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“WARREN, JOSEPH ADAM,” said Usher One.
A wild frog jumped inside my chest, and all the snarky remarks I had stored up against this moment hit a brick wall and died hideously. Millie’s blue eyes rounded as though a woodland creature was dying right in front of her. Maybe a bunny, or a chipmunk.
I slipped on my brave face and stood on quivering legs. Made sure they’d support me before I tried anything rash, like moving. “I spy two big, ugly things dressed in black.” My words came out steadier than I expected.
“Oh, Joe.” Millie stood and hugged me.
“Don’t forget to turn out the lights when you leave. And be sure to clean up, or we’ll never get our deposit back.”
She sniffed into my chest, and I was surprised to feel dampness there. Millie shoved away and brushed the front of my orange jumpsuit, as if straightening it. Her eyes were red and watery, her voice husky. “Take care of yourself, Joe. Good luck.”
“And to you.”
“And good luck with Chelle.” Millie spun away and crossed to the sink. Turned on the tap. “I hope you find her a good hospital and she gets well soon.”
Usher Two grumped, “Come on, darling, we ain’t getting paid by the hour.”
“I’m sure that’s true.” My legs carried me to the cell door without collapsing, and I put my hands through the slot for the shackles. “I’ll bet you guys get paid by the soul. Am I right?”
“Fuck off,” said Usher One while his pal clamped the cuffs on.
The door buzzed, and I marched outside. Prisoners lined up at the doors of their cells, those farther away pressed right into the bars so they could see. The combined impact of their sympathetic hangdog faces nearly dropped me to my knees right there. I drew a shaky breath as the door clanged shut behind me.
“Don’t be sad, people,” I called out. “I’m sure my new family will have a nice mommy and a daddy and new toys to play with and—”
One of the ushers shoved me. “Shut the fuck up and move.”
At mealtime every day we were marched through the door at the end of the hall for chow, so I should have been used to hearing it close. This time, when the cellblock door slammed shut behind me and an empty gray corridor stretched ahead, my knees wobbled, and I almost asked to be taken back inside. Almost.
I strode forward instead, keeping ahead of the ushers and walking like I knew the way. At the T-junction, I turned left—right went to the mess hall, so it was a safe bet—and earned a growl from the ushers to slow down. We tramped through sparsely populated corridors, meeting few people and talking to none. We trundled up metal stairs and maneuvered through electronically locked doors that opened by some unseen magic. I suspected the guards wore a microchip that allowed them to access doors without stopping and fiddling with keys or cards.
The guards halted me at a room with a number—602C—and Usher One said, “Here.”
Two comfy chairs and a table occupied the center of the room, with a desk and office chair against the right. Bookcases lined the walls. Done in institution off-white, the room left a lot to be desired, but it was a few notches better than any other part of the lockup I’d seen so far. A coffee service waited on the table, and the smell of roasted java brought tears to my eyes.
“Sit.” Usher One pointed at the comfy chairs.
I sat. And stared at the coffeepot the way a dog watches a rare steak on the floor.
“Go ahead, have some,” said Usher Two with a wave of his hand. The pair stationed themselves by the door and didn’t budge again, switched into a power-down mode common to robots of their model. C3P-Asshole.
I slugged back the first steaming cup without pausing for breath. I didn’t offer the guards any. The dark roast hit my tongue, and I shivered. Had I not been dosed with anti-libido pills, I’d have gotten off right then and there. I folded back into the cushions and sipped until the second cup was empty, poured a third, and killed it too.
An old-fashioned clock ticked somewhere, and the armchair was soft as a cloud’s butt. I sank into the cushions and closed my eyes...
***
SMACK-SMACK-SMACK!
“Mr. Warren?... Mr. Warren?”
Smack-smack-smack!
“Chelle?” I popped open my eyes, the last traces of a dream scattering away, and found Agent Ramirez slapping my cheek. I blinked and shoved upright from where I’d sunk into the cushy chair. My eyes were sticky, and my mouth tasted like I’d drunk a bottle of glue.
“I’m ’wake,” I mumbled, waving off the gnome with a badge. “Gah.” I smacked dry lips and rubbed my eyes. “How long was I out?”
“Not long, Mr. Warren.” Ramirez perched on the opposite chair and poured coffee from the thermos on the table. The smell alone made me salivate. How much coffee can one person crave? “Not long at all. Would you like something else to drink? Some food?”
Was he kidding me? This from the guy who threatened to have me butt-fucked with batons? “Who are you? Where’s Agent Ramirez?”
Ramirez cracked a tiny smile. World of wonders, I had no idea his smile muscles were connected. “No need to be concerned, Mr. Warren. You’ll be happy to know your story checked out, and we’ll be letting you go soon.”
“Seriously?” I made a point of examining the industrial-grade office. “I’m not the expert on getting out of jail, but I don’t ever remember it being quite like this.”
“Normally, no.” Ramirez perched on the edge of the chair, feet together on the floor. He set his cup on the table and leaned forward with (what I think was) a sincere expression. Fear trickled back into my veins and zipped around in panicked circles in my chest. “I had the guards bring you here first. There are a couple of things we need to discuss.”
