The Everything Box

  Coop looked at him. “Do you know how hard I worked for those clothes?”

  “Yep.”

  “Just checking.”

  The woman was giving the gunman a disgusted look. “If it’s any consolation,” she said to Coop, “you’re going to get to leave. I have to work with him every day.”

  “You must spend a lot on Zantac.”

  “As much as my rent.”

  “You’re both breaking my heart,” said the gunman. “And for the record, smart guy, you killed my shirt with the little spitting stunt back there, so I think we’re about even.”

  “I’m being kidnapped and was almost eaten by a T. rex. I don’t think we’re even close to even,” said Coop.

  The woman shook her head. “This isn’t really a kidnapping. Think of it as aggressive job recruitment.”

  “Don’t tell him anything else,” the gunman said.

  “What kind of benefits?” said Coop.

  “What?”

  “The recruitment. How much vacation time? You have a dental plan? Stock options?”

  “There’s only one benefit. I don’t shoot you.”

  “That’s a good one,” said Coop.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  Coop sat back as the van rumbled on to wherever the hell it was rumbling to. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. He went back to trying not to look scared. In fact, he was less anxious than he had been a few minutes before. He’d run and hadn’t been shot. They’d even saved him from being devoured by Cujo. They obviously wanted him for something. He hoped it was something he could handle. He felt bad because one bag of clothes the shithead kicked out of the van had been the ones he borrowed from Morty. He considered for a minute whether that made up for Morty ratting him out and landing him in jail.

  Nope, he decided. But it was close.

  They drove for another thirty minutes. The gunman kept his pistol aimed at Coop the whole time.

  “Your bosses don’t mind you pointing guns at people when you’re half crocked?” Coop said.

  The gunman took another drink. “It cuts down on the office riffraff.”

  “Do they have a special form for when you shoot your dick off?”

  The woman snickered again. She pecked at her laptop. Coop quickly went from panicky to nervous to bored.

  Finally, the van slowed, made an abrupt left turn, and went down a short incline before stopping.

  “We’re here, Cinderella. Time to meet your prince,” said the gunman. He slid the side door open and stepped down. All Coop could see was what looked like an underground parking garage. Yellow lines on the ground spaced a few feet apart. Other vans. Concrete support columns. He stepped out and the woman followed.

  “Pull a runner here, pal, and I’ll be the least of your worries,” said the gunman.

  “In the future, you should say that with a Clint Eastwood squint. It’ll scare more rubes.” Yet as much as Coop lipped off, he didn’t want to move. He hovered near the van and looked around. Yes, it was nothing but an underground parking lot. He was both relieved and disappointed. After all the drama, he’d expected a secret lair in a dormant volcano or an abandoned missile silo. This looked like the basement of a Walmart. At least it wasn’t a police station. He’d been in enough of those that he could smell them.

  “Where are we?” said Coop.

  “Disneyland. Be good and I’ll let you take a picture with Daffy Duck.”

  “You mean Donald Duck. Daffy Duck is Warner Brothers, not Disney.”

  “Christ,” said the gunman. “You and her ought to get married and have boring babies.”

  “It’s not my fault. You’ve got to do your research if you’re going to taunt people properly.”

  “I should have let the dog eat you.”

  “But then I wouldn’t be around to help you with your duck problem. Admit it. I’m already an asset.”

  The gunman put the pistol in Coop’s ribs and pushed him. “Move it, Al Capone. That way.”

  The gunman and the woman walked Coop to a heavy metal door. There was a screen on the side. When the woman put her hand on it, the screen lit up with wild patterns like a wiring diagram combined with an astrological chart. A needle popped out of the wall. She touched it, leaving a drop of blood on the end. More lights and patterns. The screen turned green and flashed WELCOME BACK. The metal door opened.

  “Ouch,” said Coop. “You have to do that every time you go in?”

  “Every time,” said the woman.

  “Do they at least give you a lollipop?”

  “Quiet,” said the gunman.

