Disclaimer: I really get tired of these. Doesn't Marvel already know what they own? Or is it a power trip to have all these little fan fic writers bowing at their feet, telling the world who owns these characters? Lousy bureaucrats...
READ ME: Because all of this takes place in my own little universe (I like to call it the Land of Bounty for some reason) I would like to state FIRMLY so that no one tries to lecture me:
I'm writing my own history here.
Chapter Three
Out of Practice
Another hour, Bookie figured to himself, before he should leave for McCoy's office. The slip of paper that held all the information he need on McCoy was burning a hole through his wallet.
I can't feel my lower body, Bookie thought as he hoisted another heavy record book onto the table. After one mind numbing morning of looking at book after book after book (he hated reading; imagine the irony in that), he would be grateful to never see the inside of a library again.
Not to mention, he hated to admit, he hadn't learned a thing. Which really set him off. Wasting time was not a big deal to Bookie, as long as he was wasting someone else's. He definitely had a problem with throwing away his own.
First of all, he had no idea how to research something that, according to many sources, hadn't existed in the first place. Like, for example, the X-Men. Aside from useless newspaper clippings and one entry in some nameless encyclopaedia, Bookie had very little to go on.
No, less than that. He had nothing.
And now he was going to interview this McCoy guy who, by virtue, knew more than Bookie could ever find in this crummy little library storeroom. It just made him mad.
His head sunk down to the cool of the table, and soon he wrapped his hands around his face, trying to rub the ache out of his bleary eyes. Now he had a headache, as icing on his cake.
In another hour, he'd meet Henry McCoy, for reasons he didn't understand. In fact, Bookie was quickly forgetting what had caused him to search for McCoy in the first place.
Oh, but then he remembered. It was a gut feeling. A gut feeling. How reliable. He couldn't even believe himself.
He closed his eyes and tried for the first time to try a new approach. A more...personal one.
What did HE remember?
Not much. He had grown out of the novelty of super powers and heroes that saved the day soon after he turned eight. By the time the X-Men were on the scene, he'd been in junior high, and too worried about homework and Tara Wilson (his unrequited first love) to pay much attention to the six o'clock news. And everyone knew that the six o'clock news was for old people to watch while their stomachs 'digested'.
Bookie wished he had a better connection to the X-Men. Like, watching them appear on the six o'clock news was what inspired him to divulge into journalism years later, hoping someday an opportunity just like this one would arise. Or that his older brother had been rescued by the noble heroes, so he in turn accepted this job as a way to repay them. Or that the dreams of someday being like them was what had gotten him though those sleepless nights while his parents fought in the next room.
But, no. He had watched the six o'clock news six times in his memory, usually just to catch the scores. His older brother had been a football player who never needed saving. His parents were still head over heel for each other, and still went out to dinner every year on their anniversary to recreate their first date.
The X-Men -whatever it was they had been- were being discovered (and not very successfully) by Bookie as he went along. He had no more interest in them than he had to.
He had code names. He had 'super powers'. He had blurry, outdated photos. He had nothing real.
Nothing real.
He couldn't help but feel out of place in the elevator.
For one thing, Bookie was surrounded by important looking people, either in white (spotless) coats, or expensive (or at least expensive looking) business suits. Plus, he wasn't entirely sure (he was no expert), but it sure sounded like Beethoven drifting down from the speaker in the corner. And everything was so shiny...
Not to mention the fact no one was saying a freakin' word.
He carefully concentrated on watching the floors tick by as they went up, because that way he could ignore the stares the other people were sneaking. He could, honestly, understand why. Here he was, attempting to disappear, all the while standing out, dressed in a beat up looking brown blazer, and shoes that hadn't seen polish, well, ever. In one hand, he dangled his portable recorder, and in the other, a worn notebook and his best (um, only) pen.
He nodded politely to the woman who was not so subtle in her stares. She returned his acknowledgement with an amused smirk.
When he clicked onto his floor, he pushed through the crowd and waited impatiently as the doors decided to open. It must have looked great to the guys behind him when he practically spilled onto the floor.
