The Global War on Morris

by Steve Israel

  Diaz got excited just thinking about it.

  Still, he had a job to do. His supervisor—Mr. Terrorist Behind Every Tree—would demand an update about the people under Diaz’s watchful eyes.

  He pecked at his keyboard until this message flashed on his screen:

  YOU ARE ENTERING A RESTRICTED SITE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW. PRESS ENTER FOR NICK. PRESS EXIT FOR HOME PAGE.

  After typing a succession of passwords, authorization codes, and secret answers to secret questions, he arrived at his file on the Network Centric Total Information Collection, Integration, Synthesis, Assessment, Dissemination, and Deployment website.

  “FELDSTEIN, RONA, he typed. He added her social security and phone number, and, just for good measure, he typed the name of her husband.

  While NICK contemplated, Diaz daydreamed over one of the pictures hanging on his partition. He and his wife were posing on the deck of a cruise ship, the sun setting at their backs.

  The monitor flashed:

  NICK ALERT NICK ALERT NICK ALERT

  AMBER WATCH UPGRADE

  NICK HAS FOUND MULTIPLE THREAT PATTERN[S] FOR FELDSTEIN, MORRIS SOLOMON

  DATA FILE: 30/5/NYLIFO/1527HRS/0-14-1051-1455-R

  DECLARED POTENTIAL PERSON OF INTEREST

  FILED BY DC HEADQUARTERS

  FIELD OF INTEREST: LONG ISLAND, NY

  SEE LINKS:

  D’AMICO, VICTORIA ELLEN

  MONTOYEZ, RICARDO XAVIER

  FELDSTEIN, CARYN—ARREST

  FILE # PPI-FELD136-NY-4268-7010(a)

  Then NICK blinked, and added the latest news reported:

  UPDATE THREAT PATTERN

  DATA FILE: 12/08/FLFTL/1725HRS/3-22-150M-4320-F

  INQUIRY

  FILED BY FLORIDA HQ, BOCA

  FIELD OF INTEREST: FT. LAUDERDALE, FL

  SEE LINKS:

  MUZAN, HASSAN

  FELDSTEIN, RONA JANET

  FELDSTEIN, CARYN—ARREST

  FILE # PPI-FELD136-NY-4268-7010(a)

  NICK ALERT NICK ALERT NICK ALERT

  UPGRADING FELDSTEIN, MORRIS S. TO:

  AMBER WATCH

  AMBER WATCH

  AMBER WATCH

  :/

  Amber watch! That was about five colors away from a SWAT team kicking down a door somewhere. NICK had always blown him off, with nothing but a blank stare from the monitor.

  Now, amber!

  Maybe this isn’t just another cigar, he thought.

  Goddamn amber watch! In Florida! Why me? Why does this always goddamn happen to me?

  Agent Fairbanks felt his neck muscles tighten as he glared at his computer screen. It was taunting him with the news of Rona and Morris Feldstein. From Florida. Fifteen hundred miles south of Fairbanks’s Long Island jurisdiction. Florida. Where all the action was. The Feldsteins, the terrorists, the Feds, the Jews, the Cubans, the suspicious elections, the suspicious persons of interest, NICK’s goddamn amber alerts.

  Calm down, Fairbanks coached himself, trying to remember his anger-management sessions.

  The Feldsteins were now on Long Island, having brought back their weekend sunburns, their sacks of Florida oranges, and the various federal agencies that trailed them. Resuming their life of crime and their consorting with counterfeiters and terrorists and other enemies of the State. And now that they were back in Fairbanks’s jurisdiction, he was ready for them. He would kick in their doors and elbow out his law-enforcement rivals. He would assert his authority and stand at the press conference and feel the warm glare of the klieg lights and the thankful embrace of the media and announce the arrest of Morris and Rona Feldstein for heinous crimes against the government of the United States.

  What those crimes were, however, he didn’t know at the moment. But, sitting at his desk, his neck muscles pulsating, he resolved to find out.

  He would need proximity. Someone to watch the Feldsteins’ every move.

  He punched at his phone. Agent Russell answered.

  “Go pay a visit to that nut, McCord,” Fairbanks ordered. “It’s time to tighten the noose.”

  In Washington, Bill Sully dug his thumbs into his temples and nodded his head in disbelief. He had gathered assets from every available federal agency, department, division, bureau, and office in his pursuit of Ricardo Xavier Montoyez. And what happens? Some local yokel in Boca Raton blows the whole thing wide open with an amber watch on NICK. Like one of those tests of the federal emergency broadcast system. Buzzing throughout the entire department. Setting off lights and sirens in the darkness that he craved. Inviting everyone with a colored windbreaker and stenciled acronym to join the investigation. His investigation. They would push in and crowd him out. Assert their jurisdiction. Point him back to his place at the bottom of the law-enforcement food chain. He could already hear the condescension: “Leave this to us, Bill. We’re the CIA. You go back to where you belong. To the Meat, Poultry, and Egg Security Division.”

