Banksters 37: Pressure

I walked out of my office to Petra's desk, putting on my very serious face. “I really hate to do this to you again so soon after the last time…”

“Take me to lunch?” she guessed, hopefully.

“No, I’d be happy to do that. But I need you to pack up your desk.”

I'd hoped she'd take, from my very serious face, that I was firing her; but she just didn't seem to have pessimism in her. “Did Ed finally get fired?”

“No, sorry, but we did get a promotion.”

“We? Does that mean I can have my own administrative assistant’s assistant?”

“It probably just means better pay and benefits.”

“Well, I guess I could take better pay and benefits,” she said with a smile. “So about lunch...” I tried not to let on I was irritated. I'd only been joking about the lunch.

I just hadn't felt as relaxed around her. She was an FBI agent, and I was a murderer, by proxy, at least. It was beginning to feel like we had less and less in common, aside from the fact that our instincts told us to bash the other one's skull in and suck out the marrow (this impulse might not have been entirely mutual).

But perhaps what was irritating me the most is she was blissfully unaware. She hadn't had a period in over six weeks, but she hadn't said anything yet. A small part of me worried that she spent her quiet time knitting booties and thinking up baby names. Of course, the other part of me worried that she had an entire file labeled “Dane” detailing most of my comings and goings and more than enough for a federal indictment. Things were tenuous. At best.  

But we ate lunch. She had a salad; I barely remembered to give her a hard time about it, to get her feeling dutifully nostalgic.

“Do you like me?” she asked suddenly.

“What?” I asked back, reasonably certain some lettuce had made it down the wrong pipe.

“I'm not trying to be needy, but you're so hot then cold. We haven't gone out in a week, and you haven't even been over to my place since the break-in at yours. I totally get it, if you started this for it to be fun, and now it's not. I'd just like to know, because... I'm already invested in you. So I think it's only fair if you at least tell me if I'm making a fool of myself.”

“Petra,” I started, slowly closing my hand over hers to stall- and I mean really slowly, “it's not you. And it's not us. I've been distant because it's all been a lot. The changes in position, in stress. Killing someone,” a pang of guilt flashed across her face, and she looked down at the table.  “It's not fair to you. You were unbelievably kind to me when that happened, but I think... I think in my head you got twisted up in that. So every time I'm with you, it feels like that night again, like I've been beaten so completely out of my mind and self that I'm just going through the motions. And you told me you loved me, and I still haven't properly responded to that. But I do. I love you.”

She looked up, and into my eyes, with tears welling up in hers. “That makes me so happy. Because I think I'm pregnant.”

She isn't, of course.

Injecting the right concoction of female birth control, which are for the most part just massive doses of hormones, can stop a woman's periods. Some even cause side effects almost exactly consistent with pregnancy.  

What's the best way to get a female FBI agent to give you a pass? Put a baby in her. Second best way? Make her think she has a baby in her. Admittedly, the first is more fun and less work, but I'm convinced I shouldn't breed.

If I have a child, one of two things happen. Either I'm a great father, and raise the perfect predator, who grows up, murders then eats me. Or, I'm a horrible father, scarring the child irreparably, and as an act of revenge, he murders me and consumes my flesh. Either way I end up as a bowel movement.

But I put on a smile for Petra, and broke out of my chair and lunged at her to hold her.

She held my hand through the rest of dinner, and didn't let go on the drive home. She didn't even want to let go in the elevator, as we approached our floor- though she did, right before the doors opened.

I went back to my office for more research, and I was there until the sun went down. Neville was one of the last people in the office. He wasn’t paying attention to his door, so he didn’t see me come in. The only light on was a small desk lamp.

“I’ve got a legal question for you, Allistair.” He nearly fell out of his chair at the sound of my voice in the room. “Do they usually disbar someone for sodomizing a fifteen year old girl?” He squinted at me in the dark. Then he recognized me, not that it was going to help him answer the question. “Did it matter that she was black? Did that make it easier, that she wasn’t quite like you, maybe not even as much of a person.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. She was sweet. Smart. She felt like an old soul.”

“But still had such youthful skin? You know it only sounds worse when you expound on it, right? Sodomizing a fifteen year old girl. You’re not a good enough lawyer to sell that as a wholesome or romantic thing.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to have never hired York- but it’s a little late for that. So the question then becomes how do we rectify that situation. I assume he’s got a contract, right?”

“Of course.”

“Iron-clad?”

“We’re both lawyers. What do you think?”

“I think dirty old men with horrible secrets shouldn’t be nearly so snippy. But I assumed as much. That's fine; it just means we have to get more creative, that's all. In the meantime, don't let your other puppeteer know that his strings have been cut- after all, we may have a reason to want to yank him by them later.” My phone rings. “I should take this- but I'll be in touch.”

“Hello?” I ask.

The caller ID said Julee, and it took me a moment to tell I was hearing a bar in the background.

“What do you want?” George Morgan.

“I think the better question, George, is what do you want?” She lets the question linger, like an accusation, then changes her tone, softening it to be sympathetic. “Because I don’t think you’re happy here. I don’t think you ever will be. Always in your brother’s shadow. Supporting him, but never really getting any of the credit for the hard work you put in.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know nobody wants to be the supporting player in somebody else’s story. So I’m asking you, sincerely, if you weren’t here, where would you be? What would you do? If a meteor struck the office overnight, and it turned out our insurance didn’t cover meteors, what would you do tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” he said, almost pouting.

“I think you’d do something else. If you stayed in business, you’d always be measuring yourself against your brother, and even if you managed to surpass him in every way, there’d always be a niggling little thought in your head that you’d done it all for him, to prove yourself to or against him. You’d never be your own man. And you are quite a man. Confident. Handsome. Educated. And you’ve got presence. Have you ever thought about going into politics?”

“I was class president,” he said into his glass. And captain of his football team. High school was good to him; clichéd, maybe, but the pleasant kind to have to live through. He also got his Bachelor’s in poli sci. 

She did her homework; well, technically, we did her homework, since we were sitting at my computer, and I worked the mouse while she straddled me.

“I could see that. I can also see you in thirty second TV spots, saying you approved this message. Or standing at a press conference, in front of a flag.” I could tell from her voice she had his hand on his leg.

And I could tell from his response he was almost too drunk to notice. “I'm not sure I'm cut out to be the political type.”

“So you'd rather stay with the company?”

“It's what I know.”

“You'd rather stay with your brother?”

He swallows so hard I hear it over the speaker phone. “He's my brother,” he says so flatly even drunk him doesn't believe it.

“But from where I'm sitting, he's your keeper, as in keeping you stuck where you are, stagnating.”

“He won't be running the company forever.”

“And you think you've got a shot at convincing his hand-picked board you're the rightful heir? Because the way I hear it, he's spent his entire tenure as Chairman infantile you in front of the other board members.”

“No offense, I usually like my women aggressive, but I think I want to finish tying one off in peace.”

“I'll leave. But you should know: you can do better than this.” I heard the clacking of Julee's boots on hardwood floors. “Not exactly a confession, but I'd say he's definitely is eying other suitors. And I made sure I was clumsy in my advances, so you didn't have to worry about sharing me. But all this fidelity makes me feel dirty. I think I need a shower. Under any other circumstances I'd ask you to come with, but,”

“I understand.” 

“Maybe tomorrow.”