That Nietzsche Thing Read Free

They’d made him
memorize it.
    “This is an occupying army,” I said in
disbelief, looking around at the gathered throng of armed men.
    “The Federal Courts will oversee the civil
administration of this city until such a time as the Geneing menace
has been combated.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “No, Detective, I certainly am not.”
    “All to get Montavez’s body back? You’re
insane.”
    “No,” Constantine shook his head. “This has
been a long time coming. President Cassidy won election on the
platform of combating the Geneing epidemic head on. Look around
you. This is what combat looks like.”
    “But...you can’t...you can’t do this ,”
I said, panic gripping my insides. “The people won’t stand for
it.”
    “They will, and they’ll thank us for it,”
Constantine said, raising to his feet. “This is what the people of
Seattle voted for – what the people of America voted. Action. Not
talk.”
    “You can’t invade an American city,” I said,
hoping there was some legal truth to such a statement.
    “We can, Detective,” Constantine said,
without a hint of mirth. “To save it from itself.”
    He was fucking insane. There was no other
explanation.
    “Thank you for your assistance, Detective
Fonseca,” Constantine continued, tapping the sheet of paper on the
table. “But the murder of this Jane Doe, and the subsequent
abduction of her body is now a Federal matter.”
    He was about to give me the bum’s rush. I
could feel it. I’d gotten it plenty in my day.
    I was about to find myself out of a job.
    But I still had one card to play.
    “I suppose you know where she was living?” I
said, matter-of-fact. They might. I had no idea what they might
know from the Sen. Montavez end. It was possible he knew where the
girl had been living. But I doubted it. And all the girl’s personal
effects, everything incriminating, from the dumpster...well, they’d
sort of disappeared between the crime scene and the station. Into a
garbage can on Second and Pike, to be precise.
    “Well,” Constantine hedged, “we are
investigating...”
    I had him. I had something he needed. I
wasn’t out of a job just yet.
    “‘Cause it’s possible that there might be a
few personal effects of the deceased that didn’t quite make it into
the chain of evidence...”
    “If you’re withholding information,
Detective…” Constantine leaned forward across the table, fixing me
with an accusing finger. “…I won’t hesitate to prosecute you to the
full extent of the law.”
    “You don’t have to tell me how to do my job,
Special Agent.” I smiled, looking at the tip of his angry finger.
“You’ve just got to let me do it.”
    Constantine looked at me. For the first time
all day, he was speechless.
    “I guess that makes us partners, then,” I
said with resignation, reaching for my smokes. If I was going to be
stuck with this hick jack-ass, he was going to be stuck with a bad
case of second-hand smoke.

 
     
     
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    So, I had Constantine by the balls. At least
until I’d shown him exactly where the girl had crashed before her
death. That bought me maybe an hour or two. No more. But I was
scrambling, clawing for anything to keep me afloat, any way to hang
on to my job.
    If Constantine was serious about the Feds
turning Seattle into a Federal protectorate, then there wasn’t be a
snowball’s chance in hell that the likes of me would be kept
around. I wasn’t political at all, but those on the force that
weren’t outright, card-carrying Progs, were at least soft on the
issues the NeoCons always harped on about – Seattle itself was soft
on the issues the NeoCons always harped on about. A haven for
hippies, Genies and abortion-huggers.
    Sure, the Federal takeover might not hold up
in court, but that would take months to play out. As sure as I was
standing, the NeoCons would certainly take the interim period to
pack the city payroll with right-minded folks and make sure that
all