Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

“May I have a word in the hallway?” McKenna sat down in the chair at the back of the court. Somebody was droning on in front and the judge looked asleep.

“Who are you?” Dark Glasses said, nose up in the air. He wasn’t wearing the glasses now and it was no improvement.

McKenna showed the badge. “Remember me? You were with Mr. Marine.”

“Who?”

“You didn’t say you were a lawyer, too.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your office. The FBI, remember?”

The lawyer inched away but kept his chin out, first line of defense. “I’m waiting to testify on a Federal case.”

“Murder crosses boundaries.”

The bailiff was looking at them. He jerked a thumb toward the doors. In the hallway Dark Glasses had revived his lawyerly presence. “Make it quick.”

“This is about one of your cases, Jorge Castan.”

“I don’t discuss my cases.”

He moved to go past and McKenna casually put a hand on his chest.

“You have no right to touch me. Move away.”

McKenna just shook his head. “You know what’s up. Your case got himself murdered, looks like. The second one like that in a week. And the Bar Association Web site says that before you got hired into the FBI you were an immigration lawyer. And you must know that your case was an illegal or else you’re dumber than you look.”

“I do not take a liking to insult. You touch me—”

“You’re in serious trouble if you know what’s really up. See, murder is a local crime unless you can show it has a proper Federal issue that trumps local. Do you?”

“I do not have to—”

“Yes you do.”

“There is not one scintilla of evidence—”

“Save it for the judge. Wrong attitude, counselor.”

“I don’t know what—”

“What I’m talking about, yeah. I hear it all the time. You guys must all watch the same movies.”

“I am an attorney.” He drew himself up.

“Yeah, and I know the number of the Bar Association. Being FBI won’t protect you.”

“I demand to know—”

Dark Glasses went on but little by little McKenna had been backing him up against the marble walls until the man’s shoulder blades felt it. Then his expression changed. McKenna could see in the lawyer’s face the schoolboy threatened by bullies. So he had gone into the law, which meant good ol’ safe words and paper, to escape the real world where the old primate signals held sway. Dark Glasses held his briefcase in front of his body in defense, but the shield wasn’t thick enough to stop McKenna from poking a finger into the surprisingly soft Dark Glasses bicep. “You’re up at bat now, lawyer.”

“As an attorney—”

“You’re assumed to be a liar. For hire. Almost rhymes, don’t it?”

“I do not respond to insults.” He was repeating his material and he tilted his chin up again. McKenna felt his right hand come halfway up, balling into a fist, wanting so much to hit this clown hard on the point of that chin.

“You knew to go looking for Jorge in jig time. Or maybe for the people who knew him. Why’s that?”

“I—I’m going to walk away now.”

“Not if you’re smart. One of those who knew him is an illegal, too. Maybe you wanted to use that to shut her up?”

“That’s speculative—”

“Not really, considering your expression. No, you’re working for somebody else. Somebody who has influence.”

“My clients and cases are Bureau—”

“Confidential, I know.”

“I have every assurance that my actions will prove victorious in this matter.”

McKenna grinned and slapped an open palm against the briefcase, a hard smack. The lawyer jumped, eyebrows shooting up, back on the playground during recess. “I—I have an attorney-client relationship that by the constitution—”

“How ’bout the Bible?”

“—demands that you respect his… protection.”

“The next one who dies is on you, counselor.”

In a shaky voice the lawyer pulled his briefcase even closer and nodded, looking at the floor as if he had never seen it before. A small sigh came from him, filled with gray despair.

It was a method McKenna had worked out years ago, once he understood that lawyers were all talk and no muscle. Good cop/bad cop is a cliché, only the lawyer keeps looking for the good cop to show up and the good cop doesn’t. Bluff is always skin deep.

The lawyer backed away once McKenna let him. “You better think about who you choose to represent. And who might that be, really?”

“My client is—”

“No, I mean who, really? Whose interest?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean. I—”

“You know more than you’ve said. I expect that. But you still have to think about what you do.” A rogue smile. “We all do.”

“Look, we can handle this issue in a nice way—”

“I’ll try being nicer if you’ll try being smarter.”

McKenna slid a business card into the suit handkerchief pocket of Dark Glasses Lawyer. “Call me. I find out the same stuff before you do, and that you knew it—well, I’ll be without mercy, Counselor. No quarter.”

McKenna stepped aside and let the lawyer flee from the playground. Dark Glasses didn’t look back.

McKenna’s supervisor leaned back and scowled. “And you did this because?…”

“Because two drowned men with strange scars don’t draw FBI without a reason, for starters.”

“Not much to go on.”

“The ME says he can’t identify the small puncture marks. Or what made those funny welts.”

His supervisor made a sour grin. “You know how much physical evidence is worth. It has to fit a filled-in story.”

“And I don’t have enough story.”

He spread his hands, the cuff sliding up to expose part of his arm tattoo, rosy barbed wire.

McKenna had read somewhere that an expert is one who has made all the possible mistakes in a narrow field. A wise man is one who has made them widely. It was supposed to be funny but it was too true for that.

So he followed his good ole friend Buddy Johnson home from work that evening. Buddy liked his pleasures and spent the first hour of his night in a bar. Then he went out back to smoke a joint. It was dark and Buddy jumped a foot when McKenna shined the flashlight straight into his eyes.

“Gee, that cigarette sure smells funny.”

“What? Who you?”

“The glare must be too much for you. Can’t you recognize my voice?”

“What the—Look, I—”

McKenna slipped behind him, dropping the flashlight to distract him, and got the cuffs on. “We’re gonna take a little ride.”

McKenna took him in cuffs down a scruffy side alley and got him into Buddy’s own convertible. Puffing, feeling great, he strapped Buddy in with the seat belt, passenger side. Then McKenna drove two quick miles and turned into a car wash. The staff was out front finishing up and when they came out McKenna showed them the badge and they turned white. All illegals, of course, no English. But they knew the badge. They vanished like the dew after the dawn.

Game time, down south.

Even with cuffs behind his back, Buddy kept trying to say something.

“Remember letting the air out of my tires?” McKenna hit him hard in the nose, popped some blood loose and Buddy shut up. McKenna drove the convertible onto the ratchet conveyor and went back to the control panel. It was in English and the buttons were well-thumbed, some of the words gone in the worn plastic. McKenna ran up a SUPER CLEAN and HOT WAX and LIGHT BUFF. Then he gave a little laugh and sent Buddy on his way.

Hissing pressure hoses came alive. Big black brushes lowered into the open seats and whirred up to speed. They ripped Buddy full on. He started yelling and the slapping black plastic sheets slammed into him hard and he stopped screaming. McKenna hit the override and the brushes lifted away. Silence, only the dripping water on the convertible’s leather seats.