“No, I’ve never been in any trouble with the police.”
“What about in 1997?” Driscoll asked.
Oh, no.
“What about 1997?” Thomas asked.
“There wasn’t an incident then? Something that involved the police?”
Thomas looked at me. I spoke up. “That was nothing. I can’t believe you’re dredging that up. The police never laid a charge.”
“Would you like to tell us about it, Thomas?” Parker asked.
“Ray,” Thomas said softly, “could you tell them? Some of it, I don’t remember.”
“When we…when Thomas and my parents lived downtown-I’d just moved away around that time-there was a misunderstanding with the neighbors.”
Parker and Driscoll waited.
“Thomas had found the original survey maps for our house, you know, the kind you get when you buy or sell a property. The maps show exactly where the house is situated on the property. And the maps showed the houses on either side of us, and across the street.”
“They were wrong,” Thomas said.
I looked at him and smiled. “Yeah, Thomas didn’t think the survey maps were accurate, so he wanted to check them, make a map of our property and the neighbors’. So he got a fifty-foot tape measure and-”
“I still have it,” Thomas said. “Do you want to see it?”
Parker said, “No, that’s okay.”
“He got this tape measure and started measuring everything. How far the houses were from the sidewalk, from one another, how big they were. He didn’t tell anyone he was going to do this. He just started doing it. And the thing is, he was right. Some of the survey measurements were off, ever so slightly. Which would have been kind of satisfying, if Thomas hadn’t ended up being discovered outside the first-floor bedroom window of our neighbors to the south-”
“The Hitchens,” Thomas offered.
“That’s right. This was at the time that Mrs. Hitchens was getting dressed.”
“Hmm,” said Parker.
“She was naked,” Thomas said matter-of-factly. “That window was exactly twenty-eight feet, nine inches from the sidewalk. The survey had it as twenty-eight feet, eleven inches.”
“Mrs. Hitchens got pretty upset, called the police. My parents managed to persuade her, and the police, that Thomas’s actions were entirely innocent, but after that, the neighbors were never quite the same with my brother. It became very awkward for my parents. That was when they decided to move out here.”
“The survey for this property is dead on,” Thomas said.
Parker and Driscoll exchanged looks again. I’d lost count of how many times they’d done this. Parker said to Thomas, “Why don’t you get back to work and we’ll let your brother show us out.”
“Okay,” he said, turning back to his mouse and keyboard.
When the three of us got back downstairs, I asked Parker, “What now?”
She said, “We’ll make our report. This visit was a threat assessment, Mr. Kilbride. I don’t believe Agent Driscoll sees one, and I would have to concur. The U.S. government hears, on a daily basis, from a great many,” and here she paused to choose her words carefully, “individuals whose interpretations of the world around them are somewhat unique. Ninety-nine percent of them present no discernible threat-they’re harmless-but we spend a lot of time tracking down the one percent that do.”
I felt I’d been holding my breath for an hour. I took what she had to say as good news, but my stress level was off the scale. On top of that, I was furious with Thomas. I knew I had to make certain allowances for him, but bringing the FBI to our door? The blood coursing through my veins was electrically charged.
Parker continued, “Your brother needs to find some other hobbies. If he keeps communicating with government agencies with his tales of a computer infrastructure meltdown, you’re going to be visited again. If not by us, then someone else.”
“I hear you.”
“It’s a different world than twenty years ago,” she said. “No one takes these things lightly. Look at what happened in Tucson. Thomas mentioned a psychiatrist. He sees someone regularly?”
“Yes.”
She had out her notebook again. “Name?”
I didn’t want to give it to her, but how long would it have taken her to find out on her own? Five minutes? Ten, tops? I had to put my faith in Laura Grigorin to either paint Thomas in a good light, or simply tell these two to get lost.
I gave Parker the name.
“Good day, Mr. Kilbride,” she said.
Driscoll nodded but said nothing. I watched the two of them go down the porch steps and get back into their government-issued wheels.
I wasn’t proud of what I did next.
SIXTEEN
Howard Talliman understands why Bridget Sawchuck wanted to tell him the details of her dilemma in a public place. Not only did it keep his reaction in check; there was nothing at all suspicious about the two of them being seen together. It’s perfectly natural for Howard to meet his best friend’s wife for lunch. He is as much an adviser to her as he is to Morris.
But Howard does not want to meet Allison Fitch where they can be seen together. He does not want anyone to know about this meeting.
So he books a suite for the day at the Roosevelt at Madison and Forty-fifth. He wants a room with a separate living area, thinking Allison might find it slightly unnerving being in a small space with a man she’s never met before, a king-sized bed the most dominant piece of furniture in the room. As though beckoning them. He instructs Bridget to contact Allison and invite her to the hotel for two in the afternoon to discuss the woman’s proposal. What Allison does not know is that Howard will be taking the meeting.
He orders coffee for two from room service with instructions that it be delivered ten minutes before Allison’s scheduled arrival. He doesn’t know whether she is inclined to punctuality, but is guessing that when one hundred thousand dollars is at stake, that’s a pretty good reason to be on time.
The china cups and saucers are set out on the coffee table, the silver spoons and white linen napkins in place next to them, when there is a soft rapping at the door at one minute before two. Howard gets up from the couch where he has been sitting casually with one leg over his knee. He opens the door a foot.
Allison’s mouth drops open. “I’m sorry. I’ve knocked on the wrong-”
“Ms. Fitch, a pleasure to meet you,” he says, opening the door wide and sweeping his arm inward. “You’re right on time.”
She hesitates, then steps into the room.
“Where’s Bridget?” she asks.
“I will be representing Bridget’s interests here today,” he says.
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Howard Talliman.” He doesn’t see the point in using some sort of alias. If this woman has been researching Bridget and Morris online-as he is sure she has-then she will certainly have come across his name and photo at some point. “I am a friend of the family.”
“Oh yeah, I know who you are,” she says. “You’re like…you’re his campaign manager or something like that.”
“Won’t you sit down? I’ve ordered coffee.”
Allison’s eyes take in the room as she moves toward the couch. “Where’s the bed?” she asked. “I mean, not that-I’ve never seen a hotel room that didn’t have a bed in it.”
