Detective Sergeant Lou "Buster" Cherry didn't so much wake up as find himself more conscious than unconscious, a state in which he slowly became aware of how much he felt like a bag of shit. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling. There were the usual sorrows of an elephant-sized hangover, the headache like a meat ax to the brain, the nausea, the burning throat, the taste of bile, and the sour stench of his own sweat and unwashed bedclothes.
Then there was a growing list of unrelated woes. The chronic pain of a bullet wound he'd received on the job what seemed like a hundred years ago. The hateful longing for his first shot of the day. A dreadful suspicion that there was no booze left in the apartment anyway. A fading twitch of resentment at the bitch he'd once called his wife-a woman he hadn't heard from in well over a year.
There was something else this morning, too, as he lay on the fold-up cot in his studio apartment, under a pile of dirty laundry. He couldn't quite put his finger on it but…
"You're a disgrace, Detective."
He would have sat bolt upright, but that would've hurt too much. So he groped about for his revolver, knowing in the back of his mind that it was futile.
"Don't bother. We moved it out of reach, just to make sure you didn't hurt yourself."
"Who the fuck-?" The raspy voice was almost unrecognizable as his. He suddenly realized how long it had been since he'd spoken to another person.
He rubbed his eyes and lifted his head, taking in the two figures who stood in the center of his room. They looked as if they didn't want to move, for fear of stepping in something nasty.
"We're from the Bureau, Detective."
At first he had no idea what they were talking about, but then some very rusty memories of his former life began to creak back into place. "Hoover men?"
"Yeah. Special agents."
As they spoke, he became increasingly aware of just how much worse this headache was than normal.
"You got names?"
"Not today, Detective."
Cherry could feel a small storm building inside his head, but he tried to ignore it. "I'm not a detective anymore," he said. "They suspended me. Six years in uniform. Nine in plainclothes, and they fucking shit-canned me because that asshole Jewish kraut pulls some strings." He pushed himself up in his cot and saw a half-empty fifth of Old Granddad lying on the floor. Hell, what's half-empty is half-full, too. He was about to reach for it-thinking it'd make a fine breakfast, right about now-when one of them spoke again, and he froze in place.
"You think Admiral Kolhammer caused you to be suspended?"
"I don't think. I know. I got my owns strings I can pull."
The feeb grunted. "Maybe so. Because you're back on the job."
Then something-two things, in fact-landed in his lap: his badge and his gun.
A squall of confusion blew through his head, and there was no way to ignore it now. He'd been drinking something like a bottle of bourbon every day since they'd ass-fucked him.
He'd never been much for your actual detecting, in the past. Mostly he just knew whom to shake down. But the mystery of this resurrection, of the badge and gun that were lying between his legs… well, it was beyond him.
So he stared at the two men who called themselves special agents. They were dressed identically. Dark suits, white shirts, red ties.
The taller one shrugged. "Everyone knows you shot that guy during the riot in Honolulu. But not everyone cares. Get up, Detective, and pull yourself together. You've got work to do."
A tangle of emotions-relief, dread, indignation, and self-loathing-all boiled toward the surface. "I'm back on the same case? That dyke from the future got whacked with the Jap?"
"No. That won't be possible. You're going back to your old office, but you're going to be working for us-on the side."
"The Bureau?" he asked.
The tall agent just smiled.