  If this is what they do to their own people, what are they going to do to me? thought Coop. What if his driver’s license wasn’t enough to prove who he was? He imagined himself turned into a pincushion while they took quarts of blood. Coop really, really hated needles. When he was five and a doctor tried to give him a measles shot, he’d bitten the guy. While the doctor went to get his mother, Coop had climbed onto a table, pushed one of the overhead tiles out of the way, and crawled into the ceiling. Careful to step only on the brackets, he made it all the way to the front lobby and outside. It was his first escape and still his proudest. But there weren’t any ceiling tiles here, just a masochist and a guy who wanted to shoot him. Maybe I should have stayed in jail.

  Beyond the door was a long, painted cinder-block hallway. He’d been in enough of those during break-ins that he felt a little more at home there. Still, where was he?

  As they walked, the woman said, “I’m Bayliss. The gentleman with the gun is Nelson.”

  “That’s Mr. Nelson to you, convict,” said the gunman.

  “Should I call you Charles or Charlie?” said Bayliss.

  “Coop,” he said. “Only my brother called me Charlie.”

  “Were you close with your brother?”

  “If by close you mean we couldn’t stand each other, then yeah, we were the Partridge Family.”

  “That’s too bad. My brother and I are good friends.”

  “Don’t listen to this crook’s sob stories,” said Nelson. “Next he’ll tell you he had to walk ten miles through the snow to go to kindergarten and sell his puppy to buy medicine for his grandma.”

  “Don’t mind him. He’s cranky because he hasn’t had a drink in the last two minutes,” said Bayliss.

  They came to a row of elevators and one of the doors opened for them. Nelson pushed Coop inside and hit the button for the sixth floor. The floors they passed were labeled ELDRITCH HORRORS, INTERDIMENSIONAL HORRORS, SUPERSCIENCE HORRORS, MISCELLANEOUS HORRORS, and PING-PONG TOURNAMENT. Coop braced himself for whatever kind of grotesque shit would be waiting on 6. The ride lasted just a few seconds. Despite the gun in his back, he braced himself to run.

  The elevator pinged and the doors slid open. Coop could already feel the bullet in his back, but damned if he was going down without a fight.

  What lay before him was the most boring scene he’d ever laid eyes on. Just a lot of men and women all in suits, sitting in cubicles, carrying papers and laptops around. Have I been kidnapped by accountants? If he lived, that was going to be hard to explain to Morty. “These people picked me up at gunpoint and forced me to memorize depreciation tables.”

  They got on another elevator and Nelson stood in front of the number pad, so Coop couldn’t see where they were going. If these people really are a bunch of desk jockey weirdos, it isn’t going to be hard to escape. With the money I made from Babylon, I can probably get a fake passport and head for Mexico.

  The doors opened again and they stepped out into an enormous room that looked like where NASA assembled orbiting death rays. Men and women in lab coats manhandled strange machines of all shapes and sizes. A bald scientist was being chased by a little ball-shaped robot covered in rotating blades. Another couple of Einsteins had a strange rifle. Every time they shot a target it changed. First into a typewriter. Then a pile of 78 records. Then a puzzled-looking lemur. A couple of heads in what looked li
ke aquariums were having an earnest conversation with a guy holding up a blueprint so they could see it. Something that looked like a starfish in granny glasses took a clipboard from one of the scientists and walked through a wall. How about that, thought Coop. It was the only thing his overloaded brain could come up with right then. How about that. He kept walking, trying not to look too hard at the science circus, but keeping an eye out in case there was a good place to run.

  It seemed a lot less likely up here than with the pencil pushers downstairs.

  “Welcome to the DOPS, the Department of Peculiar Science,” said Bayliss.

  “The what of what?” said Coop.

  “The Department of Peculiar Science. I know it’s a strange name. I guess all those years ago when they came up with it, it was very cutting edge. But it does sound a little old-fashioned, doesn’t it?”

  “Or psychotic—like all these people.”

  “We hear that from a lot of first-timers. What we do here is study and learn how to defend the world from all sorts of scientific and thaumaturgic anomalies.”

  “You mean you’re the Ghostbusters.”

  “We do a lot more than chase ghosts, but yes, we chase them sometimes, too.”

