Lost Friday Read online

  “Jail?” she said, her voice sounding quite raspy.

  “For my own protection,” I said, thinking her voice had this Tina Turner thing going on. I found myself getting a little stoked over it. “Where the hell have you been all night?”

  The Tina Turner thing suddenly disappeared. “If it’s any of your business, I… no wait. It is none of your business. This better have something to do with work, Pappas.” She paused. “What do you mean, for your own protection?”

  “Someone tried to kill me.”

  She paused again. “Too bad they weren’t successful. Who?”

  “Maybe you should come down here and find out.”

  A third pause, tiptoeing through the conversation. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Two reasons. First, because there’s a story in it. Second, they’re going to try again, and next time you and Romano are going down with me.”

  “Where exactly are you?”

  I told her and hung up, then yelled to one of the officers outside, “You guys got a mirror in here?”

  * * * * *

  I looked at my reflection and scared myself. I hitched a ride home with one of Roy’s men to take a shower, getting the message that I wasn’t to leave town or Roy was going to lock my ass up and throw away the key.

  “He can’t do that,” I said.

  “He knew you’d say that,” Officer Kaplan answered, “and he said, ‘Sue me.’”

  The ’Vette was parked in my driveway, just as it was the first time I’d lived through the Thursday before Lost Friday, and I remembered once again that Murph’s bachelor party was scheduled for tonight. On the streets, people seemed to be going about their normal business, completely oblivious to the fact that within hours they were going to be kidnapped 190 years into the future. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, nor was there anything I could do to alert them. I mean, who would believe me? Hence, preventing David Robelle from being abducted by the Red Diamond became even more relevant. I also understood why today was picked as the day to do that, as opposed to going back further in time and preventing David from getting involved with his formulas in the first place. My guess was that by today, he’d already discovered that the scientists were missing, and knew he had to protect his work, or possibly even destroy it, so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. In turn, that meant that he’d already been in contact with the Red Diamond, and the ICTO boys knew that. Sly devils, those ICTO boys. They didn’t want to stop the invention of time travel—because they had it. What they wanted was to control it, and prevent the Red Diamond from having it. The reasons for that could go from altruistic to evil, and suddenly I didn’t know what to believe. For all I knew, the ICTO was another genocidal, geo-political force, and I was being manipulated like a marionette.

  Someone knocked on my door as I stepped from the shower. I wrapped a towel around my waist, and hesitated before opening it. I mean, I’d already been shot at, and the notion of standing naked in my living room without police protection was less than comforting.

  Remington took one look at me when I opened the door, and said, “Could you go and put some damned clothes on?” I noticed, however, that her eyes lingered before she looked away. I came back in a pair of jeans, but shirtless, drying my hair with a towel. She came right to the point.

  “You said someone tried to kill you.”

  “Four of them.” I think she was eyeing my chest. I’d never seen Remington that early in the morning, and certainly not without makeup, but seeing her standing there in her Northwestern sweatshirt, I couldn’t help but tingle at the fact that we were just a few feet from my bedroom, and a couple of layers of fabric away from Naked Land.

  “Them who?” she asked, distracting me from my prurient thoughts.

  She had this tousled, thrown-together groove happening, which was making me as nuts as the Tina Turner thing. I kind of flexed as I dragged the towel across my head, hoping the replica of myself that I was, was as good as the original. “I think it’s the Red Diamond.”

  “Okay, Pappas. If this was some ruse just to get me here….”

  I moved closer and met her eyes, those deep, blue, icy eyes. “This is no ruse, Remington. Four people tried to kill me last night, and….” I stopped. Like everyone else, I knew she’d never believe me. “Maybe it’s better if you just come with me. I’ll explain everything on the way.” I suddenly heard a commotion outside my back door, then a crash, which meant someone probably knocked over my barbeque grill, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Quickly, I pushed Remington to the floor, wishing I had more in the house to protect myself than a can of bug spray.

