Charles Grant - The X-Files - Goblins

You don’t turn on a spotlight when you’re working in the dark.

That was the problem with goddamn reporters these days — they thought they owned the goddamn Constitution. Barelli would have to be mollified. Having the FBI around would help. So would assurances that he himself was personally monitoring the situation, maintaining constant contact with the CID and the civil authorities. He’d do that anyway; he wasn’t a fool. The fact that he had thought Ulman was a class-A jerk shouldn’t deter him from extending what comfort he could to his sister.

Still, if Angie took up with a serviceman again, he would personally see to it the jerk was transferred to South Korea.

He took his chair and reached for the telephone, his free hand drumming thoughtfully on the desk. He would get hold of Carl, meet him for a late lunch, take him on the two-bit tour, pat him on the back, shed a tear with him for the loss of Angie’s love, and get the sonofabitch the hell off his post. Let him go back to writing about hockey or basketball or whatever the hell it was he wrote about in April.

Hell’s bells, he was only a cousin, for Christ’s sake.

It wasn’t like he was real family.

Goblins, Elly thought nervously; the goblins are back.

She stood in the kitchenette, squinting myopically at a calendar hanging on the refrigerator door. She knew those government people hadn’t believed her, nobody did, but tomorrow was Saturday again, and the goblins would be back.

She was tired of being the only one who saw them.

That young man, though, he might be persuaded. He had the look about him. The believing look. The wanting look. All she had to do was mark one and show it to him.

That’s all it would take.

Once he knew, the others would come around.

She licked her lips and turned to the cupboard under a rust-stained sink. From it she pulled a brand new can of marking magic, shook it, took off the rounded top, and tested it in the sink.

It worked.

She cackled.

Her pale eyes hardened to steel gray.

“So when he took off for California,” said Babs Radnor, a distinct Tennessee drawl in her voice, “I got a lawyer, emptied the bank account, took over the motel, and have become, as you can see, a lady of leisure.”

She sat in her king-size four-poster, two pillows fluffed behind her back. She bordered on the painfully thin, with short black hair brushed behind her ears, hard black eyes, and a voice that husked with too much liquor, too many cigarettes. Her right hand held a floral sheet modestly over her breasts, while her left hand held a tumbler of bourbon and ice.

“I am not a lush, though,” she insisted, waving the glass from side to side. “Like the French, I always have a little something with every meal. It’s supposed to be good for the heart and circulation.”

Carl stood at the low, twelve-drawer dresser and watched his reflection trying to make sense of his tie. “That’s wine, Babs. Wine.”

She shrugged. “Who gives a damn. It’s working, right? So who cares?”

He didn’t argue. Not even twenty-four hours, and he already knew she did not take lightly to contradiction or correction. Nor did she exaggerate when she had suggested without being coy or cute that he would have a much more pleasant evening in her company than the company of a TV, even if it did have free HBO.

It beat all to hell paying for a room.

It also afforded him a way to keep tabs on Mulder and his team. Babs, as she had already proven, knew everything about every blessed person who stayed in her motel. And if she didn’t know, she found out. There wasn’t, she had confessed, a whole lot else to do around here.

“So anyway, I’m figuring one more year, maybe two, sell out and get my buns to someplace like Phoenix, Tucson, someplace like that. Have you ever been to Arizona, sugar?”

He shook his head, damned his tie and yanked it off. He didn’t figure the major would take him anyplace fancy anyway. There was, as the saying goes, no love lost between them, and it didn’t bother him a bit. Tonero was an ambitious little toad, and Carl’s skin crawled each time they met. He didn’t know how Angie could be from the same mother. Still, the guy had been sincere enough when they finally connected, and this lunch thing would give him a chance to see where Frankie had died.

Once he had done that, gotten the lay of the land, he could take the next step.

Whatever that might be.

“On the other hand, San Diego is supposed to have perfect weather, you know?” She laughed hoarsely “The trouble is, it’s in California. They hate it when you drink, smoke, and eat a decent meal, a steak and all. I don’t know if I could stand it. I’m not too thrilled about those earthquakes, either.”

He turned and spread his arms. “So? Do I look good enough to see a major?”

She waggled her heavy eyebrows. “Good enough to eat, if you ask me.”

He laughed and sat on the edge of the bed, taking the hand that held the sheet in both of his. The sheet began to slide. “When I’m done, how about I take you out to dinner?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Really, Babs, I’d like to. Is there a place around here, someplace nice?”

She looked at him carefully.

The sheet made it to her waist.

“If you don’t mind driving a little…?”

His eyes widened comically, showing her his struggle not to look at her chest. “A little?”

“An hour?”

“What’s an hour?”

“Atlantic City. There’s some really nice places at Resorts and the Taj.” Then she stuck her tongue out and laughed, pulled his hands to her breast, and stuck her tongue out again. “Just so you don’t forget.”

He kissed her then, long and soft. “Like I would,” he whispered.

“Liar.”

“Maybe.” He slipped away and stood. “But I’m damn cute, right?”

She didn’t laugh, didn’t smile.

He leaned over and kissed her again, quickly but just as earnestly “See you later.”

“I’ll be here, sugar. No place else to go.”

He blew her a kiss from the door, closed it behind him, and hurried down the long gold and royal blue corridor. Her apartment was above the office, tucked behind the crown facade, and he used the outside back stairs to get to his car, hastily parked there when he had spotted that redheaded agent pull up not long after he himself had arrived. He figured he would run into Mulder sooner or later, but right now he preferred it to be later. The way he figured it, the agents wouldn’t be here more than a couple of days, not on a case that was as cold as this one, and they’d probably eat at least one meal at the Inn.

They would talk while they ate.

Whatever they said, he would know less than an hour after they were done.

It was so perfect, he crossed his fingers to ward off the feeling that it just might be too perfect.

But he wasn’t going to run from it, either. Hell, he got a free room, a free woman, and a chance to sneak up on Dana again. What the hell more could he ask for?

The killer, he answered as he pulled slowly around the side of the building; I want the killer, that’s what I want.

He had another feeling, and he leaned forward, looked up, and saw her standing at her bedroom window. He gave her the smile, and the wave, and when she waved back he blew her a kiss before speeding out onto the road.

What a day this was going to be. Lunch with a uniformed toad who thinks his cousin is a jerk, a little investigative work around town, dinner in Atlantic City, a roll in the hay in a bed so big he could build a house on it.

Life, he decided, just doesn’t get any better.

Leonard stood at the end of the basement corridor, listening.

He didn’t know what he expected to hear. There was never any noise save for the faint grumble of the machines that gave the building its power.