The Brad West Files Read online

  “I swear to you we will.”

  He wasn’t sure how much longer he could be tormented by the image of May being treated like that. He let Jade’s persuasive hands push him to the curb and then down the street.

  On his long slog across town to his crash pad, a thought nagged at him. In the past two days, he had suffered two near-death experiences, learned of a murder at the air base, and watched a pilot trainee transform into a doctor then a maintenance person. Something told him that all this added up to much more than the ordinary love triangle or domestic squabble.

  What was really at stake?

  Chapter 10

  The city of Tucson was closed down for the night by the time Brad stumbled into his new digs across town.

  “Hey, dude. You Brad?” a strange voice asked as Brad walked into the darkened living room.

  Brad caught a whiff of something pungent hanging in the air. Then he saw a long-legged person sitting comfortably in an upholstered chair in the corner. Maybe that was his landlord. “Oh, are you Earl’s friend?”

  “Yeah, that’s me alright. Name’s Tom Chenoweth, but folks call me ‘Cheno.’” He remained firmly planted in the chair, not offering his hand, but a happy smile plastered on his face.

  “Thanks for letting me crash here, Chenowe… Ah, Cheno. I threw my things in the back bedroom off the kitchen. Hope that’s okay.”

  “No problemo, Bradorooni. And welcome. Any friend of Señor Skitowsky is an okay dude in my book.”

  Brad coughed at the fumes that seemed to emanate from a large, bassoon-like device standing next to Cheno’s easy chair.

  “That’s quite a contraption you’ve got there. Kinda looks like a…”

  “Bong?” Cheno suggested. “It’s really a hooka, man. I got it at a bazaar in Ankara a few years back. Made a few modifications. But where are my manners? Would the gentleman dude care for a hit? I just got it revved up.”

  “I don’t smoke. Well, I tried it once, but didn’t exhale. Besides, I’m exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. Had a bit of a rough day.”

  “That’s cool. Maybe another time.”

  “Very thoughtful of you.” Brad was feeling the effects of the fumes anyway, and his legs didn’t feel like moving. “So, just what are you studying here?”

  “Cultural Anthropology.”

  “Funny, I never saw you around the department.”

  “…with a specialization in early Peruvian Shamanistic practices using psychotropic plants.”

  “Oh, that explains it. A real hands-on major. I can dig that. Well, I gots ta catch some zees. I’ll see ya in the morning, if there’s anything left of it.”

  “Oh, dude. I almost forgot. I decided to have a few of my most excellent and esteemed colleagues over tomorrow at one p.m. for some research into the Ayahuasca ceremony. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”

  “Sounds cool. I’m there, whatever it is.”

  “Superlative, my good man. And oh, like I forgot. You’ve got mail, dude.”

  Cheno finally moved enough to hand him a thick, white envelope.

  “Looks like Big Brother found you, man,” he said eerily.

  Once in his room, Brad examined the envelope more closely. How could anyone trace him to that flophouse? And if the mail found him, could the Air Force Security Police be far behind?

  Maybe he’d better make a dash for it. He started scanning the room for his scattered belongings. He could head back to Earl’s dorm. But what if Earl had been the one compromised and forced to divulge his whereabouts?

  He needed to calm down. He took a deep breath and looked back at the envelope. There was no postage on it. It must have been hand-delivered. But by whom?

  He broke it open, only to find his passport inside. How could he have left that behind? He flipped through the pages. There were his normal visas to Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. But whoa. What was this?

  There was an additional visa glued to the last page. It was a Student “X” Visa for China.

  For some reason, he instinctively thought of the NTSB investigator, Sullivan. Naw, that was just plain silly. Why would Sullivan do something like that?

  More likely, it was Richter’s way of finally getting rid of him.

  Or was it Jade? Now there was a thought. She had gotten him out of military custody for some unknown reason. Maybe the visa was a tactful hint for him to flee the country. Well, he’d go there in a heartbeat if he knew May would be waiting for him.