  “Johnny! Are you up there?”

  It sounded like Roy. What the…? I ran to the back door and looked down into the patio area, as my place was on the second floor. There, face down and spread out like a squashed bug, was Aryeh. Roy was on top of him, one knee in Aryeh’s back, and his pistol in Aryeh’s ear.

  “You know this guy?” Roy asked as I hustled down the stairs.

  Aryeh grimaced in pain, his arm twisted so far up his back that his shoulder had to be unhinged. “That’s Aryeh,” I said, actually surprised that the tables weren’t turned and Aryeh wasn’t on top of Roy. That Roy never ceased to amaze me.

  Keeping Aryeh’s elbow wedged on his shoulder blade, Roy reached into his back and came up with a pair of handcuffs. “Then what’s he doing snooping around like a goddamned burglar?”

  “I’ll answer that when you tell me why you’re doing the same thing,” I said to Roy. I looked back up at Remington, who’d made it to the landing. I couldn’t tell if she was scared, or not, but she certainly had that slapped-in-the-face-with-a-shovel look.

  Yanking a now handcuffed Aryeh up like a rag doll, Roy said, “I was coming to get you and saw this guy nosing around when I drove up. The four dead people?”

  “Yeah?” I said, looking at Remington again and seeing that she was paying attention.

  “I got their DNA tests pushed through.”

  “And?”

  “Outside of being male and female, all four of them have the same DNA.”

  Abruptly, in a flash of movement, Roy was on the ground and Aryeh was whipping around like a circus acrobat, the chain on his handcuffs suddenly around Roy’s neck. “I could have told you that,” Aryeh growled, squeezing so hard that Roy’s eyes were bugging out of his head. I couldn’t help but notice that Aryeh’s arms were laced with sinews. “Please put the gun down,” Aryeh said.

  Roy lowered his weapon, and Aryeh released his grip. Both men got up and stared at each other, seething as they worked to get their bodies back to normal.

  “So you’re Aryeh,” Roy said, rubbing his neck.

  Aryeh said, “Yes, I am.”

  Roy belted him in the head and Aryeh went down like a stone. “Welcome to Sea Beach.”

  * * * * *

  Looking at the four bodies, I now questioned my observations in the week following the original Lost Friday. My coded Barbie note following my second abduction made sense in that I’d obviously seen one during that episode, but I realized now that it may not have been the same one who’d broken into my apartment. Likewise, the one I’d observed at Demetrius’s diner, and the one who’d jogged past Roy and me on our trip to Scott Reemer’s house, may not have been the same person, which, looking back on those situations, is what I had assumed. Now, putting those occurrences in perspective with the two dead Barbies in front of me, it seemed pretty clear that we’d been infiltrated by a number of them. Looking at the two dead Ken Dolls, the same was probably true of them as well. Of course, to me, a live Barbie with a tiny ass and knockers out to there was a lot more noticeable than an Aryan-looking Ken Doll, of which a thousand could have walked past me in the days surrounding Lost Friday and I wouldn’t have picked up on it. Hence, the question was: how many of them were there? “A super race of genetically-engineered and mentally-brainwashed human slaves,�
� I said aloud.

  We were in the county morgue in Toms River, we being me, Roy, Remington, and Aryeh, the four of us a rag-tag bunch that could easily have come off as hung over trailer-park trash. There wasn’t a clear eye in the bunch.

  “Super race indeed,” Aryeh scoffed.

  I’d explained about Aryeh to Roy and Remington on the ride over. Of course, that necessitated explaining Lost Friday again, and while Roy barely said anything, I could tell by the look on Remington’s face that she thought maybe I’d been smoking crack. Both of them had reason to pause, however. One reason was the fact that the four bodies in front of us had the exact same DNA. Sure, one explanation was that we could have been looking at two sets of identical twins, but we weren’t.

  “Then how else do you explain it?” Roy asked.

