Charlie's Angels: The Lost Episode

The "lost" episode never aired. Found years after the series ended. Story restored to it's original status.

Charlie’s Angels

S5, Ep18: Bosley’s Turn, the Lost Episode

Dana Gorbea-Leon

Bosley waited until he could no longer wait, and then waited some more. They were late; they were always late. Bosley was a short man, stocky by any measure, clumsy in one too many ways, a clown for strategic purposes and tactical advantage, balding, and prone to a peculiar form of nostalgia: yesterday was better than today, the day before better than yesterday, three days ago, four days ago, five. But no more than that. He looked backward for only five days at a time. Don’t ask. A few more things. His eyes were serene, true blue, pinpoints of orderly calm, and the sides of his mouth seemed always to tease or to ridicule: what you said, what she said, what the guy over there was about to say, anybody and everybody. He was older than most people he knew, and he meant to keep it that way.

“Hello Bosley.”

“You’re late.”

All three of them smiled, boldly, stylishly, irresistibly, none of them apologized, none of them thought they should, and arranged themselves, smartly, trimly, professionally, on the designer sofa (too floral for some) across from Bosley. They continued to smile, spectacularly, cheekily, ingratiatingly, and waited. Why couldn’t he retire? Why couldn’t he just retire?

Bosley reached for the cassette recorder �" Charlie’s voice they liked to call it. Model #PHP2700; the latest. �" and placed it, at an angle, on his desk.

“Hello, my angels,” Charlie’s voice said.

“Hello Charlie.”

They paused, the voice on the device anticipating the pause, as though they were talking in real time. It lent the occasion a certain air of spontaneity. The voice came on again, unmistakably casual, polite if you like, as though it were about to order expensive hors d’oeuvres off the menu and the waiter had been kept waiting for a while.

“Intel tells us that a foreign entity has concrete plans to assassinate the president.”

“The president?”

“Again?”

“How boring.”

“Now, girls,” the voice said, gently teasing, gently chiding. “I know this isn’t as sexy as nukes in Minsk or WWIII in the Middle East, but he is our president, the only one we’ve got, let’s show him a little respect.”

Sabrina bristled, Kelly yawned, Jill crossed and re-crossed her legs. Not an opinion, one way or the other, about the current president, they just hated Washington, D.C. Too many monuments in one place; you felt obliged to stop and gawk. Meanwhile the bad guys would be getting away, worrying about their own monuments back home.

“Bosley has all the details,” the voice said. “Be careful out there, and don’t forget to salute veterans of foreign wars wherever you find them.”

“Bye Charlie.”

Sabrina walked to the bar and helped herself to the whiskey. “We’re not the best because we’re the oldest, we’re the oldest because we’re the best,” it said, right there on the label.

“I think we should go on vacation,” she said. “I’m thinking Holland.”

“It’s called the Netherlands these days,” Bosley said.

“Not if you’re from Holland,” she said.

“They both have those quaint windmills, don’t they?” Jill said.

“And brothels on every street,” Kelly said.

It was unwise, Bosley thought, yet again, to think they were as careless in their thoughts as they were in their speech.

Sabrina wore bell-bottom jeans in three colors of the rainbow and a blouse of some sort of synthetic lace. She paced. The floor was covered in carpet; it had been tiled not that long ago. “Are those our instructions?” she said.

Bosley nudged three manila envelopes toward the edge of the desk. Kelly handed one each to her friends and colleagues. None of them looked at the content.

“Wasn’t someone trying to assassinate him last week?” Jill said.

“Domestic origins,” Bosley said. “Doesn’t count, as far as we’re concerned.”

“Which foreign secret service is it this time?” Kelly said.

“So secret, so foreign,” Bosley said, “we’re not sure.”

“Follow the leads,” Sabrina said, in her mock-spy voice.

Kelly’s sandals were mostly a string of miniature diamonds on thin leather straps that snaked up her feet from her big toe to her ankles. A tattoo of a gecko lounged on the instep of her left foot. Both made her feet look more naked than they should. “Some sort of Second Chief Directorate,” she said.

“It’s always some sort of Second Chief Directorate,” Jill said.

“While the First Chief Directorate gets to sit back and watch,” Sabrina said.

“And take all the credit,” Kelly said.

