Written in Time (6 page)

Jack looked up from the telephone’s keypad and their eyes met. “I’m checking with that little town’s chamber of commerce. For the heck of it. Wanted to, ahh . . .”
 

Jack had pretty eyes—so dark—even when peering out from within a sheepish smile. “Fine.” Ellen sat down at her desk. Their two desks dominated the center of the office, the fronts of the two desks facing, touching. Jack believed in UFOs, thought Bigfoot was the missing link and, every once in a while, got into serious discussions about the JFK assassination, about which he was actually quite well-informed. After over twenty-three years of marriage, dating four years before that and knowing each other as friends for three years before that, she was used to Jack’s penchant for going off on tangents.
 

Ellen picked up The Skeptical Inquirer and began looking through it. She could hear her husband talking, but wasn’t really paying attention until she heard him put down the receiver and say “Shit.”
 

“What?”
 

“The historian’s out of town for a while and can’t be reached.”
 

“He’ll be back.” As she said that, her eyes drifted across the photos on the wall nearest the hallway. There was a big painting of John Wayne as he looked in Hondo and, next to it, a color photograph of Richard Boone as he looked in Have Gun—Will Travel, one of Jack’s favorite old television programs. Jack even had a hat like Richard Boone had worn, low-crowned and black; one of Jack’s holster-making friends had made an almost perfect duplicate of the hatband.
 

On other walls in the room there were pictures of Clint Walker, Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels—mingled with photos of David and Elizabeth. There was even a picture of Theodore Roosevelt, one of Jack’s big heroes, in his cowboy mufti, standing beside a large black horse.
 

Ellen wondered just what it was that her husband was hoping to find out about the photograph they’d been mailed? Did he really wonder if, somehow, they were— ”No,” she said aloud.
 

“What, princess?”
 

“Nothing. Why don’t you get back to work, Jack? I’ll get out of your hair.” As she left the office and entered the hallway, her eyes flickered toward the hall tree. The black Stetson was there, lurking . . .
 

Unlike departures, there was no arrival ritual, no waving at all. Ellen’s thirty-four-year-old nephew, Clarence, merely let himself in through the front door of their house with his own key and sang out his characteristic “Hi. It’s me.” “Hi” was Northernese for “Hey, y’all!” All of them were Illinois-born damned Yankees who came to Georgia in the late 1970s. Non-damned yankees, of course, were the kind who were merely passing through. Only Liz, who was less than two when they migrated southward, had what Jack Naile still thought of as a Southern accent. However, Elizabeth could turn it on and off like a faucet, as required.
 

Jack got up from the kitchen table, stepped into the hallway and responded, “Hiya, Clarence! Ellen’s got dinner nearly ready. Good to see you, son!”
 

For the time that Clarence was in Air Force Electronic Intelligence, in Greece for the last three-and-one-half years of his hitch, they had seen him precious little. Since then, after a year doing pretty much the same thing, but as a civilian, he had moved to Atlanta and taken a job managing a multiplex, which Jack had always thought was a waste of talent. However, it did allow more frequent socializing, for which he, Ellen and the kids were grateful.
 

Clarence was Ellen’s late sister’s son, after her death brought into their home in Illinois while still in his teens. They had pretty much raised him from then on, and looked on him as an extra son. Ellen, nine when he was born, had carried him home from the hospital. Jack had met Clarence for the first time—Clarence had punched him in the stomach—when Clarence was not quite seven years old.
 

“So, how’s the movie business?”
 

“I’ve got some posters for David and Liz. They’re in the car. Remind me to bring them in before I leave.”
 

“So, how you feeling?”
 

“My back’s bothering me a little, and I think I’m getting a cold.” With that, Clarence sneezed.
 

Ellen announced, “Dinner’s ready.”
 

“I’ll call the kids,” Jack volunteered.
 