  Was it even safe to sleep at Cheno’s house that night? Man, he was too tired to care.

  He flipped the envelope over. The return address read, “Chinese Consulate / San Francisco.” It certainly looked legit. Somebody had sure pulled some strings on his behalf.

  He checked his watch. Boy it was late. But his mind was still whirling.

  He unfolded the dingy sleeper-sofa and plopped onto it. It felt good to rest his battered body and put his sore leg up.

  But sleep wasn’t coming any time soon. It was time for the ultimate sedative. He leaned over and turned on a portable television that appeared to have been abandoned in the room. Maybe he could catch a late-night horror flick, or cruise with the Skipper and Maryanne on the All ’60s channel.

  Just his luck, there was no cable. He kicked the rabbit ears around and tried in vain to bring in the color reception. He needed some more of that Demerol. Or maybe he should just take a hit from Cheno’s hooka.

  Suddenly, the black and white static resolved into a larger-than-life image of a very familiar face. It was his stepfather broadcasting from Stockholm, where he was hosting a meeting of Nobel Prize laureates.

  Professor Richter was reminding the viewers how he was the top contender for the up-and-coming prize in physiology.

  Brad groaned and tried to kick the television’s power button off. Almost too late, he remembered his sore knee and involuntarily jerked his leg back. That knocked over the phone on the table.

  He rolled over and reached for the television cord and yanked it out of the wall. There, that would shut the pompous horse’s patootie up. He wished he could pull the cord on him for real.

  He lay back on the mattress and stared at the dim light cast by the table lamp. Darn if he wasn’t a character in some late-night detective show. A criminal on the lam.

  Shoot, he’d better call Skeeter, if they hadn’t already caught him and scared him silly. Earl probably needed sanctuary as much as he did.

  Then an intriguing idea occurred to him. He could send Earl over to Jade’s apartment. Earl could beg to crash there for the night and maybe even weasel some information out of her in the process, as long as May’s psycho handler was really gone.

  He dialed Earl’s room number, then hung up. What if the cops already tapped Earl’s phone looking to trace him? Switching gears quickly, he dialed the pay phone in the dorm lobby. It was a standard ploy to reach someone in the building if their line was busy.

  “Guantánamo Hilton, front desk,” a voice answered.

  “Yeah, get me Skeeter on the horn, my good man.”

  “Hey, you’re in luck. He’s down here kicking the snack machine. Hang a sec.”

  “Stupid Pringles got stuck,” Skeeter grumbled as he grabbed the phone. “Yeah?”

  “Skeeter.” Brad leaned back in bed. “It’s me. I’m at Cheno’s.”

  “Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. How did you manage to get out of the hospital?”

  “Another long story that we’ll have to save for later. Listen, you been to your room yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t even try. Use the utility tunnels to sneak outta there and go over to May and Jade’s condominium—but make sure the Mad Max goon is gone first—and beg to stay the night.”

  “I can beg, but why the matchmaking all of a sudden?”

  Brad looked suspiciously around the room. “They find you, they find me. I just need you to lay low until I figure out my next move.”

  “So, you’re asking me
to give up my cozy cinderblock palace for an unpredictable night with a couple of lonely Chinese sex goddesses?”

  “I know. Crazy, ain’t it? Just remember, if May’s hiding out there, the one with the kewpie-doll eyes and luscious derrière…”

  “…is yours.” Earl completed his thought. “No problem. I can get by with little Miss Hot Leather.”

  “Which leads me to a question I’d like answered.”

  “Ah! The real reason you want me there.”

  “No. But if you could find out exactly what kind of hold this thug has on May, I’d like to know.”

  “Wouldn’t we all?”

  Brad’s throat was feeling parched. Maybe Cheno had some beer in the fridge.

  “So give me the directions,” Earl was saying.

  Brad stood up to head for the kitchen, but was caught by the telephone cord.

