Chapter Five
Mulder's Room, The Regency Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts
April 1st, 1999, 8:00 a.m.
"Mulder, are you awake? Mulder?" Scully gently rapped on his door twice. A distant groan immediately informed her of his presence and seconds later, he opened his door dressed in little more than a pair of boxers and a robe hanging wide open. "Hey, what happened to you last night?" She started to close his robe for him but winced once she smelled the stench of alcohol on his breath. "Never mind," she sighed and backed away.
"Scully, wait. Don't go, wait." He glanced downward, covered himself, and ushered her inside. Scully warily trudged in and swept her eyes around the room.
"Your bed's made. Where were you last night?"
"I can't remember, that's the problem. I mean, I remember driving and going to a pub, but until this morning, my memory's full of holes."
"Yeah, alcohol under a large consumption rate can do that," she replied tartly. "Where's your gun?"
"Um..." He staggered around the bedroom for a moment until he located his overcoat and let her inspect it until she was satisfied. Mulder's gaze went from her examination to his bedside table. "I'm sorry that I chickened out on you."
"Mulder, Skinner called...last night. I lied to him--again--for you. I can't believe you'd be foolish enough to do something this irresponsible." Or this selfish, she thought.
"I had every intention of coming back to you, Scully. Honestly, I did. I went for just one drink, or at least, I thought I did." Her righteous skepticism grew by the volumes as he frantically searched for some kind of proof to placate his guilt. "Look, if I were truly that drunk last night, do you think I'd have remembered how to plug my phone in and charge it last night?" He picked up the cell phone and shook it in her direction.
"Well, you have me there." Just as she was about to sit down, he held the phone up to his ear.
"You have a new voice message. Press 1 to listen," the computerized voice instructed him.
As soon as he heard the caller's voice, he cringed and swallowed a lump the size of a tangerine down his throat. "Mulder, what's the matter?" Scully inquired with a cautious eyebrow.
"You called me six times last night. I'm sorry, Scully, I...-hang on a second." His left hand began to scrape his cheek nervously, and as soon as one fingernail crept into his mouth, she knew something was not right. "Oh, no, I didn't..." he murmured in denial as he listened to the message. "I would've remembered that..."
"What the hell is going on, Mulder?" He padded over to the couch and plopped down onto it while rubbing his hand onto the leg. Scully pursued him and gave him a suspicious, icy glare. "Mulder?" Her tongue forked itself over her top lip with indignation as she waited for him to finish.
"Okay...now...ah...this is hard," he stammered and plugged the phone back into the power adapter. "Scully, you're a doctor, what's the best cure for a hangover?"
"Are you looking for a quick fix or something to actually help your health?"
"Well, for now, a quickie."
"All right. Just wait right there." She plowed her way through Mulder's mess of clothes strewn about the room to the phone and ordered a few items from room service. "While we're waiting, you can now inform me of what you were trying to avoid discussing before you changed the topic."
"Ah...let's just say that I found out where I was between now and the pub last night. And it wasn't detrimental to my health."
"Not detrimental...-" she repeated the words, perplexed, and bent over to pick up his dress shirt. As soon as she brought the article of clothing to her nose, her jaw began to quiver back and forth. Silence was one of the worst terrors he feared coming from Scully--and he was experiencing it in full thrust as she let the shirt drop to the floor with disgust.
"Now, please, Scully...please...it was hard enough trying to remember it, let alone tell you," he pleaded as she began to stride towards his door and opened it. The attendant was frozen in place as he was just about to knock and then came inside to set the tray of ingredients onto the coffee table. "I'll...just come back later for your signature, sir," he mumbled embarrassingly and shut the door quickly behind him.
"I know who it was, so don't even bother," she barked and commenced to combine the black pepper, egg yolk, cayenne pepper, brandy, and water together. "Drink this all the way down, and I'll meet you in the car in twenty minutes. We have an appointment with SAC Lucas Pendleton at nine."
"You're being irrational, Scully. Now just hang on, let's think this situation through."
"We'll discuss your character flaws later, Mulder. For now, just drink the goddamned drink and get dressed," Scully commanded him and slammed the door shut on her way out.
