Just down the hall from Weiss’s office was an alcove that served as the agency’s mailroom. There was a Xerox machine in there, a fax machine, a stamp machine, the computer mainframe. And me. Me working at my desk, licking envelopes and making copies, ordering supplies, doing research—and basically waiting around for whatever crumbs of investigative work Weiss felt willing to throw my way.
Which had been exactly none for the last few months. Ever since I’d screwed up my first real case. I’d been assigned to do a simple background check on a priest who was giving testimony in the trial of a vicious armed robber. It was supposed to be my introduction to the business—a grounder, they call it—a simple, straightforward task. Well, I got off to a promising enough start. Right away, I sniffed out the fact that the priest was lying. Unfortunately, that meant that the armed robber would probably go free. So—also unfortunately—I decided to cover up the lie. Then—unfortunately—I felt so guilty about it that I got drunk and passed out at my desk. Which—unfortunately—was where Weiss discovered me. It was all very unfortunate.
Now, Weiss had never mentioned the incident. He never reprimanded me or broke my magnifying glass over his knee or anything like that. I just couldn’t help but notice that what I’d hoped would be the start of my career as a hardboiled gumshoe à la the characters in the old novels I loved turned out instead to herald my inauspicious return to licking envelopes and making copies and waiting around for the investigative crumbs that never came.
But Weiss had not entirely given up on me. He still liked to wander down the hall from time to time and visit me in my little nook. He liked to talk things over with me. I was never sure why. He always kidded me it was because I was going to write a book about him one day and he wanted to make sure I heard his side of the story—and maybe there was some truth to that. But mostly I thought it was just because I didn't count for very much in the world of the Agency. I had my highbrow Berkeley education, my big plans to return to the East Coast and become a writer: I wasn't truly part of Weiss's world. I was just passing through. So I figured Weiss felt he could talk to me with impunity, if you see what I mean. Anything I said or heard didn't really matter. Talking to me was about the same as talking to no one at all.
Whatever. Down the hall he came that day, bearing Professor Brinks's manila envelope.
"Make me some copies of these, willya?" he said. "One for Hwang"—he was our computer consultant—"and one for Sissy"—she was another op. He seemed about to walk away again. But he hesitated. Hung around, as he sometimes did, with his hands in his pants pockets. "While you're at it, make a copy for yourself, too," he said after a moment. "Take a look at them over the weekend. You're a literary man. Let's see what you think."
I don't need to tell you, my youthful heart went pit-a-pat. It seemed I was being given a second chance investigative crumb-wise.
"Okay," I said, as nonchalantly as I could. I opened the envelope's clip, peeked in at the sheaf of papers inside. I could make out only a single sentence:
You will be just one pussy in a row of pussies, one emptiness among many waiting desperately for me to fill you.
"Holy canoodle," I said mildly. "What is this?"
"E-mails to one of our clients. She's being sexually harassed."
“I’ll say. Hey, this isn’t M. R. Brinks, is it?”
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“I saw her go into your office.”
“You know her?”
“Not personally. But I recognize her.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Weiss. “She teaches at Berkeley. You ever take a class from her?”
I snorted. “Not exactly.”
“What? You don’t like her?”
I shrugged. But no, I didn’t. I didn’t like feminists in general. Don’t get me wrong. The way I felt, all God’s children, male and female, should be free to do whatever they wanted, whatever they could. Smoke, go to medical school, stay home and raise their children, it didn’t matter a damn to me what people did. But feminists like Brinks—these ideologues who thought marriage was oppression and sex was rape and men and women should be exactly the same—I’d only just recently escaped from academia, and I knew them well and I hated them. They were bullies and liars. They lied about history and human nature and statistics—anything that might contradict their stupid positions. And when you pointed out to them that they were liars, they tried to bully you by branding you sexist or accusing you of harassment. Then, when you pointed out that they were bullies, they suddenly went all reasonable on you and said, “Oh, surely not all feminists are bullies.” Which is like saying that not all mobsters are hit men: It only takes one or two to intimidate the opposition. The rest are free to go about the business of being ordinary thugs.
So that’s what I thought. Which I mention not by way of convincing anyone. I just want to be clear about what my position was. Because normally I was the soul of gentlemanly good manners, truly, but my feelings about M. R. Brinks and her ilk made me just that little bit sympathetic toward this obscene e-mail guy of hers. And that, in the end, is the reason I was able to help Weiss solve the case.
“So what’s she want you to do?” I asked. “Hunt the man down and drag him to her elfin grot? Turn him into a stag so he can be torn apart by his own dogs?”
He laughed once. “Her elfin grot. Where do you get this shit?”
“Or are you supposed to just hurl him into the Women’s Studies Department and bar the door?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
I hefted the manila envelope in my hand. “That’s a lot of e-mails. Why the hell doesn’t she change her address or something?”
Weiss lifted his eyebrows. “Good question, as a matter of fact. I wondered that, too. This has been going on for nine months.”
“Nine months? How come she’s just hiring you now?”
Hands still deep in his pockets, Weiss hoisted his shoulders. “Don’t ask me. She says she’s being objectified or genitalized or some sort of thing.”
“Genitalized. Gimme a break. You ever read her work? Genitalizing that broad would take a power tool.”
“Awright, awright. Never mind,” said Weiss. “Just make the copies.”
I began to work the pages out of the envelope. “ ‘I’ll slide my cock easy into you and rub velvety rose petals against your clit,’ ” I read aloud. “Wowser!”
Weiss wandered back toward his office, shaking his head. “It’s no way to treat a lady.”