Clarence ate as if food were about to be banned, as much as a pound and a half of Ellen’s homemade lasagna. After dinner, they would all probably play Trivial Pursuit, Clarence and David and Ellen on one team, Jack and Elizabeth on the other. Somehow, Jack knew, that was supposed to make it fairer, a more even match, which was not entirely true. Both Clarence and David followed professional sports, Clarence more so. Jack Naile had seen two broadcast television football games in his life and had no idea how the scoring was figured beyond the obvious thing that a touchdown was good.
 

After dinner, and saying the obligatory but sincere “Anything I can do to help?” Jack steered David and Clarence into the rec room, while Ellen put things away and Elizabeth helped her.
 

Jack had the photograph on the coffee table and showed it to Clarence.
 

“I agree that the photo is an interesting coincidence. That’s all that it is,” David announced, as if forming Clarence’s opinion for him.
 

Clarence, six foot two and named after his fourteen-inch shorter grandfather, plunked down on the far end of the sectional sofa. “It’s interesting. It’s also creepy,” he added with a laugh.
 

Jack leaned back into the center of the sectional, feeling very pleasantly full, and lit a cigarette. “Creepy in what way, Clarence? You mean that it might actually happen?”
 

“He doesn’t think that. Do you, Clarence?”
 

“No, David. No. No, Jack. I mean, the same name thing.”
 

“He’s right, Dad. Nothing more to this than two men separated by almost a century who happen to have the same name. God knows, the guy who sent the picture to you could have doctored it just as a joke. There’s nothing to it.”
 

Jack Naile supposed that it was only fate that one member of the family had to be sensible.
 

Jack sat at his desk, but his eyes weren’t on the screen of his computer, nor did his fingers stroke the keyboard. In his hands, he held one of his most prized possessions, a Colt Single Action Army .45, a second-generation gun made in the early 1970s, worked on for him by the world’s fastest draw, and one of the finest trick shooters in history, Bob Munden. The revolver had originally been nickel plated, but after Bob’s work on it, the Colt was sent to another old friend, Ron Mahovsky, who had Metalifed it over the nickel, making it look like brushed stainless steel but more impervious to rust. The original checkered hard rubber grips were replaced with black buffalo-horn two-piece panels from Eagle grips.
 

The barrel was seven and one-half inches long. The trigger pull was fourteen ounces. It was the perfect Colt.
 

Jack Naile set the single action down on the desk and picked up the telephone.
 

“Hi. This is Jack Naile again.”
 

Jack recognized the voice on the other end, and the woman belonging to the voice recognized his. “Arthur Beach is back. I’ll connect you, Mr. Naile.”
 

“Thanks.”
 

After a moment, there was a voice announcing itself as that of Arthur Beach. Unlike the mental image Jack Naile had formed of a historian in a small Nevada town, someone old and perhaps a bit stodgy, Arthur Beach sounded barely thirty and seemed quite intrigued at the call. “When they told me about your calls, I did a little digging, Mr. Naile.”
 

“Ohh, wonderful! Who was this guy Jack Naile?” Jack asked.
 

“Well, understand I haven’t really been able to look into this too thoroughly yet. And, if you’d like, I’ll get you more information.”
 

“Anything you can dig up, yes. A photograph would be great, if one exists.”
 

“I’ll do my best. But here’s what I can tell you so far about your namesake, Mr. Naile. The original Jack Naile was a prominent citizen, not only owning the store but a large ranch as well. After a time, he became very influential behind the scenes in Republican politics within the state and at the national level. Jack Naile’s store became a Mecca for people from all over the area, people interested in the highest-quality products or just the unusual. As time went on, for example, Jack Naile’s store was the first in the area to offer phonographs, radios and the like. In that respect, the store was more of a hobby for Naile. Naile grew to be one of the richest men around, with an uncanny ability to predict trends in public interest.”
 

Jack Naile lit another cigarette. “What about Jack Naile’s personal life? Do you have anything on that?”
 

Beach told him, “Well, Naile and his wife—I don’t know her name off the top of my head—had two grown children, teenagers, I guess, when they first came to town.”
 

“So none of them were born there, then.”
 

