Back to the Main Page
Back to Sentinel Fic
Message
can't find a friend, you've still got the radio
--nanci griffith, listen to the radio
"Blair ... I saw your car out front, man. I know you're in there."
Judging from the way Blair was looking at our front door, I wouldn't have wanted to be the man on the other side of it. Whoever this guy was, he'd been knocking and demanding Blair's attention for going on half a century. Blair didn't show any signs that he planned to get up from the couch.
"You know, Sandburg," I told him, "eventually he's going to break that door down, and you're going to have to replace it."
Blair gave me the same look he'd been giving the door. Subtlety was not the way to go.
"Answer the damn door, " I said. "I'm getting a headache."
"Letting this guy in won't help you with that," he said, but he went.
Normally I wouldn't have said anything. Sandburg's friends tended to be more trouble than they were worth. But since the initial flurry of "I can't believe you faked your diss" phone calls, there'd been tumbleweeds blowing through Blair's social life, and it was getting on my nerves.
I kept out of sight. If the person was going to be a problem, I wanted to avoid them. Blair, who was about as tense as I'd ever seen him, moved his shoulders a little before opening the door.
"Okay, Dave," he said by way of a greeting. "What the hell do you want?"
"Blair, you just can't be popular enough right now to justify that kind of attitude."
He was a little guy, not much taller than Blair, and not nearly as appealing. He had a gym bag in one hand, and the craziest expression I'd seen in months. He tried to push his way into the loft, but Blair held his ground.
"Think of it as a password. Answer the question, or I'm shutting this door in your face."
"You can try that, Shorty. I don't think -- aw, hell, I didn't come here to fight with you. I just want to borrow your guy."
Blair moved to fill more of the doorway. It still wasn't enough, but I guess he knew that if there was a problem, I'd stand behind him.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your Sentinel. I need to borrow him for something."
Blair pinched the bridge of his nose.
"You're out of the loop, man. Haven't you heard? I made the whole thing up."
Davey-Boy laughed. It wasn't real charming.
"And what, I'm supposed to take your word on that? You're like Captain Kirk talking to a computer. `Everything I say is a lie. Now, listen carefully ... I'm lying'. Nah. You've made a lot of things up in your time, but not this. I don't know why you took a dive on your diss. Don't even care. I just want to borrow the guy for, like, a couple of hours. What do you say?"
"I say go to hell. I. made. it. up. Faked my diss. Committed academic fraud. You don't believe it, that's your problem."
Dave set the bag down.
"South of the border, down Mexico way, I happen to know a lot of people. And they tell me the temple of the Sentinels is exactly where you said you found it."
"It was a lucky guess," Blair replied. The last time I'd heard that much edge in his voice, it had made me think he was planning to cut my throat while I slept. At least this time he wasn't aiming it at me.
"Again, I don't think so. Did this Sentinel of yours put the brakes on your diss? Is that what happened?"
Blair placed his hands on the door frame.
"Look. I'll say this one more time, slowly, because you seem to have a hearing problem. There *is* no Sentinel. If you're looking for the cop I wrote about, he's not a Sentinel. He's also not *my* anything. And if you bother him with this, I wish you luck in finding all your teeth."
"That brings up an interesting point. This is his place. You're still living with him. You'd think if you really had faked a diss and used his name, you'd be on the street."
Blair did something that looked like a shrug. It was hard to tell, with his arms out blocking the doorway.
"Yeah, well, he's a pretty forgiving guy. Tell you what -- leave me your card, I'll give it to him, and if he feels like it maybe he'll call and explain to you that he isn't really a Sentinel. Okay?"
Dave laughed again. I hoped for his sake that this would be the last thing he found funny, because I wasn't going to listen to it a third time.
"No, I'll tell *you* what. I've got my shortwave setup in this bag. We'll crank it up and the detective can give it a listen. Totally off the record. I just want to know what he hears."
"Speaking of detectives," Blair said, "I know some. I know a lot of cops. I could call them right now and have you picked up for trespassing."
"I'm not trespassing. I'm in the hallway of an apartment building, and you people have no security doors. Look, Blair, I realize I'm being a little pushy..."
That got a laugh out of Blair.
"You think this is a *little* pushy. Jesus. Go home, Dave."
