Crooked Little Vein - By Warren Ellis Page 0,1
machine to make sure it’s all still working.
I don’t have a secretary. Sometimes I flip on a phone voice-changer I got for five bucks on eBay and pretend to be my own secretary. It is very sad.
I blew stale-tasting cigarette smoke at the window-glass, looked down at people moving around the street, and debated what to do. I was fairly sure it was Saturday, so I didn’t need to be there pretending I had a career. On the downside, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I could have coaxed my old laptop into life and gone on the Web to read about someone else’s life, but I feared my email.
Maybe, I thought, it was time to leave the office, go out into the sunlight, and give the hell up.
Kids were playing in the street, which isn’t something I ever saw often from my window. I considered, and watched, reaching for my coffee mug by reflex as I idly chased trains of thought around my head.
It occurs to me now that if I hadn’t seen the man in black on the far side of the street at that exact second, I would probably still be brushing my teeth with bleach.
But I did. The absolute stereotypical man in black, with the shades and the earpiece and the stone face.
And another, down the street.
I leaned over. A third was outside the door to my building.
And they were all looking up at my window.
“Well, you always knew this could happen,” I told myself, because there was no one else around to give me a hard time.
A black car pulled up under my window. My office is five stories up. Takes me six minutes, in my shattered condition, to ascend the stairs to my door. Call it three for someone in basic human condition. I had exactly that long to get dressed and think of something clever.
But I wasted another terrified thirty seconds watching the car disgorge three more people who headed directly into my building.
I almost put my foot through the crotch of my pants in my hurry to dress. No idea who they were or what they wanted but a very basic sense of self-preservation said, Mike, you need to be running in the general direction of Away now. Three buttons of the shirt done up, fuck the other three, stuff the tie in the pocket, pull on the jacket, practically break your fucking ankle getting the shoes on. Half-run, half-fall for the door. Left the gun back in my desk. I needed the gun. I thought I needed the gun. Ran back into the office, sat down on my sticky chair, pulled at the lower left drawer where the gun sits, and the door opened. The outer door to my office.
Two men in black swept through the small reception room and in, looking down extended arms and two-handed grips full of large gun at me. They bobbed and pivoted around my office like gangster marionettes. One of them broke the effect by bringing his right hand up and talking into his sleeve. “All clear. Needle can enter at will.”
A bony man with skin like leather in a suit that seemed to not quite fit him walked quickly into my office. The men in black deferred to him and swept out, closing the door behind them. I was suddenly alone with the bony man, whose face was vaguely familiar to me.
The bony man sat in my client’s chair, eyed me sourly. “Do you know who I am, son?”
The voice fitted to the deathly presence. I’d seen him on the news, but this was not a man made for television. “You work for the president, don’t you?”
He nodded once. “I’m the chief of staff to the office of the President of the United States. And you are Michael McGill. Can I call you Mike?” “No, I’m…” Reflex. Swallowed, changed tracks. “Mike is fine.” I slumped in my chair. “I really need to be more awake than this.” The square inch of my brain that was working properly blitzed through possibilities. It’s a gag. No, that’s the guy. Why is the chief of staff alone in a room with a man whom they must know has a gun in the drawer? No, no, that’s the cart before the horse: why is he here looking at me like that? With those eyes, so pale they’re almost white-on-white? Jesus, he’s a creepy old fart in real life…
“You’re looking at me strangely, son.”
I smiled, shook my head.