  Not missing a beat, Aryeh said, “Each model comes from engineered eggs and sperm of human origin, synthetically reproduced, fertilized, and incubated. The Red Diamond is raising its own race of super-humans, while simultaneously exterminating those thought to be of lesser value.”

  Looking at Roy’s expression, I figured he was having a hard time with that. One thing he did admit, however, was that he was totally mystified about the weapons found at the crime scene the previous night. The same went for the ammunition. We’d ridden over in one of the boro squad cars, and on the way Roy had gotten a call informing him that none of the weapons could be fired. He also revealed that his research with the state police, the gun manufacturer, the FBI, and ATF turned up nothing except snide, disbelieving comments that the technology he and his men were asking about simply didn’t exist.

  Standing there, I surmised there was no way of telling how many Red Diamond operatives had been sent back, despite the supposed fact that they only had one ITD. Certainly, if the ITD worked off specific DNA, which I was told by Vishal that it did, having multiple operatives with the same DNA could multiply its effectiveness. Many more of them could be used to accomplish the mission, which was to kidnap David Robelle so he could give them the ITD technology, which we were now here to prevent. Talk about your merry-go-round.

  After a while, I could tell that Roy was getting closer to believing that the unbelievable was happening. He didn’t say much, but, hey, I’m a reporter, and if there’s anything I knew, it was how to read people. With Roy, I was reading that he wanted a more rational explanation, but Roy was a cop, and cops went where the evidence pointed.

  For Remington, on the other hand, it was a different story. I mean, if I couldn’t get her to believe this—this being Lost Friday and all its related happenings—she was like lips on a chicken to me, as in useless. “I don’t know what to think,” she verified, “and I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  I put on my sincerest face and put my hand on her shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t think it was just another come-on. “You’re here because you and I partner up on this story after Lost Friday takes place. I know it sounds a little fantastic—”

  “More than a little,” she interjected.

  “Okay, more than a little, but your part of the story is even more fantastic.”

  “More fantastic than futuristic terrorists traveling back through time?” she said doubtfully.

  I hesitated, but figured I had nothing to lose by telling her everything. The worst that could happen here would be that Aryeh and I would have to zap ourselves back another day or two, or perhaps another decade or two, and come at this from another angle. If that happened, this conversation would be meaningless. “Your part in this is that you broke the story that the president is one of them.”

  “Them?”

  “The Red Diamond. In exchange for allowing them to come back and alter history, they alter it in his favor. He stays in power, and they sow the political seeds that lead to the formation of their organization.”

  She stepped back and glanced at Roy and Aryeh, who were caught up in their own muted conversation across the room. “I broke that story?”

  “You did, and as a result, you, me, and Romano all drown on the night of the company Christmas party.”

  “How…? I mean, why…?” Mouth open, she couldn’t get the rest out.

  “The president put a hit on us, and our car is forced off a bridge by a couple of Secret Service agents. I’m not b-s’ing you on this, Remington. It’s your story that eventually brings down the president.” There, I’d just given the story away, but none of this would matter because if I was successful in doing what Vishal and Aryeh wanted me to do—which was getting David Robelle to not make his discoveries—none of this would happen. “If you want to prevent that car from going off that bridge, you’ll work with me here.” If that didn’t cement it, nothing would.

  “This is for real?” she asked/concluded.

  “It is, and Lost Friday is about to happen all over again.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Romano needs a story by noon. Here’s what I want you to write.”

  Chapter 25… Violating History

  I knew something was wrong as soon as she answered the phone. “So what did Romano say about the story?” I asked tentatively.

  “I’ll tell you what he said, Pappas. First he cursed a blue streak, then he told me to stay home and think about what else I wanted to be when I grew up because being a reporter might not work out for me.”

  Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good.

  “He suspended me, Pappas. Two days for going off my assignment.”

  “Uuuhhh….”

  “Save it, okay? I’ve heard enough bullshit today.”