  “I’m not sure what you want from me, but I really don’t think I belong here,” said Coop.

  “Neither do I, but it was bring you in or shoot you,” said Nelson. “There’s still time to go the other way.”

  “No. I’m good.”

  They went out into another hallway and into an unmarked room. To Coop’s relief, it was just an office, with chairs around a big table, a phone, and a computer in the corner. He’d never been so happy to be somewhere so damned boring. Nelson pushed him into a chair, then he and Bayliss sat down across from him. Nelson finally put the pistol away.

  Coop started to say something, but Nelson shushed him. A minute later, a tall, hawkish man with strange, milky eyes came in. He looked at Coop.

  “I see you brought him in. Good choice. Though I think we could have made good use of him in the post-life department. Still, there’s always time for that. Hello, Mr. Cooper.”

  Coop didn’t like the guy’s eyes. They didn’t look quite real, but he looked into them anyway. It was like staring at two fried eggs. The weird part is that it made him kind of hungry. When had he eaten last? The man sat down.

  “Hi,” said Coop. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m Mr. Salzman. I’m in charge of this and that around here. Which includes you. And them,” he said, indicating Bayliss and Nelson. “Basically, they’re your bosses and I’m their boss.”

  “Lucky me,” said Coop. “Bosses for what exactly?”

  Salzman looked at Coop. “You’re still cuffed, I see. If you promise to be a good boy, we can do something about that.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” said Coop.

  “I hope that, too. Uncuff him, Nelson.”

  Nelson didn’t get up. He dug around in his pocket and when he came up with the key, slid it across the table. Coop picked it up and, after a couple of awkward minutes, unlocked the cuffs. He slid them across the table to Nelson. It felt good to have his hands free again.

  A row of strange symbols crawled across an LCD screen on the far wall.

  “What the hell is that?” said Coop.

  Salzman didn’t bother to look. “We think it’s the last will and testament of a demigod who lived around here approximately ten thousand years ago.”

  “A demigod? You hang out with a lot of them around here?”

  “More gods than hoodlums.”

  “Me, too. Let’s be friends.”

  Salzman moved his gaze from Coop to a green file folder on the table and said, “You’ve been filled in on what we do around here?”

  “Yeah, but it’s a funny place to repair stereos.”

  Salzman smiled. “Stereos. Yes. And you’re going to help us fix the biggest stereo of all.”

  Coop rubbed his wrists and said, “Yeah? And what’s that?”

  Salzman took a photo from the green folder and slid it to Coop. He looked at it and saw a familiar fat face.

  “I understand that you know this man,” said Salzman.

  “Yeah. He’s a big spender who calls himself Mr. Babylon. Not that I buy the Babylon part.”

  “No. That’s his real name,” said Salzman. “He’s a magician of sorts.”

  “That’s funny. He told me he couldn’t even shuffle cards.”

  “He lied. Babylon had a decent little occult criminal empire going at one point. But he’s old and his power is fading. That’s why he hired you and your merry pranksters to find the box.”

  Coop shrugged. “He said it was a family heirloom.”

  “Another lie. Would you like to know what it is?”

  All Coop wanted was to get out of there, but he’d been grilled enough times to know he had to let the scene play itself out. “Sure. If it’s not for Aunt Sadie’s earrings, what is it?”

  “It’s a bomb, you moron,” said Nelson.

  “That’s not quite it, but it is as deadly as a bomb,” said Salzman. “What’s in the box is a device capable of destroying the world’s electronic infrastructure, sending us back to the nineteenth century. Think of it. Planes would fall from the sky. Satellites would spin out of control. Hospitals couldn’t perform surgery.”

  Coop didn’t say anything for a minute. He just scanned the room and their faces. He’d been stealing things and running scams pretty much since he could walk and he was good at picking out liars. What bothered him was that none of these lunatics seemed to be lying. Babylon was the liar. He’d stuck him with a bomb after all.

  “You sure all that’s in there? It wasn’t a very big box,” said Coop.

  “Trust me. That’s in there.”

