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Dick "The Biz" Baxter

Dick "The Biz" Baxter is an FBI counterintelligence agent and founding member of the Paranatural Incident Task Force, played by Ezra.
Type Player character
Aliases The Biz; Dick; Special Agent Dick Baxter; "Richard Baxter" (Letterman, Yeltsin); Noah Mueller (passport alias); "Bizarino" (Kurt)
Affiliation FBI (Counterintelligence); Paranatural Incident Task Force; secret contact of Russian intelligence
Status Alive, held in Russia as a guest of Boris Yeltsin; blind in one eye (as of Radford Horrors 04)
First appearance Radford Horror 01
Played by Ezra

Description

The Biz is a stocky man in his forties, about 200 lb, with what the table calls a "normal middle-aged shape": too big for a cave crevice in Georgia, a chimney in Rhode Island and an air vent in a pharmacy. He first appears in a brown windbreaker, khakis and shiny shoes, and later settles into sport jackets and black rather than a suit. Ezra's mental image is a competent mid-forties character from a Japanese or Korean film, with nice clothes, a rough look and a casino-and-cigarette-smoke air. A hotel clerk in Dahlonega calls him "kind of hot, bigger guy". His colleagues note that he always looks pale and sweaty. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 03, Summer Service 04, Appalachia 03, Appalachia 06, Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)

He is cynical, paranoid, deadpan and tired. He drinks, smokes, avoids confrontation, dislikes driving and describes himself as not a deeply curious person. He prefers working people face to face to reading files, and his best-used talent is tidying away evidence of his own crimes. His diet runs to corn dogs, donuts, sunflower seeds, Corn Nuts and black coffee, and his digestive troubles are one of the campaign's longest running gags. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Appalachia 01)

After The Walkers in Skin he has a mouth full of gold fillings, and a scar where a chunk was bitten out of his cheek. By The Radford Horrors he is about 35 lb lighter, clean-shaven and blind in one eye. (Walkers 05, Walkers 07, Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 03)

Background

The Biz served in Vietnam as a radio operator in signals intelligence. He was not in active combat, but he had to run from the Viet Cong at the very end, which Ezra says traumatized him, and he came home with lasting damage to his appetite and his nerves. He then spent his career in FBI Counterintelligence in Washington, DC, mostly on nuclear-security work, where he once ran a canary trap using almost 1,000 copies of a fake reactor plan, each with a different error. He only ever went to zoos for dead drops. He speaks and reads some Russian and can recognise Chechen. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 04, Summer Service 04, Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 03)

His private life is a mess. He has a gambling problem, a shabby DC apartment, repossession letters for a car about $2,500 behind on payments, and by his own account was for years "more into cocaine and lying to people", which is where the nickname comes from. He grew up Catholic and, by his own account, talked to God until his thirties without anything ever happening. His closest friend outside work is Jeff "Apple" Appleby, a DC lawyer turned federal judge, whom he once talked down from a Las Vegas rooftop while blackout drunk. (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 08, Appalachia 04, Appalachia 07)

Before the task force he thought anyone who believed in the paranormal was nuts. (Appalachia 04)

At character creation Ezra gave him two ex-wives: a high-school sweetheart he has not spoken to in many years, and a more recent wife whose departure, bound up with his money troubles, is the sorer spot. One of them is from Radford. In Appalachia 07 Ezra decided that the Biz is not "a finalize-the-divorce kind of guy", so the second marriage was never formally ended, and on Letterman the Biz jokes that he is already estranged from his wife. He has no children. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 04, Appalachia 07, Walkers 01)

History

The Radford Horror

Assigned to the new task force under Andrew Howard, the Biz staked out its barbershop headquarters for hours before going in, decided his new boss was an actual lunatic, and introduced himself as "Dick" and then with "My friends call me the Biz." (Radford Horror 01)