  I refuse to go back. I’ve come too far. Built things up. This is my bust. My moment. All I need is some help. A little more help!

  And so it began. Bill Sully’s quiet but urgent search for reinforcements. Calling in favors and redeeming chits dispensed across an entire career in the federal criminal justice bureaucracy. Contacting old friends at the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Pleading with the boys at the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, and the Plant Variety Protection Office. Cajoling his human resources contacts at the National Drug Intelligence Center, the INTERPOL-US National Central Bureau, the National Counterintelligence Center, the National Credit Union Administration, the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact Council, the Office of Special Counsel, and even the Federal Navigable Lake Ship Inspection Service. Then, just to be sure he had what he needed, Sully reached deep into the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, the International Joint Commission on the US and Canada, the Marine Mammal Commission, and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. Trading and swapping, loaning and borrowing, transferring and detailing. Moving people from countless boxes on dozens of flowcharts, like a frenzied game of bureaucratic hopscotch. Where everyone’s feet landed in Bill Sully’s box.

  At the FDA.

  THE BUSINESS TRIP

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2004

  Morris Feldstein drove down Soundview Avenue. In-ground sprinklers hissed and pulsated and sputtered on every lawn. Air conditioners groaned from steel cages next to every home. Stately Tudor homes lined the street, with dark wooden moldings and high-pitched roofs. A canopy of maple tree branches splattered odd-shaped patches of sun on the pavement. Landscaping trucks sat on the sides of the road like infantry vehicles in an army of occupation, a foreign legion of immigrants impressed into lawn-to-lawn combat in the global war on dandelions.

  He approached his house, and felt a twinge of nervousness. This time of day there was a good chance of crossing paths with Rona’s last appointment. There were, in fact, two paths on the Feldstein’s property. One curved from the driveway to the front porch. Lined with evergreen bushes, it wrapped around a chipped aluminum light pole that leaned at a slight angle and bore a sign that said THE F LDSTEINS. (Morris had been meaning to reattach the missing E since it fell off, sometime during the winter of 1987.) The second brick path originated at the separate entrance to Rona’s office at the side of the house, then cut straight across the front lawn and terminated at the curb. Rona had wanted to plant a sign on the curb that advertised:

  RONA FELDSTEIN, CSW

  FAMILY & INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

  With one of those bright-yellow happy faces. But Morris knew that the village zoning board frowned upon happy faces on people’s curbs.

  It was always possible that when Morris came home, one of Rona’s patients could be
walking down the side path, only thirty feet away. (“Please don’t call them patients!” Rona scolded Morris. “That stigmatizes them. They are clients!”)

  To Morris it seemed the unstigmatized clients walked out of Rona’s office as if they were walking the perp line at the county jail. They bowed their heads, hastened their pace, and avoided eye contact. Maybe they thought he was casting judgment on the frayed marriages, the midlife crises, the family feuds, the panic attacks, phobias, and foibles that sent them up and down that path. But Morris didn’t stand in judgment of anyone—with the possible exception of the Mets’ pitching rotation. He just felt guilty for violating their privacy. So he pretended not to notice them—feigning an urgent fascination with the contents of his trunk, or how the grass was growing next door at the Schiffs’.

  Morris drove slowly, craned his neck, and blew a sigh of relief when he saw no car.

  He had planned a busy evening. First, there would be the matter of deciding between take-out Mexican, take-out Greek, or take-out kosher deli. After dinner, he would descend into the basement, sit at his junior desk and complete his Celfex Daily Report by pecking at a keyboard with two fingers and e-mailing it to corporate headquarters. Then, he would settle into his RoyaLounger, and watch the game he had recorded between the Mets and the Marlins. And if he still had it in him, there was the possibility of joining Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn on Turner Classic Movies later in the evening.

  He pulled into the driveway and saw his across-the-street neighbor, McCord, on his usual vigil, standing like a sentry at the foot of his immaculate blacktop driveway, protecting it from terrorists, criminals, or windswept leaves.

  Lately, McCord seemed to be on a heightened state of alert. Watching Morris. Surveilling him in the early mornings when Morris retrieved his newspaper from the curb, and when he left for work and returned home. One night, Morris thought he heard raccoons rummaging through the trash cans at the side of the house. When he opened the front door, he could have sworn he saw McCord dart across Soundview Avenue in night camouflage.

  McCord’s paranoia, Morris realized, was making him paranoid. He rushed up his brick walk, avoiding eye contact with McCord.

  He opened the door and saw two bulging pieces of Rona’s luggage, planted smack in the middle of the front hall.