Not bothering to recover his already lost dignity, Bookie glanced around the lobby before him, then down at the torn slip of paper in his hands. Once more, he glanced over the information.
He'd have to trust Wesley on this one. For all Bookie knew, his old buddy was sending him into the lion's den.
Or at least to a fake address.
Bookie tried to remember the brief conversation he'd had with Wes the week before. He had been in a hurry to meet a girl downstairs and barely paid the guy any mind.
'Listen, Bookie, man,' Wesley had said in that nasally voice of his. 'This guy McCoy is some kinda biochemist. Smart shit, man. Word is he's gonna be up for the Nobel in-'
'Prize?' Bookie interrupted, the mention of the word sharpening his attention.
'Yes, Bookie, as in prize.' Wes scoffed over the phone, which came off as more of a cough. 'Anyway, he's spent years workin' on that Legacy virus. I think he gave that up, though.'
'Fantastic,' Bookie had muttered, pocketing the address he had scribbled in haste. 'Now, look, I got somebody downstairs, so...'
'Right. Well, I hope I've been of assistance,' Wes offered dryly, obviously feeling he had gotten the fuzzy end of this lollipop.
'No, really, Wes, I owe you a million. Anytime you need somethin', call me.'
'Now that you mention it...'
'Not now, Wes. Talk to ya later.' Bookie hung up the phone and took off downstairs.
And now, here in was, in beautiful downtown Dayton, Ohio. He'd never been to Ohio before, let alone Dayton. He was quickly beginning to dislike any city outside of Chicago.
Bookie swung open the doors of Larkville Biological Conventions cautiously, as if the hinges might snap if he got too eager. The place was as quiet as a tomb, excluding the constant tittering of the secretary's keyboard.
Bookie glanced around the smaller lobby that was encased on the other side of the glass doors. A few chairs, a coffee table. Plants. The walls were pale blue and the carpets were white. Average lobby stuff. There was the receptionist's desk (or maybe it was a secretary, he didn't care). The place was as spotless as the rest of the building. Immaculate.
Bookie stepped forward and cleared his throat softly, in case any loud noise would knock the walls off the place.
It took the girl at the desk a few seconds to look up and acknowledge his presence. She had a pretty face. "May I help you?"
"I'm here to see Dr. McCoy?"
She held back her smile pretty well. "Is he expecting you?" Which, Bookie knew, was the polite way of saying 'In your dreams, paperboy'.
"I do believe so. Bookie Johnson. I called ahead."
The brunette with the shining curls stood up, carrying a few manila envelopes. "I'll just let him know you're here, Mr. Johnson. Take a seat."
Bookie didn't bother to sit down. She was back a few minutes later, still holding the envelopes.
"Dr. McCoy is in a meeting right now-"
"I can wait."
The girl seemed as if she was expecting that answer and pointed down a hallway. "I can show you to his office if you'd care to wait there." He nodded, and was led to a rather large, rather sparse room. There were plenty of awards and certificates adorning the walls, but nothing personal-like. For cryin' out loud, even Bookie had a picture of his mother on his desk. But not this room. Not one personal token or picture.
"He won't be too long," the secretary promised, just before she left, shutting the door behind her.
Forty five minutes later, the door behind Bookie squeaked open. He turned to watch a large man lumber in, wearing a spotless white coat similar to those he'd seen in the elevator.
"A thousand apologies to keep you waiting," the man said immediately, shrugging off the lab coat and revealing the blue suit underneath. "Some things can't be helped."
Bookie extended his hand. "Dr. McCoy?"
The doctor graciously took the extended handshake. "Yes, yes. You must be...?"
"Bookie Johnson. From the Chicago Advocate. We spoke briefly, on the phone? Last week?"
"Oh ,yes. Yes, of course." He moved around his desk to sit at the chair. "Please, take a seat." Bookie obliged. "Did Katherine offer you anything? Coffee? Water?"
"Nah, I'm fine," Bookie insisted, waving off the offer. "Pretty long meeting."