“Things?” I had an itch in the middle of one of my shoulder blades, in a place that was a real bitch to reach. I twisted this way and that, scratching around it, but never quite getting it.
“Yes, Mr. Warren. Things. You see, I learned early on that you were exactly who you said you were; that you had nothing to do with the so-called Children of Liberty. I had a nice long chat with your case worker, Mr. Killingsworth—”
“Wait.” I rubbed my back into the seat cushion, scratching like a bear. “How long ago did you figure this out?”
“Oh, almost immediately.”
“Almost... What? You left me in a cell for three weeks, knowing I didn’t do anything? My girlfriend—”
The Nice Ramirez flushed from the detective in a heartbeat. Without moving anything more than a few muscles in his eyes and cheeks, the earnest and sincere look vanished and Evil Ramirez, Agent of Darkness, appeared. I couldn’t prove it, but I suspected the temperature in the room dropped several degrees. He held up one finger, and my mouth snapped shut, just like that, and my anus puckered so tight, I couldn’t pass a pin.
“Mr. Warren, you were arrested”—his words frosted the air—“with a group who strives to overthrow the lawfully elected government of the United States of America. We had to be sure you were exactly who you reported yourself to be before we could release you. We listened very attentively to the recordings of your conversations with your cellmates before deciding you were a person we might be able to trust.”
“Uh... thanks?”
“You’re welcome,” he said with all due gravity and not a hint of irony. His predatory appearance faded, and he resumed his earlier personality. I wondered how many shades of Ramirez were in there. “It is because of this fragile bond of trust that I have asked to speak with you.” He sipped from his coffee and placed the cup exactly where it was before. “You see, I would like you to do something for us. For your country, Mr. Warren.”
“I see,” is what came out of my mouth—flat, neutral and non-committal—while screaming inside my head was, The fuck kind of moron are you?
“You seem to have bonded in some small way with the people in your cell, especially Ms. MacCauley. It’s why we separated out the other men early in the process; we wanted you and her to spend some time together. Had there been a way to conveniently do it, we would have taken the anti-androgenic out of your food and disabled the fraternization analytics so the two of you could have engaged in sexual intercourse. Unfortunately we could find no way to effect that outcome without tipping our hand.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, “too bad.” Jesus, Joseph, and Moses, were these people for real? I didn’t know whether to laugh aloud or run screaming from the room. Agree with everything. Shut up and get out of here. “Yeah, we got to know each other a little. I mean, how can you not, locked up with somebody?”
“Exactly.” Ramirez seemed pleased I was with the program. Good doggy. “What we would like, Joseph”—apparently we were on a first-name basis now—“is for you to take advantage of that budding friendship and strive to get to know Ms. MacCauley a little better. Look her up, have coffee, gain her trust...”
“Spy on her, you mean.”
“Hmm.” He shrugged, frowning as if I’d used a naughty word. Bad doggy. “If you want to put it that way. Joseph, the Children of Liberty are a dangerous group, and we need to keep tabs on them. We need somebody... on the inside, so to speak.”
A dangerous group? Yeah, I could see the yolk lady knitting suicide vests for her dogs Goldie and Snowflake. Millie tossing fish to her missile-shooting dolphins for every successful launch. De Galvez might bore a man to death, but armed rebellion? Who was this guy kidding?
To badly paraphrase Dorothy Parker, What fresh pile of dogshit was this?
“You’ll be that somebody,” Ramirez continued without a glitch. “Nothing too sneaky, nothing dangerous. Get to know a pretty girl and ask questions. Pretend to be interested in the answers and even boink her if you want. Act like a convert, in a manner of speaking. Once a month or so, come back here and tell me what you learned. Simple as that.”
“Simple as that.” Was this guy for real? Did he even stop and listen to himself? Keep your cool, Joe. Just get through it. I refilled my coffee cup to buy time to think, and to wash the gummy taste out of my mouth. I had two choices: Go with the flow and sign up to be Ramirez’s happy little snitch, or go all fuzzy batshit crazy and throw this coffee in his face and see how much punching I could get in before the ushers came over and stomped the multicolored steaming guts right out of me.
“Well, Joseph, can I count on you?”
I sipped coffee and said, “Well, you know, Agent, I may have a little problem at home. I live with a woman who’s not very forgiving, you know? I mean, I come home ten minutes late and bam! she’s all over me. What’s going to happen when I sneak in late at night, smelling of some other female person? She’ll bust a two-by-four over my head.”
I had him now. No need to tell Short-Dick Ramirez I planned to break it off with Chelle once she was cured and things weren’t so life-and-death. All he had to know was I couldn’t play Romeo because my Juliet had a temper and wasn’t afraid to abuse it. I could picture the look on her face when I told her: Hey, you know, the feds want me to seduce a cute little seditionist. I don’t want to, but hey, it’s my duty. I regret I have but one penis to give for my country.
“That brings up the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, Joseph.”
“Yeah, sure, what else you got?”
He cracked that tiny smile again and said, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Ms. Schweitzer has passed away. She opted for early Revivant conversion rather than wait for the disease to kill her. She stipulated her mother as the Early Option Bonus recipient. I know that’s shocking news to hear, especially now, but I wanted you to know before you went home. It seemed the least I could do.”