  “But before you do,” Earl went on, “there’s something I think you should know about our buddy Jade—if that’s her real name.”

  Brad sat down on the edge of his bed.

  “Remember our lunch at the cafeteria?” Earl said. “Jade must have taken your steak knife after she scraped you with it. That might have been the DNA evidence the military cop was talking about. Ergo, she’s the one who framed you for the murder of Colonel Philips.”

  “Well, that’s a little strange,” he said, “considering she just busted me out of police custody and the hospital.”

  “Hmm. Methinks there’s more to this sultry siren than initially meets the eye. Not to worry, Agent Earl is on the case. I’ll get to the bottom of this girl if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Brad smiled and set down the phone. His eyes landed on the Chinese visa. If ever there was a clear sign to follow, that was it. Somehow he would get himself to China and set things right.

  But first he needed a beer.

  Half an hour later, Earl pulled up to the Desert View Condominiums on an ancient Vespa scooter that he had borrowed from a fellow graduate student. Not the most macho of vehicles, but it was probably a good idea not to use his own car.

  He looked dubiously at the off-campus walk-up condo. He wasn’t so sure that the average Chinese military guest could afford such a place just for the occasional off-base tryst. Taking into consideration Jade’s ploy to lure him out of Brad’s hospital room earlier that day, he wouldn’t put it past her to be a spook.

  He moseyed up to the door and, after listening to the sound of someone sweeping up broken glass for a full minute, gave a light knock.

  Someone used the peephole. Then the door opened and Jade appeared, broom in hand. She looked puzzled at first, then smiled.

  “Hey, honey,” Earl said. “Is your friend home?”

  “I’m afraid I’m all alone. But why are you here?” she said, and instinctively scanned the street.

  “I’ve got a message for May, from Brad. Can I trust you with it?”

  “Of course. Please come in.”

  He sauntered in, then remembered to remove his helmet. The bright orange crash helmet from the ’70s was squeezing his head. He probably looked like a tootsie-pop in the thing.

  He tried to appear nonchalant as he strolled into the living room while struggling to remove the helmet. At last, he yanked it free. That sent his glasses flying across the room and careening off the wall.

  He smoothly retrieved them, sat down on the sofa, and looked about. The furniture was neat, but anonymous. Of the three lamps, two were in working order. The other’s shade was askew with a pile of glass beneath it. The rugs were pedestrian. The artwork, store-bought.

  It had to be a safe house where spies and traitors transacted business, where occasional violence took place, where the walls were bugged and tape recorders rolled in secret rooms. For a split second it occurred to him that this all might be slightly out of his league. Shoot. He could wing it.

  The curtains hung limp in the humid night air. It was even hotter inside than out.

  He blew a strand of sweaty hair off his nose and looked at her shapely figure as she leaned against the door and heaved her buns against it. The click of the door was tiny, but embarrassingly obvious.

  “So, you in the military?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “If that’s so,” he said, trying to keep the conversation on life-support, “why don’t you live on base?”

  “I do, except when I need to fraternize.” She moved toward him.

  “You mean this is a fraternity?” He looked around with mock incredulity.

  She set the broom aside and crossed her arms a meter away. “We like men.”

  “Same here. Ah, er, I mean, I like a good cigar now and then. That is with the fellahs, you know.” He decided to take advantage of the subject since she raised it. “That acquaintance of May’s, now he’s an interesting guy. Oh, he is her minder, right?”

  “No. It’s a little more serious than that.” She insinuated herself into the near end of the couch. “They’re engaged.”

  He wrenched his eyes off her and stared dumbfounded at the wall. Engaged? Brad sure could pick ’em. Poor guy, he’d be crushed. He couldn’t wait to tell him.

  “So, what’s your message?” she asked.

  “Message? Oh, that. I guess it doesn’t matter after all. But maybe I could ask a favor. Can I stay the night?”

  Jade burst into laughter.

