Free A Nasty Piece of Work by Robert Littell

got busted in the altercation—you could sue the trousers off me, as you put it. But as I own nothing in the way of equity, and as my bank balance, last time I looked, was in the neighborhood of minus seven hundred and fifty dollars, the only thing you’d collect would be my trousers. I’m not sure they’d go with your haircut, Mr. Fontenrose.”
    “I could attach your income for the rest of your life.”
    I tossed the globe from my right hand to my left and then back again. I could hear him suck in his breath. “I don’t have an income,” I explained. “I don’t go to an office, I don’t draw a salary. How about it, Russell? All I want are simple answers to simple questions.”
    I gave the globe a spin and tried balancing it on the tip of my middle finger. “For Christ’s sake put it down,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
    I kept the globe in the palm of my hand just in case. “Who hired you to represent Emilio Gava?”
    He made his way around his desk and collapsed into a leather chair that appeared to fold itself around him. “Our firm has an ongoing relationship with—” He sucked air in through his nostrils and started over again. “Over the years Fontenrose & Fontenrose has taken on some special clients—we deal with their legal problems, we manage their financial portfolios.” His hagfish mouth clamped shut. He was clearly having a hard time spitting it out. I played catch, left hand to right hand and back again, with his three-hundred-year-old Lorenzo da Silva. He groaned. “This is the first time one of our special clients has been arrested after going into the program. Certainly no one in the program has ever jumped bail—”
    “What program are we talking about?”
    “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s witness protection program. That’s as much as you’re going to get out of me, Mr. Gunn. If you require more information, I suggest you go to the horse’s mouth.”
    “Would you care to identify the horse’s mouth?”
    “Talk to Charles Coffin. He runs the witness protection program for the western states out of the FBI’s Albuquerque office.”
    I could actually hear his sigh of relief when I deposited his precious globe back in its cradle.
    “Please leave now, Mr. Gunn.”
    I looked at my watch. “Twelve minutes. Which means I owe you one-sixth of three hundred dollars, which is fifty bucks.” I pulled two twenties and an Alexander Hamilton from my billfold and dropped them onto his king-sized desk. “That makes us even-steven, pal.”
    I plowed through the carpet to the door. Miss Wyman led me down the corridor to Miss Godshall, who led me back through the secret door to the elevators. Heading back toward earth in one of the Cresswell Building’s silver time capsules, I felt like a sap for having paid for Fontenrose’s twelve minutes. As gestures go, it’d been pretty dumb—I was out of pocket fifty bucks, all to feel superior to an eel.
    In the words of D.D. back at the Blue Grass, go figure.

 
    Twelve
     
    Ever since the honcho himself, J. Edgar Hoover, fired an agent he spotted in the hallway for wearing tight trousers, every FBI field office that I’ve been to has been an island of haberdashery conformity. The New Mexico field office, on Luecking Park Avenue in downtown Albuquerque, was certainly no exception. The men circulating in the corridor sported dark two-piece suits with button-down shirts and conservative ties. The two female secretaries at the main desk wore jackets that flared at the hips over sober dresses that plunged to midcalf. Maybe it was my imagination working overtime, but even the men on the Ten Most Wanted list posted on the wall next to the elevator seemed comparatively well decked out, which made me wonder if casual apparel like mine could keep you off the Most Wanted list. The way the secretaries sized me up, I wondered if casual apparel could keep you out of the New Mexico field office.
    “There’s no agent here