Killing Plato

earlier than evening and wondered if his NIA buddies might have been responsible for doing the deed while he kept me out of the apartment.

“Then there are all the foreign embassy intelligence operations. There are twenty or so that we know about and a lot of them are pretty good. Could be almost any of them.”

Suddenly an image jumped into my mind of CW sitting on a bar stool in Phuket. Was it possible that the US Marshals could be bugging the apartment of a US citizen in Thailand?

“The equipment isn’t really all that hard to get,” Jello continued before I decided. “You can buy stuff pretty much like that over the internet these days. Quite a few local police and military guys freelance and pick up a few baht on the side, although generally those people only work for wives who are setting their husbands up for a ride into the sunset. You haven’t pissed Anita off recently, have you, Jack?”

“Very funny.”

My butt was going to sleep sitting on the hard lid of the toilet, so I stood up. I pulled the stall door open and stepped outside. Ipeduo; leaned back against the sink.

“Don’t be so quick to shrug off that possibility, Jack. You know what they say. The husband is always the last to know.”

“Cut it out, Jello. That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

I let that hang there a moment, then changed tack.

“So you’re telling me there are a lot of people around here who could have done this,” I said.

“Yep. Hundreds. Maybe more.”

Jello had a note of cheerfulness in his voice I found annoying.

“Unless, of course, you can narrow it down for me, Jack. Maybe by giving me a hint about who you’ve been fucking around with lately.”

I had just about decided to float Jello a heavily edited version of my recent tete-a-tete with Plato Karsarkis when the door opened and a woman walked into the toilet. She was probably in her late twenties, tall, wasp- waisted, and wearing a white shirt with tight jeans that had lines of silver studs running down both legs. She didn’t seem in the least embarrassed to be in the men’s room and gave me a smile that could have blown out light bulbs. Then she went into the stall I had just vacated and closed the door.

“So what’s it going to be, Jack?” he pressed, not knowing of course that I was now sharing the men’s room with a startlingly beautiful woman.

“Ah…” My eyes flicked to the stall door, but I heard nothing from the other side. “That’s a little hard for me to say right now.”

Jello caught the change in my voice.

“Has some guy just come in?”

“You’re half right.”

Jello considered that in silence, trying to read between the lines.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said.

There was still no sound or movement behind the stall door, but my discomfort had increased to the point where I thought it might be better just to get the hell out of there and take my chances with the lasers and shotgun mikes. At least that seemed preferable to standing in the men’s room trying to carry on a telephone conversation while a beautiful young woman relieved herself.

“Never mind,” I told him. “I’ve had it for tonight. I’m going home.”

“You want me to get somebody to sweep your apartment tomorrow?”

“Yeah, that would be good.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll work something out,” he said, “but Jack…” Jello took a deep breath and let it out again. “Until I get that taken care of, be careful what you say.”

“Oh, golly,” I said. “That never crossed my mind.”

“Good night, Professor.”

“Night, Jello.”

I punched off my phone and stuck it back in my pocket. Then I pushed out through the door and shot a quick glance back over my shoulder just to make certain the woman wasn’t following me. When I did, something caught my eye, and it caused me to stop walking and turn around very slowly.

That was the first time I clearly registered the black scrollwork painted on the door to t thg ahe toilet I had just come out of. It read…LADIES.

I HAD BEEN back in the apartment for a nearly an hour sitting at my desk with my feet up and trying unsuccessfully to make some sense out of the evening’s festivities when I heard the front door open and close. A few seconds later Anita walked into the study.

All at once it occurred to me I had no idea at all what to say to Anita about any of this. If I started pointing at the walls with one finger while holding another over my lips, she wouldn’t know what to think. On the other hand, blurting out something like, Darling, it appears our apartment has been bugged by a sophisticated intelligence operation that wants to know everything we are saying, didn’t seem quite the way to go either.

Anita stopped in the doorway instead of coming over to the desk to give me a little peck as she usually did.

“Hello, Jack.”

There was a brittle edge to her voice and I was left with no doubt Anita was unhappy with me for some reason. That was just great. Here I was under surveillance by persons unknown for reasons unknown and now my wife was apparently mad at me and I didn’t know what the reason for that was either.

“What’s wrong, Anita?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Why would you ask?”

Uh-oh.

Whatever it was, it had to be serious. When a woman says something like, Nothing’s wrong and why would you ask, my own personal rule of thumb is that you’re pretty well fucked right there.

“We have to talk, Jack.”

Stee-rike one!

“But not now. I’m very tired and I’m going straight to bed.”

Stee-rike two!

“Good night, Jack.” And with that Anita turned her back on me and walked toward the bedroom.

Stee-rike three and you’re outta there!

So far I was having a heck of an evening, wasn’t I? And hell, it was barely ten-thirty. The night was young. There was still plenty of time for a few more tons of shit to fall on me before the day officially ended.

TWENTY SIX

Anita must have taken a sleeping pill because when I woke the next morning she hardly seemed to have moved all night. I showered and dressed, trying to do it quietly, and she never stirred.

I went into the study to pick up my briefcase and then, remembering I hadn’t brought it home with me, all at once I also remembered everything else from the night before as well. Since I hadn’t yet had even a drop of coffee, that wasn’t too swell.

The maid didn’t come in until eight and I briefly considered making some breakfast for myself, but with the apartment wired for sound and Anita apparently ready to rip into me about something as soon as she woke up, getting out of there as quickly as possible was far more appealing. I left by the front door, got into the car, and drove to the Starbucks in Amarin Plaza. Forty-five minutes later, thoroughly buzzed on the caffeine from a double- shot latte and riding a sugar high from ingesting a couple of blueberry muffins, I parked in the garage on campus, collected my notes from my office, and made it to my nine-o’clock class more or less on time.