  Coop opened and closed his hands. “That sounds like a big deal for the world, Mr. Salzman. But what does it have to do with me?”

  “You stole the box for Babylon. Now you’re going to steal it for us.”

  Coop leaned forward. “Excuse me? I just saw Buck Rogers gear and a fucking fish who could walk through walls in the other room. If you want the box so much, why don’t you send one of those Buzz Lightyears, or Hansel and Gretel here, and get it back yourself?”

  “Because you stole it,” said Salzman. “Now it’s your responsibility to get it back before Babylon sells it to some rogue state and ends the world.”

  Coop looked at Salzman. He looked at Bayliss and Nelson. “You don’t want me. You just want a fall guy in case we all end up wearing top hats and bustles. Which you’d look dashing in, by the way.”

  “Shut up,” Nelson said.

  “Not you,” said Coop, turning to Nelson. “You’re more the bearskins and raw meat type.”

  “An apt description,” said Salzman. “We want the box and you don’t want to go back to jail. And you will go to jail if you say no to us.”

  Coop looked at Salzman’s fried-egg eyes and knew he’d do it. “Even if I get the box back, how do I know you won’t turn around and send me to jail anyway?”

  “You don’t, but if you refuse to work for the DOPS, I’ll see that you do life. Maybe longer.”

  Coop didn’t like the sound of that last part. He thought about it for a minute and said, “Even if I say yes, I’m not a skip tracer. How am I supposed to find Babylon?”

  “Let us worry about that. We have someone who can help you.”

  “Who?”

  “We’ll come to that later. Do you agree to our terms?” said Salzman.

  “Not yet,” said Coop. “If I get the box back, what do I get?”

  “You’re free to go and return to your rich and rewarding world of stealing hubcaps and ripping off candy stores. The DOPS is in the business of protecting the world, not chasing pickpockets.”

  “I haven’t picked a pocket since I was sixteen.”

  “Nice to hear that you’re a reformed man.”

  Coop looked at Bayliss and Nelson. Bayliss wa
s staring at her laptop screen, looking uncomfortable. She didn’t like rough stuff like this. Good to know. Nelson, on the other hand, looked at Coop like he wanted to grill him over mesquite coals and serve him with a baked potato.

  “Okay,” Coop said. “But I get to pick my own crew. People I know I can trust.”

  Salzman shook his head. “We have plenty of competent people in the DOPS who can help you. Just let us know what you need.”

  “No deal.”

  Salzman tapped his finger on the green file folder. Coop was sick of seeing green file folders. They were nothing but trouble.

  “Let’s compromise,” said Salzman. “You get to pick one of your criminal associates. He or she will get the same deal as you. Jail or freedom.”

  “Fine. I want Morty for my Flasher. But I want to meet your people before I agree to work with them.”

  “That’s not a problem. In fact, I think you know some of our agents.”

  “Who?”

  “Phil Spectre seems to think highly of you.”

  Coop stood up. “No. Not Phil. I will not work with him again.”

  Nelson reached for his gun, but Salzman motioned for him to stop. He got out his phone and punched in a number. “Hello, Doris. Would you have the West twins bring in those dossiers for me? Thanks.”

  They sat and waited. The demigod gibberish rolled by like supernatural chicken scratches. In a few minutes, two people came in, although calling them people was being more than a little charitable. One of the West twins was a dark-haired bearded man’s head on a kind of octopus’s body. The other twin had an octopus head on a human body. They each dropped another goddamned green folder on the table in front of Salzman. The analytical criminal part of Coop’s brain was kind of fascinated by the sideshow, but the rest of his brain wanted to claw his eyes out. Coop dropped back down into his seat.

  On their way out, Salzman said, “Thanks, boys. See you Saturday for softball.” He looked at Coop. “You haven’t even been in the abracadabra wing of the building yet, have you, Mr. Cooper? We’ll get you over there in due time. My point in calling in the West boys is to remind you that there are worse things than jail. Herbert and Jimmy had a little accident recently. But the thing is, in Peculiar Science, accidents happen all the time. And they can happen to anyone.”