Keith Thomson - Once a spy

Placing his icy feet onto the radiator, he accidentally knocked a rubber bath duck from its perch atop the diaper pail. It squeaked softly on impact with the rug. Baby Alfonso awoke in full-on wail.

“Hang on,” Mickey said to Charlie.

He stuffed a hand through the crib slats and rubbed the crown of Alfonso’s head. As usual, the baby was back asleep in seconds. But now Sylvia was marching down the hallway.

“Hey, man, can you call me a little later at the office?” Mickey asked Charlie.

“I might not be able to, actually, because I might be dead.”

Mickey didn’t take this lightly. Charlie had been calm in comparison when detailing Grudzev’s cup-of-sand threat. “Okay, okay,” he said, mouse-clicking his way to the board of elections Web site. Its information-rich database was available only to qualified election officials. Mickey could access it thanks to a guerrilla Web site that generated functioning election official pass codes.

“I thought we were through with this shit, Moby Mick,” Sylvia yelled from the other side of the hollow plywood door. She maintained it was thoughtless to speak inside the nursery while the baby slept.

“Charlie, hang on one more sec?” Mickey said.

He balanced the handset atop the hard drive and stepped out of the room, head lowered. The appearance of supplication usually helped.

“It’s not the horses this time,” he said.

Her eyes were hot coals. “I don’t care if it’s the weather. You said you don’t want your son knowing you associate with the likes of that dead-beat.”

Mickey winced. Charlie probably had heard her. This was gracious, though, compared to things she’d said before to his face. Mickey’s concern was Alfonso.

Indeed, the baby began to cry again.

“Nice work,” Sylvia said, as if it were Mickey’s fault.

Mickey rushed back into the nursery, simultaneously picking up poor Alfonso and the handset. He saw that, in his absence, the board of elections site had linked to and automatically opened a PDF of the elaborate paperwork required, in light of all the Social Security benefits fraud, for a change of address. It requested that Isadora VanDeuersen Clark’s checks be forwarded to Charles Clark at 305 East 10 Street in New York City. The original address was General Delivery, Monroeville, Virginia. No news there. But the form stated, in oversized bold caps, that if the original address were a post office box or general delivery, the applicant needed to supply a physical address below. So to learn Isadora VanDeuersen Clark’s actual whereabouts, in theory, all Mickey had to do was scroll down.

“What’s going on?” asked Charlie and Sylvia, almost in unison.

“Just a sec,” Mickey told them both.

Sylvia stomped into the room. Mickey’s back was to her. Still, her look made him wither. “One more second, please,” he begged, scrolling furiously toward the address.

“Okay…” She eyed the ceiling for about one second, then seized the computer’s power cable, shifting her weight toward the outlet, to pull the plug with maximum dramatic effect.

“Stop, please!”

She did. But only to twist the knife. And what could he do? The crib stood between them-not that he could overpower her if he wanted to. He knew of no way to persuade her. Out of spite, she usually denied even his simplest requests, like “Pass the salt?”

“Tell her you’re trying to help me find a place in Virginia,” Charlie said.

Sylvia heard. “Really?” she said with enthusiasm. She relaxed her grip on the power cord.

Mickey’s own look of mystification gave up the game. Sylvia reared back and jerked the power cord as if starting a lawn mower. The plug whipped past him, a prong grazing his cheek. The hard drive fizzled. As the screen faded to gray, however, he was able to make out Isadora V. Clark’s street address.

With the address firmly in his memory and corresponding bounce in his step, Charlie hurried from the parking lot pay phone and down the still-dark breezeway. Night Manager A. Brody sprung out of the vending machine room, directly into his path.

“Top of the morning to you, Mr. Ramirez!”

Although the vending machine room was just a few steps from the office, Brody was bundled into a coat, scarf, and hat. And he hadn’t purchased anything.

He’d been waiting.

Swallowing against an upsurge of dread, Charlie said, “Top of the morning back at you.”

“You have rather fair hair for a Ramirez, don’t you?”

“My mother’s Swedish.”

Brody laughed derisively. “Listen, I’ve had so many weird middle-of-the-night check-ins that a man giving a fake name counts as fairly normal, especially if a second person’s waiting in the car. I can’t see the parking spaces around the corner from my office, but while you were checking in last night, I could distinguish the rumble of your car from that of the highway. Most people, fearing car thieves, don’t leave their vehicles running. Unless there’s someone else in the vehicle.”

“Is there a charge for a second person?” Charlie asked, hoping the objective of this third degree was merely the collection of a few bucks.

“No, up to four can stay at no additional fee. I wanted to share with you the message in a fax I just received from the FBI. They’re seeking two fugitives, an older man and one about your age. And height and weight and hair and eye color.”

“Thanks for sharing,” Charlie said. By it he meant, “What do you want?”

“I’ll tell you what, a thousand in cash, and if someone asks me, a man matching your description may or may not have checked in here in the middle of the night-it was dark, you were all bundled up, who could tell?”

A thousand dollars was a small price to avoid capture. Charlie wished he had it. He fished the wallet from his pants and flipped it open to display bills totaling $157. He saw no need to mention the twenty he always kept in a different pocket. “This is what I have, and going to an ATM won’t do either of us any good, even if I had that much in my account.”

“What about Daddy?”

“Obviously you’re a highly observant individual. Notice how, like last night, I’m wearing just a sweatshirt even though it’s, like, two out?”

“The point?”

“I had to leave home last night in a rush-you can imagine how that happens, when you’re a fugitive. My father was in the same rush. He left home in pajamas, or, to the point, without his wallet. I only have as much cash as I do because yesterday I was thinking about buying a bus ticket to South Dakota.”

Brody deliberated, his breath rising from the dimly lit breezeway and into the predawn darkness. Finally, he cast a porcine hand and pinched the bills from the wallet.

Eight minutes later, Arnold Brody was swiveling anxiously in his desk chair when a dark blue Chevy Caprice sailed into the lot. Out darted two men. A strong gust of wind blew their overcoats open, revealing gray suits. The driver, in his twenties, was pale, with a stern countenance, like a wolf’s. He was what Brody had expected of a federal agent. The passenger, in his early forties, had a jock’s thick torso, gone soft in the middle. His big face was pleasant and suntanned, showcasing a sparkling grin. He looked more like an insurance salesman or a golf club pro.

“Mr. Brody, I presume,” the driver said.

“Good to meet you.” Brody stepped out of the office and extended a hand.

The driver did too, but only to flash an FBI badge identifying him as Special Agent Mortimer. His partner’s ID showed him to be Special Agent Cadaret.

“Sir, where’s their car?” Mortimer asked.

“They were clever about that,” Brody said. He pointed to the back end of the building. The nose of the gray Buick peeked from behind it, twinkling silver in the nascent sunlight. “They parked all the way down there, even though their room isn’t anywhere close, so the car would be hidden from the road.”