Dr. McCoy smiled widely. "Around here, we don't call them meetings." He slipped off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. "We don't call them much of anything else, but they certainly aren't meetings of the traditional sense."
Bookie nodded as if he had the slightest clue of what the man was talking about.
McCoy must have noticed the pen and paper poised in Bookie's hand and abruptly remembered why the man had come here. "Well, Mr. Johnson, considering I've already swallowed up a great deal of your afternoon, why don't we disperse with the common pleasantries and get right to the business at hand?"
"Sounds good to me." Bookie pulled his recorder from his jacket pocket. "I'm assuming you know the reason I'm here, then?"
"You were rather vague on the phone, but I was hoping it had something to do with our extensive research on the molecular interest in particles brought back from Mars," he murmured as he polished his glasses with a soft cloth. "But I greatly doubt that."
"You're a smart guy."
McCoy smiled slightly. "Well, I like to think so."
"I am here," Bookie started, pressing the record button on his tape player. "On a quest for truth."
McCoy nodded slowly. "Charles Xavier."
"A very smart guy."
"Allow me to extend congratulations," McCoy said in a wry tone, tapping his fingers in a methodical melody on the desk. "You're the first in a long time."
Bookie tried to ignore the underlying message in his voice and cheerfully smiled (smiling tended to get you out of a pinch). "Shall we begin?" he asked, setting the small recorder on the desk before him with a quiet metallic click.
McCoy motioned his hand in the air, "By all means."
Now what, Bookie pursued to himself. He hated this part of the job. Not to mention he'd been out of practice for a long time. Certainly you couldn't call a generic interview with a stadium technician practice for this. It was his first real, uh, grown up interview in a good long time.
"How did you come to know Charles Xavier?" Yeah, that was it. A nice, safe question to start off with. After all, Bookie wasn't here to find out about McCoy; that he could learn later. He was here on a mission (at least, that was what he liked to tell himself).
"I was his pupil, at the private school he founded." Bookie, being a master at human behaviour, could tell from his curt tone he'd been asked that question a million times, and had probably provided the same answer each occasion.
"At Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"And how long did you attend the School?" Oh yeah, he thought to himself, THIS was going well.
"Oh, for the better part of my youth. I stayed on afterwards, to help with the newer recruits, for a little while, before I moved on to other things."
"You called students recruits?"
McCoy seemed to gradually realize his apparent error. "Yes, well, you see, we were never really a school of traditional means. Our student body at one time rarely exceeded into the double digits."
Bookie muttered a thoughtful sounding "I see" and nodded solemnly. He had no idea what the guy was talking about. He also had little clue to how to lead the conversation to where he wanted it to go. "Please, go on."
"Well," McCoy obliged , not originally intending to say much more. "Any student that we accepted had to meet certain criteria. The program consisted of extensive study in various fields, and required intensive drive and dedication."
"So, not just anybody got in?"
"Precisely. Rather, we went looking for candidates, instead of waiting for them to come to us."
"So, you were sort of a teacher there, huh?"
"No," he said quickly and harshly. "Charles was the teacher, always the teacher. Everyone around him constantly learned from him. I was never sure if he intended that, or if it was simply in his nature."
"So, I take it so have a great respect for him?"
"Who?"
"Xavier."
"Oh, yes. It was under his tutelage that I completed my doctoral studies. I always felt he judged you only by your potential, nothing more. And he could encourage you, no, force you to achieve your potential. I owe him a great deal."
Was it just him, or did these answers sound rehearsed? Bookie blinked off his annoyance (it was mostly with himself, anyway) and tried another angle. "The papers...they always described you as a close associate of Xavier. Care to elaborate?"
"Charles and I, we were partners of sorts."
"In what sense? Business?"
"No, partners in science. Partners in knowledge, even. Charles, you see, would have the brilliant ideas, and I would be the one to carry them out. He was an intellectual, I, merely the scientist."
"And when you say brilliant ideas, you mean...?"
