Brad could tell Baker was hooked by the fact that the
man hadn't thrown him out of the office. He could also
tell, however, that Baker was being very cautious about
making the deal. Perhaps it was for fear of being ripped
off, or maybe concern for his reputation. After all, he had
gone to great lengths to insulate himself from his hobby of
UFO investigating. Either way, Brad could only hope the man
would return his call before Wednesday night.
He had given Baker's secretary his office phone number,
knowing full well that Wheeler probably wouldn't appreciate
seeing him. It was a chance he was willing to take, because
the office phone lent credibility to his story, and there
was a receptionist on duty to take messages. Brad had an
answering machine on his home phone, but didn't trust Baker
to leave a message. Some people just have a thing about
talking to a machine.
About a mile from the office, Brad pulled into a
parking lot to use a payphone. He dialed the number he had
jotted in his note book a week earlier, and charged the call
to his company calling card. He stood patiently, covering
his left ear to shut out the sound of the passing traffic,
and listened to Mrs. Gatewood's phone ring. Maybe, just
maybe, the Air Force had returned her husband to her in Las
Vegas.
"Hello," answered a voice that in no way sounded like
Mrs. Gatewood's. It impressed Brad as being too
professional-- the voice of a person who answered phones for
a living.
"I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number," apologized
Brad. He hung-up the phone and checked the number in his
book. It seemed correct. It had the right area code.
He dialed the number again.
"Hello," answered the same voice.
"I'm trying to reach Elizibeth Gatewood."
"Who's calling please."
Brad almost spoke before he caught himself. Something
clicked in the back of his mind, and highlighted the nasal
quality of the voice. The woman who had answered sounded
like a phone company operator, but an operator would only
ask who was calling if Brad had made the call collect. "I
wanted to talk to Mrs. Gatewood, is she there?"
"Sir, this is her answering service. Can I give her
your name and number."
Answering service? What would a virtually single,
working mother-of-two being doing with an answering service?
Something was definitely wrong. "No, I'll call her later.
Thank you." Brad hung-up the phone and returned to his car.
Surely the Air Force wouldn't have been so bold as to
have taken Gatewood's wife prisoner, too. There would be
too many people who would miss her if she disappeared. They
had even given him her name! She had said she wouldn't have
done anything to hurt the service, she had only cooperated
because Brad had coerced her. Not even the American
military could be so evil as to turn on its own people, he
thought.
Unless...
She had said that she intended to move to LA.
Brad couldn't buy it. If she had moved, she wouldn't
have employed an answering service, but would have had a
recording give out the new number. The Air Force must have
disposed of her, and Gatewood, to silence their leak. Brad
knew one way to find out.
He parked the Firebird in the company garage and took
the elevator to the forth floor. Upon entering the office,
he asked the receptionist if there were any messages for
him. The fact that there were not, didn't bother him as it
was only one-thirty, and Baker probably hadn't had time to
think about it yet. It always amazed Brad how the higher
the rank and pay of an individual, the more time it took for
them to make a decision.
When Brad arrived at his desk, he was surprised to find
that someone had cleared everything off the top except his
phone and name plate. He looked around the room, and
noticed several other reporters were staring at him. An
uneasy feeling began to creep over him, as his gaze once
again fell upon his naked desk. The fact that the room had
grown a little quieter and that a few more eyes were staring
at him added to his insecurity.
After a second glance around the room, he decided he
just didn't give a shit anymore, and plopped into his chair.
He didn't care if they stared. He didn't care if they
thought he was walking on thin ice. All they needed to keep
in mind was the fact that at least his name plate was still
on his desk, and that made his employment official (no less
fragile, but official).
Brad spun the phone to face him, and dialed Nevada
Directory Assistance. When the operator answered, he asked
for the management office of Mrs. Gatewood's apartment
complex. He took the number down in his steno pad. This
time a man answered the phone.
"I'm trying to contact Elizibeth Gatewood, I think her
phone is out of order."
"She moved this morning."
"She moved? To Los Angeles?" inquired Brad.
"No, New Hampshire?" explained the manager.
"New Hampshire?"
"Yeah. You deaf? Do you want me to say it again?"
"I'm just surprised. Why New Hampshire?"
"I didn't ask why-- she was paid up through the
fifteenth, and didn't ask for a refund. The packers came
last night, and she left this morning."
"You mean the packers came yesterday afternoon?"
"Man, you need your hearing checked. The packers came
last night. They kept half the complex up 'til midnight.
The truck showed up about seven. Who the hell is this
anyway."
"I'm... Tom Beechum, a friend of her husband," lied
Brad. "Did you see anyone from the base helping her?"
"You in the service?"
"Yeah, Bob and I use to work together," lied Brad,
again.
"Some creepy looking officer was with her."
Brad started a desperate search through his notes for
the name of the man he'd spoken to. "Was it a tall guy?"
"No, average height," explained the landlord. "He had
pilot's wings on, but I didn't know the Air Force had any
one-eyed pilots."
One eye? That's what the baglady had said. She
claimed they were pirates because one of them had an
eyepatch. "Was his name Dandridge?"
"Yeah, that's him. Call him, he knows where she
moved." Brad thanked the man for his time and said he would
call Dandridge right away.
