A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  “And to add to all of this, you not only breached a federal security agreement, but you did so in the company of a woman who has been missing, presumed dead for over two years.”

  Cady.

  Smith felt as though solid ground was slipping out from beneath his feet. This did not feel like an encounter that was going to end with them pointing him to the edge of town and giving him a warning not to come back.

  “Well, I only just met Miss Eliadis,” he offered, hating the weaselly sound of it as the words came out of his mouth.

  He was starting to wish he'd gone for his guns back at the apartment building. Seemed to him he might've had more chance of shooting his way out of this trouble than he did of talking his way through it.

  “Why don't you let us help you,” said the woman, Forsyth. “Just help us and we can help you.”

  Her tone and manner were much softer than Brubaker's. But while she seemed more reasonable than her colleague, there was something of the rattler about her, Smith thought.

  “I would like to help you,” he said. “But I don't know what you want. You asked my name and I told you. You didn't take to that, but it's the only name I got. You asked me what business I had with Miss Eliadis. I'm telling you I had none. I did not know her or even know of her until this morning.”

  “And the other girl,” snapped Brubaker, “the one you kidnapped?”

  “The hell I did,” Smith said, his voice much louder than he'd intended.

  Without knowing why, Brubaker had struck a raw nerve. Fact was, Smith had been feeling guilty about having got Miss Cady caught up in his problems.

  Hell fire.

  How long could it be now a’fore those apprentice sons of whores showed up? He half-expected Chumley to walk in through the door at any second with a cold smile, a new suit, and a long knife.

  “Is that what happened, John?” Forsyth asked gently. She gave no hint of having been upset by his outburst. “Did you take Cadence two years ago? Have you only surfaced now because you could finally trust her not to run away?”

  Smith looked at her as though snakes were slithering out of her mouth. Where did she get these plumb crazy notions?

  “You stash her away somewhere off the grid?” Brubaker asked, his tone a good deal more confronting. “Is that why you're a ghost, Smith? What are you? Really? Political? Ex-military? Alt-Right Militia? It'll go better for you if you just tell us now. Maybe you should think about the shit we'll dig up when we really start looking into your history.”

  Titanic Smith laughed then.

  A rich, peeling baritone burst of laughter at the absurdity of his situation. It was his interrogators' turn to look as though they were the ones stuck in a room with a crazy man.

  “History,” he said. “You have no idea.”

  Special Agent Forsyth leaned toward him and held his eyes with hers. It was quite the trick. She must have been practicing it for years.

  “Then help us understand, John,” she said. “Tell us what we don't know.”

  The only door to the room opened while she was speaking.

  A man entered. Another civilian. Not one Smith had seen before.

  “What I know,” said the stranger, “is that this interview is over.”

  21

  Until now, the appearance of a lawyer in his life had never been cause for celebration. Even the county prosecutors with whom he had dealings in the course of his marshaling duties were as like as not to occasion vexation. They were forever demanding to know why he had shot some rascal instead of bringin' him to court, or why he'd brought some other ruffian a’fore the bench when, on the paucity of evidence, it might have been better to just shoot him and be done with it.

  There was never pleasing a lawyer.

  But this one was definitely in the way of pleasing Smith, if only because of the instant look of peptic displeasure his arrival elicited from Agent Brubaker. Even the charming Miss Forsyth appeared more than somewhat irked by his sudden appearance.

  “Mr. Smith, my name is Thomas Calvino, and I have been retained by Ms. McCall in the matter of your unlawful arrest. I will take instructions from you in that matter right now, and we can discuss the settlement you will receive from Homeland Security when we sue them in due course.”

  Smith wasn't entirely sure what this Calvino character meant by all that, but he could see that Brubaker and Forsyth understood, and they did not enjoy it at all.

  Calvino strode up to the table and banged a leather briefcase down on top of it, before turning his attention to the Homelanders.

  “Undo the cuffs and either charge or release my client immediately. You've had your fun. Playtime is over.”

  “Your client has questions to answer, Calvino,” Brubaker shot back. “He's impersonated a Federal agent. Probably kidnapped a young woman. Breached a security agreement. And he's a ghost. He doesn't have an identity card. He doesn't have an identity!”

  Calvino smiled.

  “I am advised that Mr. Smith is a professional cosplayer and collector of western antiques. He did not represent himself to your officers as a federal agent, and neither Ms. McCall nor Ms. Eliadis have made any such allegations. They will not be doing so. Ever. The alleged breach was a minor infringement and we both know that with my clients' spotless records and unimpeachable skin color, you will get nowhere with it. As to Mr. Smith's identity, it is not yet a crime to go without an identity card, merely an inconvenience. So, release him or charge him. By all means, I would welcome the opportunity to seek vastly aggravated damages from your department when we litigate the civil case with all dispatch.”

  It sounded like lawyers had lost none of their taste for codswallop and gobbledygook since Smith had last dealt with one, but in this case, the lawyer's mouthing off was all for his benefit. Smith merely sat back and smiled.

  He guessed that it had been nearly four or five hours since he’d been chained to this table and, unlike him, Cady had obviously been busy. He did not care to contemplate how this encounter would have played out for him had he not been allied with someone who knew what she was doing.

