“Try the FBI.”
So Tuck, on the cab ride to the FBI offices, changed his strategy. He’d wait until he got past the front line of defense before spilling his guts. The receptionist was a petite Asian woman of forty who spoke English so precisely that Tuck knew it had to be her second language.
“I’m sure I can help you if you will just tell me what it is that you’d like to report.”
“I can’t. I have to talk to an agent. I won’t be comfortable unless I talk to a real agent.”
She looked offended and her speech became even crisper. “Perhaps you can tell me the nature of the crime.”
Tuck thought for a moment. What did the FBI always handle on television? Al Capone, Klansmen, bank robberies, and…“Kidnapping,” he said. “There’s been a kidnapping.”
“And who has been kidnapped? Have you filed a missing persons report with the local police?”
Tuck shook his head and stood his ground. “I’ll tell an agent.”
The receptionist picked up the phone and punched a number. She turned away from him and covered her mouth with her hand as she spoke into the mouthpiece. She hung up and said, “There’s an agent on his way.”
“Thanks,” Tuck said.
A few minutes later a door opened and a dark-haired guy who looked like a mobile mannequin from a Brooks Brothers window
display entered the reception room and extended his hand to Tuck. “Mr. Case, I’m Special Agent Tom Myers. Would you step into my office, please?”
Tuck shook his hand and followed him though the door and down a hallway of identical ten-by-twelve offices with identical metal desks that displayed identical photos of identical families in identical dime-store frames. Myers motioned for Tuck to sit and took the seat behind the desk.
“Now, Rose tells me that you want to report a kidnapping?” Special Agent Myers unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.
“You allowed to do that?” Tuck asked.
“Casual Fridays,” the special agent said.
“Oh,” Tuck said. “Yes. Kidnapping, multiple murder, and the theft and sale of human organs for transplant.”
Myers showed no reaction. “Go on.”
And Tuck did. He began with the offer of the job on Alualu and ended with his arrival in Hawaii, leaving out the crash of Mary Jean’s jet, the subsequent loss of his pilot’s license and pending criminal charges, anything to do with cargo cults, cannibals, transvestites, ghost pilots, talking bats, and genital injuries. As he wrapped up, he thought the edited version sounded pretty credible.
Special Agent Myers had not changed position or expression once in the half hour that Tuck had talked. Tuck thought he saw him blink once, though. Special Agent Myers leaned back in his chair (casual Fridays) and templed his fingers. “Let me ask you something,” he said.
“Sure,” Tuck said.
“Are you the Tucker Case that got drunk and crashed the pink jet in Seattle a few months ago?”
Tuck could have slapped him. “Yes, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“I think it does, Mr. Case. I think it affects the credibility of what is already an incredible story. I think you should leave my office and go about the business of putting your life in order.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Tuck said. He was fighting panic. He worked to stay calm. “Why would I make up a story like that? As you pointed out, I’ve got enough on my plate just rebuilding my life. I’m not so stupid that I’d add charges for filing a false crime report to all the others. If you have to take me into custody, do it. But do something about what’s going on out on that island or a lot more people are going to die.”
“Even if I believed your story, what would you like me to do?”
And there Tuck lost it.” ‘Special agent.’ Does that mean that you had to take the little bus to the academy?”
“I was at the top of my class.” A rise.
“Then act like it.”
“What do you want, Mr. Case?”
Tuck jumped up and leaned over the desk. Special Agent Myers rolled back in his chair.
“I want you to stop them. I want covert action and deadly technology. I want Navy SEALS and snipers and spies and laser-guided smart stealth gizmos out the ying-yang. I want surgical strikes and satellite views and a steaming shitload of every sort of Tom Clancy geegaw you got. I want fucking Jack Ryan, James Bond, and a half-dozen Van Damme motherfuck-ers who can jump through their own asses and rip your heart out while it’s still beating. I want action, Special Agent Myers. This is evil shit.”
“Sit down, Mr. Case.”
Tuck sat down. His energy was gone. “Look, I’m giving myself up. Arrest me, throw me in jail, beat me with a rubber hose, do whatever you want to do, but stop what’s going on out there.”
Special Agent Myers smiled. “I don’t believe a word you’ve told me, but even if I did, even if you had evidence of what you’re claiming, I still couldn’t do anything. The FBI can only act on domestic matters.”
“Then tell someone who handles international matters.”
“The CIA only handles matters that affect national security, and frankly, I wouldn’t embarrass myself by calling them.”
“Fuck it, then. Take me away.” Tuck held out his arms to receive handcuffs.
“Go back to your hotel and get some rest, Mr. Case. There are no outstanding warrants for your arrest.”
“There aren’t?” Tuck felt as if he’d been gut-punched.
“I checked the computer before I brought you in here.” Myers stood. “I’ll show you out.”
After another cab ride and another truncated telling of his story, Tuck was also shown out of the Japanese embassy. He found a pay phone and soon he had been hung up on by both the American Medical Association and the Council of Methodist Missionaries. He found Sepie curled up on the king-size bed, the television still blaring in the bathroom, three minibottles of vodka empty on the floor. Tuck considered raiding the minibar himself, but when he opened it, he
opted for a grapefruit juice instead of gin. Getting hammered wasn’t going to take the edge off this time, and at this rate, the money he’d left on deposit at the desk in lieu of a credit card—the money that Sarapul had found in Tuck’s pack—would run out in two days.
He sat down on the bed and stroked Sepie’s hair. She had put on mascara while he was out and had made a mess of it. Funny, she’d walked into the hotel wearing one of Tuck’s shirts—the first time she’d worn a top in her life—looking very much the little girl and now she had on makeup and was passed out drunk. Tuck had a feeling that coming to America was not going to be easy on either of them. He kissed her on the forehead and she moaned and rolled over. “Perfume tomorrow,” she said. “You get me some, okay?”
“Okay,” Tuck said. “A woman who smells good is a woman who feels good.” The phrase rattled off the walls of his brain. He snatched up the phone and punched up information. When the operator came on, he said, “Houston, area code 713…”
60
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Mary Jean sat behind a desk fashioned entirely of rose quartz veined with fool’s gold and stared out the window at the Houston skyline. A brown haze had risen to the level of her fiftieth-floor office as the exhaust of a million cars huddled against the stratosphere and curled around the city like a huge rusty cat looking for a place to nap. It just made her made as a cowpoke wearing bob-wire pants, but not mad enough, of course, to sell her shares of GM and Exxon. Blue chips was blue chips, after all, and the great state of Texas ran on oil.
The intercom beeped and Mary Jean keyed her speakerphone, not because she needed her hands free to work, but because the phone receiver either got caught in her hairdo or her clip-ons rattled against it making all sorts of distracting racket. There’d been a time, before Prozac, when she’d thought for six months that the FBI was tapping her phone line, only to find out it was a pair of twenty-carat ruby cluster earrings banging against the earpiece.