Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (19 page)

Zaleski smiled thinly and sucked greedily on his Camel.

"You think Olive might be with Melanie?" Jack said, watching him carefully.

Zaleski made a sour face. "I doubt it. Melanie couldn't stand that nut."

"Really? That's not the impression I got."

"Yeah?" he said, eyes narrowing. "When did you get this impression?"

Jack had no idea what Zaleski knew, so he figured the best course would be to play this straight.

"Olive stopped by my room yesterday and—"

"Did she make you hold her silver cross?" Zaleski said with a smirk.

Jack nodded. "And she asked me the same thing you did: What else did Melanie say when she contacted me? She gave the impression they were close friends."

"Melanie's not into religion, and if you ain't got religion, you can't be close friends with Olive. I mean, she's got no fucking sense of humor, and a real set of hot buttons. I get such a boost out of pissing her off. You should see her face when I say something like, 'Jesus paid for our sins, so let's get our money's worth.' Goes so purple she looks like Goofy Grape. Or when I tell her the pillars of cloud and fire that led the Israelites through the desert weren't from God, that they were UFO-generated instead—which they very likely were—she almost goes postal on me." He laughed. "But what can you expect from someone who blames Satan for everything that goes wrong in the world?"

When you really should be blaming the gray aliens, right? Jack thought.

"It's like her brain's gone five hundred years back in time," Zaleski said, shaking his head. "You should hear her go on about computers—666 chips and other eschatological bullshit. Thinks they're tools of the Devil."

He grimaced as a guy in an "Area 51" cap and a blue jumpsuit studded with UFO badges strolled by. The front was open to reveal his T-shirt. It read:
Abduct me now! I wanna go home
!

"Asshole," Zaleski said under his breath. "Why the fuck did Roma invite jerks like him into SESOUP?

Can't figure it. They make me crazy. Trend-humping dilettantes. UFO fans—
fans
, can you believe it? This is serious shit and they make a fucking
hobby
out of it." He growled. "Guess I can't blame them. They've got the government, Madison Avenue, and Hollywood messing with their heads."

"Hollywood?"

"Christ, yes. Those bastards were bought off a long time ago. Spielberg's the worst. I wonder what MJ-12 paid him to do
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
and
ET
. Those two films started the whole aliens-are-cute, aliens-are-our-friends bullshit.
Men in Black
was another, probably the most blatant example, and unquestionably financed by MJ-12 to make the MIBs look ridiculous. But that's their tactic: Take a fucking serious problem and defang it by making a joke out of it." He ground out his cigarette. "And where Hollywood leaves off, Madison Avenue takes up."

"The advertising industry's in on it too, huh?"

"From Day One. Just watch the fucking tube for an hour and you'll see flying saucers delivering Maytags or families of gray aliens driving around in Buicks. None of that's accidental. They've trivialized the grays. When the aliens finally reveal themselves, they'll be welcomed with open arms and given the keys to the whole fucking planet."

Jack spotted a pair of orthodox rabbis walking by. "Look," he said, shrinking back. "Men in black."

"Oh, you're a comedian," Zaleski said sourly, but Jack sensed him battling a smile. "You're no Jan Murray of course, but you're a real fucking comedian."

"Sorry," Jack said, not sorry at all. "Couldn't resist." And then he remembered the two men in the black sedan on the Castelemans' street last night. He hadn't got a good look at them, but they'd appeared to be dressed in black.

"Seriously, though," Jack said. "Have you ever actually seen one of these men in black?"

"No, and I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much. They're supposed to be mean SOBs."

"What do they look like?"

"Like men in black suits, ties, and hats, with white shirts, and black sunglasses. They wear their sunglasses
all
the time."

"Even at night?"

"Word is they're human-alien hybrids, supposedly with very pale skin, and eyes that are very sensitive to light. Usually tool around in black sedans ... with the headlights off."

Jack felt a prickle at the base of his spine. Zaleski was describing last night's car and its passengers to a T. And what about that black sedan out in Monroe? He didn't believe for a moment in human-alien hybrids, but he couldn't discount the very real possibility that he was being watched ... and followed. How else would they cross paths in Monroe and Elmhurst? No one but Oscar Schaffer knew about the Queens job. Could Schaffer be involved in—?