In Radford he did the hands-on scouting. He tracked footprints at the Whateley house, searched its rooms, found the radio and the library books, and planted a bug in the office of Dr. Lawrence Lori. He later burgled that office to get the bug back, photographed the patient files and stole a prescription pad. After the team's car struck Agent Murphy and Murphy's flashlight weapon went off, the Biz chased him, fired a warning shot and missed, then cleaned glass, blood and burned trees off the road. The same night he charmed the motel clerk Rutherford into selling him $40 of DMT, and from his car, with night vision, he watched the craft skim the treetops behind the houses where a dog and then Phoebe Augustine vanished. (Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 05)

He was the task force's skeptic. He told the team that aliens were "back off the menu", called Andrew's theology blasphemy, and raised the secrecy question in the FBI huddle. He spent the stakeout at the Alpine Lodge water tower as spotter, then explored the Whateley cellar and hid a live radio bug behind the flag patch of the spaceman suit. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 05, Radford Horror 06)

The fight in the old-town church ended his skepticism. With no armor and no melee weapon he shot the Radford Moth, was slashed across the chest, tore its wing with his bare fingers, climbed to its face and gouged out its eyes. Its psychic blow left him seizing on the floor of the burning building. He burned a Luck point to wake, collapsed short of the door and was dragged out by Kurt Larson. He reached 5 harm and was stabilized by Andrew and Kurt. (Radford Horror 07)

He left hospital with burns, several pounds of thigh tissue missing and recurring butterfly nightmares, having bet drug money on the Cubs and lost. Back at the church, his search showed that the gore and dog collars had been removed in a cover-up. (Radford Horror 08)

The Summer Service

In Marblehead the Biz stole and hid one of the crystal marbles, licked it, tested it with a new pocket knife and later told the team the marbles were diamonds. Unknown to him, he was himself under FBI counterintelligence surveillance. He did not drink the communion wine and was never infected by the worms. (Summer Service 01, Summer Service 03, Summer Service 04)

He became the party's chief investigator, twice rolling 14 at the lighthouse, and talked the assistant Henry away from Donald McManley. His 1986 Buick Regal, which had once carried a severed arm, ended up as the mount for Kurt's Davy Crockett. A career in nuclear security left him appalled at a loose nuclear weapon; he said nothing and smoked. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 04)

This arc also revealed his secret. Instructions he had received required a 1980 reprint of Moby Dick. He bought one, sent the team away, called a recorded "promotional sweepstakes" from a distant payphone and decoded its number lists with the book cipher. The message, from Russian intelligence, said that submarines had been lost near Massachusetts, cause unknown, with instructions to follow. He concluded the Russians were probably not behind the case and kept the message to himself. (Summer Service 04)

At Arnold Weathers' house his panicked burst of gunfire destroyed the hallway decor and hit nothing else. He planted a bug, took the marbles, and helped pass the sixty-pound warhead out of a window as police climbed the stairs. Having bought welding goggles and earplugs in advance, he lost rock-paper-scissors to Huell Kendrick for the honour of firing the weapon, and drove the survivors out while they slept. He finished the case unharmed. (Summer Service 05, Summer Service 06)

The Things in Appalachia

On 3 October 1992 a sweepstakes mailer that the Biz recognised as a KGB front sent him to a payphone and the "Canada maple syrup sweepstakes line". The decoded message offered $10,000 and information on the "Massachusetts matter" for a favor in Georgia. Paying a homeless man $50 to collect from the old drop spot, he received a covert microphone and film camera and flash-paper orders: install the camera in room 111 of the Smith Hotel in Dahlonega before midnight two days later, retrieve it after 24 hours, and mail the undeveloped film. By chance the team was booked next door. The desk clerk reported the room's booker as suspicious and lent the Biz the master key. He hid the camera facing the bed and the microphone on the bedside drawer and left no prints. (Appalachia 01, Appalachia 02)

On the case itself he found the shoe in the tree, held hands in the human chain in the mine, and climbed out last as the tunnel collapsed. He declared himself "three for three" on real creatures. (Appalachia 02, Appalachia 03, Appalachia 04)