  And had the wherewithal to do it, he added to himself.

  Calvino did not look like the sort to work for charity. His suit was immaculate, his shoes highly polished. Everything about him reeked of money and connection. Smith would normally have hated him on sight, but he felt quite warmly toward the feller right now.

  Brubaker did not.

  His face looked like a bowl of egg custard gone rotten in the sun.

  He dug out a small set of keys and tossed them across the steel tabletop where they fetched up against the thick metal hoop to which Smith was chained.

  “Do it yourself, Marshal. You should know how.”

  Miss Forsyth's caring and helpful persona, Smith noted, did not extend to helping him with the awkward task of undoing the manacles while still fastened securely by them.

  Calvino actually rolled his eyes.

  “You're not helping your case, agents,” he said, and shooed Smith away from his efforts to free himself. He leaned over the table to pick up the key. It slid into the lock and with a quick turn the cuffs fell open.

  The most noteworthy aspect of the whole exchange was how extravagantly perfumed the lawyer was. Titanic Smith had never smelled so fine a feller in his whole life. It was like he'd been dipped in a bath of exotic spices, and Smith could only wonder what he made of the reek emanating from his client.

  Or at least from his client's trail-worn clothes.

  At least he'd been able to scrub himself at the gymnasium this morning, another tick in Miss Cady's column.

  “They took all my things,” he said to Calvino.

  “Standard processing,” the lawyer assured him. “But if there is a problem, please do not hesitate to call my office.”

  He turned on the Homelanders.

  “I'm certain the department's legendary administrative efficiency will not fail you, Mr. Smith. I would be most surprised to find otherwise.�
��

  It sounded like a threat.

  Chair legs scraped as Forsyth pushed back from the table and stood up. Brubaker was already halfway to the door.

  “Enjoy it while you can, Calvino,” he said over his shoulder. “My personal hero, the US Attorney General, is about three weeks away from putting you fags out of work.”

  Smith did not know what the agent was talking about, but for a man who had just been convincingly bested, he did seem to be recovering his mood.

  Calvino, on the other hand, appeared quite somber, now the agents were leaving.

  “Come on,” he said. “I don't like to spend any more time here than is absolutely necessary. And I have to get back to my office. Ms. McCall wants me to file on behalf of Ms. Eliadis's fiancé. That won't be easy. Once they go to the wall, they rarely come back.”

  The words, as had been the case from the moment he lost the watch, made only a simple kind of sense. He understood them, but not whatever deeper story they were meant to tell.

  “I thank you for your efforts, Mr. Calvino,” Smith said as they left the small room. “You did a fine job of work on old Brubaker there, chipping his horns. But I really need to get my possibles back. And I'd like to find Miss McCall and Miss Eliadis as quick as I might.”

  Calvino examined him, his eyes crinkling.

  “Miss Eliadis was processed out two hours ago. She should be home by now, working. She needs to meet her KPIs to maintain her detention agreement. It's the only thing keeping her off the Wall. I would strongly advise you not to approach her again, and if you could emphasize the importance of that to Ms. McCall I would be grateful.”

  He paused, and a rueful shadow passed over his face.

  “It really is as though she's been living on another planet for the past two years.”

  “I can set with that,” Smith agreed. “So. No talking to Miss Georgia.”

  “You can communicate with her via my office. But her personal communications are monitored, and if you breach the order a second time I'm afraid I won't be able to spring you as easily.”

  “Right you are then,” said Smith. “And Miss Cady?”

  “Should be waiting for you in reception. Your personal items will be returned to you there, although you should expect them to take their time about it. They can be unbelievably petty.”

  They walked down a short hallway, almost as featureless as the room in which he'd been questioned, passing by Homelanders, uniformed and not, who saw Calvino and mostly ignored him. A couple did favor them with hard looks and unpleasant regard.

  It meant nothing to Smith, who'd run his own lock up for long enough to be used to such ridiculous displays of plumage.

  Calvino pressed a button in the wall at the end of the corridor, causing two doors to slide open onto an elevator room—an arrangement not unlike the mule driven cages he had seen miners ride up and down in the Kentucky coal diggings.

  “I understand your reluctance to carry an ID card, Mr. Smith,” Calvino said, as they rode up. “They are an abomination. But I would advise that it's only going to get harder to do without one. Especially for someone like you who is in the system now. I'm afraid they've got your number, along with your DNA and hand prints.”

  “I'll consider it,” Smith said, knowing he'd do nothing of the sort. He guessed they had a picture of his hand in that infernal machine he'd been forced to touch earlier in the day. What good that would do them, he did not know. And this “dee-en-ay” was likewise a mystery he did not care to look into. At a guess, Calvino appeared to be advocating that he register himself with the government less'n he be harassed over his preference for privacy; an outrageous idea at any time. But given his intention to quit this time and place as soon as possible, Smith did not mind leaving the lawyer with the impression that he would play along.

  All he wanted was to get gone with his watch and Cady, assuming she was of a mind to tag along.