When he had hung-up the phone, he sat back and
considered the Air Force's move. They had definitely taken
Sgt. Gatewood. The streetpeople had confirmed it by
randomly selecting an unmarked car, Air Force uniform, and
the eye-patch. The three items were too significant to have
merely been coincidence.
If the apartment manager was correct about the man with
the eye-patch being Dandridge, then it would explain Mrs.
Gatewood's sudden move. During the interview, Mrs. Gatewood
had said that Dandridge was head of security. Therefore, he
was the obvious man to plug the leak. He had picked up
Gatewood, and arranged for his wife and family to move. The
fact that Mrs. Gatewood hadn't asked for a refund on her
unused rent meant that the Air Force was footing the bill.
Surely, thought Brad, Dandridge knew that by pulling
Gatewood and his wife out of circulation, he would only be
reinforcing the evidence against him. Unless Dandridge
thought that Brad's whole story revolved around using them
as witnesses. Maybe Dandridge believed that by removing
them, he would remove any validity the story might have.
Boy, did he have a surprise coming!
But what, Brad wondered, about the answering service?
At that moment, Brad's train of thought was interrupted
by a flurry of activity at the receptionist's desk. Several
other reporters left their seats and ran to the front of the
office to listen in on what must have been an especially
juicy piece of gossip. Though Brad did not stand, he was
able to see that at the head of the crowd was one of the
newspaper's criminal lawyers. He addressed the crowd,
listened to a question Brad could not hear, shook his head
to signify 'no,' then walked toward the elevators. The
sullen mob retired to their respective desks in silence.
As Bill Hollaway-- another 'cub-reporter' about the
same age as Brad-- passed, Brad asked what had happened.
"You mean you hadn't heard."
"Heard what?"
"Fletcher got busted again."
"Big deal. The paper'll get him off."
"Not this time. The FBI caught him with half a kilo of
coke. Raided his apartment at like three AM."
"No shit! Did he say he was researching a story?"
inquired Brad.
"Are you kidding? He said the FBI planted it in his
house-- he claims he's being framed."
"I guess Fletcher wasn't quite as clean as we thought,"
jabbed Brad.
"Yeah. He had to keep up the payments on his Porsche,"
joked Hollaway. He didn't have time to take two steps
before Wheeler threw the door of his office open. With a
quick sweep of the room, he zeroed in on Hollaway.
"Hollaway!" he yelled across the room. "Find out
what's going on at the corner of Yale and Thurman. Some one
just called in a tip that four LAPD squad cars had closed in
on a phone booth to make an arrest."
"A phone booth?" questioned Hollaway. "Why?"
"That's what I'm paying you to find out. Now, move! I
want you there before the SWAT team." Hollaway sprinted out
the door, and Wheeler started back into his office. Brad
spun in his chair in a last ditch effort to hide himself,
but it was too late. "Dartmouth! I thought you were on
vacation." Wheeler slammed the door before Brad could
comment.
For a moment, Brad cursed Wheeler for singling him out,
until, suddenly, all his anger drained from his body leaving
an empty feeling inside. Gatewood gone; that's one. His
wife moved; that's another one. One plus one... made two.
Fletcher's home was raided by the FBI, he was arrested
on possibly trumped-up drug charges, and Brad had used his
name when he spoke with Dandridge; that's one. The police
attacked a phone booth moments after Brad had called Mrs.
Gatewood; that's another one. One plus one... made two.
But what really bothered Brad, was the fact that two
plus two makes four: The Air Force was not simply trying to
eliminate the evidence, but were after him!
As if the sick feeling in Brad's stomach wasn't enough,
his phone rang.
Brad stared at it fearfully, and it rang again.
Slowly, Brad picked up the receiver. "This is Brad
Dartmouth"
"Use no names. There is a payphone in the fifth floor
employee lounge. Do you know which one I mean?"
"Yes."
"I will call you at that number in two minutes." The
mysterious caller hung-up leaving Brad in a state of
paranoid shock. Perhaps it was the FBI setting a trap.
Maybe the Air Force had managed to place a bomb in that
phone, and would detonate it when he answered it. But why
go to the effort? Since Brad had answered the phone, they
would have known he was at his desk, and could have simply
come to arrest him. If they had not wanted any witnesses,
then why send him to the employee lounge? Why not ask him
to meet them on a pier in Longbeach where they could cuff
him to a couple cinderblocks and just throw him to the fish?
Brad arrived in the lunch room with about fifteen
seconds to spare. The room was nearly deserted as the lunch
rush had finished half an hour earlier. When Brad looked at
the payphone, he was distressed to find one of the janitor's
using it. Brad approached the janitor to tell him that he
was expecting a call, but as soon as the man saw Brad, he
hung-up. As he walked off, Brad couldn't help but notice
that the man had avoided eye contact.
The phone rang.
"Hello."
"Dartmouth?"
"Yes."
"This is Baker. I couldn't run the risk that your line
was tapped or that you'd be recording the call. Meet me in
front of the stadium in one hour. Will you be driving the
Firebird?"
"Yes," answered Brad, wondering how Baker had known
what type of car he drove.
"Good. One hour." The line went dead.
It had sounded like Baker, and unless the government
intended on making him part of the end zone, the stadium
sounded like a safe meeting place. Brad checked his watch
and headed for his car. With a little luck, Brad could meet
Baker and still get to the bank in time to withdraw his
share. If all went well, he could pay Asher tonight.
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