Free Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley

intelligence, talent, and the Establishment's sense that they had better admit their own African-American into the clubhouse before a less ruly one was thrust upon them, someone like the Reverend Bacon. It was a wise selection: Burton Galilee was eminently clubbable. He had a great talent: he made white people feel good about themselves. They could honestly say, Me, prejudiced? Hell, one of my bestfriends is Burt Galilee.
    He rose from behind his enormous desk to greet the obviously distraught Banion.
    He'd never seen Jack Banion look like this. Over the phone he'd sounded like he was calling from under ten tons of trouble and all of it concrete. So what had this prissy Princeton boy gone and done?
    Driving under the influence? No, not his style. Man only drank wine. White wine. Banion was the whitest man he knew. To judge from the face of woes blinking at him through spectacles, this was serious trouble, the kind keeps you from closing your eyes at night. Woman trouble? Was old Jack mustanging on the side? That English secretary of his, with the magnificent tits? Possible, possible. Someone's wife? A weird but not implausible thought occurred: had Jack knocked up some girl? Was he coming to him for advice on how to handle it? Galilee felt a little prick of anger. Wouldn't it be just like one of these Ivy League dandelions to come whimpering to him: Burt, you're an oversexed Negro, you must know all about abortions, how do I go about this? Do I charge it on my Visa card or American Express? If it was that, damnit all, he was going to hand him the yellow pages and kick his lily white ass out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
    Or .. . Burton continued to muse as Banion ambled, zombielike, to his seat: could this be a sexual crisis of a different sort? Twenty years earlier a prominent columnist had come to him straight from a trip to Moscow, looking like he hadn't slept in days, and told him that the KGB had taken photos of him in bed at the Metropol Hotel with one of their boy toys. They'd confronted him with the photos and told him they wanted him to take a kindlier view toward Soviet foreign policy in his writings. Burt Galilee had a momen t of clarity: Banion was the la test victim of "fairy shaking," the blackmail practiced by some D.C. cops of photographing married men coming out of gay bars and threatening to expose them. My my my. He could hardly wait to hear the details.
    "Sit, sit," he said comfortingly to B anion, pointing out a five-thou sand-dollar leather sofa behind which loomed the facade of the National Gallery.
    "Now" - he smiled and spoke in the soothing baritone that set politician, criminal, and lobbyist alike at ease - their troubles were over, they were talking to the most connected man in Washington -"tell me what's on your mind and how 1 can help."
    Suddenly Banion felt the terrible, and entirely uncharacteristic urge to burst into tears, something he had not done since scoring only 780 out of 800 on his college entrance English exam.
    Steady, he told himself.
    Burton Galilee did have this effect on some people. Was it his enormous, big-shouldered, black heartiness? People were always bursting into tears around him. One president of the United States, a southerner, so constantly blubbered on Burton's shoulders that he had to have his London-made suits sent out to the dry cleaner.
    Banion collected himself. "Burt, this is - this is difficult for me."
    All right, the boy needed a little coaxing. "I know it is," said Burton more sympathetically than any psychiatrist could have. "You just take your time."
    "I called you just after I left my doctor's ..."
    Sweet Jesus. AIDS! God almighty, Jack O . Banion! He did look a little gaunt, come to think.
    "I ..." Banion looked into Burton Galilee's eyes, twin oases of understanding. Any secret deposited in them would be swallowed up and buried deep in the earth. Yes, he could tell Burt anything.
    Still, Banion could not bring himself to utter the words "I have been kidnapped