Jennifer Government: A Novel (9 page)

S
he was so late to work she missed her own Welcome Back party, which she was grateful for. Since she’d been injured her answering
machine had fielded fourteen well wishes from colleagues. It wasn’t totally about her, she knew: it was about Taylor, who had gone to work Friday morning and died in a shopping mall. Jennifer hadn’t done anything except stay alive. But this was a big deal to agents, who had the highest death rate of any occupation except machine operators.

There was an e-mail waiting for her from Legal, about the suit from the Mercedes-Benz dealer whose car she’d fallen on. It said:

She had a lot of experience with allowing memos from Legal to grow old and die in her In Box, but this one, she decided, deserved a response. She tapped out:

“My God,” Calvin said, entering. “You’re really back. How’s the shoulder?”

“Hi,” she said, turning. “Did you get Hack Nike?”

He dropped into a chair. “Come on, Jen, this isn’t Europe. I can’t just get someone. We have no evidence. We have no
budget.”

“I
asked
you to.”

“I assumed you were delirious,” Calvin said. “Look, anyway, I’ve been busy interviewing families, trying to scrounge up funding. So far, zip. And I’m down to the last couple.”

“Who?”

“Ummm…”He slid his chair over to the desk and shuffled some papers. “Jim GE and Mary Shell. Parents of Hayley McDonald’s. Killed at…”He looked up.

“Chadstone?”

“Maybe you should sit this out.”

“Don’t coddle me,” she said. “I can run an interview.”

There was a knock on the door. A man stood in the doorway. His suit was so cheap it shone. “Jennifer Government,” he said. “Maybe you think you’re a comedian. Maybe you think this whole situation is funny.”

“Who are you?” Calvin said.

“Lemme guess,” Jennifer said. “Legal?”

“My department has a job to do, Jennifer. We’re trying to defend
your
budget. We can do without you sending us insulting replies.”

She said, “Don’t ask me why I chose to fall onto a car and talk about being insulted, you shit. I’m wearing a sling here.”

He reddened. “Well, we still need that information. It may not seem important to you, but this is a serious suit.”

She couldn’t help it: she looked at his suit.

“I see,” the lawyer said. “It’s all very, very amusing.”

“Ah, look,” Calvin said. “We’ll get you the info you want. We have interviews to conduct now. Okay?”

“Fine,” the lawyer said, and left.

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Go get Hayley’s parents.”

He left. She tried to push back her hair before remembering there wasn’t anything left to push: just a crude, dark shock. She missed her hair.

Calvin led Hayley’s parents in and offered them seats. They were shy, clutching coffees in polystyrene cups. She stared at them. It was hard to forget she’d seen their daughter shot. Calvin cleared his throat.

She blinked. “Jim, Mary, I’m Field Agent Jennifer Government. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m not sure how familiar you are with Government procedure in these circumstances.”

Mary looked lost. Jim said, “You want money.”

Jennifer folded her hands on the desk. “In order to pursue the perpetrators, we need funding, yes. The Government’s budget only extends to preventing crime, not punishing it. For a retributive investigation, we can only proceed if we can obtain funding.” She gave them a moment. “I apologize for the question. Can you contribute?”

Mary shifted. Jim said, “I…I’ve had a very bad three months. I lost my job…”

Silence. Calvin folded his arms.

“She played hockey,” Mary said, then bit her lip.

“There were Government agents at the mall,” Jim said. His ears were red. “If you had stopped these people then, Hayley would—we wouldn’t be here.”

“We did our best with the information we had,” Calvin said. “We’re sorry, Jim. We lost an agent in this mess.”

Jennifer leaned forward. “I was there. At Chadstone. If anyone should have stopped them, it was me.”

His eyes darted to her sling. “And now you want money.”

“Yes.”

Silence. “This wasn’t some street shooting.”

“No. We think it was planned.”

“Then they’ll be hard to catch.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. He looked at Mary, then his hands. Then he looked at Jennifer. “Will you try?”

“If I have the budget, I will get them. I promise you that.”

“All right,” he said. “Then I’ll sell my house.”

Her relief was frightening. “Thank you, Jim.”

“
J
en, that was really bad form,” Calvin said, closing the door. “You know you’re not meant to promise results. No investigation is a slam dunk.”

“We have funding.” She couldn’t stop jiggling her leg.

“And don’t smile like that,” he said. “What’s the matter with you? You’re freaking me out.”

“Let’s go pick up Hack,” she said.

Someone was shaking him. “Nnn,” Billy said. “Quit it.”

“Get up,” the someone said. “We’re leaving.”

He sat up. It was an NRA clone. Black T-shirt, camouflage pants, buzzcut haircut, too much time in the gym: Billy was having trouble telling them apart. “Leaving where?”

“There’s a briefing in the mess. Get dressed and assemble there in fifteen.”

“Yes, sir!” Billy said. He had discovered that everyone was much more relaxed if you called them sir.

