Jack shook his head. "She just asked me to come out to her place to discuss my 'experience.' I was pretty shocked, seeing as I hadn't mentioned it to a soul, and I asked her how she knew. She said, 'I just do.' And that was pretty much it."

This didn't seem to be at all to Zaleski's liking. "Come on, Shelby—"

"Jack."

"Okay, Jack. There had to be more to it than that. Hell, she talked everybody's fucking ears off"—a glance at Lew—"no offense, man." Lew shrugged and Zaleski went right back to Jack. "You're sure she didn't say anything else?"

"That's what I told you, isn't it?" Jack said. This guy had the personality of a piranha. "I can make something up if you like…"

As Zaleski frowned, Jack noticed Carmack grinning and giving him a secret thumbs up.

What's the score between these two? he wondered.

Jack added, "I'd really like to find her so I can ask her how she knew."

"Just what did happen to you?" Carmack said.

Jack told his story.

"Typical alien abduction," Zaleski said when he was through.

"I wasn't abducted."

"Hell you weren't. That's what happened during those missing hours. The Jersey pine barrens are notorious for big-time alien activity. You notice any pain up your ass afterwards?"

"Any what?"

"Let me rephrase," he said with faux delicacy. "Rectal pain. The grays like to use anal probes on their abductees." He made a twisting motion with his hand. "Right up the old wazoo."

"Not to me, they didn't," Jack said, squirming at the thought. "And who are the grays?"

Zaleski rolled his eyes. "The gray aliens, man—you know, with the oval-shaped heads and the black almond-shaped eyes, like you see on T-shirts and bumper stickers? They're known as grays."

"Oh, like in Close Encounters." .

Zaleski's expression at the mention of the film would have been right at home on someone who'd just bitten into a wormy apple.

"I think I'd remember them," Jack said.

"Not if they wiped your memory, dude. And if you start to remember anything, keep mum, otherwise the Men in Black will come calling."

Jack smiled. "Yeah? You mean like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith?"

Zaleski's face darkened. "Trust me, you won't be visited by some wisecracking clowns like in the movie. That travesty was produced for the sole purpose of making the real Men in Black look benign, to hide the fact that they're ruthless agents of MJ-12."

"What's MJ-12?" Jack remembered hearing mention of that at the reception last night.

Zaleski stared at him. "Christ, you really are a virgin, aren't you."

"Easy, Jim," Carmack said, leaning forward. "Not everyone knows what we know."

"I just can't believe how ignorant people are."

As Jack was debating whether to laugh or break Zaleski's nose, the waitress reappeared.

She took their orders, and hurried off. Jack poured himself more coffee and glanced at Lew where he sat on the end of the booth cushion. He was staring off into space, his gaze fixed somewhere out near the grays' home planet maybe. He had to have heard all this a zillion times before. Probably bored out of his skull. Or maybe just missing Melanie.

"Okay," Carmack said. "Here's how it is: I've got to assume you've heard about the Roswell crash and Area 51 and all that."

"Sure," Jack said. He'd figured how he could get Zaleski's goat. "I learned all about that in Independence Day. Saw it twice."

Zaleski slapped a hand over his face. "Oh, Christ!"

"Cool it, Jim," Carmack said. To Jack: "Then you know that a saucer crashed and members of an alien race were found in the wreckage. But the real skinny is that we've been in Ongoing contact with that alien race since Truman was president. All the rapid technological advancements since the fifties didn't come from the billions of dollars spent on the arms and space race: it was donated. By the gray aliens."

"How generous of them," Jack said.

"It doesn't come without a price," Zaleski said, "but nobody's reading the small print."

"Just let me finish," Carmack said, showing a little annoyance. "We're going to need all that help—all the help we can get. When the grays arrived in their saucers in the 1940s, they warned us of a flesh-eating reptilian race called the Reptoids that's been roaming the galaxy in a spacecraft that looks like an asteroid. When they find us—not if, when—they'll turn Earth into a giant cattle ranch, and we'll be the cattle."

Zaleski was shaking his head in disagreement. He said nothing but looked as if he were about to explode.

"The grays made us a deal," Carmack continued. "They'd supply us with some of their advanced technology in return for allowing them to experiment on animals and abduct people now and again."

"They abduct animals too?"

"You've heard about cattle mutilations, right?"

"Sure, but—"

Carmack nodded sagely. "The grays."

"But why?"

"They're an ancient race, and apparently they need to borrow some human DNA—just a little—to rejuvenate their own damaged genes. That's where MJ-12 comes in. Back in 1952 an ultra-secret government within the U.S. government called Majestic-12 was set up to deal with the aliens. MJ-12 has been keeping all evidence of the aliens under wraps. Thus the ongoing cover-up of the Roswell crash."

They paused as the waitress delivered their platters. Eggs for Zaleski and Lew, waffles for Carmack, a stack of buttermilk pancakes for Jack.

"I'd think contact with another race would be the biggest, greatest story of all time," Jack said as he drowned his cakes in syrup.

"It would be…except for the part about the approaching Reptoids. Think of the panic that would cause. And then if news of government-sanctioned alien abductions ever got out…we'd have riots in the streets."

Jack shook his head in disbelief. "You mean this has been going on for over half a century and nobody's blown the whistle?"

Zaleski jumped in. "Very few people know—even presidents are kept in the dark. JFK found out, however, and he was going to go public with what he knew. That's why he was offed. Unfortunately he told his brother, who then told Marilyn Monroe while he was boffing her, so the two of them had to go as well."

"But you guys know," Jack said. Or at least think you know. "How come you're still walking around?"

"Because we're nobodies," Carmack said. "And nobody's listening to us…at least nobody that really matters."

Zaleski pounded his fist on the table. "The Freedom of fucking Information Act revealed that every government agency—from the NS A to the Department of Education—has files on UFOs. Thousands of pages on something that officially doesn't exist. But people still don't believe." His voice rose as he pounded his fist again. "When are they going to wise up? We're a country of Pollyannas! DickheadNation!"

People at surrounding tables were craning their necks to see what was going on. He overheard someone mutter, "Uh-oh, Jimmy Z's at it again."

"Easy, Jim," Carmack said. "You don't want to have one of your hissy fits."

"The hell I don't." He turned to Jack. "Tony's only telling you part of the story. He—"

"Shoot," Carmack said. "You ain't gonna lay that Grand Deception cowflop on him are you?"

"Damn right. You had your turn, now I'll have mine. Okay?"

Carmack leaned back with a disgusted expression and nibbled a piece of toast.

"In my opinion, and I'm not alone in this," Zaleski said, "there are no Reptoids coming to Earth. That's all a big lie cooked up by the grays to gain our confidence and pursue their real agenda: crossbreeding with us and taking over the Earth."

"Now hold on a sec," Jack said. "I'm no biologist, but I've never heard of a goat crossbreeding with a cow, and I know cats don't crossbreed with dogs, so how can aliens from light years away crossbreed with us?"