assortment of Batmobile models, in metal and plastic and in various scales. A set of lawn darts and hoops, like we once had and played with in the backyard until Thomas nearly speared the neighbor’s dog. A child-sized plastic fireman’s helmet in red with the word “Texaco” emblazoned across the front. Cardboard boxes of old board games based on long since canceled television shows, like Columbo, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Brady Bunch, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And, of course, countless dolls. Barbies, Raggedy Anns, Cabbage Patch Kids, and life-sized plastic babies whose eyes would shut when you laid them flat. Some were minus limbs; others, heads. One shelf contained a collection of old metal robots; another a pile of tinplate trains that looked as though they’d been in a catastrophic wreck. Three black balls, each about the size of a squash ball, which I recognized as sixties-era Wham-O Super Balls, the kind that could bounce over a house.
But I didn’t feel nostalgic, looking at these treasures from yesterday. What I felt was scared. Scared shitless.
Lewis returned with the computer tower and set it on the desk. He detached various cables from the computer that was there, then attached them to Thomas’s.
Nicole, expressionless, addressed Thomas and me. “Someone’s going to be asking you some questions, so the tape’s coming off. If either one of you starts yelling, I hurt the other one. Fast and hard. Are we clear?”
We both nodded. Nicole ripped the tape off me with one short, cruel, backhanded stroke. I winced, licked my lips, and tasted blood. When she did it to Thomas, he yelped. “That hurt!” he said, like he’d been kicked in the schoolyard. But then he immediately apologized to Nicole. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet. Don’t hurt Ray.”
I said to him, “You okay?”
He shook his head. “No. My arms hurt, my lips hurt, and I can’t feel my hands.”
I couldn’t feel mine, either. The plastic cuffs had cut off most of the circulation. I appealed to Nicole. “My brother’s hands, they’re probably turning blue. Mine, too. Can you help us out here?”
Lewis went into his backpack for a pair of orange-handled snippers. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said as he cut my cuffs, then secured my wrists to the chair with duct tape. The blood rushed back into my fingers, and I closed and opened my hands a dozen times to get the tingling out of them. Lewis did the same thing for Thomas, then went back to work on the computer tower, hooking up the last of the cables and pressing the start button. The machine began to whir and the monitor he’d commandeered started lighting up.
Thomas said, “Anything that’s on there is confidential.”
The home screen, powder blue with only a couple of icons on it, cast a soft light across the room. There was one to open up an Internet browser, one for mail, one down in the corner for trash.
Lewis went on the Net and checked the computer’s Internet history. Thomas hadn’t had an opportunity to clear it, as was his custom at the end of the day, but there wasn’t much to look at. Just plenty of locations from Whirl360.
Lewis said, “Don’t you ever look at porn or anything?”
Thomas didn’t appear to understand whether this was a serious question. He said, “I don’t have time.”
Lewis was clicking from image to image, city to city. All the different places Thomas had been exploring today-well, yesterday now. It had to be after midnight. “Why do you-no, I’ll let Howard ask you. No sense going over it twice.”
He got out of Whirl360 and opened up the mail program.
Thomas said to me, “He shouldn’t be reading those.” Then he started in with questions. “What city are we in? What street are we on? What’s the address?”
I’d been wondering the same thing, although maybe not with the same level of detail. We’d been driving long enough to be in New York or Boston or Buffalo and probably half a dozen other urban centers. We could be in Philadelphia, for all I knew.
Nicole ignored him, as did Lewis.
Thomas looked at me. “I want to go home.”
“I know. I know. Just try to hang in.”
Lewis was opening one e-mail after another, shaking his head slowly, no doubt trying to puzzle out what the hell Thomas was up to with all his updates to the CIA.
“What the fuck…”
He continued to read updates while Nicole looked around the room. She’d pull out a book, check the cover, put it back. She took a doll off the shelf and examined it like it was a souvenir from another planet. “My mother didn’t let me play with dolls,” she said to no one in particular.
Everyone looked up when we heard a knock. It came from a different direction than the way we’d come in. We’d entered this room, it seemed to me, from a side door, but the knock sounded as though it was coming from the front. Lewis left the computer, pulled aside a green curtain that served as a door between this room and the front of the shop. As light spilled into the front room I could make out more, and more orderly, displays of antique toys.
“It’s him,” Lewis said to no one in particular as he slipped out of the room.
Who was him? It had been mentioned more than once that someone wanted to talk to us. Someone Lewis and Nicole reported to.
I was no less scared than I’d been since we left the house, but I was also curious. When you’re pretty sure you’re going to end up dead, wondering who you’ll meet next provides some distraction.
I heard a small bell jingle as Lewis opened a door. There was some muffled conversation, then two sets of footsteps working their way to the back of the store. I heard a man ask Lewis, “What is this place?”
Lewis said, “One of the guys who helped me move Bridget’s body owns it. He’s a toy nut.”
Bridget?
Then Lewis appeared, holding back the curtain to allow a stout, short, balding man in his fifties to come in. He was wearing a topcoat that looked like it was made of camel hair or cashmere, and an expensive suit under that.
He ran his eyes over Thomas and me. It struck me that he looked more dumbfounded than menacing.
“So, these are our guys,” he said to Lewis.
“Yup,” he said.
Then the man’s eyes landed on Nicole. She’d put away the doll and was leaning against one of the shelves stuffed with books, her arms crossed over her breasts.
“You,” he said contemptuously. “You’re the one who fucked this up.”
“Nice to meet you at last, too, Howard,” she said, meeting his gaze, staring him down.
Thomas and I gave Howard an excuse to break eye contact with her. He said to me, “Which one are you?”
“Ray Kilbride. That’s Thomas. My brother.”
Thomas said, “Tell that man-Lewis-tell him to leave my computer alone.”
Howard turned to Lewis and said, “You have it hooked up?”
“Yeah. There’s some weird shit on here. All these e-mails.”
Howard reached into his jacket for a slender case, from which he extracted a pair of reading glasses. “Open a few.”
Lewis did some clicking. Howard read quickly through the e-mails. “Are they all like this?”
“Yup.”
“All addressed to Bill Clinton, care of the CIA?”
“Yeah.”
Howard looked at us, then back at Lewis. “Tell me about the phone call again.”
“Someone called the house, asked for that one, said it was Bill Clinton. Like I said.”
“But you also said it didn’t sound like him.”
Lewis shrugged. “I mean, I’ve never talked to the man, but no, I don’t think it sounded like him.”
“People sound different on the phone,” Thomas said.
Howard was still looking at the screen. “These e-mails, they’re all in the sent file?”
“That’s right,” Lewis said.
“What about in the in-box, or the deleted messages. Are there actually any messages from Bill Clinton or anyone at the CIA?”
Lewis did some clicking. “Nothing.”