Wait. Stop. I'm beginning to think like a SESOUPer.

But the idea that someone—anyone—was dogging him changed the prickle in his back to a crawly sensation in his gut. Who? And why?

"You all right?" Zaleski said.

"Yeah, why?"

"You looked like you went away for a while."

"Just thinking."

"Thinking's good." He rose and flipped his cigarette toward the curb. "And right now I'm thinking I'm freezing my ass off out here. Let's go inside. I think I'll check out Miles's panel. Wanna come along?"

"Maybe I'll sneak in later. I want to check out the exhibit room."

"Yeah, well, don't expect to find any fucking exhibits," he said with sudden heat. "It should be called the huckster room. Nothing but piles of worthless shit for sale in there."

"I think I'll check it out anyway," Jack said. Still a ways to go before he was due at Gia's, and he wondered where Zaleski's resentment was coming from.

"Go ahead," Zaleski tossed over his shoulder as he walked away. "You'll see what I mean."

4

Jim Zaleski fled the New World Order panel after about ten minutes. What a load of paranoid horseshit. Miles and his crew were totally clueless. They'd taken every lousy crumb of disinformation MJ-12 had tossed their way and swallowed it whole.

But even if Jim had found the panel vaguely interesting, he doubted he would have been able to focus on what was being discussed. He had Jack Shelby on his mind.

Something strange about that dude. Nothing Jim could put his finger on, but something was not fucking right.

For one thing, he didn't talk enough. He made a comment here and there, but mostly he listened. That could be because he was a newbie—he did seem genuinely ignorant of even the basics of ufology—but it might also mean he was a spy of some sort. And not necessarily from MJ-12 or the grays. Last year a writer had come to a UFO convention and pretended to be an experiencer ... He'd hung around, talking, listening, and secretly recording everything on a hidden mike. A few months later an article about SESOUP appeared in
The Skeptical Inquirer
. None of the quotes had been directly attributed beyond "a man said" this and "a woman said" that, but Jim had recognized a couple of his own comments, and had been furious.

You couldn't be too careful about whom you spoke to these days.

Maybe that was what it was about Jack Shelby—his vague air of amusement. Nothing overt, but a sense that he found SESOUP and its members ... ridiculous.

Was he another
Skeptical Inquirer
type playing games? They didn't believe in
anything
. Probably even had doubts about gravity. But they'd be true believers soon enough. They were like the guy who's falling from the top of a skyscraper, and when people at the windows he's plummeting past ask him how he's doing, he says, "So far, so good!"

But it won't be so good when the grays reveal themselves, Jim thought. I'll have the last laugh, but BFD: nothing funny about Earth being turned into a cattle ranch.

Might not be a bad idea to check Shelby out while he wasn't looking. He'd said he was going to the huckster room. Jim hated the place, but supposed he could handle a quick fly-by without blowing his stack.

He headed for the room marked "Exhibit Area." Jim had lobbied Professor Roma against a huckster room, saying it put SESOUP in the same league as a Star Trek or comic book convention, but Roma had said he found the dealers' wares amusing. "Wares"—the pompous ass had actually use the word "wares."

He stepped inside and paused at the door. The "Exhibit Area" room always looked the same: long tables lining the perimeter and squared off in the center, each displaying the hucksters' junk. Always the same dealers, who all knew each other. Like gypsies—more like camp followers, really—they followed a circuit of conspiracy conventions.

Keeping an eye out for Shelby, Jim wandered past rows of books and pamphlets on astral projection, the secrets of interdimensional travel, even something called the Cholesterol Conspiracy
("People with the highest cholesterol live the longest!!! ")
.

I might have to come back and check that one out, he thought.

He strolled past the
real
truth about Vince Foster, the
real
truth about the Oklahoma City bombing, all written by "foremost experts," many calling themselves "doctor." Doctor of what? Jim always wanted to know.