  All I could think of was that I was already changing history. Every minute that I was breathing air I’d already breathed was changing the linkage of events as they’d occurred the first time around. The only way to insure that what had happened before, would happen again, was to repeat those events as closely as possible to how they had originally transpired. For all I knew, not buying a pack of gum could set off a bankruptcy filing on the part of the gum company, which would cause a bank to fail, which would spur an economic downturn, which would lead to a depression, causing our military to weaken, which would invite an invasion, our eventual takeover, and the subjugation of our entire population to slavery. No pressure.

  “I don’t think you’re far behind,” Remington went on. “Romano’s pretty pissed. Says he’s been calling your cell phone for hours.”

  Could be, I thought. I still had no idea where my cell phone was, and, knowing Romano, he was probably so livid that he was vibrating with each unanswered ring. “But what about the story?” I asked again.

  “He said the Press wasn’t the National Enquirer, and it wasn’t in the business of making unsubstantiated accusations about the president being controlled by aliens.”

  “Not aliens,” I defended. “Terrorists from the future.”

  “Who cares? All that nonsense about bringing down the president…. You screwed me over, Pappas. I can’t believe I fell for that crap.”

  “Wait,” I begged before she hung up. Without Remington, the story might never come out. I mean, as far as I knew, I had three months until I bought the farm off that bridge with her and Romano, but that was hardly a lock. It could happen sooner—the dead Barbies and Ken Dolls proved that—much sooner if the Red Diamond knew where I was, and what I was up to, especially with Roy having planted that little white lie with Allison Kovar and Scott Reemer about me knowing who their leader was. I couldn’t risk it. I needed things back the way they were, and Remington back on the story as soon as possible. Then, I thought: I was jumping the gun. Remington didn’t get on the story until three days after the original Lost Friday, which meant I had time to correct things.

  “About the story, do you still have it on your computer?”

  “And on CD back up, Pappas. Normal procedure.”

  “Good. With the original save date, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “T
hen don’t change a thing, or overwrite it. I need you to leave that CD on my desk.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Meanwhile, what are you doing tonight?”

  Hesitation on the line. “Same thing as last night.”

  “Which was none of my business, as I recall.” She was hiding something.

  “That’s right, Pappas, and you’ll keep it that way if you know what’s good for you.”

  Right. “Are you really going to walk away from this story, or are you just pissed off at Romano?”

  More hesitation. “You’re such a jerk.”

  “Now what?”

  “Four dead Aryans with identical DNA, weapons that can’t be fired because the technology that created them hasn’t been invented yet, futuristic terrorists coming back to kidnap an entire town—sure, I’m going to walk away from all that.

  “A simple no would have sufficed.”

  “You better not be jerking me around, Pappas. If it doesn’t happen the way you say, I’m taking you down with me.”

  I could think of worse things than going down with Kelli Remington.

  * * * * *

  I tried to think of what my dad would have done. I mean, it’s easy to think you’re as good as anyone, or that others were just lucky in their journalistic careers. Take Watergate, for instance. Woodward and Bernstein stumbled onto that story, and while going forward with it was an act of faith, it wasn’t in the realm of the parting of the Red Sea. The events that comprised that piece of history were traceable to tangible occurrences, and as such it came down to one basic question, one that Woodward and Bernstein must have asked themselves a thousand times: Do we trust our source? Lost Friday was different, much more like the parting of the Red Sea in that the event was observed but not understood, and, as such, fraught with distrust and conjecture. Then, there was the writing itself. I had to ask: Am I good enough to take on this story? Do my words and images spring to life the way Woodward’s and Bernstein’s did, so that my readers live through the story rather than just read it? If I had to answer all those questions honestly, I’d say that with regards to trusting my sources, well, how do you trust the unbelievable? The incentive for forging ahead on Lost Friday was based more on the lack of a better explanation than trust, and I think my dad would have said to trust no one, and to move forward cautiously. So, that’s what I decided to do.