4
Midnight. Gideon Crew slouched down the street, hands in his pockets, baseball cap turned backward, filthy shirt untucked beneath a greasy trench coat, baggy pants hanging halfway down his ass, thinking how lucky he was that today was trash day in suburban Brookland, Washington, DC.
He turned the corner of Kearny Street and passed the house: a shabby bungalow with an overgrown lawn surrounded by a white picket fence only partially painted. And, of course, a lovely overflowing trash can sat at the end of the walkway, a fearful stench of rotting shrimp hovering in the muggy air. He paused at the can, looking about furtively. Then he dove in with one hand, digging deep, groping among the garbage as he went. His hand encountered something that felt like french fries and he pulled up a handful, confirmed they were fries, tossed them back.
He saw a flash of movement. A scrawny, one-eyed cat came slinking out from a hedge.
“Hungry, partner?”
The cat made a low meow and crept over, tail twitching warily. Gideon offered it a fry. It sniffed at it suspiciously, ate it, then meowed again, louder.
Gideon tossed the cat a small handful. “That’s all, kiddo. Any idea how bad trans-fatty acids are for you?”
The cat settled down to nosh.
Gideon dove in again, stirring the garbage with his arm, this time turning up a wad of discarded papers. Quickly sorting through them, he saw they were some little child’s math homework — straight A’s, he noted with approval. Why were they thrown away? Should be framed.
He pushed them back in, dug out a chicken drumstick, and set it aside for the cat. He reached in again, both hands this time, wriggling downward, encountering something slimy, fumbling deeper, his fingers working through various semi-solid things before encountering more papers. Grasping them and working them to the surface, he saw they were just what he was looking for: discarded bills. And among them was the top half of a phone bill.
Jackpot.
“Hey!” He heard a shout and looked up. There was the homeowner himself, Lamoine Hopkins, a small, thin African American man, excitedly pointing his arm. “Hey! Get the fuck outta here!”
In no hurry, glad of the unexpected opportunity to interact with one of his targets, Gideon shoved the papers into his pocket. “Can’t a man feed himself?” He held up the drumstick.
“Go feed yourself somewhere else!” the man shrilled. “This is a decent neighborhood! That’s my trash!”
“Come on, man, don’t be like that.”
The man took out his cell phone. “You see this? I’m calling the cops!”
“Hey, no harm done, man.”
“Hello?” said the man, speaking theatrically into the phone, “there’s an intruder on my property, rifling my trash! Thirty-five seventeen Kearny Street Northeast!”
“Sorry,” Gideon mumbled, shambling off with the drumstick in one hand.
“I need a squad car, right now!” shrilled the man. “He’s trying to get away!”
Gideon tossed the drumstick in the direction of the cat, shuffled off around the corner, and then picked up his pace. He quickly wiped his hands and arms as thoroughly as he could on his cap, discarded it, turned his Salvation Army coat inside out — revealing an immaculate blue trench coat — and put it on, tucked in his shirt, then slicked back his hair with a comb. As he reached his rental car a few blocks off, a police cruiser passed by, giving him only the briefest of glances. He slipped in and started the engine, rejoicing at his good fortune. Not only did he get what he’d come for, but he’d met Mr. Lamoine Hopkins in person — and had such a lovely chat with him.
That would come in handy.
From his motel room, Gideon began cold-calling the numbers on Hopkins’s phone bill the next morning. He worked his way through a succession of Hopkins’s friends until on the fifth call he struck pay dirt.
“Heart of Virginia Mall, tech support,” came the voice. “Kenny Roman speaking.”
“Yes?”
“My name is Eric, and I’m calling on behalf of the Sutherland Finance Company.”
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“It’s about the loan on your 2007 Dodge Dakota.”
“What Dakota?”
“The loan is three months overdue, sir, and I’m afraid that Sutherland Finance—”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have any Dakota.”
“Mr. Roman, I understand these are difficult financial times, but if we don’t receive the amount currently overdue—”
“Look, buddy, dig some of the wax outta your ears, will you? You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t even own a pickup. Suck?—?My?—?Dick.” There was a
Gideon hung up. He snapped off the digital recorder. Then he listened three times to the exchange he’d just recorded.
He picked up the phone and dialed again: this time, the IT department at Fort Belvoir.
“IT,” came the response. It was Lamoine Hopkins’s voice.
“Lamoine?” Gideon said, whispering. “It’s Kenny.”
“Kenny, what the hell?” Hopkins sounded instantly suspicious. “What’s with the whispering?”
“Got a fucking cold. And…what I got to say is sensitive.”
“Sensitive? What do you mean?”
“Lamoine, you got a problem.”
“Me? I got a problem? What do you mean?”
Gideon consulted a sheet of scribbled notes. “I got a call from a guy named Roger Winters.”
“Winters?
“Yeah. Said there was a problem. He asked me how many times you’d called me from work, that kind of shit.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.
“He wanted to know,” Gideon-as-Kenny asked, “if you’d called me on your office computer, using VoIP or Skype.”
“Christ, that would be a violation of security! I’ve never done that!”
“Man said you had.”
Gideon could hear Lamoine breathing heavily. “But it isn’t true!”
“That’s what I told him. Listen, Lamoine, there’s a security audit going on over there, I’ll bet you anything, and somehow they’re on your case.”
“What am I going to do?” Hopkins fairly wailed. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I mean, I couldn’t make a VoIP call from here even if I wanted to!”
“Why not?”
“The firewall.”
“There are ways to get around a firewall.”
“Are you kidding me? We’re a classified facility!”
“There’s
“For Chrissakes, Kenny, I
