The Program

by Stephen White

  He was ten yards away, sitting on the edge of one of the brick planters in the middle of the Mall, the one at the end of the block beside the flat bronze sculpture of the old man who spits. Next to the man—not the one who spits, the one who was gaping—sat a large shopping bag from Abercrombie & Fitch.

  The man who’d been eyeing me wasn’t tall, maybe five-eight. He wasn’t young, wasn’t old. He had most of his hair, but it was short. I guessed that he was in his late forties, maybe early fifties. He wore sunglasses but no ball cap. He wore chinos and good leather shoes.

  Yes, chinos.

  Without glancing back my way, he stood and hooked the handles of the shopping bag with his fingers and lifted it from the bricks. The bag didn’t distort as though it contained an extra heavy load. If the man had a gun, it wasn’t stashed in the Abercrombie bag.

  He took steps my way.

  I didn’t panic. I didn’t run. But I moved away from the spot I’d chosen at the café and walked purposefully down the Mall. I fought an impulse to begin to pray, and I avoided looking over my shoulder. I was calmer than I might have been. Why? For some reason I didn’t think that it was going to end like this.

  I didn’t feel a whale being calved.

  After I crossed Broadway, I paused in front of a little store called the Printed Page. I spotted him on the other side of the Mall. He appeared to be window-shopping. I increased my pace and made my way down Thirteenth toward Canyon. I stopped at the light but didn’t see him any longer.

  My main hangout in my brief time in Boulder was the Dushanbe Teahouse. It is a stunning structure that was a lavish gift to Boulder from its Tajikistan sister city of Dushanbe. The bright, airy building was handcrafted in Asia and then disassembled and shipped in pieces to Boulder. It sat crated for years until the City of Boulder found the will, and the funds, to permit Asian artisans to reconstruct the exquisitely carved cedar columns, mosaic panels, and painted ceilings into a remarkable room.

  I walked inside, got a table, and ordered tea. I was waiting for it to arrive when I saw the man with the Abercrombie bag walk in the door. He stepped away from the entry, stared open-mouthed at the lavish decorations in the room, and then he spotted me. Without any further hesitation he stepped toward the empty seat at my table.

  His approach paralyzed me the same way that I felt stopped in place by the man on Bourbon Street, the man who killed Robert. I considered screaming, running. But I couldn’t afford to create a scene and bring attention to myself.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  By then he was standing right in front of me. He was smiling. “May I?” he said, pointing at the empty chair. Even hearing only those two little words gave me some information. His accent was flavored with the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

  Where exactly? The Baltimore–D.C. corridor? I couldn’t tell.

  Know thine enemies, I thought. Then I thought, if this man wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. Almost involuntarily my mouth said, “Um, I guess. Have a seat.” I wasn’t expecting him to reach into the Abercrombie bag and blow me away with a silenced weapon. All along, I thought I’d know when that was about to happen. This didn’t feel like the time.

  He lowered himself heavily, as though his ample weight was a bit much for one of his joints, a hip or a knee. “They got espresso here?” he asked me, his tone light, friendly. His cheeks rose when he smiled, chipmunk-like.

  “I don’t know. I always have tea,” I said, sliding a menu his way. His eyes intrigued me. They were the same blue as Landon’s, even had the same amber pebbling in the irises.

  “You’re new in town?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

  I didn’t respond.

  “You are,” he said, leaving things momentarily at that.

  I felt a shiver and wondered how he knew. Was it the way I was dressed? I was wearing a simple sundress; I no longer wore chinos. Ever.

  He raised his hand from his lap, and my heart skipped a beat before I recognized that it was empty. He was offering to shake my hand.

  “Carl Luppo,” he said. “Pleasure.”

  For a moment I couldn’t remember my new name. Katherine? No! That was the old one. Kirsten? Can’t use that one. Peyton? Yes! “Peyton Francis,” I said, almost proudly.

  He smiled. “Takes a while to get used to it, doesn’t it. All the lying and pretending. It’s unnatural. Took me months. I still f——Excuse me, I still screw up sometimes, give stuff away that I’m not supposed to. You know?” His eyes remained friendly.