“We’re getting off subject.” Bosley gestured at the envelopes. He walked to the large glass pane in the corner and sat on the window seat. They were on the 64^th floor. Mountains, he thought, for no reason. And of the plains of North Dakota, grassland, prairie dogs, bison, like in the movies, grand vistas and open range.

Jill wore a white silk tie on a black silk blouse. Her tops of her shoes were black, the heels white. Some sort of calculated symmetry there. “Bosley’s looking kind of sad staring out the window like that,” she said. “I think he misses us already.”

“I was thinking of the great plains of North Dakota. I was missing North Dakota,” he said.

“You’re from Florida, Bosley,” Sabrina said. “Remember.”

“It’s always easier to miss a place you’re not from,” he said.

“You’re in rare form, Bosley, in rare form,” Kelly said.

“But what about us?” Jill said.

“What about us?” Sabrina said.

“I want to be missed, don’t you?” Jill said.

“You’ll have to wait,” Kelly said.

“For what?” Jill said.

“Until you die,” Sabrina said. “No one misses anyone while they’re still alive.”

“That’s what phones are for,” Kelly said.

“Or continental travel,” Bosley said, coming out of his funk.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Sabrina said, waving the envelope at him. She poured herself another drink.

“You’ll have to read it first,” he said.

“I think she means he’s got the Secret Service, the CIA, the DIA, the FBI, Naval Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence, Coast Guard Intelligence, Intelligence and Security Command, what would he need us for?” Kelly said.

“None of whom he trusts and none of whom trust him,” Jill said.

“He doesn’t know us from Eve, why should he trust us?” Sabrina said.

Bosley ignored them. “Kelly, you’ll be the new Communications Chief,” he said, getting down to business. “Sabrina, the incoming pastry chef �" “

“I don’t do souffles, Bosley,” she said. “I thought we knew that.”

“Jill, you’ll be the White House’s diplomatic tour guide.”

“Being tactful is my middle name,” she said.

“I think he means you’ll be giving White House tours to every foreign dignitary that drops by,” Kelly said.

“Can I still be tactful, circumspect?” she said.

“Charlie’s thought of everything,” Sabrina said.

“When do we start?” Kelly said.

“Next week,” Bosley said. “On a Tuesday, I believe. Some sort of White House superstition. This White House, in any case.”

“Won’t it look suspicious if we all show up at the same time, on the same date? Shouldn’t we trickle in quiet-like, every other Tuesday or the day following?” Sabrina was on her third whiskey. She was from Kentucky, wasn’t she? Wouldn’t she have preferred bourbon? No one seemed to notice or care.

“Trickle or flood, everyone’s suspect in D.C.” Bosley said. “I’m sorry but we can’t delay this thing. Players are lining up on either side of the field, we’re either there with our own Hail Mary pass or on the sidelines cooling our thirst with orangeade.”

“Wow, Bosley, you could be Time magazine’s next featured sportswriter.” Kelly said.

Jill was getting impatient. She had taken off her left shoe and was inspecting the heel. “Do we get to seduce someone important, get them to fall in love and turn in their comrades?”

“I don’t think we’re talking the U.S.S.R. here, are we Bosley?” Sabrina said. She was pacing again. “Or any of the Eastern bloc. You would have said so, right Bosley?”

“It’s all in your briefs,” he said. “And, no, we’re not talking the U.S.S.R. or the Eastern bloc. That would have made this thing that much easier.” Somewhere quiet, he thought, I could retire somewhere quiet, the Midwest perhaps. Or Dutch country, Pennsylvania-way, a small Amish farmstead. Would he have to give up his phone? The Mennonites next door then, raise a barn or two, learn to rotate crops on three- or four-year cycles.

All of them, as if in one swift motion, reached for their individual manila envelopes and rifled through the content. Overviews, synopses, classified surveillance, supervised watches, informs, coded reports. Rumor, hearsay, version one, version two, version one hundred and two

“This doesn’t help, Bosley,” Sabrina said.

“It’s all we’ve got,” he said. “It’s why we’re sending you in.”

Bosley sank deeper into the window seat. The office walls were pictureless, mica-white (Super Sparkle, the designer had called it), almost everything else was acrylic or glass, angles and slants and fascinating approaches, the city and its skyline outside the tall panes of glass asking to be touched. He was frightened for a second. He wondered if it showed. He hoped he knew what he was doing.

