick-back time of solitude, the celebration would have lasted the weekend.

  Another reason for Ralston to call it quits this time, the most important reason, was that he was ever so anxious to soak up some time with his new beloved book...

  ...so when others would read it, he would at least know what the hell they were reading and would be able to handle their responses like an experienced bestselling author should.

  As usual, Jessica was the first of the others aside from his agent to read his latest work, though she often complained otherwise in an irate and wining sort of fashion.

  And of course, Ralston had to deal with it, which meant letting Jessica read the novel before he did.

  In Andrew’s apartment, Ralston had a chance of sorts to browse through the book: from what he read of it, it was good. Damn good.

  But he never truly caught the gist of it, in what little time he had then.

  And neither did Jessica, though within the past few hours, the silent, quiet, post-party hours, she tried.

  But she didn’t quite make it.

  If she had, everything would be a different story from there on out.

  And from here on out.

  ***

  “I saw you with my new book,” Ralston said slyly as he sat there.

  Jessica stirred, turned on the bed to her side. “Ohhh. Yes. Yeah. When was that?”

  “Must’ve been a few hours ago.”

  “Must’ve.” She sat up, propping herself with her hands.

  Ralston had caught Jessica browsing through the manuscript’s pages just before the last of the guests had bade them both farewell; almost immediately the two of them engaged in a sexual frenzy that had been mounting throughout the evening.

  Ralston had never been one for modesty and had been known from time to time to out-and-out go for his girlfriend regardless of who was with them in the same room...although a great deal of the time whoever was watching was so incredibly strung out they didn’t seem to notice or care, which made the two lovers all the more consenting and comfortable. Hell, they themselves were usually so strung out they never seemed to care either, even if two other uncaring couples went into frantic screwing not far away.

  And whenever Jessica wasn’t paying attention or passed out, one or the other, Ralston had been known to join in.

  Under such drugged conditions, such a celebrity was indeed obliged.

  “So waddaya think so far?”

  “What, about the book?” Jessica asked. She reached behind her, fetched the thick pages of the manuscript and brought them before her. Her glasses, put into use strictly for reading purposes, rested atop a nightstand. She retrieved them also and situated them over her eyes.

  “No,” Ralston replied rather sarcastically, “Waddaya think about my cock....”

  “Fuck you,” came her reply in turn, lazily, yet playfully. Then, “It’s great, honey. Of course. As usual. Like this Max character. You never wrote a book about U.F.O’s before. I think it’s cool, the part you wrote about how he goes to Carbon Canyon because of that letter. I’ll read more later. Or...I’ll read more now. Ya got some more cheese....?”

  “Yeh, babe,” Ralston said and stood up, went for the dresser, went for the sizeable hand mirror on which rested two likewise sizeable lengthy lines of the best goddamn crank this end of California. Another hand went for a two-inch-long crazy straw. Next, he offered the mirror and the crazy straw over into Jessica’s waiting hands. She sucked up the sugar-white granules through one nostril in a single snort, cringed for a moment, then, handed the straw and the hand mirror back to her man. She resumed her spread-eagle position atop the bed, then sat right back up again, ready for action.

  Before Ralston commenced with his turn, he shot his girlfriend a quick glance. “So....waddaya think of my book? Or my cock...?”

  ***

  Less than three years ago, Jessica had been nothing more than a mere librarian’s assistant, of all things, periodically engaging in various odd part-time jobs alongside. She had finished night school just previous to this, finally achieving the high school diploma she fell short of years before. She’d dropped out of Kingsburough High after a final semester of truancy and an aborted pregnancy and at the age of eighteen screwed her pre-destined goals and abandoned her Utah home altogether.

  Stepping from the Greyhound bus terminal in Los Angeles, she found herself spending the first handful of months in this new world of sorts in a no-tell motel with cash stolen from her bastard stepfather. Meeting people and then some, she eventually graduated to apartment life with an occasional roommate, an occasional boyfriend and soon after, landed a job at a local library, living paycheck to paycheck.

  Then one day, certain employees of the library were cordially invited to a writer’s convention at L.A.’s Bonaventure Hotel.

  The day Jessica went to the convention was the day she met Ralston Cooper.

  It was just like meeting an idol, a rock star idol.

  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.

  That’s right, girl.

  And he was interesting, provocative, mysterious.

  He had people working for him, under him.

  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.