  What? How does he know about the lying? What does he know about me? I swallowed, but I was more curious than frightened. I reached an instantaneous conclusion that this man was a marshal. He represented some kind of test that Ron Kriciak had arranged for me.

  The waitress came and delivered my tea. Darjeeling. Carl Luppo ordered an espresso and after the waitress went on her way, he said, “I know I’m gonna be disappointed. I watch ’em make it sometimes and sure enough it comes outta the right machine, but it doesn’t taste like it’s suppos’ to taste. The espresso? That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” He offered me a pleasant little shrug that was more neck than shoulders. He had a robust neck, too large for either his shoulders or his head. His accent was definitely East Coast, but I couldn’t begin to guess whether it was Miami or Boston or Newark or somewhere in between.

  Like maybe the Baltimore–D.C. corridor.

  My stomach flipped, and impulsively I almost asked him if he had kidnapped Landon. Figured maybe that’s why his hand hadn’t held a silenced gun. If he had my girl, he didn’t need a gun. But my gut said that he didn’t have Landon. My gut said something else was happening.

  This was a WITSEC test, had to be.

  He spoke. “I wasn’t gonna talk to you today. Was gonna wait till another time. Hope I didn’t spook you. That wasn’t my intention.” He scratched his head with his left hand before he smoothed his hair with his palm, a habitual gesture of someone who was accustomed to having more hair than Carl Luppo had right then. “But you made me over there when I was eyeing you. Over when I was sittin’ on that planter on the Mall? That was good, that you made me. Generally, I’m not that easy to make. I’m pretty good at being invisible.” He winked at me.

  Involuntarily, I smiled back at him. But I was thinking that that’s what people had said about the man in the chinos who’d killed Robert. The witnesses all said he was almost invisible. They’d hardly noticed him.

  Carl Luppo waited until he’d captured my eyes in his own and said, “Me and you, Peyton Francis, we have a lot in common.”

  A cloud intercepted the sun, and the light around the Dushanbe Teahouse fell into shadows. The colors in the carvings seemed to come even more alive. “We do?” I managed to say.

  “Sure we do.”

  The waitress brought his drink. He waited for her to move on to another table before he raised his demitasse cup from its saucer and touched the rim to his lips with his eyes closed, the way Robert used to when he was pretending he knew something about wine. “The espresso’s all right—I’m surprised,” he said. “Pleased, even. Not the same as back home in … but…” The neck shrug again. “What are you gonna do?”

  “You said we have something in common,” I said.

  “Yeah, I did say that. We have the same doctor, for instance. That’s something, right?”

  God. That was it. Damn. He’d followed me to the Mall and then here from Dr. Gregory’s office. I wondered why and fought a shiver that wanted to snake up my spine. What did he want with me?

  “And … we have the same babysitter.”

  I lost my calm. I yelped, “What did you say?” Now I had to question my instincts. Maybe this was about Landon. Or was it? I only had one babysitter for Landon. She was a Hmong woman named Viv. She’d told me her name meant sister in Hmong. She watched Landon while I was working at the restaurant. Viv had told me she didn’t work for any other families. Landon was actually learning some Hmong.

  Weird.<
br />
  Carl Luppo recognized the panic that lit in my eyes. “No, no, no,” he said, making a dismissive gesture with his left hand. “It’s not like that. Not about kids and babysitters. The babysitter I’m talking ’bout is Inspector Kriciak. He’s your babysitter, right? Well, he’s my babysitter, too. He’s something, I gotta tell ya.”

  Suddenly, I knew exactly who this man was. “You’re in …” The next word, whatever it was going to be, stuck in my throat.

  “The program? Yeah. Ten months.” He sounded like an alcoholic dating his sobriety.

  It was the last thing I expected to hear from a stranger on the street. It was something I never expected to hear from a stranger on the street. The reality of what was occurring struck me. I’d been in the program for less than a month and I’d already been discovered? Made. Great. Just great.