FBI Field Office, Boston, Massachusetts
April 1st, 1999, 9:05 a.m.
"Special Agents Scully and Mulder. I believe there's a fax here for us care of AD Skinner from D.C." The executive assistant arose from his chair after Scully showed him her badge and nodded. As he returned to his seat and handed her the papers, she held up her hand. "I...we also are here to see SAC Pendleton."
"He's on the phone right now, Agents. Please sit. He'll be right with you," the man responded coolly, and Mulder took his suggestion while Scully stood studying the photos.
"Of course today you'd wear my favorite suit," Mulder muttered and as her head snapped around with a bitter stare, he let his head sink into his hands. Any further comments he made were ignored since they were unintelligible and considered probably to be mind numbing prattle.
"So I hear the Red Sox are doing a bang up job in their pre-season," Mulder broke the uneasy silence that had blanketed the room in a black gloom.
"Wouldn't know. I don't watch baseball. Would you like some coffee while you're waiting?" The man arose and smiled flirtatiously in his direction. But once he noticed Scully's gaze lift from the photos to him for the once over don't even think about it look, his expression toned down a bit.
"You the guys here for my nine o'clock?" a nearly bald headed man stuck his head suddenly out of his door and asked. "I'm expecting a Mulder and a Scully."
"That's us," Mulder answered, and they adjourned into Pendleton's office. But on the way in, Mulder could swear that the secretary gave him another run down.
"So, you're the ones that get stuck with the weird shit going through the plumbing," Pendleton coarsely commented and retreated behind his desk. "Well, the call from your Lieutenant Ashcroft came directly into my office, ma'am, since you were wanting to know. I'm the liaison between local law enforcement and government agency as SAC."
"Has the warrant for Dominic Williams come through yet?" Scully questioned him while folding her hands into her lap.
"I was actually kind of wondering why in the hell you'd want to have a blind guy arrested first. I did have a background check done on him last night," Pendleton stated and donned a pair of reading glasses from the middle of his bureau.
"Because I clearly saw him on a surveillance disc committing the felony, and I'm having trouble coming to terms with how he did it, but he was there."
"Right. And I suppose he slid the canvas into a secret compartment in his cane on the way out."
"Actually, from what I saw, he left the cane in the other room," Scully replied.
"Uh-huh. And what do you have to say about this, Agent Mulder? Did you see these tapes?"
"I was...uh...occupied last night." He nervously fidgeted in his seat, which made Scully clear her throat, and he gave her an apologetic pout. "But I'll definitely be the first person to support Agent Scully's conclusions."
"All right, then. What's your theory--how does he do it?"
"My first thought contains extra sensory perception in the works."
"And pray tell, what in god's name does that involve?"
"He uses one of his functioning senses to home in on the object he's concentrating on. It would be like the Daredevil, maybe, in a sense."
"Refresh me--it's been quite a few years since I last picked up a comic book," Pendleton's glasses slid down his nose.
"Well, for instance, he might be able to smell your assistant's after shave lotion from here, and therefore, he could use the scent to guide his actions to his desk."
"Would he do that with his nose in the air or to the ground?"
"You said you wanted to hear a reason why I think Agent Scully's right," Mulder shrugged. "Feel free to come up with a better scenario, sir."
"I just might do that," Pendleton became defensive. "Obviously, he couldn't have done this alone. Maybe he did it with radio earpieces. You know, someone told him where to go."
"Yeah, maybe someone also guided his hand as he sliced and diced it, too. Have you ever tried walking through a pitch black room with just a person's voice helping you through it? It's kind of a clumsy ordeal, isn't it? You end up with your arms outstretched like a zombie wanting dinner, and you bump into things. Was that the case on the surveillance, Scully?"
"No. He made his movements as swiftly and gracefully as a cat. That's what struck me as being so odd. So at this point, I'm more willing to give credence to Agent Mulder."
"I'll tell you what, agents. I sent the paperwork to the D.A. with your names on it. But he's only going to be brought in for questioning. Any more than that, and I could get laughed out of the FBI," Pendleton announced hesitantly.
"Welcome to my world," Mulder quipped.
