Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

Despite the hardships, Anita allowed herself two indulgences: an evening soak, and multiple classes of barbiturates, painkillers, and the occasional bottle of wine that corralled the dulling effects of the other drugs.

As Scagnelli looked through his binoculars, he wondered how much his boss was keeping from him. After stints in two national security agencies before becoming a “consultant,” he’d learned that you could count on getting half the truth. The trouble was they gave you the half that didn’t matter and withheld the half that would have helped you do your job.

And that’s what it was all about. Doing your job.

Some of his fellow agents had wasted their time banging against the Puzzle Palace in DC, trying to make sense of the decisions made by higher-ups. Scagnelli tried that his first couple of years, but then he figured out that nobody knew the whole story anywhere. Nobody knew the motives, nobody owned the agenda.

While some agents grabbed their crotches and saluted the flag, and others were sucked down the drain by the political intrigue, Scagnelli made peace with the idea that there was a job, somebody had to do that job, and he might as well be the one doing it.

He’d become a free agent because the proliferation of security agencies in the wake of 9/11 had created a lot of cracks. For the entrepreneurial types, the rampant intergovernmental mistrust had fueled opportunities. Some agents hated to serve as wingmen for politicians, but an election year was coming, and there were jobs to do. And he doubted if any of his fellow consultants were sitting in the bushes looking at a marvelous pair of boobs topped with sparkly white froth.

The book on Anita Molkesky was that she was an exhibitionist, fragile, and constantly on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. At least, that was half the story. Scagnelli had filled his idle hours between baths by speculating on the other half.

I wonder if porn actresses have agents like regular movie actresses do. If so, I’d say she got screwed as hard by them as she did by her costars.

He twisted the focus on the binoculars as she lifted herself from a leaning position and reached out of his field of vision. Not that he really cared what she was reaching for, because those amazing globes dangled like skinned papayas. They looked smaller now than they had in the dossier photos, and he wondered what kind of idiot in LA had taken them down a size. Probably some fetishist who thought normal-sized boobs were the next big thing.

Still, he could not complain a bit. What they lacked in volume was more than offset by their undulating sway and dark, swollen nipples. Some boobs were greater than the sum of their parts, radiating charisma in the same way that some normal-looking women somehow became beautiful when they were splashed across a movie screen.

Tits with charisma. Did Oprah ever do a show on that?

Despite the exhibitionist streak, Anita wasn’t going out of her way to flaunt it. Her curtains were open, sure, but the window was six feet above ground level. Scagnelli had found the only spot that afforded a clear view, and as he crouched in the suburban shrubbery, he glanced around to check the lights of the surrounding houses. It appeared everyone was safely occupied by their televisions or computers.

He was close enough to her to hear a mellow twang and gentle backbeat spill from the half-open window. She settled back amid the mounds of bubbles. She’d turned on some tunes, Fleetwood Mac, mood music for the mellowing druggie.

Speaking of which.

Scagnelli lowered the binoculars and pulled the mint tin from his pocket. One of the fringe benefits of being a free agent was he didn’t have to wait for a monthly paycheck. Compensation came in many forms, and a stack of unmarked bills was only one of them. His boss apparently had far-reaching connections, which wasn’t surprising given his background.

The surprising part was the moral ambiguity. Somebody with his boss’s reputation should be a prude who made sure every penny was reported to the Eternal Fucking Revenue Service and with no hanky-panky on the side.

Just went to show what Washington did to people. It was a place where you could only afford to show half the truth at any one time, but you also had to be able to change the truth at a moment’s notice.

Scagnelli’s fingers trembled only a little as he opened the tin. As a frontline observer of the War on Drugs, he’d come to see the “war” part as the public half of the story. The more important half of the story featured all the tidal forces of big industry, political expediency, and good old departmental pissing matches that fed the pipeline on the front end. The United States had the muscle to stamp out any drug supply in the world, but regulation was selective. The U.S. could easily cut the balls off the Taliban by whacking down all the opium poppies in Afghanistan, but billionaires were turning into trillionaires through the use of military force and cartoon diplomacy. And the trillionaires had purchased Congress decades ago.

But such thinking was for the idiots who gave a crap about democracy, freedom, and those other words that had people eating shit and smiling like it was cake. Scagnelli’s job was to keep his eyes on charismatic tits. And Scagnelli’s game was that he was always just doing his job and nothing more.

Anita was listlessly soaking as he slid a tablet into his mouth. Some nights, she lazily stroked herself, nothing serious, and he figured she was one of those frigid types who only put out for the cameras.

His cell vibrated inside his pocket. He’d silenced it for the surveillance mission, but being reachable was part of the job.

He pulled out the prepaid phone and, shielding it with one hand, flipped it open to check the text message.

He recognized the number. The message contained a single word: Tonight.

The next text buzzed in right after that: Then to Morgans.

He closed the phone, gave a last wistful glance through the binoculars, and shrugged. A job was a job.

Scagnelli tucked his binoculars into his leather tool belt and slid his arms into an orange mesh safety vest. The time for subterfuge was over. Now he needed to be conspicuously ordinary. The white hardhat and clipboard were his tickets to the working class.

Scagnelli had spent the past couple of days monkeying with the telephone switch box around the corner, the central feed for numerous land lines in the area. Everybody had a cell phone these days, but people still needed wires for a number of important services. The phone company trucks had been visible around the neighborhood, although the technicians were probably scratching their heads over the random problems.

So Scagnelli would be just another soldier in the faceless army of service workers, meeting the needs of the customers they cared so much about.

Scagnelli emerged from the bushes and crossed the small lawn. He would be visible from the two houses across the street, but with the brim of the hardhat pulled low, no one would be able to make an ID. A car went past, doing well over the 35 mph speed limit, and Scagnelli didn’t even look. After all, he carried a clipboard and had a job to do.

He slipped on a leather work glove when he reached the small stone patio. The door was unlocked, so there was no need for the burglar tools hidden in pouches along his belt. He stepped inside, checking the neighborhood again before closing the door.

Thank you, American Idol, for keeping the sheep drowsy.

The layout was as he’d mapped it during his down time. A kitchenette, a combined dining and living room with a breakfast nook, and a short hallway that split the bedroom and bath. Scagnelli glanced into the open bedroom as he passed. It was neat, tidy, and boring, with none of the mirrors on the ceiling or leather restraints on the bedposts one might have expected of a porn star. The most controversial object visible in the room was the folded-open paperback on the nightstand.