Rufus Ramley slammed the door shut on the black Suburban. He straightened the tie on his black suit in the side-view mirror.  

Regarding his façade, he thought, he hated the men in black stereotype, but it came with admitted advantages. If the suspect was quaking in his boots at the mere sight of him, it saved Rufus a lot of threatening, and with his blood pressure these days, that was a godsend.  

He checked his pants pockets to make sure he had his Eucalyptus nose balm. He took a moment to apply some. Interviewing suspects who had soiled themselves in advance made his job harder in this one respect, as he had a painfully sharp sense of smell. A fact that explained why he collected orchids and spent his downtime in his greenhouse. There, he could find himself again after being bent out of shape by the big bad world, which seemed to brutalize him as much as his victims these days. 

As Rufus continued to take himself in from different angles before the reflective smoked glass passenger windows of the Suburban, he combed back his hair, dusted the dandruff off his shoulders, and reviewed the other rationales behind softening his target up in advance... Torturing people to extract information was a long arduous process that required the patience of Michelangelo as he painted the Sistine Chapel. Rush it, and you botched the job. Go at the correct pace, and Rufus quickly bored. He turned to reading his Agatha Christie novels mid-session, leaving his assistant to apply the rest of the blows. What's more, he was sore for days after if he alone did the beat-downs. So unless he couldn't make it to the gym, he didn't see the point.

***

Farrell eyed the men in black disembarking the black suburban, their guns showing prominently, and proceeded, without further ado, to shit himself. He had never been so scared in all his life. "Well, you see, it's like this." "You've got the wrong idea about me entirely." "No, no, it's nothing like that." Maybe, by the time they reached the front door, he'd figure out what to say to turn them away.

***

Pontius Pilate, Rufus's sidekick, looked like a leg of cow hanging in a walk-in refrigerator-huge, stiff, and cold, and just as thick. It didn't take much imagination to see him for what he was-a brute with an on-and-off button whose niche was dismantling suspects Guantanamo-Bay style. If one look at Rufus didn't do the trick, one look at Pontius, and even those trained to resist torture figured they'd save themselves the trouble.  

His wingman walked beside him, looking like his shadow and like the sun going down on Rufus's life was really bad news for anyone getting in his way. 

Rufus checked his pocket for his paperback copy of Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary, made sure he hadn't lost his bookmark, and returned the book to his inside sleeve jacket-pocket. Heading towards Farrell Donnelley's porch steps, he jogged his memory over what he knew about Farrell.  

Farrell had had the bad sense to design a rather workable prototype of a teleporter. The powers that be were quaking in their boots. The trucking industry would collapse overnight. Big Oil and shipping would virtually implode. Industries related to the transportation sector-the ones that laid asphalt and strung telephone poles-would take an egregious hit. There were a lot of people getting very excited about Farrell's invention, and very determined to see him dead.  

Maybe if the fool had had the sense to migrate to China first, or to one of those European countries where Big Oil wasn't so entrenched, and the economy was based less on old world technologies. But the poor guy apparently lacked any political acumen, and any sense of how the real world works, typical for these geniuses. Like horses running with blinders on, they were way too specialized to be of any real threat to the powers that be. In short, owing to his unsurpassed naiveté and cluelessness, he hadn't gotten to hell out of Dodge. So the new world, which he was helping build-which Rufus wouldn't mind seeing, in all honesty-was never going to be.  

Rufus couldn't recall when America had become as resistant to the future as it had, considering we were once the number one pioneers of tomorrow. But reading Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class, and The Flight of the Creative Class-the latter documenting the flight of the creatives oversees to environments more friendly to entrepreneurs and builders of tomorrow-had really opened his eyes. Maybe because he didn't have all that money to blind him from seeing the writing on the wall, and convince him he could overwrite it with some writing of his own.  

About the one good thing to come out of this entire situation was the fact that Farrell thought entirely in advanced physics and mathematics that maybe a dozen people on the planet could even understand. That meant Rufus wouldn't have to worry himself with hiding the evidence, burning it, and later being suspected of holding on to it himself, so he had to worry about another man in black showing up at his door. He could leave the papers where he found them. They'd end up in a shoebox somewhere, if they made it that far. The other twelve people who could make sense of the equations, should they find their way to them, were all being monitored, anyway. All in all, fate had dealt Rufus a good hand. Not so much Farrell. 

He rapped on Farrell Donnelley's door.

***

TWO HOURS EARLIER

"You sure Mr. Donnelley didn't email, snail mail, hell, carrier-pigeon any other sensitive information to you?" Rufus said, looking up from page seventeen of The Secret Adversary. "Because I'd really hate to think you were lying to me." Mr. Sitwell's face was puffed up from Pontius's love taps. Strictly soft-tissue inflammation. One good all-out-blow from Pontius and Mr. Sitwell's face would have been crushed like a rider thrown in a motorcycle accident, ending the interview.  

Mr. Sitwell-hands tied behind the dining table chair-feebly shook his head. 

"Now, I know what you're thinking," Rufus said. "My face all puffed up like this, how can he read anything off it? But I assure you, sir, dead as a doornail, lying in a morgue for a week, should the spirit possess you in an effort to communicate to me, I could translate the word of God Himself off your face. And you know what I see, right now, Mr. Sitwell? I see the face of a liar. A stone cold liar. Yes, sir. Now, don't let this get any uglier. You don't want me to start in on your six year old daughter next, do you?"  

Rufus panned his head to the little girl playing with her dolls in the room. "Such a nice child. See how well she plays with others? You don't see her interrupting the big boys' games, do you? Content to play right alongside us in her own little world. God, you gotta love children. The world is years away from messing her up but good, Mr. Sitwell, if you just tell me what I want to hear." 

