RainStorm

what I wanted to know.
    "Well, Mr. Crawley," I said, "I guess what we need to talk about
    is why a nice guy like you would want to have me killed."
    He pursed his lips and swallowed again, his breath whistling in
    and out of his nose. I could see that he was trying to decide how to
    handle this. Deny everything? Blame someone else? Confess and
    beg for mercy? Something in between?
    Watching him trying frantically to make up his mind, weighing
    the pros and cons of the feeble set of options before him, I sensed he
    understood that I knew what he was thinking, that I had seen it all
    before and would know just how to handle him regardless of which
    route he decided to use. So he would probably know enough not to
    outright deny everything. No, he looked savvy to me, even shrewd.
    At some level, he was probably thinking, Don't deny it, he wouldn't be
    here if his information weren't good. And if you don't deny it, if you confess
    up to a point, he'll be more inclined to believe what follows. It would be a
    variation of the galoshes game I had just played with the old lady
    with the walker. And he'd probably do a good job, too. A lot of these
    government guys are pretty adroit when it comes to lying.
    Let's see, I thought, making a mental bet with myself, probably
    it'll be something like, "I was only following orders."
    "It's not me," he said, unintentionally winning me the bet. "It's
    someone else."
    "Who's that, then?"
    "It's . . . look, Jesus Christ, I can't tell you these things!"
    "But it's not you."
    Hope flared in his eyes. "Yes, that's right."
    I sighed. "Is there another Charles Crawley running around
    who looks and smells just like you?" I asked.
    "What?"
    "A twin. You don't have a twin?"
    "What? No, no I don't."
    "I didn't think so. But see, that's strange. Because a guy who
    looks exactly like you, and also named Crawley, although he called
    himself Johnson, went to a special operator recently and offered him
    a hundred thousand dollars to take me out. Went to him personally."
    He glanced to his right, a neurolinguistic sign of imagination,
    not of recall. He was trying to make something up, to find a way
    out of the corner he had just painted himself into.
    "Maybe, I don't know," he said. "Maybe there is someone using
    my name. Trying to set me up."
    I sighed again. "The operator in question was carrying a cell
    phone with an integrated digital camera," I said. "He took about a
    half dozen pictures of you."
    His pupils dilated. He licked his lips.
    "I'm afraid this isn't going to end the way we were hoping,"
    I said.
    "All right, all right, I'm sorry, I was just afraid. That part was
    me. But look, I didn't want to do what I did, I just ... I didn't have
    a choice."
    "I'm listening."
    He took a deep breath. "You were hired to ... to go after
    someone recently. The problem you have, it's with that person."
    I shook my head in mild disgust. It's been my experience that
    bureaucrats are to killing what the Victorians were to sex: they just
    can't bring themselves to call it by name.
    I waited, letting the pressure of silence bear down on him. But
    he stayed cool, resisting the urge to talk. Okay, plan B.
    I picked up the stun gun and held it an inch from his eyes, then
    depressed the trigger. Sharp tendrils of blue electric current crackled
    between the electrodes, and the acrid smell of ozone cut through
    the air. He tried to jerk his head away, but there was nowhere for him
    to go.
    I released the trigger. "Remember, Mr. Crawley, my assurance
    that I wouldn't hurt you had a condition attached. Let's not breach
    the condition, okay?"
    The truth was, I didn't want to hurt him. Fear is a better motivator
    than pain. Fear is all about anticipation, imagination. Pain is
    real and quantifiable. Once the pain starts, the person is no longer
    in fear of it--it's right there, actually happening. The person might
    think, okay, this is bad, but I can take it. And he might even be
    right. So when you're interrogating someone, once you have to
    start actually hurting him, you've already lost a lot of your leverage.
    I wanted to avoid all that if I could.
    I set the stun gun down. "It's important that we not hide behind
    euphemisms and vague references and undefined pronouns, okay?"
    I said, as though he was a child and I was just explaining the rules
    of the classroom to him. "It's important that you tell me exactly
    who's coming after me and why. If it turns out that you're just a bit
    player in all this, you'll survive