And Justice for All!?

"General Sessions?"  Justice Department Attorney Atticus Hawk grabbed his pen and yellow pad to listen to his new Attorney General--Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (who liked to be called "General Sessions")--give a new assignment over the speaker phone.

"Now, they're not telling me about this new Executive Order exactly because they've got so many leaks in the White House.  We just need to prepare for all possibilities."  (Sessions spoke in a slow and easy Alabama drawl, which Hawk found soothing...except for when it was not.)  "I need you to work on a brief for the defense of a possible order allowing Immigration to hand arrivals over for transport to Guantánamo."

"GITMO?!  Sir!"

"'GENERAL!'" barked Sessions, losing his cool and his drawl.

"General, sir, Guantánamo was for enemy combatants picked up during conflict."

"The conflict is everywhere, Hawk!  We can't have namby-pamby lawyers showing up at airports saying they're gonna represent people likely to be scum of the Earth just because they're refugees or resident legal aliens working as emergency room doctors or Microsoft engineers!  These people need to be interrogated!"

"Oh, boy," sighed Hawk.

"I was told you had written more legal memos and briefs about Guantánamo than anybody else," said the Attorney General.

"Well, yes, sir, General."

"I'm not gonna let another DOJ embarrassment happen like the Acting Attorney General did in the Ninth Circuit," said Sessions.

"No, sir, General, sir."

"I think this Order could go in various directions, and I need briefs ready for all of them."

"General Sessions, there are no precedents for--"

"Don't talk to me about precedents, son!  We are livin' in unprecedented times!"

"If somebody is a legal permanent resident--"

"Then they should've stayed permanently residing in the U.S. instead of traipsing off to crazy foreign countries on vacation!  Now, get to work lickety split!  I got other skillets on the campfire!"

"Yes, sir, General Sessions."  Hawk hung up the phone.  If somebody in this Administration has a heart attack, they're gonna be shocked at the sea of brown faces working the GW Hospital emergency room.  He clutched his gut with one hand while grabbing the Pepto Bismal bottle with the other.  And somebody already told him, and now I'm the Torture Expert again.

Of course, for every Atticus Hawk available to the new Attorney General, there were dozens of other civil servants who had resigned and could not be replaced under Trump's hiring freeze, not to mention a suite full of empty offices not yet filled by his own political appointees.  And of the hundreds of attorneys he had at his disposal, he sure did not trust most of them.  And so he had already turned to outside counsel....

"Ladies and gentlemen," began former Senator Evermore Breadman, sitting at the head of the largest conference table Prince and Prowling had.  "Our law firm has been retained to assist the new Attorney General in preparing legal defense memos pertaining to the dozens of lawsuits already filed against President Trump."  (Several half-chewed brownies and blondies actually fell out of people's mouths as jaws dropped around the table.)  "Now, some of you are aware we sidestepped getting hired by Trump operatives during the campaign, but things are different now.  We have always said this law firm can thrive in any political scenario, and this will be no different."

"No different?" asked several partners in unison, while senior associates took swallows of coffee trying to make their brain cylinders start firing more rapidly.

"My husband couldn't even get into the country two weeks ago!" complained one of the tax partners.  "He's a law professor at Georgetown!  He was returning from an international conference on chemical weapons!"

"This was not an easy decision," said Breadman, "but when a law firm is called to serve its country--"

He was interrupted by a peal of laughter from junior partner Bridezilla.  "Goodness gracious!  The amount of Ivanka Trunk clothing I was able to purchase on 70% discount yesterday!  This is all too funny.  Yes, let's serve our country!"

Breadman frowned at the increasingly odd junior partner and looked for reinforcements from the Managing Partner, who told the assembly that they had negotiated a great billing package.  (The Managing Partner did NOT tell them that a big part of the deal was allowing their state-of-the-art review center bunker to exit from further legal monitoring on deferred-prosecution labor violations.)

"But a wide variety of parties are suing the Administration, including private corporations," said junior partner Felix Cigemeier.  "We might end up with a lot of conflicts of interest."

