Designated Targets

“Agents Geraghty and Swinson, I presume.” She smiled, but not in a friendly way. “You’d know them as Good Cop and Bad Cop, in that order, Mr. Davidson. Now, would you care to cease your criminal assault on my client?”

“We never touched him!” Swinson protested. “Did we?” he asked, turning a baleful eye on Slim Jim.

“The hell you didn’t, you fucking assholes. You frog-marched me in here and then you threw me into the desk, and I’ll bet I got a big bruise out of it. I could prove it, too.” He started to undo his belt.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Davidson,” said his lawyer. “I’m sure we can find a doctor who’ll testify in the civil suit.”

“There won’t be any suit,” Swinson blustered. “A two-bit hustler like Davidson. Done time for chiseling somebody’s grandmother. Good luck, sister.”

Slim Jim winced uncomfortably. That goddamned rubber check was always bouncing back in his face.

It didn’t seem to bother Ms. O’Brien, though. She still had that nasty smile on her face: the one that reminded him of feeding time at the zoo. “Well now, Agent Swinson, I don’t believe Mr. Davidson has ever made a secret of his former life. In fact, it’s very much public knowledge. Just as his efforts to reform himself, and to make amends for his past misdeeds, are also public knowledge. You may not be aware of it, but Mr. Davidson has made an ex gratia payment of five thousand dollars to Mrs. Durnford, the grandmother to whom you refer. A significant return on the twenty-four-dollar check he wrote to her grocery store, when he was unfortunately unaware of a shortfall of funds within his account.

“You may also be aware of—”

Swinson cut in over the top of her. “Hey, we know all about your client, Miss O’Brien. You might have earned a pretty penny turning him into the new fucking Santa Claus, but water still finds its own level, lady. And he’s a crook. Always has been. Always will be.”

“I guess we’ll see about that,” said O’Brien. “In the meantime, I’ll be pursuing an order against you gentlemen, and any other agents of the Bureau who are sent to harass my client concerning anything other than legitimate government business.”

“We’re just doing our job,” Swinson growled. “Some people still work for their country, O’Brien.”

Slim Jim wondered how she’d take that. Ms. O’Brien was inordinately proud of her time in the Marine Corps—much more than he was of his hitch in the navy. If they meant to get under her skin, though, they failed. She simply raised an eyebrow and produced a large leather folder. It contained a data slate. She powered up, opened a file, and there was Slim Jim’s apartment on screen.

There he was in his bathrobe.

And there were the two feebs, muscling him.

It was the surveillance footage from the microcams hidden all over his home. Geraghty was administering a savage, unprovoked blow to the back of his head.

“Hmm, not such a good cop after all, are we, Agent Geraghty?” Ms. O’Brien teased with a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. At that moment, Slim Jim thought he might just be in love with his scary lawyer.

The others had crowded into the small room and were also watching, which only added to the agents’ awkwardness. The video made them look and sound like a couple of stupid thugs. Marilyn gasped when Swinson threatened to tell her ex-husband where he could find her.

“You bastards,” she said. “That was just a marriage of convenience. If I hadn’t hooked up with him, I would have been sent back to the orphanage. My guardian used to pay him to go out on dates with me!”

Slim Jim wasn’t the only one who found himself caught out by that. Every man in the room, and even the other two women reacted with obvious surprise. Norma turned a cold, level stare on the feds. When she spoke, it didn’t sound like her at all. There was nothing soft in her voice. It sounded like she was grinding up rocks with her teeth.

“Don’t you imagine for a second that you can involve me in any of your grubby schemes,” she went on. “You have no idea of the life I’ve just escaped. Or what I will do to avoid going back there. You can expect to hear from my lawyers.”

Slim Jim began to wonder whether it was such a good idea dating someone like Norma. She apparently had hidden depths.

Hidden depths were not good. Not in his experience. He began to wonder if she’d been using him all the way along.

The man and woman who’d come in with her remained silent. But he could tell they were fascinated. The chick, in particular. Davidson didn’t doubt she was twenty-first. Her clothes told him that much. But he began to wonder what angle she had. She didn’t strike him as the soldierly type. Ms. O’Brien spoke up while he was wondering.