Will Staeger - Public Enemy

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

She noticed there wasn’t any particular accent to his speech-maybe a slight East Coast edge as was appropriate to his assumed identity, but otherwise pretty much neutral, like a news anchor.

“More to the point,” Laramie said, “who are you?”

“What are you talking about? What’s going on here? One minute I’m having a beer on my couch, the next thing I know these goons bust in and throw me on the floor and I wake up in this fucking basement.”

“I can answer part of my question for you,” Laramie said. “One person we know for certain you’re not is Anthony Dalessandro. Unless, that is, you died from leukemia at age six and were subsequently resurrected in full health.”

Laramie might have seen the first spark of something besides confusion or anger in his eyes-but if so, the spark lasted about as long as a spark normally does.

“My name is Tony Dalessandro,” he said, “and I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re pretty good at this,” Laramie said. “You know the first thing they teach at CIA? ‘Never go belly-up.’ Even when caught red-handed, there’s always the chance they’ll have some doubt you’re good for whatever they’re accusing you of, as long as you never actually admit your guilt. You’re familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency-I’m sure they taught you all about them in your classes under the hill in San Cristóbal.”

There was the slight flash of rage-Laramie reading it as how the hell could anybody know these things, I’ll kill you-but that look too, real or imagined, left the basement as quickly as it came.

Laramie knew Dalessandro, or the man who called himself that, to be single, thirty-six years of age, living in a rented two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse, working as a site foreman for a major rural housing contractor, up to his ears in debt, and blessed with one hell of a handsome appearance. He’d been putting this appearance to work with a different woman almost every night since they’d been watching him-belying the source of the majority of his methodically built debt. According to his many credit card statements, Tony had spent a great deal of money on dinners, weekend getaways, sports events, private-room cash-outs at numerous strip joints, and virtually every other form of foreplay invented to date.

Not quite Benjamin Achar, Laramie thought. But in a way, very similar: both seemed to be soaking up the life they preferred to lead with great relish. The problem, as Laramie saw it, was there seemed nothing to threaten him with. Unlike Achar, he had no family, and he’d already bought the fertilizer, so was obviously fully resigned to fulfilling his assigned mission. How do you convince a guy like that to reveal whatever secrets Márquez, Fidel, or anybody else on the public enemy team had vested him with?

She went straight to the only strategy she’d been able to devise, sorting through the options on the Jet Blue flight from Fort Myers to JFK.

“I thought I’d skip the part where we beat around the bush,” she said. “We’ve been watching you, Tony. You and your colleagues. We’ve seized the fertilizer and the diesel fuel you bought this morning. We searched your home and found the filovirus vials, so we took that too. We know where you trained. We know who sent you, when, and how. But you know why I’m being blunt and getting right to it?”

He watched her with lukewarm interest. She’d earned a portion of his attention-as to whether that would get her anywhere was anybody’s guess.

“The reason I’m skipping the pleasantries is for your own benefit. The organization that has captured you is not the Central Intelligence Agency. This is relevant to your situation because CIA, or any other arm of the American government, frequently has to concern itself with pesky little things like international law. Things like civil rights and trials. At least most of the time.”

She shrugged.

“The people I work for-the people who brought you here-don’t have to answer to any of that. Plus, Tony, you don’t really exist to begin with. Therefore I’d say the simple solution to this filovirus-dispersal scheme, at least as far as your involvement with it goes, is pretty simple: after our conversation, you vanish. I think that in the place you come from, it’s probably called ‘disappeared’-you’ll be ‘disappeared.’ No trial, no sentencing. One bullet. Two, if necessary.”

She stood in the way a person would when she’d said all she’d come to say.

“If you’re interested,” she said, “I’ll give you an alternate scenario. If not, you’ll die an anonymous failure within the hour. Goodnight.”

She offered him a courteous smile and turned to go.

About the time she was halfway up the rickety old stairwell, she heard a phlegmy kind of grunt that might have been Anthony Dalessandro clearing his throat. Then again it might have been something with the plumbing, so she continued to the door and had it open before Dalessandro said, “Just a second, lady.”

The bounty hunter and a different but also large cohort were seated at the table in the kitchen consuming a couple boxes of pizza and Diet Cokes out of the can.

“Be another few minutes,” she said, then closed the door again and retreated down the stairs.

When she’d retaken the chair across from Dalessandro, he shook his head.

“You’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t have anything to do with what you’re talking about.”

In Laramie’s experience, anybody who used the phrase “You’ve got the wrong guy” had, in stating it, for all intents and purposes, admitted his guilt. She decided she’d play his game and let him stick with whatever he was trying to convince himself he’d convince her of.

“There’s something else,” Dalessandro said, his voice congested. He cleared his throat again, the same sound she’d heard climbing the stairs. “There’s something else I hear they teach you about interrogations in the CIA. Or at least I’ve seen it on CSI and Law & Order. It’s that if the cops haul your ass in, you should tell them what they want to hear. If you do, they’ll let you out of it. Make a plea-bargain deal. Or let you go. So what does that organization of yours want to hear? Tell me and I’ll give it to you, and you can let me go back to fertilizing my lawn.”

As nonchalant as he was being about this, Laramie continued to believe what she’d thought would be the case before coming here-that he wasn’t going to tell her much, but that he might, nonetheless, show some of the same tendencies as Achar. Maybe, she thought, he likes his “deep cover” life and, if caused to believe he might have a shot at getting back to some form of it-via witness protection or some such route-he’d give them something.

“You’re a smart cookie, Tony,” she said. “I’ve got some influence with the people I work for, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about: if I put a word in, you’ll be spared immediate execution. So yeah, you tell me what I want to hear-even if you’ve got nothing to do with any of this suicide-bombing business-and maybe it’ll work out for you.”

He shifted in his chair, waiting.

“I’m skeptical you can even help me with any of this, Tony. I think you’re a compartmentalized drone, busy with nothing but assimilating until the order comes in for you to wipe your useless self off the face of the planet.”

…but I’ll bet your fellow San Cristóbal alumni have followed whatever course you were told to take, and I’d like to hear a little more about it…

“But whatever,” she said. “If you’d like to walk me through how it is you knew to go out and buy the ingredients for your SUV bomb, I’ll consider putting that good word in. What was the signal?”