"I think we're done here, unless you have something more to offer me. And right now, unless it's a single malt scotch, I don't want to hear about it," Pendleton withdrew a few papers from his desk and banged it shut.
On their way out of the field office, Mulder held the door open for Scully, and they silently climbed into the Le Sabre without another word. Finally, after a few more minutes of pure agony, he pulled over into a side streetand took the keys out of the ignition. "What are you doing?" she asked indignantly.
"We have to talk...now. I'm not letting this come between us."
"Fine." Scully crossed her arms and made eye contact with the dashboard.
"I see it already has, so I'll start. I remember driving to a Rose pub, and I had a couple of beers. Then Katherine walked in and offered me another. From there, it's kind of foggy. But from what I can recall of our conversation, it was strictly business."
"We've discussed this before, Mulder. What you do with your personal life is your own. I was simply upset because you didn't return any of my calls. I was worried."
"I can see it was more than that. You're too damn stubborn to admit it, though."
"All right. All right, I will. You'd be upset, too, if you knew that your partner was sleeping with the enemy."
"Sleeping with the enemy? Did we just bump into an interlude from 'Days of Our Lives'?"
"What I was trying so desperately to tell you last night on the phone was that Katherine Lloyd was lying to us about that painting. She's in on that smuggling ring."
"Oh, Scully, don't tell me you're jealous..."
"Have you heard a word that I've said in the last few minutes! She's a con artist, Mulder, and she's reeling you in like a mackerel!"
"All right, assuming for the moment that that's true, how does she fit into the picture?"
"I think that...somehow, maybe through ESP or whatever, Dominic Williams stole those paintings. And then, the museum reported its loss to the insurance company. They sent out a field agent, Lloyd, to 'assess' the damage. But what she's really doing is arranging for the next shipment to go out or come in--I'm not sure of which yet. And while it's occurring, she's also doing her damn well best to throw us off the scent!"
"Scully, I hate to prove you wrong, but she showed me this list of figures last night in the pub. Why would she give me this information if she weren't trying to do her job?" Mulder dug the paper out of his coat pocket and offered it to her impatient hands. Scully peered closely at the paper and scoffed.
"Because you'd already had a couple of beers and wouldn't realize that this is a car rental agreement!"
"What? What do you mean?" He snatched it back and skimmed over the paper. By the time he finished, the expression of a mild disapprobation disappeared from her face and turned into one of compunction. "I see," was all he said as the keys went back into the ignition. A moment of nervous silence passed in between them until Mulder's cell phone rang. Both jumped at the noise, and Mulder answered it with a jittery chuckle.
"Mulder, it's Byers. We've been looking through our usual channels to find your blizzard-"
"My what? Oh. Go on, Byers, sorry."
"And yes, you can purchase it on the Internet. It's actually being sold on e-Bay by a small company in Boston by the name of Williams' Electronics. Made and sold exclusively by the owner-"
"Dominic Williams," Mulder completed the sentence.
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"I saw it coming. And did you check him out?"
"Well, you just requested us to find out where we could buy one. And by the sound of it, you already know who he is."
"I know of him. But I intend to find out much more."
"Okay. Is that my cue to hang up and do you another favor?"
"No, what do I owe you for this one?"
"That's up to Frohike. He was the one who found it first."
"Uh-oh. Well, if it has anything to do with impure thoughts regarding a certain partner of mine, I'm afraid that's out of the question...for now. I'm receiving a dirty look as we speak. I'd better go."
"What'd you do to her this time?" Frohike's Illinois accent shouted just as Mulder removed the phone from his ear and pressed the talk button.
"Now what?" Scully was agitated, but he noticed that her irritability had softened into the familiar skeptical but amused tone. His breathing returned to a somewhat normal pace.
"I say we go pick up Mr. Dominic Williams."
"Mulder, his warrant hasn't arrived yet!"
"Well, this seemed to fool me pretty well last night," Mulder held up the car rental paper and started the car back up. "Shall we try two for two?"
"Oh, Mary, mother of God..." Scully mumbled, tore it away from him, and folded it up into a business letter format. "I wonder how many rosaries my priest will have me saying this week."