He showered, standing under the water for too long. When he was done, he went back to his bunk and dressed in the crisp pants and T-shirt laid out for him. The T-shirt was black with a big NRA logo on the chest: an AK-47 crossed with a burly arm. Underneath, it said: FREEDOM IS AN ASSAULT RIFLE. That was kind of catchy, Billy thought. The NRA was getting hip.

There was a kid standing guard outside the barracks, and he snapped to attention. Billy attempted a salute, squinting in the sun.

“Good morning, sir!” the kid said. His head was shaved so brutally it looked like someone had gouged his skull. “I am informed that you may wish to visit briefing tent 4A, sir!”

“Sure, okay.”

“If you will accompany me, sir!”

Billy followed. The compound was like a mutant Boy Scout camp: all green tents and vehicles and barrels, smack in the middle of nowhere. He saw a troop of soldiers drilling in a field. They reminded him of high school football players with guns. Then a tank rolled past.

“Shit! What’s that?”

“That is an Abrams M1A battle tank, sir!”

Billy looked around with new respect. Now he understood why the NRA membership fees were so high.

The kid led him to a tent at the front of the camp, set back from a dusty road. He held open the flap for Billy. Inside, a dozen men looked up.

“Close the fucking door,” the man at the front said. He was the older man Billy had met in the bush: his name was Yallam. “Mosquitoes like birds in this place.”

“Yes, sir!” Billy said. He squeezed onto the end of a bench.

“Now we’re all here,” Yallam said. “We depart camp in exactly six minutes. Our destination is Melbourne, our target is an employee of the Police, one Senior Sergeant Pearson. We will eliminate the target quickly and quietly, and return to base. Questions?”

A man at the front raised his hand. “Weapons?”

“Issued in-flight. Anyone else?”

In-flight?
Billy thought.

“Yeah,” a soldier said. “What’s with the FNG?”

“Bill’s a good man,” Yallam said. “He’s been reassigned here after completing some classified action.”

“All right,” the guy said, nodding at Billy. Billy raised his eyebrows in return.

“Other questions?”

Billy became aware of a drone outside the tent. He looked around.

“All right. Good luck, God speed, straight shooting.”

The men began filing outside. Billy wondered if now was a good time to cut and run. The past few days he’d kept a low profile, but now it was sounding as if the NRA expected him to
fight
, and he definitely wasn’t—

A hand fell on his shoulder. “You’re probably wondering why you’re being sent back into action so soon,” Yallam said. “The truth is, we were only assigned this action this morning. Command feels that moving you again might arouse suspicion.” He held Billy’s gaze. “Maybe it’s for the best. Get back on the horse.”

The drone had turned into a roar. “Uh, I see.”

“It’s important that you integrate into the team like any other NRA soldier, Bill. Our enemies are looking for you. Now go join your squad.”

“Yes, sir!” Billy said. He pushed his way out through the tent flap, thinking:
I am surrounded by maniacs
. Then he stopped.

There was a green military transport aircraft straddling the
road. Fat NRA logos adorned its sides. The noise from its engines was tremendous. The NRA squad was marching up a ramp into its belly.

“Bill!” one of the soldiers shouted. “Come on, move your ass!”

This is not skiing
, Billy thought. He jogged toward the transport.

Hack woke to Violet moving about the bedroom, gathering clothes. He sat up, rubbing his face. “What…”

“I have to do my software demo.” She was pulling on a short black skirt; already wearing a cream shirt. “You knew this, Hack.”

Hack did know that. “But…aren’t we going to the Police? Or the Government?”

She blew air through her teeth. “You packed me
one
pair of underpants. And—” She shook her head. “I don’t have time to go to the Government. You go.”

He bit his lip. “You sure you don’t want to come? Since, I mean, you killed that guy…”

“You want me to defend myself against a murder charge with two hundred dollars?”

“But it was self-defense. It doesn’t matter how much money—”

“Don’t be naïve,” Violet said. “Look, if my demo goes well, I’ll have money. Then I can talk to the Government.”

“I guess,” Hack said. “Okay.”

She hefted her laptop. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck. And—be careful, okay?”

“I will,” she said. “Don’t wake my sister.”

H
ack padded out to the kitchen in his dressing gown and made a bowl of cereal. He couldn’t find the sugar, so added some strange, unbranded honey. He sat at the dining table and tried to eat quietly.

Violet’s sister had a lot of books. They filled three bookcases, with bizarre titles like
An Equal Society
and
Socialist Thought
. Hack wondered what they were about.

At ten o’clock he caught a cab downtown to the Government office, which was a couple of floors in a dingy building that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since 1980. The lobby was huge, though, and crawling with people in scruffy-looking suits who Hack could only assume were Government agents. He felt them looking at him as he walked up to reception, and started sweating. This wasn’t like the Police, with magazines and nice-looking women dressed in cop uniforms.

The agent behind the desk was doing something to his computer. Hack waited patiently. After a while, he cleared his throat.

“Just a second,” the agent said.