  I felt a hollow in my stomach that could have housed a herd of spelunkers. I wanted to run from the table and find my car and go find Landon and take a flight to the moon.

  Carl Luppo said, “You’re a newbie. It’s hard, I know. But I think maybe I can help. The marshals aren’t always going to be so helpful themselves. Pretty soon, Kriciak will stop dropping by so often. How often do you see him now, once a week?”

  I nodded. “Twice maybe.”

  “Soon it will be every two weeks or even less than that. He calls you now, doesn’t he?”

  I nodded again. “Every other day or so.”

  “That’ll stop. He won’t call you so much on the phone, maybe not at all, or he’ll only stop by when he has your stipend check or he wants something from you. He’ll begin to see you as an occasional appointment he has to keep, not as a curiosity. Not a priority, you know what I mean?

  “The problems you’re having in a while won’t be the same ones you have now, but there’ll still be problems. You still won’t know who to trust. And every day something will be hard. Awkward.” Carl Luppo shook his head. “This is something I know about, believe me. Why? Because it’s still hard for me after almost a year in the program. Want to know what’s the hardest part about being in? Do you?”

  I opened my mouth to reply. Closed it. Finally I stammered, “Sure. What’s the hardest part?” I told myself I hadn’t really acknowledged anything by asking the question.

  “I miss my family. That’s the hardest part. Knowing I can’t see them, no matter what.

  “The second hardest part? I feel useless now. I once had a role in life. I felt like I did important things. Now?” He did that shoulder shrug again. “I don’t have a role. My role is waiting. Eliminate those two things—the family and the being-useless thing—and I swear I could do it. The time I’m doing in the program. Prison was easier than this in some ways. I spent some time there—a lot of time there, who am I kidding?—before I came into the program. I missed my family there but at least I wasn’t useless. I had a role, a reason, a place inside, you know what I mean?” He drained his tiny cup and placed it haphazardly on the saucer. When he looked up he was smiling. “Here, though, at least there’s better coffee than there was inside. And I can have wine with my dinner. Listen,” he looked at me, “I’ve upset you with all this. I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intent. My apologies.” He feigned a little bow.

  I’m a lawyer. I’d signed a Memorandum of Understanding that outlined my rights and responsibilities when I’d agreed to be placed in WITSEC. My mind started searching my memory of that document for a clause in the agreement that might have restricted my contact with other WITSEC participants. I couldn’t recall one, but then I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it anyway. I never expected to have a meeting take place like the one I was having.

  I asked, “Are we allowed to do this?”

  Carl Luppo was enjoying himself more than I was. “What?” he asked. “Sit in a pretty place like this and drink coffee? I think so. The program has some crazy rules but I don’t think there’s a rule against that.” He paused and his eyes twinkled. “Truth is that this is probably considered a breach of security. Marshals knew we were here, we’d both probably be given the paper. But it’s not my intention to jeopardize you unnecessarily. So you want me to get up and leave, I’m gone. History.”

  “What’s ‘given the paper’? What does that mean?”

  “The paper is your ticket out of WITSEC. You want out, you ask them for the paper. They want you out because they think you violated security, then they give you the paper.”

  My indignation came out of hibernation. “Then you jeopardized me by following me here?”

  “What I have to offer is worth it, I think. The risk is small. But you decide that, not me. Like I said, say the word, and I vanish like Tinker Bell.”

  I was off balance, way off balance. I made a perplexed face as I asked, “So you’re really not going to tell Inspector Kriciak that we met?”

  He smiled at me as though I were a lunatic. “What?” he asked. “You gotta be kidding?”

  “Yes, I’m just kidding,” I said, recovering.

  I’m a good girl, always have been. I follow rules. I play by the rules. Sitting here breaching WITSEC security with this man frightened me. But along with the terror I was experiencing, I was feeling something else. I was captivated at the prospect of learning the ropes from somebody who had done what I was doing. I asked, “How did you find me, Mr. Luppo?”