  Turned out she was. Cady McCall was waiting for them in the anteroom of the Homeland barracks, a grim little space cut-off from the rest of the building by design. She sat on a concrete bench, her hands clasped between her knees, which were bouncing up and down as she tried to work off her nerves.

  “Ms. McCall, I hope you haven't been put to any further inconvenience,” Calvino said as soon as he saw her. She looked up, and her expression brightened just a little, but it was a candle flickering in a long night of high wind.

  “Haven't been hassled, if that's what you mean,” she said, “but they wouldn't tell me where you guys were, and they won't say what's happened to Georgia. I'm worried about her, Tom. I just wanted to help.”

  Calvino silenced her with a shake of his head.

  “My job is to help. Leave it to me. Ms. Eliadis is safe at home, and my colleagues at the firm are already working on her case. We'll make all of this go away,” he promised, seeming to take in the entire edifice of the Homeland building.

  Smith doubted anything like that would be happening quickly, but Calvino's promise went some way toward lifting the pall which had settled over his traveling companion. The confidence and hope which had illuminated Cady when she’d woken him with a sweet roll and a cup of coffee, was entirely gone. In its place Smith found a haggard vision of a woman on the first step of the gallows.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I really appreciate that. Did you get the retainer? Did that money go through? I don't want there to be any problems.”

  “You are not to worry about that, Ms. McCall,” Calvino said. “My firm has been in contact with your bank and explained that you have returned from a long trip and that they can expect renewed activity on your accounts. We have further informed them that we now act for you, and that should any federal agency attempt to place any lien or caveat over your assets, we are to be informed immediately. I have also given them to understand that we will seek punitive redress for any action they take in such matters without such notification and without our written consent.”

  His manner softened, just a little bit.

  “We might be losing our rights, but the administration still respects the rights and privileges of money, and you have plenty of that.”

  Buoyed by her lawyer's fighting words, Cady gathered her resolve and pushed herself up off the cold concrete block which did for public seating in this place.

  “So, we just wait here for our personals?” Smith asked. He could see that, like him, Cady had not had her bag or other possessions returned. Calvino looked pained.

  “I'm afraid so,” he said. “There's not much I can do about that. It's just one of the stupid little games they like to play with people.”

  He looked at his watch. Smith would have bet good folding money that it was made out of gold. He wondered how much Cady was paying this man and his law firm.

  “I can stay with you if you would prefer that,” Calvino offered, “but I honestly think they might drag the whole process out a lot longer if I did. And I can be of more help to you back at my office.”

  “That's okay,” said Cady. “You go, Tom. I don't have my phone back yet, but there's a 7-11 down the street. I can just get a burner from there if I have to call you. If I think they're jerking us around,” she added.

  “Please do, and quickly,” he said, offering her a professional smile and a handshake before turning to Smith. A thought occurred to him. “You'll need money for a phone and incidentals, maybe a cup of coffee, if they decide to keep you waiting. Here, take this.”

  Calvino produced a money clip and peeled off some bills. Cady did not even bother with making a show of demurring.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Mr. Smith, I won't say it's been a pleasure. These things never are, but be assured that Dexter and Calvino have your back.”

  As long as she's paying you, Smith thought, watching Cady out of the corner of his eye. It would be churlish to say so, however, and he shook Calvino's hand in good faith. Maybe this guy was different, he thought, as he watched the man stride away. Maybe lawyers
had changed since his day. After all, most everything else had.

  “Let's go outside while we wait for our stuff,” said Cady. “This place is probably bugged. I mean, they're probably listening to us. Outside is better.”

  Smith did not feel confident leaving the building because it meant putting even more distance between the watch and themselves, but Cady was already moving toward the door with a determined tread and a set to her jaw that told him she was in no mood to be second-guessed. He followed her out and down the steps onto a small grassed area shaded by a large conifer.

  “We've got to get out of here,” she whispered fiercely as soon as she judged them safe from eavesdroppers.

  “I would not disagree,” Smith said, “but we can't leave without our baggage.”

  Cady looked as though she had misunderstood him, but then she shook off that annoyance.

  “No. I meant this whole timeline. It's wrong. It's messed up, Smith. It wasn't meant to happen and we shouldn't be here.”

  For somebody who'd just escaped a good long stay in the jug, she leaned more toward hysterical than relieved. Cady paced about in a tight circle, oblivious to the scene around them. By the light and shadows, it seemed they had lost most of the day. Seattle folk went about their business, giving the crazy lady a wide berth, and, he thought, steering as clear of the footpath and grounds outside the Homeland barracks as possible.

  He could understand that. The place looked like a fortification from the Civil War, except on the grand and brutal scale that engineers did everything here. To his eyes, the Homeland Security forces looked dug into the sort of massive concrete bunker in which you stored a whole army's supply of gunpowder against the chance of a stray spark. There were just a few tiny windows looking out over the city it was presumably supposed to safeguard, and armed guards stalked around at ground level, like trigger men standing watch over a bandit hideout. But none of that seemed to agitate Cady as much as the doubts and fears swirling around inside her own pretty little head.

  “You need to slow down,” he said, “catch your breath and your thoughts, and explain it to me like I don't understand nothin' about this place, because frankly I don't.”