“Bosley, you’re not going to fall asleep on us, are you?” Jill said, looking up from her reading.

“It’s the only form of rest I get these days,” he said. “Staring out into the city, five minutes at a time. It’s my way of dreaming.”

“Are we pretty in your dreams?” Kelly said.

“Yes, of course.”

“That’s awfully unconvincing Bosley,” Sabrina said.

“You’re awfully pretty, all of you,” he said. “How’s that?”

“You’re going to have to dream harder, that’s what,” Jill said. She had put her shoe back on. It was as resolute a move as any other. “I’m ready, aren’t you?”

“I have to go to the Ladies Room,” Kelly said.

“On our way out,” Jill said.

“What a bully,” Kelly said.

Sabrina looked down at the empty glass in her hand. “Let’s go,” she said and found a place for it on the immaculate tabletop of the plexiglass bar.

“Bye Bosley.”

He waved at them and they waved back.

∞

William Calverton “Claymore” Headley-Neudecker, 39^th President of the United States, 1977 �" 1981 (1^st term), January 20, 1981 �" June 21, 1981 (2^nd term), was killed that Monday, 12:37 p.m. Head of Elite Special Ops, we were told, on a routine visit, motive unknown. Had killed himself, we’re led to believe, rather than surrender. Sabrina, Jill and Kelly had been somewhere over Omaha, Nebraska, set to land at Washington Dulles International Airport later that day. The first had been nursing her second martini, the second flirting with the co-pilot, the third abstractedly scratching at the tattoo on her left foot as though petting someone else’s borrowed turtle. All three were arrested immediately upon stepping foot off Pan Am Flight #432A, non-stop from Los Angeles International Airport. Charles “Charlie” Townsend had been the Secret Service’s Head of Elite Special Ops for over twenty-years and three presidencies. Everyone who had ever worked for him, however tangentially, however inconsequentially, was now under arrest. Everyone but one John Bosley. No nickname, no middle initial, no major identification marks or features, no wife and kids, no emergency contact, no next of kind or distant relatives. No known pets or bodies buried in the backyard. He had disappeared into some hitherto unknown dimension, a black hole perhaps, perpendicular to some strange star. No one seemed to remember what he looked like, his age, his real gender, the surprising way he shrugged his shoulders at irrelevant points in a conversation to give the moment a certain amount of heft or force.

∞

Early morning, early morning light. He sat on a bench on a park on a cliff in a mid-to-large seaside city, the ocean at a distance. He had lost most of his weight but was still short, still balding. He wore a hat. To his right, the coastline turned outward for a long spell, turned inward briefly, and disappeared into the emergence of clouds. To his left, a beach park, a Ferris wheel, a broken-down roller coaster, a beachfront hotel, a cabana or two, a marina. A few feet away a boy and a girl were dressed in black and disguised as teenagers. Tattoos mushroomed across her arms and neck and the crown of her head. He had a safety pin stitched across his right eyebrow. It looked like an afterthought. His hair was pink.

“We should plan to eat breakfast sometime soon,” the boy said.

“Yes, we should do that.”

“Do we have any money?”

“That’s why we should plan.”

She started to draw a teardrop on the cheekbone of his left eye.

“Should we ask that man over there for a dollar?” said the boy.

“He can hear us you know.”

“Then we shouldn’t have to ask.”

“But what if he wants us to?”

She finished one side and started on the other.

He handed them a $20 bill.

“No, no, that’s too much, we were only going to ask you for a dollar,” said the boy.

“Be gracious and thank him. I think he’s impressed by the artwork.”

“Look at that smile. I think he likes us. I think we should ask him to adopt us.”

“After we eat. Come on, I’m hungry.”

There was now only the sun and the long coastline. He stretched awkwardly and uncomfortably in his old bones.

“Hello Bosley.”

They sat down on the patch of grass in front of him. Sabrina had let her hair go gray, Kelly had retouched hers, Jill was Jill. But older. Otherwise fifteen years in a federal prison hadn’t spoiled their looks.

“Bosley, my friend, that wasn’t very nice.”

“You knew we’d find you.”