  “Call me Carl, please. But that was a good question you just asked me, Peyton Francis. Shows me that now you’re thinkin’. If you want to stay in the program and you want to stay alive, it’s important that you keep thinking. Disappearing—it’s not as easy as you might imagine. It’s important not to get complacent.”

  The word complacent surprised me coming from Carl Luppo’s mouth. I said, “Well? How did you find me?”

  He took a moment before he responded. “I don’t expect much from people anymore. I used to. Respect, honor, loyalty. They were big deals for me. And honesty. I couldn’t stand the f——, the people who wouldn’t be straight with me. So … this is all a roundabout way of explainin’ that I found you by accident while I was checkin’ on Ron Kriciak’s honesty. I was tailing him for a few days when he told me he didn’t have time to do something for me. Turns out he was sittin’ on you almost the whole time I was on him. One of the times I followed him was the time he dropped you off at Dr. Gregory’s office. I put two and two together. Same place I go once in a while. I’ve always been pretty good at math so …”

  I wondered if Carl Luppo was trying to give me an indirect message about Kriciak. “I’m not sure I understand. Why would you need to check on Inspector Kriciak? He’s here to help you, isn’t he?”

  Carl said, “You’ll learn. Some of the marshals, they’re here to help. Others are here for another reason. What? You ask me, they’re here to do what they can to get you tossed from the program.”

  “What?”

  He leaned forward over the table. “Yeah, I’m serious about this. Some of the marshals, they can’t do enough for you. They’re like your mother’s sister’s kid, you know. Like family. Others? They get a hard—Excuse me, they get excited waiting for you to screw up. They sit on you, park outside your place, follow you to work, all the time waiting for you to commit a little breach of security—then they report you to Washington and you’re gone. That’s when they give you the paper.”

  I asked, “So what exactly did you discover when you were following him? Was Ron Kriciak being straight with you?”

  My words earned me another smile. “Another good question, Peyton Francis. Maybe with my help you’ll do okay in the program.” He closed his eyes briefly. “The answer to your question is, I’m not sure yet. That time he was. But the jury’s still out on Kriciak.”

  AND THAT’S HOW I met Carl Luppo. Everything about him told me he was going to be a beluga.

  Everything about him also screamed “MOB!”

  Hello.

  7

  What I knew about organized crime I’d learned from Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and R
obert Duvall. I had no context for understanding Carl Luppo. None. He seemed like a nice guy. After having tea with him, I felt that he could have been somebody’s uncle. Somebody’s father.

  I also felt certain that he would have spent the whole afternoon chatting with me while sipping espresso in the Dushanbe Teahouse, but I had to get to work. I excused myself when it was time for me to walk the few blocks to begin my voluntary servitude at the prep table at Q’s in the Hotel Boulderado. Carl stood quickly to help me slide back my chair.

  “We should do this again,” he said.

  I wasn’t ready to commit to that. Inadvertently breaching security once was one thing, plotting to do it again, something else entirely. I tried to deflect him by saying, “I’m curious about something. How could you be sure that Inspector Kriciak wasn’t meeting me here today?”

  “Ron doesn’t do meetings in restaurants. He’s too restless. I’d hate to see Kriciak after two or three coffees. Haven’t you noticed? You seem perceptive. I’d have thought you’d notice.”

  He was right about Ron, of course. He was a walk-and-talk here’s-the-plan kind of guy. Reminded me of a man I dated in college. No, not fondly. “Can I think about it, Carl? Doing this again. Maybe give you a call.”

  He looked crushed at my words but managed to conceal his disappointment behind the shrug that he seemed to have patented. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Lemme give you my number.” He scrawled it on the bottom of the receipt from the teahouse—he’d paid cash—and handed it to me. “I’m there a lot of the time,” he said in a manner that amply communicated that he was lonely and bored and wished he had other things to do with his time. I’m sure he was hoping that I’d offer him my telephone number. But I didn’t.

  I felt repulsed by the sentiment my radar was detecting. I didn’t need anyone to need me right now. For anything. No one but Landon.