typed | (no subject)

Robert Graysmith has been married for some time now. Sitting on a couch, he flips through a great scrapbook, filled with newspaper cuttings on the Zodiac.

Suddenly, he feels a breath on his neck and -- "I'm not Paul Avery."

It's his wife. She laughs, he does too. "The boys need to be tucked up, please, and the baby needs changing."

He sighs. "Can I switch you?"

"You wish." She begins to leave the room, blue bathrobe swinging around her ankles. "No one has more Zodiac crap than you do."

And that -- that gives him pause for thought. A pattern, a trend he's noticed in the articles he's cut out. Straightening up, he flips through the album again and he sees

The Search for Zodiac's 4 Weapons
By Paul Avery

Zodiac -- Portrait of a Killer
By Paul Avery

Cops No Closer on Zodiac Identity
By Paul Avery

and he knows who he has to find.

Pulling up to the docks, the houseboat isn't too hard to locate, dark brown with light roof tiles. Roberte hesitates once before knocking (the curtains are all drawn).

i feel it in my bones you ache to know my name so i'll clue you in but why spoil the game YOU ARE DOOMED

paul feels his heart jumpskipabeatstophalt when he hears the knocks. no one -- no one visits him, no one has any reason to visit. so why, why is there a person at his door. he gets up, cleans up a few bottles (stares down the barrel of a gun youaredoomed youaredoomed), goes over to the door and

The door is thrust open. The man inside is almost unrecognizable. His hair has streaks of gray and white, and his face is even more worn, with an unhealthy pallor, an animal sort of panic evident in his eyes. He's dressed poorly, in a thin maroon bathrobe, a white t-shirt, and boxer shorts.

It takes Paul Avery a moment to recognize Robert Graysmith, but a (relieved) smile crosses his face (not the Zodiac not going to kill me).

"You're kidding," he mumbles under his breath, opening the door a little wider.

Then, he turns, leaving the door for Graysmith to close. "Permission to come aboard." Avery points out a chair, leaning a hand on Graysmith's shoulder for a moment and gesturing at a TV, currently playing PONG against itself.

"See that? Mesmerizing."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, my own kids would kill me for one o' those."

"Yeah?"

Paul makes his way a little further into the houseboat, past a bead screen, and into the kitchen. Graysmith turns accordingly, trying to keep tabs on the reporter.

"How -- how are you?"

"Fantastic. I mean, admittedly, the Bee ain't exactly the Chron, fuck no. Do you want a drink? I don't have anything blue. So I got --"

Paul trails off, waving a bottle of vodka.

(Graysmith is a little put off. There are glasses all over Paul's coffee table, alcohol left in some of them. The ash trays have still-burning cigarettes, and, to Robert's dismay, joints of marijuana.)

"Don't --don't worry about that, don't worry about it."

Robert gets a glass nonetheless.

(The rest of the bottle, Paul takes for himself.)

"No... bother at all. No one comes by from the old days."

Clinking the bottle against Graysmith's glass, he heads off towards one of the couches, picking up a cigarette along the way.

"To your health." Then, almost as an afterthought: "And mine." He sits. "Mostly mine." Putting the bottle to his lips, he takes a drink, before placing it within easy reach.

"So, uh --," he fumbles for a lighter, clicks it a few times, and lights his cigarette, taking a drag and clamping it between his lips. "What's new?"

"I've been thinking." (Graysmith seems so eager, Paul can't stand it. Why is he here, why is he here. It can't be just to visit. Or at least, a visit for the sake of visiting is a concept Paul isn't in a state to wrap his head around.)

"Yeah."

"Somebody should write a book."

(Paul thinks of Kate and her own words along those lines -- almost pauses in thought, doesn't, passes it by.)

"Somebody should write a fuckin' book, that's for sure. 'Bout what?"

"About Zodiac!"

Paul almost sighs, plucking the cigarette from his lips.

"That's not new."

pass it up pass it on don't harangue me about the fucking zodiac

"I've been thinking that -- if you put all the information together, maybe we could jog something loose, you know what I'm saying? And I was thinking that, nobody knows the case better than you do."

(It's true.)

"You know all the players, and you -- you have all the files."

"Lost them."

From the look on Graysmith's face, you might have thought Avery had made a bad joke. "... You lost them."

"Or, I tossed them -- I don't know, I moved onto a boat. You know that we work in the daily business, right? As in to-day? What d'you think we were doing back then? " (The look of disbelief on Graysmith's face persists.) "Do you know more people die in the East Bay commute every three months than that idiot ever killed? He offed a few citizens and wrote a few letters and he faded into a footnote."

Paul pauses, watching Robert's face. (Robert can't look at him any more.) He leans forward, a cruel edge to his words.

he does not appreciate robert coming by here, just to stir up an old case. the job of cutting his ties to the zodiac is hard enough already, and he's lost enough. he's divorced, a drunk, a druggie, and he's employed at a newspaper he doesn't really enjoy working at. this, this is a reopening of old wounds, a step backwards into the abyss. paul knows what the zodiac case does to people, what it has done to him, and he does not want to be eaten up any further.

"Not that I haven't been sitting here, idly, waiting for you to drop by and reinvigorate my sense of purpose."

Robert looks up at that, a terrible sort of realization dawning across his face as he glares over.

Paul resists the urge to laugh in his face, the urge to yell at him to get out and leave him to rot in peace. "It was four years ago, let it fuckin' go."

"You're wrong. It was important."

Fucking boy scout. Paul's voice is suddenly loud, suddenly full of venom and a very, very real frustration. "Then what did you ever do about it? If it was so fuckin' important, what did you ever do? You hovered over my desk, you stole from wastebaskets, am I being unkind?"

Robert is speechless.

"Oh, that's right, I forgot. You went to the library."

(He doesn't feel any better.

He hates that.)

When Graysmith finally speaks, it's in a flat tone.

"I'm sorry I bothered you."

And he sees himself out.

A vague numbness is all Paul feels for the rest of the day.