  Chapter 11

  Brad jerked awake in the middle of the living room floor. His new best friend, Cheno, snored in his easy chair. A couple of beer cans lay crumpled by Brad’s side, and Oreo crumbs were everywhere.

  Outside it was still pitch black. He stretched his limbs and actually felt pretty good, if a little wasted.

  Sleep had been all he needed.

  The house smelled like dirty laundry. Shoot, no. That was him. He had to change shirts. Today for sure.

  He picked some of the larger crumbs off his chest, ate them, and reviewed in his mind everything about May that Investigator Sullivan had divulged in the hospital room.

  For one thing, her father was a prominent anthropologist in China. Now there was a fellow he’d like to meet. He had long hypothesized that early man might have gotten a kick-start in Asia. Then he lapsed into his habitual thoughts about his favorite topic: the origin of man.

  Louis Leakey and his family’s theories all pointed to Africa as the cradle of mankind. Other paleo-anthropologists followed suit as Darwinism was reduced to its purest form. Man descended directly from apes. And explorers fanned out around Africa looking for the missing link to prove it. It all seemed very simple, like a family tree in a high school textbook.

  But it turned out that history was not all that simple. No matter where one hunted in the world, one could find increasingly older bones of prehistoric man. One found them in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

  There were waves of humanoid creatures emerging from Africa, or so the theory went. They ended up dying out in various pockets around the world from Malaysia to Europe. Or new waves would interbreed with the older humanoids. There was crossbreeding going on like crazy in the past. Humans were doing it with anything that moved, as long as it could present its backside for sex and stand upright afterward. That created new deviations in genetic markers that could throw off scientists for decades. And without help from more advanced species, certain lines would have died out far quicker than they actually did.

  Okay, so even if the skull his stepfather supposedly “found” in North Dakota was authentic, all it did was predate all other hominid finds with large brain cases and vertical midfaces. What was the big deal? In another year or two, researchers would find an even older specimen. But just saying, for the sake of argument, that it was the oldest discovery scientists would ever make, he still didn’t trust Richter. Not for an instant.

  He had seen many deserts in his lifetime and had literally grown up with a trowel in one hand, digging for human remains in the sand-swept landscapes of Northern Africa and the cool soils of the Great Rift Valley.
His fingers could still feel the curve of the trowel’s handle. He was born to be an anthropologist, and his instincts told him that Richter’s theories were a pack of lies.

  Richter had gained his notoriety by playing up the America-centric theme. And the professor would ride that wave of historical ethnocentrism as far as it would take him.

  What did most of the so-called “experts” really know about early man? A bemused smile came to his lips. How much did they know about the Homo erectus found in the lower caves of Zhoukoudian near Beijing and how they related to the more advanced species in the upper caves? How could the fact escape them that hominids roamed China and Java 1.8 million years ago? And one mustn’t overlook the prevalence of Homo heidelbergensis spreading their seed throughout Europe and China half a million years ago. East Asia could easily be the birthplace of that branch of early man that became Homo sapiens.

  Of course, he’d never been to China. But he could ask May’s father for some inside information on Chinese dig sites.

  Now there was a pleasant thought: May, China, and anthropology all wrapped in one neat little bundle. Had his anonymous benefactor sent him the visa to help him solve a scientific mystery or to rescue May?

  Jade woke up with a start. She checked her alarm clock. It was 3:00 in the morning, so she slowly relaxed. A strange satisfaction had come over her, a kind of contentment she had never previously experienced after lovemaking.

  Just what was she doing? That stout Napoleon of a man would normally be the last sort she’d choose for her bed. And it wasn’t even in the line of duty. It was more of what Earl called a “love the one you’re with” attitude.

  She examined his face and listened to his heavy mouth-breathing. There was something infantile about it, yet strangely erotic. His thick glasses were uncomfortably wedged between his face and the pillow. Did he always sleep with them on? Or perhaps he didn’t have a chance to think about it and simply passed out wearing his glasses after their exhausting session. Or, maybe he just liked to watch.