Unrecorded session

Appalachia 05 was never recorded. The next recorded session shows only the aftermath: the Biz wandered in wearing slept-in clothes with a badly twisted ankle, the door of the room next to the team's had been broken down, and state police pulled a night-vision headset out of the hotel bushes for the Secret Service. What happened that night has never been stated on a recording. (Appalachia 06)

He developed film in the hotel bathroom and came out pale and distracted, then went to "retrieve the thing". The next day state police announced that the FBI had been surveilling candidate Bill Clinton in Dahlonega, with fingerprints on recovered equipment matching an unnamed agent. The Clinton surveillance scandal put Andrew on live television and the whole team in hiding from the press. The Biz, by then sleepless and frayed, floated the theory that it was a fake Watergate-style smear, and admitted in passing that he had no bugs left because he had used them all on Clinton. (Appalachia 06, Appalachia 07, Appalachia 08)

Under the Spud Hut plant he was the only one to hear the door squeak and see the hairy arm, dropped on reflex at the Claymore warning, and photographed the crack in the air with his spy camera on a timer. He fought Big Bob, was thrown by him, and left the mine carrying an unreasonable amount of gold. (Appalachia 08, Appalachia 09)

Unrecorded session

The finale, Appalachia 10, was never recorded. Dialogue in the next episode establishes that the Biz shot a Polish man in the woods with a shotgun and had a heart attack around that time. The Georgia State Police released his name and recovered his night-vision monocular from a rose bush, making him "the most hated cop in America". Officially it was Jan Martense who was caught surveilling Clinton. (Walkers 01)

The Walkers in Skin

A few days before the election the FBI ordered the Biz onto David Letterman's show, the one concession to programmes that wanted someone actually involved. Sweating through his makeup, he opened with a joke the audience found "complicated", then burned a Luck point to turn a Manipulate Someone roll into a 12 and made Letterman an ally. Letterman told him on air that the Clinton Polaroids were taken with a Russian camera, which was news to him. He closed with a marked-card trick using his wallet and badge; the patter was rough but it earned more claps than boos, and a production assistant gave him Letterman's personal number. He came out of it hated less, more famous and harder to read. (Walkers 01)

In Ballard he was recognised on sight as the man who spied on Clinton, first by FBI agent Carl Gardner. He worked as the team's fixer: a contact in Salt Lake City, Drebin, supplied the ground-penetrating radar, and his DC informant Hooster took an order for a bomb collar. (Walkers 02, Walkers 03, Walkers 04)

The night event at the ranch hit him hardest. Part of his visual field crumbled and he lost every filling in his mouth; he was treated with cocaine and spent a day at the dentist getting gold replacements on the FBI's tab. Still slurring, he tested Yusuf Ansari with a trick question and argued for paying the $10,000 and letting the local police think they had won. (Walkers 05, Walkers 06)

When the naked intruder broke into the guest house, the Biz looped his belt round the man's neck and had a piece of his cheek bitten out. In the next session's tactical entry and firefight he stepped on plate glass, was winged, and killed the first gunman with a head shot. During this period the duplicate Andrew secretly took a sample of his blood. He rode out the finale on horseback with binoculars and kept a private hypothesis about Howard to himself. (Walkers 07, Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

The Roulet Estate

At the office Christmas party the Biz gave a Georgia gold nugget to carolers, scratch-off tickets to Diane and a floppy disk marked "Mystery Government Files" to Kurt, and planned a Vegas trip with his judge friend. On Inauguration Day 1993 he woke in the Roulet house and vomited into a Stetson that was not his, with a holster but no gun. He and Kurt were the only ones to spot the grey face on the roof, took charge of restoring transport, bluffed his way to a telephone at the Clown Mansion and made the official call to the FBI. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)

