// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
The courier
Joel Glover writes across an array of genres and formats. He is interested in love, technology and unreliable narrators, among other things.
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“Either charge him or release him. You know the rules.”
I drum my nails on the wood of the desk, sticky cracks in the varnish grabbing at my fingerprints. In some places, I am more careful where I leave a record of my presence. When face-to-face with a custody sergeant of the LAPD, surveilled by AI-enabled divining tools provided by competing concerns, and acting as an agent of the court, there is little point.
In the back, the detectives come to the inevitable conclusion.
My client shambles out of holding half an hour later, 25 minutes of my wait on wipe-clean blue seats a carefully calculated insult from his captors. He stinks of drunk-tank epiphanies, fear flop-sweat and his own filth. The left side of his face is slack, loose as an ill-fitting suit. Thick, milky drool runs out of a curl of his lip and falls onto his shirt.
He can’t sign his name. I press his thumb carefully into ink and make his mark for him. Then I coax him past the Auntie Annie’s kiosk that projects an alluring smell of cinnamon and sugar into the lobby, and down the stairs at the front of the precinct to where the Shelby is idling.
I was prepared. Big Citrus has sheathed the back seat in the sort of plastic sheeting beloved by painters of industrial buildings and house decorators. I have to work in this car. I don’t need the stink to linger.
Big Citrus unfolds his phone and sliver of WLFI2$ lands in my crypto wallet.
The payment and advice make at least the next two miles covered by attorney–client privilege, per the Rao court’s most recent ruling. Big Cit presses the pedal to the metal, the car’s steel shaking like a horse getting swarmed by fire ants. It was not a comfortable ride, but it was American made and so old it predated spyware. We run the first red light, then hit the speed limit for the boulevard and keep accelerating. Overhead a drone marks our progress and sends us a court summons for speeding.