"Well, to stay out of technical waters, all our experiments usually dealt with the matter of genetic mutation, the kind that evolves into home-superior. He had an incredible mind. Yes, in so many ways, he was brilliant."
Alright, enough of that. "You liked it there? At the School, I mean."
"Yes, very much. I spent many of the best years of my life there."
"This probably isn't a big surprise to you," he began slowly. "But not much information about the School is just floating around, for anybody to snatch up. Well, nothing besides what your Xavier guy wanted everyone to think."
"Well, Charles conducted every matter about the School just as he saw fit."
"So my next question would be about the School itself. What is it that you did that seemed to need so much secrecy?"
"Secrecy is a strong word, Mr. Johnson. Perhaps discretion is a better choice." He smiled. "But, to answer your question, it was a school. We learned."
A real chatterbox, this one. "Did you have any idea about his other life?"
McCoy seemed genuinely dumbfounded. "Which 'other life' would that be, Mr. Johnson?"
"Well, I'm not sure if the news reached you," he replied carefully, "but it came out that Xavier had been the head of the X-Men."
"The head?"
"Yup, the boss. He, as far as we can tell, paid the expenses, housed the whole lot of them, and cut some political strings when necessary."
"I see."
"Did you have any idea? I mean, you lived there for a time."
"Well," began McCoy, laying both hands in front of him on the desk. "I had some inkling."
"So, you were aware of the X-Men?"
"Of their existence, of course. I'm sure I even met them on a few occasions."
"But, what? You can't be sure?"
"These days, there's little I am sure of."
"What about your fellow students?"
"What about them?"
Bookie had no idea what about them he wanted to know.
McCoy clicked his tongue. "It seems well advised to do your homework, Mr. Johnson."
"I'd be glad to, Dr. McCoy, but it's quite hard to do when that information doesn't seem to exist."
McCoy was silent for a beat. "Five. There were only five of us in the beginning."
"I see." Bookie didn't care to press his luck. "Did they have knowledge of Xavier's association with-"
"Perhaps. But then again, why would I speak for them?"
Well, Bookie thought, at least he hasn't used the old 'no comment' bit yet. There was still hope. "Did it ever seem odd to you that so much of last years of his life revolved around the issue of mutant rights? Did you ever wonder why a human would devote such energy to a cause that didn't directly involve him?"
"I'm sure the man had his reasons. Surely you can't balk the justice in allowing such hatred continue?" McCoy leaned forward on his desk. "He was consumed by the debate for most of his life, actually. His support only became public in the few years before he died."
"Did you ever believe that maybe, he was killed because of his stand on the issue?"
"I have little doubt in my mind."
"But the police were never able to recover much of a case, were they?"
McCoy's jaw tightened. "The entire matter was handled poorly. First of all, security at the event was disastrous. Obviously, they should have anticipated such a disturbance at such a high-profile event."
"Did you ever have any suspicions that prejudice had anything to do with the Xavier Assassination to go unsolved?"
"Prejudice?"
"Xavier associated publicly with mutants. There are a lot of people who don't like that."
"Point taken. I suppose that a member of some sort of anti-mutant league could have executed it, but for some reason...I don't think so."
"Why is that?"
"It's unlike them."
"Then who?"
"Well, I've always suspected someone closer...perhaps a former associate of Charles."
"What possible reason could anyone have to kill him, in that case?"
"Think of the great murders of our time, Mr. Johnson. Caesar. Lincoln. King. And what did they all have in common? Jealousy and power."
"You believe it was attempt on someone's part to gain power?"
"Again, it is only my own suspicions."
"What about the night Charles was murdered?"
"I wasn't in attendance. I was actually supposed to give a short speech, but I had to decline at the last minute."
"When did you find out?"
"A friend," he sighed, rubbing his chin with a large hand, "called me that evening. She was in terrible shape. I knew something was wrong the moment I picked up the phone."
"And the next week..."
McCoy solemnly closed his eyes. "The next week was the memorial. Surprisingly, we managed to keep it rather low key. The funeral, on the other hand, was anything but small. They turned out in droves."