"In these times of economic uncertainty for corporate America, we actually feel it is financially safer to take on a large government client with a booming case load and severe understaffing at the moment," said the Managing Partner.

"And there's no reason to tell any of your corporate clients about this," said Breadman, and Bridezilla started laughing again.

"Of course not!" she exclaimed.  "Some of our corporate clients are probably owned by Trump anyway!  Nobody's seen the tax returns explaining his five-thousand different limited liability corporations all over the world!"

"Well, I don't think this is humorous!" said the disgruntled tax partner, who had already decided it was time to take up that offer to jump over to Prince and Prowling's arch-enemy:  Lye, Cheit and Steele.

"We don't take this decision lightly," said the Managing Partner.  "Evermore even believes the Trump Administration will be shorter-lived than almost any Presidency in our nation's history."

"But we will gain valuable DOJ insights which will serve our clients for years to come," added Breadman, to more than a few gasps.

Not far away, contract attorney Laura Moreno was carrying a box of binders when she passed Breadman's Wall of Me.  She put down the heavy box to take a breather while she examined the updated photos:  Breadman standing next to Jeff Sessions, Breadman standing next to Steve Mnuchin, Breadman standing next to Tom Price.  It was the disappointed lechery of Breadman that had gotten Moreno demoted back down from a staff attorney position, and she only hesitated for a moment before removing several framed photos and walking them out into the hallway to be dumped in the ladies' room trash.

A mile to the south, Dulles Samuelson finished cleaning the upper deck of his houseboat, Singapore Surprise, and headed down to the smells of Angela de la Paz's cooking.  She was going on very few assignments for Charles Wu, and, as far as he knew, not taking on any supernatural missions, either--despite the large amount of time she spent in the Dreamtime.  She wouldn't tell him much about the Dreamtime, and he couldn't tell her much about his new FBI workload, so lately they had not talked much at all except about the weather and whatever television program Angela was currently binge-watching.  Was she feeling guilt?  Despair?  Anger?  Whatever it was, she wasn't the kick-ass killer of zombies and demons he had once known.  But he was determined to do what he came to Washington to do:  fight evil.  He had just hoped it would be more by her side, and less in the entrenched bureaucracy of the FBI--where he was pretty sure the entire White House staff (including Trump) were under investigation, but where he, a new agent, was still assigned to routine criminal investigations.  He knew there was nobody in Washington who could bring down Trump faster than she could, but she wouldn't.  Why?  He had asked himself that a hundred times.  She knew Trump had no soul!  Why?

"Smells good," he said, entering the kitchen area.

"I'm going to go to El Salvador for awhile," she replied, not looking at him.

"What?!"

"Visit my relatives."

"You're not in touch with any of those relatives!  Who's still alive down there?"

"A couple cousins."  She added more ingredients and resumed stirring the pot.

"Are you mad at me about something?"

She put down the spoon and finally turned to look at him.  "I tried to do it."

"What?"

"Get Trump's soul back from Satan.  I couldn't do it!"

"What?!  Is that why you've been been in the Dreamtime so much?!"

"I couldn't do it!"

"What about Steve Bannon?"

"Don't you think I tried that, too?!"

"That's all the more reason for you to stay here!  A lot of people need protection!"

"You think I don't know that?!" she cried, tears welling up.  "I just need to be in some other country for awhile.  I can't stand any of this.  I can't believe what my parents went through to get to this country, and the politicians are just throwing it all to Hell!"

He put his arms around her and let her cry into his chest.  "It'll be okay," he said.  "There are plenty of other people in this fight.  You do what you need to do.  I'll be here when you're ready to come back."

A few miles away, attorney Coretta Rosa McIntyre smiled grimly after her final reading of the next lawsuit Goode Peepz was filing against the Trump Administration the next morning.  "I will do this as long as it takes," she said to the photo of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump adorning her dartboard.  "You're all going down!"  She turned back to the computer and pressed the print button.

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COMING UP:  A new conspiracy theory!