"This is really important. I need this for my thesis. And I don't mean to inconvenience you, but I can make a pretty good case that you lied about lying, if you know what I mean. Wouldn't it be easier to have your guy do me one small favour and be done with it?"
It wasn't the smartest thing to do, but I was too angry to be smart. I went to stand behind Blair.
"Are you trying to blackmail us, you little punk?"
"Ah, Detective Ellison," he said, holding out a hand. "Dave Petroff. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
I ignored the offer to shake and looked him in the eye.
"Either you leave now, or I will evict you. If you leave quickly and quietly, I'll forget about the fact that you threatened us and I won't press charges. That's the best deal you're going to get."
That kind of talk was enough to scare most people, but not this guy.
"I'm asking for a few hours of your time. And don't bother telling me that you're not a Sentinel, because I don't believe it. You do one simple chore, I get out of your life, and things don't have to become complicated. See, *that's* a good deal."
"I'm getting a bad case of deja vu," Blair muttered. It was low enough that I was pretty sure he'd only meant it for me. I put a hand on his shoulder and gave Dave Petroff my best stare.
"Did you hear him say that I can't help you?"
The little creep grinned at me.
"Sure, but he's a liar."
That wasn't news to anyone who knew Blair, and normally I didn't care when people called him names, but this guy was getting my back up. I reached over Blair's shoulder and grabbed Petroff's shirt. Blair backed into me, shoving me back into the loft.
"Jim, *don't*. Let it go."
Petroff used that opening to step into the loft and shut the door. I pushed Blair into the living room and took a step toward our uninvited guest.
"Get out. NOW."
For the first time, he looked like a man who was getting the picture. He raised his hands.
"Okay. All right. Why don't I just leave my gear with you? All the instructions are in there. I have a couple of students working for me this year and I had to write it down for them, so it should be pretty clear. You think about it, sleep on it, maybe give it a try; I'll call you in a couple of days. No pressure.
"GET OUT."
"Yeah. I'm gone."
He went, leaving the gym bag on the floor. I shut the door, locked it, and turned to Blair.
"Want to help me throw this off the balcony?"
Blair smiled.
"There might be people on the sidewalk. Protect the tribe, remember?"
"Long as the tribe doesn't include that guy. What the hell was he talking about, anyway?"
Blair came over to where Dave had left the bag and knelt beside it.
"He's a communications grad student. He's doing his thesis on numbers stations."
I crouched down on the other side of the bag and watched as Blair fiddled with the zippers and straps holding it shut.
"Can I get that again in English?"
"Huh?" He was peering into the bag, hair hiding his face. I grabbed a handful of it and tugged until he looked at me.
"What are number stations?"
"Oh." Blair rocked back onto his heels. "There are hundreds of shortwave stations out there where people broadcast groups of numbers. Usually women, usually in Spanish, but there are some in English and German and I forget what else. Anyway, nobody knows what the stations are for, but there are so many of them and so much effort is put into them that it's probably not a joke. I've heard they might be transmitting codes used by drug runners, or the CIA."
I shook my head.
"I can't believe the things you university types waste your time on."
It was out before I thought about what I was saying. Blair sighed and looked back into the bag.
"Can't lump me in with them anymore. Look at this ... he really does have his whole setup in this bag. Instructions, a frequency list ..."
"Great. If you're short on cash, you could try hocking it."
He smiled, but it was the patronizing little smile he came up with when he wasn't really paying attention.
"I don't care if you listen or not," he said, "I want to hear this. Obviously you're not going to tell him if you do hear anything, because then he'd never leave us alone ..."
"I had that figured out on my own, Chief."
"But aren't you curious?"
I took my time standing up. My knees cracked anyway.
"No. I think it's a waste of time. If you want to play with his toy, be my guest, but set it up in your room."
Blair made a face.
"There's no room in my room. I'll use headphones."
I didn't want to get into an argument. I was tired of them.
"Whatever."
I heard him dragging equipment onto the kitchen table, picked up the occasional squeal, but by and large Sandburg managed to make himself unobtrusive enough that I could watch a movie in peace. When it was over, I looked over the back of the couch to check on him.
He was hunched over the table with his eyes shut and his chin on his arms, wearing a set of headphones that could have fit an elephant. I went over to him and carefully put a hand on his shoulder.
"Chief?"
