"Jesus Christ," he coughed. "I was only joking, fellas. He can have the dresses. She left 'em in the other room."

"Shut up, you cocksucker."

"Ha! That's good, coming from one of J. Edgar's boys," he said, even though he knew he was risking another whack upside the head. When none came, he blinked away some of the blurred vision that turned his attackers into dark blobs of attitude and body odor. They came into focus. Two feds, just as he recalled. Dark suits, white shirts, red ties. Everything buttoned down to within an inch of its life. Just as Mr. Hoover liked it.

"Okay, so I'll be shutting up now. But you are gonna want me to talk, aren't you? Ain't that the way it works? You beat the crap outta me, so I'll tell you what you want to hear?"

"Not really."

That surprised him, so he decided to shut up for real.

The room was quiet for a moment, save for Garth Brooks. As his stomach settled, Slim Jim decided that he really wanted that coffee now, perhaps with a shot of bourbon. But he decided it wasn't the brightest idea, giving these fuckin' apes another chance to beat on him, so he just kept quiet.

They both stared at him a little while longer, at least one of them with eyes that looked like hard little pellets of hatred. He spoke first. "Think you're pretty fucking smart, don't you, Davidson?"

"Dunno about that, man. Never finished high school." He shrugged.

Then the other one spoke up in a much friendlier, even cheerier tone. "Take a smart guy to end up here, wouldn't it, Jimbo? You couldn't buy most of this stuff on a special agent's salary. Definitely not on a seaman's wage."

Jesus Christ, they were gonna tag-team him. Good cop, bad cop. He would have laughed, if his head weren't pounding so much. "I do what I can," he croaked.

Bad Cop was back. "If you keep smart-mouthing us like that, asshole, the only thing you'll be doing is playing pick up the soap at Leavenworth. You got a house full of contraband here."

Slim Jim almost opened his mouth to protest. The apartment was the registered business address of at least half a dozen of his investment companies, and those companies all had valid permits authorizing them to obtain and use twenty-first-century technology. But the memory of his fearsome lawyer, Ms. O'Brien, arose to shut his trap before he starting babbling.

Bad Cop plowed on regardless. "I wonder how much the IRS would enjoy going through your books? That's how they got Capone, remember? And for that matter, what would the navy make of your new billet? You're supposed to be on active duty, aren't you, Davidson?"

"I do special services for the USO now," he said. And it was true, sort of.

"Does that mean banging that factory worker's wife? The actress nobody knows? Norma or Marilyn or whatever her name is now."

"She left that guy!" he blurted out, and instantly regretted it.

"And I'll bet he'd love to know where she's been these last few weeks," the agent continued with a palpably evil grin. "And what she's been doing. Or who she's been doing."

Slim Jim felt about half the blood in his body rush into his head, then just as quickly drain out again, leaving him giddy. He took in a long slow breath to settle himself and waited for the squeeze to come. He wasn't much surprised when it came from his new chum, the kindly special agent with the altogether friendlier line of patter.

"Yeah, you've got yourself a sweet setup, here, Mr. Davidson. Be a terrible shame if it all went sour and you ended up back on that chain gang. We could probably help you with that, you know. If you could see yourself clear to helping us out with a little problem…"

"Is that so?" Slim Jim replied without bothering to keep the bitter sarcasm out of his voice this time.

"Yes, it is," said Good Cop. "You see, we're a little worried about these characters you've been doing business with, out in California. Not all of them, you understand. Just a few bad eggs, here and there. We hear things about some of them. Disturbing things, really, that'd make a red-blooded man feel a little sick."

The agent seemed to falter over his next line. Slim Jim couldn't help but be impressed with his acting ability. He was very good.

"Sexual things," the agent said with a little choke in his voice.

Slim Jim was tempted to make another crack about Hoover, but that would only get him beaten again, so he rearranged his bathrobe to cover himself and buy some time to think. Some of the racier scandal sheets he liked to read had published big chunks of a couple of books written about the maximum cop after he'd died, or would have died, a few decades from now. Of course, you rarely saw that kind of gossip in the "quality" press, not straight up, anyhow. But Slim Jim understood there'd been a couple of slanting references to it. He'd been all fired up to publish the fucking books himself and sell them on the black market. But Ms. O'Brien had talked him out of it. Said he didn't need the headache of a fight with a vicious old fag like Hoover. That's what she called him, too, "a vicious old fag." Anyway, word was, J. Edgar was going berserk over the things people were saying about him back in the Zone. So maybe this was something to do with it.

Or maybe they were just busting his chops because he was-let's face it-a career criminal. Reformed or not.

Whatever.

His confidence was coming back now. If these guys had something on him, they'd a frog-marched him out of the place already. For the umpteenth time he found himself pathetically grateful to Ms. O'Brien and her ramrod-straight, pain-in-the-ass, do-it-by-the-fucking-book ways. She had insisted that everything he do be completely aboveboard-legally, if not morally. He even paid his taxes now. More than he had to, if truth be known. It was almost as if she'd expected this to happen.

He was gonna have to step lightly around Norma's old man, though. You could never tell what a pissed-off husband was gonna do. But the rest of the feebs' routine was all bullshit and bluster.

His silence seemed to convince Bad Cop to ham it up even further. The guy put his foot against the heavy coffee table that sat between them and gave it a vicious push, slamming the edge into Slim Jim's unprotected shins. He yelped in pain as tears welled up in his eyes.

"We know you're in thick with these time-traveling assholes, Davidson. We know some of these companies of yours have picked up contracts from them. You mix with them, and you got the inside track. You're gonna start working for your country again. Keeping us informed about them."

Two painful lumps were already coming up on his shins. He rubbed at them and complained in his whiniest voice. "I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about, or what you need me for. They don't make any secret of it, all the shit goes on there. They got nightclubs and bars for queers and lemons. They got all the races sleeping together. They don't give a fuck what you think about them. And neither does Congress, or weren't you paying attention. They're in the Zone, man. That's their world now."

At that, the friendly one looked disappointed.

His unpleasant partner leaned forward and bared his fangs. "For now, smartass. Just for now."

Bad Cop placed his foot on the edge of the coffee table again, causing Slim Jim to wince in expectation. But the agent just gave the apartment a good looking-over, and he didn't appear to like what he saw. Again, Ms. O'Brien was responsible for much of the decoration.

She'd flipped the first time she saw how Slim Jim had decked the place out, with moose heads and porn and ratty old furniture. "This isn't the image we're trying to create, Mr. Davidson," she'd said in that quiet, level tone that frightened him a little. "We are trying to establish you as a serious if somewhat rakish businessman, and this looks like the waiting room of a Chechen bordello."