“No. They just showed up in town one day, evidently coming from somewhere back East and en route to California. I understand that you’re thinking about using this information as the basis for one of the novels you and your wife write.”
 

“Yes, if we can dig up enough information,” Jack Naile responded, keeping his cards as close to the vest as possible.
 

“I’ll be happy to help all that I can. But you’ll have to promise me an autographed copy of the book if you write it.”
 

Jack agreed to that, he and Arthur Beach exchanged complete contact data and the conversation ended . . .
 

Ellen waited as long as she dared before the answering machine would pick up. Jack wasn’t answering the telephone. She lifted the receiver, shook her hair back and put the receiver to her ear. “Hi. Can I help you?”
 

And Ellen almost passed out. It was their old agent, Lars Benson. A very nice guy, Lars had also been the most incompetent literary agent imaginable. “Jack around?”
 

“What’s up, Lars?”
 

“I got you guys a sale, Ellen!”
 

Ellen Naile thought that she’d heard Lars Benson, who, in the first place, hadn’t been their literary agent for more than five years and, in the second place, couldn’t sell a space suit to a naked astronaut, let alone a book to a publisher, say that he had sold something.
 

“Let me find Jack, Lars. Okay? Hold on.”
 

“Let me tell ya! I gotta tell ya!”
 

“Alright, Lars. Tell me.” Sometimes, she wished that she still smoked. A Salem at this moment would have cleared her sinuses and given her something to think about besides how dear, sweet, honest and ineffectual Lars had gone off the deep end. “What did you sell, Lars?”
 

“Remember when you guys wrote Angel Street?”
 

Ellen wanted to say, “No, I forgot.” Instead, she answered, “And?”
 

“One of the majors in Hollywood—and I don’t mean an indie—wants to option it for a western.”
 

Ellen Naile almost said, “shit” but didn’t. “Lars,” she pointed out, “that book was set in the present day—at least the present day in the mid-1980s.”
 

“Don’t you get it, sweetheart?! They’re movin’ it to the 1880s. Or somethin’. We could be talkin’ the Austrian Oak here makin’ his first western, or—”
 

“He made a western with Kirk Douglas and Ann-Margaret. It’s really funny, like a cartoon with people in it. It was intended to be that way.”
 

“Well, I don’t know who the hell’s gonna be in it, but they’re talkin’ twenty-five large up front—”
 

“You’ve gotta stop watching Miami Vice, Lars.”
 

“Twenty-five grand, alright?! And if they exercise the option and decide to lens it, we’re talkin’ major bucks city here, a hundred grand extra and a piece. A little piece, for sure . . .”
 

“Ohh, for sure. I’ll get Jack, Lars.”
 

Ellen pushed the hold button and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Jack! Pick up on line one! Now, Jack!”
 

Ellen had been on the kitchen telephone and ran toward the office, her fists under her breasts because she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath the loose-fitting T-shirt.
 

Jack was on the phone as she came in and they exchanged glances. His eyes mirrored her thoughts—poor Lars had finally gone off the deep end, withdrawn into a fantasy world.
 

“Angel Street,” Ellen whispered barely aloud as she sat down at her desk. As a western? Angel Street had been a book Jack had liked a lot more than she had. The hero of the story had been a hard-as-nails P.I. named “Angela Street” who takes a charity case, going after the drug lord responsible for the death of a teenage runaway.
 

The P.I. is closing in on the drug lord, about to get the goods on him, when the drug lord’s gang ambushes her and kills her.
 

An actual angel—her guardian angel—appears and offers Angela Street the chance to return to life long enough to get the drug lord and his gang. Angela agrees. The angel—a very good-looking male angel—stays with her, helping her. It is a risk for the guardian angel, because, in order to help her, he must take on human form. And, should something happen to him while in human form, he would die, would be unable to return to life as an angel. He’d be dead-dead. Angela and her guardian angel fall in love—which Ellen had thought was way too predictable. More predictable had been the ending. Angela Street triumphs against the drug lord, of course, and the guardian angel gets fatally shot. As he dies, she kisses him and, somehow, she doesn’t die as she should have.