Next came a whole array of exposes on the CIA, ranging from a hardcover by Bob Woodward, to pamphlets by the ever-popular Anonymous.

In the services section he passed a guy offering to take pictures of your aura for $20, a woman reading palms for $10 ("Quick! Fast! FUN!"), "Divine Astro-Tarot Readings" for an undisclosed price, then a travel service offering tours to "Places of Power" (Stonehenge and Macchu Picchu, and various Mayan temples).

"Oh, Christ," he muttered as he saw the UFO section. It was biggest of them all, easily claiming the most tables in the room.

God, I can't take this shit, he thought, readying to turn around.

But then he spotted Shelby in the thick of it.

He'd have to go in there.

Jim fought a wave of futility. Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life was a lost cause. He kept fighting to get the truth out, but every time he thought he was making headway, he found himself batted back to square one.

He's begun reading about UFOs in his early twenties. He'd become obsessed with them, and the more he'd read, the more he'd become convinced that a massive cover-up was blocking the truth from the world. He'd committed himself to uncovering that truth.

His commitment had cost him his job with the telephone company—something he was sure had been arranged as a warning, although he could never prove it. But he hadn't let that silence him. His wife left him, but he hadn't let that stop him either. He went into business with his brother, and their hardware store was doing well, although Tom was getting annoyed with all the time he was spending away from the business. Tom didn't understand that
this
was his life, not hardware.

Maybe if he could finish that book and make it a bestseller, he could leave the store and be on his own, devote every waking hour to making people see. This was when he felt most alive: when he was with fellow believers or preaching to the unconverted. This was what he lived for.

But even this had its dark side—people taking the truth, warping it to commercial ends, and making a quick buck on it. That was what the bastards in here were up to. And Jim hated them for it.

Taking a deep, calming breath, he forced himself forward past racks of glossy photos of crop circles, many of which looked to be more the result of Adobe Photoshop than alien space craft.

Then came rows of videos about UFOs and close encounters ("Actual footage!!!") and videos of recent Ecuadoran sightings, all narrated by the ubiquitous "foremost experts." Books about UFOs and close encounters ("True accounts!!!) followed.

Lost amid the bright covers and hokey posters were serious pamphlets and broadsides that told the plain unvarnished truth, but nobody was pushing those. The fast-buck artists and second-handers and recyclers had moved in and were making a killing while the real truth languished unnoticed, unread.

He found Shelby amid the flying saucer refrigerator magnets, green alien glo-pops, action figures of Men In Black and gray aliens, and miniature flying saucers of all shapes and sizes, labeled as either "scouts" or "motherships."

"
See
?" Zaleski said through clenched teeth as he came up behind Shelby.

He hadn't meant to speak but this shit never failed to put him over the edge. Every time he stepped into one of these places he felt like doing a Jesus-and-the-moneychangers number.

Shelby turned. "Oh, hey, Jim. I thought you were going to the—"

"See what I was talking about?" Jim said, hearing his voice rise. "This is what I meant by trivialization. These creeps are selling the human race down the river with this cutesy shit. Anything to make a lousy fucking buck. Lemme outta here before I strangle one of these assholes!"

To hell with Shelby. Who cared who he was. The worst enemies of the truth were right here in this room!

Without saying anything more, he pushed his way through the crowd and found the door.

5

Definitely a loose cannon, Jack thought, watching Zaleski go. Ready to blow somebody away at the slightest provocation—if he hasn't already.

Jack hung around a little longer, checking out the goodies. He found a wristwatch in the shape of a gray alien's head, with flying saucers on the hour and minute hands. He bought it for Vicky. She was going to love it.

He sighed as he stuffed the watch in his pocket, fighting the feeling of futility that was slowly enveloping him. At least he'd come out of the morning with something. He sure as hell hadn't got any closer to finding Melanie Ehler.

Jack had been giving some thought to this gig while browsing the exhibit area. The nightmare last night, the weird crate in his bathroom ... something very wrong here ... and a damn certain feeling that things were going to become much more wrong before the conference was over. His gut urged him to cut and run now.