October 12, 2020.

Fait Accompli, Chapter One.

It's two people who get ahold of me from the University, a dean of one of the colleges whose name I can't hear over the crackle of the bad connection, and Dr. Abraham D. Besmont, a professor of anthropology that clears his throat before every protracted sentence like an engine gunning up.

I'm sick from gin and the thing that's been going wrong with my back, but I need the money, so I agree to meet with them at their off-campus offices in half an hour. The taxi ride is longer than I expect. I don't have enough to pay the guy, so I leave him cursing me with the entire contents of my trouser pockets in his lap. I climb three flights of stairs. It's an old building and there's a lot of water damage on the second floor, from a pipe on the third floor bathroom that burst last month, I learn from a Polish signmaker who gives me his card even though I can't really afford a sign and I don't know where I'd put it anyhow. He also tells me where to get a good meatball sandwich, and I write this down in my notebook.

I take notes on account of I don't remember too well without notes, and what I like to do is keep a notebook in one coat pocket and write on it and tear out the pages of the notebook when it's done and put them in the other pocket, and then when I get home I take the pages and I arrange them on a couple of stainless steel memo stabbers or in folders or just on my desk. It's not a perfect system but it works O.K. for me.

I figure the University has some beaucoup bucks to spend so before coming over here I got out a fresh notebook and laid down my hair with a comb and washed my face. I walk into their offices and they don't have a girl on the front desk to greet me so I just keep walking and into the office with their shadows moving around inside and I say hello and shake their hands.

The dean whose name I couldn't hear on the telephone is a big old balled fist of a man with a drinker's gut and a beard and is called Rahey. Dr. Abraham D. Besmont is short and hairless and remains seated the whole time I am there, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and blinking with his big and heavily lidded eyes, sometimes at me, sometimes at Rahey, sometimes at a blank wall.

I feel sick strong again but I always feel sick so I tamp it down and listen. I take notes as they talk. Two associates of theirs, from the anthropology department at the University, have gone missing. Their names are Dr. Leonard Palmer and Amos Schmitt, who is a graduate student and a mentee of Dr. Palmer. Dr. Leonard Palmer went missing last month, Amos Schmitt went missing early last week.

Some questions: Did you know them well. Have you inquired as to their whereabouts from their families and companions. What did the bulls have to say or not say that made you come to me.

These questions were expected but they don't yield any interesting results. They knew them O.K. but not socially. Their families and companions didn't know boo. Their disappearances were both after they traversed across state lines (California into Nevada) so the bulls shrugged and said Not our business, we've got our own problems, pal.

I am distracted by a light playing in the windows across the street. They say it is a reflection of a fire that some grime-layered roustabout on the rooftops keeps starting, a danger to them and theirs, they say. He cooks hot dogs and his own mustard up there, they say, and sells it on Columbus Avenue. I realize I am hungry (my stomach growls like a sick lion) and think about the restaurant with the meatball sandwich that the Polish signmaker recommended. I want to ask if they have any opinion on the matter but instead ask about what's in Nevada.

My notebook gets a workout. They talk about ley lines and telluric currents, they talk about the Gila River Valley and Blythe Intaglios, they talk about thermionic valves and the photoelectric effect, they expect me to know what the letters LFW mean in this context, and about the current research on cathode ray diodes, they let me examine several projections of the Desert Southwest with arrows and Latin and calculations scribbled all over it that I don't get anything out of. They use the word antediluvian several times. It is my measure that they have completely forgotten about their missing colleagues in the course of this conversation.

Anyway, a couple of kooks. I start to lose hope that the University is backing this expedition after all, and try to adjust my expectations accordingly.

O.K. I say. So what do you want from me. And it's easy. They want me to find these gentlemen and return them safely home, and if I can't do that, find out what made them go missing in the first place. I give them my fee and they say O.K.

Well, I've dealt with the Duckys in the dockyards. I can probably find a couple of missing bookworms.

But first I'm going to need to get to Nevada.