"And what was it like for you, afterwards?"
"Well, admittedly, some of my colleagues had a harder time coping than I. I've had to say goodbye more than once in my life. You could say I've gotten used to it."
Bookie used his pencil to scratch behind ear, once again faking flipping through his notes.
"May I be blunt, Dr. McCoy?"
"Within reason, Mr. Johnson."
He glanced up at the man behind the desk, staring calmly at Bookie while waiting for his next question. If he wasn't planning to co-operate, why had he bothered to okay the interview? Not that it was shaping up to be much of a scoop.
"Why was Charles Xavier killed?"
McCoy broke the eye contact he'd had going with Bookie.
"For what he was, and especially, what he wasn't."
The phone beeped insistently to his right, and the good doctor promptly excused himself, and turned his seat so Bookie could not hear the conversation.
Bookie took the time to study this Henry McCoy, this doctor of science. He was a big guy, Bookie knew that the second he walked in. Unusually large hands as well. Well spoken, well versed, well dressed. But there was something nagging at the back of Bookie's mind...
"Mr. Johnson?"
Bookie snapped back to reality. "Yes?"
"I apologize, but I'm needed desperately downstairs. Perhaps we could continue this another time?"
Right, just what he was hoping for. "Of course," he lied.
"I hope I've been of some help to you. I..." he trailed off, his eyes wandering to a corner on his desk. He stood there, paralyzed in the position for a moment, and Bookie actually saw the idea click in his head.
McCoy reached over and slid his Rolodex over, poking through it in a wild fever. After a few spins, he plucked out a small rectangular card.
"I'm giving you the number of a man who lives in New York," he said as he briefly studied the card, most likely debating the wisdom of this gesture. He straightened and stalked over to where Bookie sat patiently. "He may be a tad more willing than I to help your cause. If not, I can do nothing else for you," McCoy said earnestly, dangling the card a few inches from Bookie's nose.
He continued, quickly summing up. "I'll contact him myself, so you call his offices within a week or two. He's an old, old friend of mine," he pressed the card into Bookie's hand, and for the first time he noticed the bulky, clunky looking watch on his large wrist. "If you're really looking for truth, Mr. Johnson, I hope you find it."
Within moments had slid into his spotless lab coat again. "If you'll excuse me now, my duty awaits me." Bookie stood as he headed to the door. "Just let Katherine know where you're ready to leave, she'll buzz you out."
Henry McCoy stopped in the hallway, and turned to face his office. "Goodbye, Mr. Johnson. I pray you find whatever its is you're looking for."
Bookie left the diner with his stomach still relatively empty. There wasn't a good place to eat for miles around his hotel, and he was the one to suffer. He was starving.
It was a short walk back to where he was staying. He was tempted to change rooms, the one he was in now being an awful location next to awful neighbours. But he didn't bother. He'd be out of here soon.
That is if McCoy ever decided to get back to him. He'd taken extra precautions, and left his hotel and room number with the cute secretary. But a week and a few days had passed with no answer, nothing at all. And it wasn't like Bookie had anything better to do with his time. He was getting annoyed.
He walked through the lobby, noticing it was slightly busier than usual. Instead of checking the desk for messages like he did twice a day, he figured he'd go without. It was such a pain to ask for messages day in and out and get the same answer: no.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and spun around. The clerk was standing a few feet behind him.
"Mr Johnson?"
Bookie nodded and glanced around the area. "Yeah, that's me."
"You didn't check your messages like usual, sir." The clerk held up a white slip of paper. "This came in this afternoon, sir."
Bookie's eyes grazed the piece of paper before he grinned. "Thanks," he said to the guy, grabbing it from his hands and speeding of to the elevator. "You made my day."
An hour later, after ordering from the crummy room service and digging out his trusty notebook, Bookie carefully punched in the ridiculous amount of numbers before it rang. After what seemed like forever, there was a voice on the other end.
"Hello?"
"Uh, Mr. Worthington, please?"
Me Again: Go ahead, GUESS what I want to know.