Mr. Sitwell nodded. "Cut the man's hand free so he can point, Pontius." Pontius freed a hand, and Mr. Sitwell pointed to the dollhouse the little girl was playing with.  

Rufus sauntered over and took the roof off the dollhouse. "Do you believe this? He wallpapered the house with the formulas. That's priceless. Looks kind of like calligraphy, which, come to think of it, would look pretty good on my walls. Thanks for the decorating tip, Mr. Sitwell. You see the ways we enrich one another's lives? Fate always has her hand in things, despite our clumsy attempts to mess everything up." 

Rufus set fire to the doll house. 

And next he set fire to the child.  

Mr. Sitwell was too far gone to scream; all he could manage was a whimper and tears, helping to rush the blood down his face like one of those Brazilian mud slides coming off the steep hillsides of his puffed up cheeks.  

The little girl ran to daddy, screaming, burning alive, to give him one big goodbye hug. She set daddy afire, too, causing Rufus to chuckle. "Fate, there she goes again."  

He donned his hat. "It's been a pleasure knowing you, Mr. Sitwell. Sorry we had to meet under these trying circumstances. And I'm sorry about your daughter. But history has taught me to leave as few loose ends as possible-unless you just live to be haunted by your past.  

Rufus stared at the burning child, strangely at peace. "Personally, it's the future and what it might turn into that haunts me. With a few exceptions, like this contraption you built here. Yes, indeed, can't see any bad coming of that, but it appears I'm in a minority, and as usual, my vote doesn't count." 

Rufus left one of his orchids on Mr. Sitwell's mantle, and departed the house before the spreading fire caused him to break a sweat. 

On Mr. Sitwell's porch step, Rufus asked, "Where's the next flower delivery, Pontius?"  

Pontius checked his notepad. "On Claremont Boulevard. Farrell Donnelley. Barely ten minutes from here." 

Climbing into the Suburban's front passenger seat, Rufus returned to his book. "Drive slowly over to Farrell Donnelley's. Forestalling the future can wait until I finish this chapter. God, I love how this woman solves crimes: with class, elegance, and style. Don't you miss those days, Pontius? I know I do. God, what an ugly brutish world this has become. Lost all sense of artistry, it has."  

The dull Pontius didn't respond. He never did, making Rufus's point for him. Rufus made a sad face staring into the blank stone of Pontius's face in the rear-view mirror, before returning to his book.

***

"Farrell! Farrell Donnelley!" Rufus said, raising his voice to be heard through the wooden door. "Come out, come out, wherever you are."  

He held the orchid in his hand, a Phalaenopsis, with bright pink petals, one of his favorites. Orchids relied on their hosts, usually the trunk or branch of a tree, for nourishment. Rufus supposed there was something symbolic about that, considering his line of work.  

Farrell answered the door, looking sleepy-eyed. Rufus could tell he'd been up half the night working on his equations. Such passion. He felt like a poser by comparison. He enjoyed his work, but nothing like that. He knew he had a hand in shaping the future, maybe as much as this kid. Still, nothing quite fills the void of not spending your days doing exactly what you loved to do. 

Rufus handed the kid the flower, and he brightened. "I didn't know I had a secret admirer," Farrell said. Thinking, possibly, for a brief second, he'd been all wrong about the reason for the men in black at his door.  

"I assure you, you do," Rufus said, "several in fact." He stepped into the house, gently pushing the kid out of the way with his body.  

Pontius waved his hand in front of his face. "Phew, get a load of that." Pontius lacked the delicate social graces Rufus hoped to some day instill in him.  

Pontius lifted Farrell up and dangled him off the ground in one hand in the middle of the living room floor. Rufus gave him a disapproving look. "There you go, Pontius, robbing my life of any sense of artistry. I hope it keeps you up at nights, I swear to God." 

"What did I do?" Farrell asked sheepishly.  

Pontius consulted his Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms. The paperback copy fit neatly in meaty hands big enough to swallow a cantaloupe. "You threw a spanner in the works." 

"Huh?"  

"Means you caused a problem that slows or stops something that was going well," Pontius translated proudly.  

"God help him if he hasn't figured out that much for himself, Pontius," Rufus said.  

"You mean my equations," Farrell said. 

"There you go!" Rufus exclaimed. 

Pontius turned the page in the dictionary. "We need you to be a Vicar of Bray." Pontius explained, "That means: a person who changes their beliefs and principles to stay popular with people above them." 

"I'm guessing he figured that part out on his own, Pontius," Rufus said.  

Farrell flapped his arms. "I'm happy to sell out. You don't have to kill me. Not like I can afford to build the machine on my own." 

Rufus explained the hard facts of life. "I'm afraid in this down economy, everyone has to find a way to drive greater efficiencies. And it's just cheaper to kill you, Farrell." 

"Please," Farrell begged. Pontius laid him down on the floor, and this time picked him up by the neck. The next thing Rufus heard were gurgling sounds as Pontius strangled Farrell and snapped his neck. 

"Pontius, that's no way to kill somebody. For Christ's sake!" 

"Sorry, boss. You want me to get a book on how to kill people, too?" 

"Let's not rush things. That's the problem with the world today. Everyone's in a big rush. To get where exactly?" He yanked a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket. "The whole nature of a rat race is it's pointless for anyone but a rat. He wiped the perspiration from his brow. Frustration with the human condition always triggered a good sweat. 

Rufus set the orchid down on the mantle.  

Together, he and Pontius exited Farrell Donnelley's home into the bright sun. Rufus donned his shades. "We really have to stop killing people before sundown, or I'm going to catch hell with cataracts later in life."