At the Brooks Pharmacy siege he climbed to the roof, opened the door with a credit card and wedged himself into the drop ceiling as a fail-safe. When the gunman was about to spot Kurt, the Biz fired first. The return shot from a Mosin-Nagant went through the ceiling into his thigh for 3 harm and he fell onto the tile. Andrew's healing failed, and a tourniquet saved him. (Roulet Estate 03)

He then vanished from the hospital, and his teammates assumed he had run. In fact the Russians had taken him. They had his leg treated at a good Russian hospital, then held him in a freezing cell at the abandoned Vorkuta Corrective Labor Camp, where he was beaten and interrogated and then left for two weeks in near silence, making up sea shanties and talking to a cockroach. When a senior officer looked in through the door slot, the Biz welcomed him in polite Russian. He was flown to Moscow and handcuffed to a chair in front of Boris Yeltsin, who put a Cuban cigar in his mouth, lit it and told him to start talking. (Roulet Estate 03)

The Radford Horrors

By early April 1993, about three months after his abduction, the Biz was living under guard in the Hotel Metropol on stroganoff, champagne and dubbed soap operas, passing the borscht he did not like to a friendly guard. His first captors had asked about Clinton; the new ones asked only about aliens. His strategy was to exaggerate how seriously the United States takes the paranatural and hide that Ross Perot might axe the task force, and a Manipulate Someone roll of 11 sold it. In Yeltsin's opera box he stonewalled on the Marblehead explosion, explained skinwalkers, identified a half-melted flashlight weapon, and praised Andrew Howard while leaving out his abilities. He scouted escape routes and hid bed sheets but did not want to run. (Radford Horrors 01)

In Washington his teammates searched his apartment. They found his gold, cash and cocaine under a floorboard, the torn-up Moby-Dick with circled words, bills for classified ads in three DC papers, a granted six-month leave for a "family emergency", and a bug-out briefcase holding Swiss francs, a revolver and a Swiss passport in the name Noah Mueller. Andrew asked whether the Biz was a double agent; Kurt answered that there are degrees. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)

Summoned at 3 a.m. to ride in Yeltsin's convoy toward Oryol Oblast, the Biz woke as ambushers rammed the presidential limousine. He burned Luck to get Yeltsin into a car, drove it blacked-out into a wheat field, carried the president into the wheat and ambushed a pursuer with a guard's knife. The man gouged one of his eyes, blinding it, before collapsing from blood loss. A helicopter collected them both. (Radford Horrors 03)

Yeltsin then took him to the Oryol crash site, where a triangular craft had destroyed a farmhouse. The Biz witnessed the questioning of the crash survivor, who spoke of "Survey" and servitors, noticed its resemblance to the change in Andrew Howard since his death, and told Yeltsin honestly that these were not the beings he knew. He remains in Russia. (Radford Horrors 04)

Relationships

Abilities and equipment

The Biz's playbook is never named at the table. The moves he is seen to use are listed below; see Game mechanics for the rules as played. (Radford Horror 02, Walkers 01, Walkers 04, Appalachia 09)

  • Concealing a crime: +1 when hiding evidence of a crime. Andre remarked that "your crime move is the one that by far gets the most use".
  • Fixer: to buy, sell or hire, roll +Charm.
  • Grifter: before manipulating someone, ask the Keeper what will convince them.
  • Charlatan: to make people think he is using magic, roll +Cool. Ezra took it with a saved level-up just before the Letterman taping: between cases the Biz had been teaching himself conjuring tricks so that he could pass off what he had seen Howard really do as "woo-woo powers" of his own. The card trick on Letterman is the only time he performs.
  • Advanced moves: Investigate a Mystery and Manipulate Someone, marked as advanced with a second level-up in the same session.