“You knew it would be a matter of time.”

“Fifteen years.”

“You knew we’d never relent.”

“You set us up.”

He said nothing. It was almost a shrug.

“Charlie.”

“The president.”

“All of us.”

“But no, not the president, never the president, right Bosley?”

“What was he, collateral damage?”

“He was you friend, wasn’t he?”

“So not him.”

“Us.”

“Charlie.”

“What were you trying to accomplish? What were you trying to tell us Bosley?”

“That was cold.”

“Deadly cold.”

“There are things beyond reason,” he said, and regretted it as soon as he had.

“Someone’s always got a reason.”

“Nothing’s ever beyond.”

“And that someone wasn’t us.”

Sabrina appeared on the verge of an emotion. She touched her elbows, right to left, left to right, as though checking to see if they were still there. Kelly wouldn’t, or couldn’t, stop smiling, for a while it seemed, no matter what anyone said. Jill whistled, unexceptionally, indifferently, anonymously if you will, as though no one would notice, and she wouldn’t have to notice them. Had they changed that much since the last time he’d seen them? Or had they ever been anyone other than who they were at this moment? He had to think. But what would be the point?

“We’re disappointed Bosley.”

“Hurt.”

“Angry perhaps.”

“It isn’t as though we don’t have a history.”

“A family history.”

“We were almost blood-related, kin.”

“We feel betrayed Bosley.”

“Intimately.”

“What should we do? What should we do?”

“We’d like an explanation Bosley.”

“We expect one.”

“We’re likely to demand one.”

Someone made a gesture. An innocent one perhaps. He reacted out of instinct.

It was a funny sound, like someone letting out an exhausted bit of breath after a long run or a kind of small startled metallic-sounding cry, hard to tell where it came from, it wasn’t just one sound, it was three, reverberating almost simultaneously, three bodies toppling along with it, almost simultaneously, too, but that couldn’t be true, that couldn’t be the physics of the thing, even with the almost involved.

Bosley looked around. There was a lone female jogger at the other end of the palisades, a man down the street struggling to parallel park and making a joke out of it, as though he were trying to punk himself. Why couldn’t he have double-parked, jumped out, ran his errand, ran back? They hadn’t made a sound, hadn’t protested. He didn’t understand why he thought they should have. He put away the gun with the silencer �" had he ever had it out, hadn’t he shot them through the facing of his jacket? He supposed he should walk away, he supposed he wouldn’t be alone for long, he supposed he would be discovered soon enough. He walked to the railing at the edge of the cliff.

“Point blank, through the heart, I bet,” the boy said. He looked down at the three bodies. One of them had its arms braced against its chest, holding on to its elbows. He pointed at the one at the end. “She’s pretty.” He leaned over the one in the middle. “She’s pretty too.”

“She’s dead. She’s dead and she’s dead,” the girl said, pointing. “They’re all dead.”

“My first bunch of dead bodies. I don’t know how to feel, what to think.”

“It’s not something you should get used to, is it?”

“They should have been walking along the beach.”

“They probably thought it would’ve been nicer up here.”

“They should have had their pretty feet in the water.”

“But look at the trees up here, look at the shade. I would’ve done the same thing, too.”

“I think he’ll have to adopt us now, don’t you? I wouldn’t say a thing if he feeds us now and then.”

“How do you know he’s not counting out two more bullets for us?”

“He wouldn’t do that. Look at him. I bet you he regrets it. And we’re friends now, aren’t we? He gave us twenty dollars and we were bringing him back the change.”

“You and me, honest like the neighbors we’ve never had, Sue and Al.”

“I never know when you’re joking,” the boy said.

Bosley waved them over and turned to walk away. They followed, laughing like they’d just learned how or had been allowed, keeping up an improbable Highlands jig behind his back, arms flailing, legs kicking, in and out, sideways, sidelong, whirling, twirling, twisting, twining. One of them giggled. He wasn’t sure if it was the girl. They caught up to the lone female jogger at the end of a major cut of grass leading to a parking lot. She was catching her breath.

“Cigarettes and jogging �" they don’t quite mix,” she said.

The boy and the girl smiled at her.

“He’s our dad,” the boy said.

Bosley walked on.

“Our favorite,” the girl said.

He was still the oldest man he knew.