Nothing. He was completely and entirely asleep. I took off the headphones with every intention of putting them down and sending him to bed, but as I was laying them on the table I noticed a clipped female voice reciting numbers in Spanish.
I pulled up a chair and put the headphones on. They were warm. Blair mumbled something in his sleep. I laid a hand on his back.
"Ssh. I'm listening to something."
It went on for five minutes, give or take. As I listened, Blair's eyes opened and he lifted his head. Amazingly, he managed to keep his mouth shut.
For some reason, it bothered me. Something about the precision of her tone, the strangeness of the message, the words coming out of all that static ... it gave me the creeps.
The woman stopped speaking. Very softly, in the background, I could hear other women's voices reading numbers in different languages. After a few seconds, the transmission ended. I put the headphones down.
"Did you hear it?"
"Yeah."
He sat up. His eyes were huge and very bright.
"*And*? What did you think?"
"It was like you said. A woman read a bunch of numbers, it repeated a few times, then she stopped and I heard a few other women reading numbers in English and ... I think it was German. That was it."
"Oh, *yeah*." He leaned forward. "I've heard about that, how sometimes people can hear other transmissions in the background. I couldn't hear that at all. Do you think it was a live voice or a machine?"
I thought about that.
"Now that you mention it, it did sound ... mechanical. It was a little too precise."
"Did you hear anything else? Music, people talking ..."
"Sandburg ..."
He smiled, with feeling.
"Sorry. Force of habit."
I turned the radio off.
"You're not going tell him anything."
He blinked.
"No. Of course not. I already told you ..."
"Yeah, I know." My hand was still resting on his back. I patted it. "I just wanted to make sure we were clear on that."
"We're clear. I'll call him on Monday and tell him to pick up his shit."
I took my hand back.
"Or, like I said, you could sell it."
He laughed.
"Not that it wouldn't serve him right, but I couldn't do that to him."
I went into the kitchen to make coffee.
"The guy's an asshole, Chief. I don't know why you're being this patient with him."
"I just ... " He stopped and looked at the table. It was at least a minute before he raised his eyes to meet mine. "What am I supposed to think when I look at him? Dave developed a fascination with mysterious shortwave stations when he was seventeen years old. He's been driven ever since. Everything else in his life takes a backseat to this. Don't you remember the day we met?"
I stared at him.
"You can't be serious. I admit, you were a little much, but on your worst day you were nowhere near as bad as this guy. He tried to blackmail us."
He shrugged.
"I lied to you. I pretended to be a doctor. I made a deal by offering a service I wasn't sure I could provide."
"You saved my life, remember?"
He waved a hand, dismissing that as if it were nothing.
"Of course I saved your life. I was obsessed with my thesis, and you were a really important research subject. You think Dave wouldn't throw himself under a truck for someone who could make his diss for him?"
The coffee was almost ready. I took out a pair of mugs and set them beside the pot.
"You would have done that for anyone, Chief. I could see that even then. *That's* what made the decision for me." I poured the coffee and brought it to him. "You and this guy are miles apart."
"Maybe." He looked at the coffee. "I just ... I know he's so devoted to this that he doesn't really care about anything else. He doesn't really *have* anything else, and I ... " He wrapped both hands around the mug and looked up. "Been there, you know?"
I sat down across from him. He didn't look as young as he had when I'd met him, not anything near. His eyes weren't quite as wide, he didn't smile as often, but the changes weren't bad. He'd traded in a superficial prettiness for something more ... striking.
"You're not there now."
"No." He tilted his head. "But I could be. I don't think you get this obsession thing, Jim. I don't think you ever really understood. I was so focused, so blind to everything else ... don't you realize that you were the only person in the world who *could* get through to me? I pretended to listen to other people, you know, I nodded at the right times, but they had nothing to offer me when all I wanted was a Sentinel. I only really listened to you. And the difference between me and Dave is that the voice I heard wasn't just reading numbers over the radio. You cared about me. You said things that changed me. Those voices Dave listens to, they're *cold*. I don't know what their message is, but whatever it is, it's not for him."
He pulled back, and I let go of his hands. I didn't want to, but I knew that if I held on he'd look at me expectantly, and I didn't have the first idea what to say.
"I'm going to bed, " he said.
After his bedroom door had shut behind him, I put the headphones on again. Those voices raised the hairs on my neck, but I listened to them all night long.