Ratings. Charm +2 at the start, +3 by The Walkers in Skin; Sharp +3; Tough 0. Cool rose from 0 to +1 as his first improvement and was +2 by Roulet Estate 03. (Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 04, Walkers 04, Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 03)

Luck and harm. He burned Luck in the church fire, on Letterman and again during the convoy ambush in Russia, which left him three Luck before he is Doomed. His injuries include burns and a mauled thigh from the moth, a heart attack, lost fillings, a bitten cheek, a rifle wound to the thigh and a lost eye. (Radford Horror 07, Walkers 01, Radford Horrors 03)

Gear. Night-vision goggles, repeatedly lost; a spy camera and bugs; binoculars, pager and handcuffs; a flask, lighter and cigarettes; his Buick Regal; a cheap Casio scrambled at the ranch; and a share of the Georgia gold. He refuses to carry a bigger gun. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 06, Walkers 03, Walkers 04, Roulet Estate 03)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"I now believe in aliens, and I hate them." Ezra (as the Biz) (Radford Horror 07)

Quote

"If there's one thing that I know about Uncle Sam, it's that state security matters more than lives until it's a lot of lives." Ezra (as the Biz) (Radford Horror 05)

Quote

"I don't write reports. I do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It's much more interesting." Ezra (as the Biz) (Summer Service 03)

Quote

"Bigfoot is real, and I'm gonna kill it." Ezra (as the Biz) (Appalachia 03)

Quote

"I wish the state police creeps would come down here. This is way weirder than Bill Clinton." Ezra (as the Biz) (Appalachia 09)

Quote

"Listen, Howard, I like you. But if that moth thing is real, God had better goddamn be real." Ezra (as the Biz) (Walkers 06)

Quote

"Look, what I wouldn't give to just investigate a regular serial killer right now." Ezra (as the Biz) (Roulet Estate 02)

Quote

"I'm going into a wheat field. You're gonna have to find me." Ezra (as the Biz) (Radford Horrors 03)

Trivia

  • Dick or Richard? In Radford Horror 07 Ezra says the name is "not even short for Richard", and in Appalachia 02 that his passport reads Dick. Letterman nevertheless introduces "FBI agent Richard Baxter", Yeltsin calls him Richard once (a slip: when a guard begins a line with "Richard" in Radford Horrors 04, Andre corrects it to "Mr. Baxter"), and when Andre asked for the Biz's actual name in Roulet Estate 03, Ezra answered, "Richard Baxter. A.k.a. Dick." (Radford Horror 07, Appalachia 02, Walkers 01, Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 04)
  • Where was the gold? In the Roulet Estate 03 epilogue the players agree that his teammates buried his share and left him a cryptic message, and Andre rules that it is in a park near his home. One session later the team finds "all of the Biz's share of the gold" under his apartment floorboard. (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)
  • Faith. In Radford Horror 04 Ezra describes him as someone who grew up Catholic and is not particularly religious, but in Walkers 08 he says, "The Biz is a Presbyterian, I think I've decided." By his time in Moscow the Biz admits to "some kind of spiritual awakening maybe beginning to take root". (Radford Horror 04, Walkers 08, Radford Horrors 01)
  • The handlers. Andre calls the sweepstakes mailer "a KGB front" in Appalachia 01; elsewhere the Biz's contact is simply Russian intelligence. (Summer Service 04, Appalachia 01)
  • Secret scenes. Andre ran the Biz's spy scenes in Appalachia with the other players out of the call, though he admitted that "they know the gist". (Appalachia 01)
  • The abduction. After the pharmacy siege Ezra suggested that the Biz would either be abducted from hospital by the Russians or go to ground, and left the choice to Andre, who picked "abducted and still in custody, because that's more interesting". Ezra played Daniel Webster in the Virginia scenes that followed. (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 02)
  • The voice. Ezra began with no planned voice, used a Columbo impression on the radio, and settled into Boston slang and accent, which he admits he keeps forgetting. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 06, Summer Service 01, Walkers 03, Roulet Estate 02)
  • In Radford the diner waitress Sheila remembers him as the one who blew up the toilet. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • Ezra has said that if the Biz dies, his next character will be an Australian bush pilot. (Walkers 06)

Appearances

He also took part in the unrecorded sessions, which survive only through later recaps; see Lost episodes.