  Tsuris. To go.

  He heard Rona’s urgent footsteps clacking against the ceramic kitchen tile. She appeared in the hall, holding a variety of take-out menus, splayed like a deck of cards.

  “Morris? You’re home already? How was your day?”

  Morris was silent.

  “What would you like for dinner? I was thinking maybe Greek.”

  Morris looked at the luggage and back at Rona. It seems like a lot to pack just to get some Greek takeout. Unless you’re going to take it out from Greece.

  Rona caught the surprised look in Morris’s eyes. “Morris, guess what? I’m going back to the condo! On a business trip!”

  The Feldstein Anxiety Anticipation Index edged up.

  In thirty-four years of marriage, the only “business trip” Rona made was to that little office at the side of the house.

  “Remember my Arab friend from Boca? Hassan? He has some friends who need counseling. Persecution complexes I think. Accchhh, all the racism they must experience. I’ll do some group therapy. Maybe teach them to meditate. Who knows, maybe I’ll open a practice down there! Rona Feldstein. CSW. Florida Office!” She cackled.

  Sure, Morris thought. That’s Rona. Counseling Jews in Great Neck and Arabs in Florida. Rona Feldstein. Counseling the world.

  A slight twitching in his stomach overtook his appetite for chicken souvlaki.

  “But, Rona. We just got back. Last weekend.”

  “I know! Isn’t it wonderful? A three-hour plane ride and we can come and go as we please. Besides, it’s only two days, Morris. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning and be back Saturday. Just in time for dinner.”

  “Can’t this wait?”

  “Well,” she said as she puckered her lips, a warning sign that a guilt zone was just ahead, “next week is Rosh Hashanah so that won’t work. And the week after is Yom Kippur. When we atone for our sins.”

  She pronounced the “atone for our sins” part slowly and distinctly. For the benefit of any sinners in the room who might also be hearing impaired.

  “But, if you want me to stay here and not see clients while you watch your baseball games and movies, I guess I’ll just unpack.”

  Rona moved slowly toward her luggage, waiting for Morris to say stop.

  Morris felt an unusual sensation. Not the usual anxiety accompanied by the release of acids and fluids. This feeling was a soft burning. Like a flame.

  Rona stretched out her arms and bent toward the luggage.

  Then it happened. That low flame in Morris’s gut erupted. Like a fireball, shooting up his stomach and straight into his mouth. Erupting from his cheeks as a withering:

  “I’d really rather you not go to Florida, Rona. Not now.”

  In almost any marriage in America, such a statement would be a civilized way to raise an objection. In thirty-four years of the Feldstein marriage, the words “I’d really rather you not” had never been uttered. There was “Yes, Rona,” “Fine, Rona,” and “Okay, Rona.” This was unprecedented. A violation of the “peace at any price” treaty signed on the Feldsteins’ wedding day. A breach of the diplomatic protocols that kept the waves at bay.

  And it felt good to Morris! For the first time, refusing to surrender to Rona. Determined to fight. He assumed a self-righteous posture. Something Clint Eastwood might do. Or Gary Cooper in High Noon. His legs spread, both hands on his hips. Waiting for Rona to return a fusillade of high-velocity guilt.

  “Make my day!” he thought.

  He could anticipate what would happen next: how far Rona would roll her eyes upwards, when she would heave her shoulders, how long it would take her to top off her lungs with oxygen, and the duration of the exhalation.

  He predicted wrong.

  Rona pulled in her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed into slits. Her face turned almost as red as her Clairol Auburn No. 4. Her fingers clenched into tiny fists, shredding the take-out menus. Then she seemed almost paralyzed, gripped by an eerie wordlessness.

  Morris sunk his hands into his pockets and began jiggling coins. He visualized the images in the photos of Caryn and Jeffrey on the walls around him. Wondering what would happen next, frozen not only in time but suspense as well.

  Watching Rona glare at Morris and Morris jiggle the coins in his pockets.

  It was less than a minute, five seconds actually, when Rona’s facial muscles untightened and her lips parted just enough for her to force a few words through them. Her voice was gravelly, and she spoke in a tone that was firm, so that even an imbecile like Morris could understand. And when she dropped her Long Island accent, and began pronouncing her Rs, it was a sign of formality. She said: “Excuse me. I have people who need me. In Florida.”

  “Really, Rona? What are you, the official social worker for Arab towel boys?”

  That was the moment when Morris knew how it felt to be a Mets pitcher who threw a game-losing home-run ball. How desperately that pitcher wanted to reclaim the pitch as soon as it was released from his grip; how his stomach dropped when he realized that something bad was going to happen, and all he could do was stand there, watching as the ball wafted toward the batter, waiting for contact. That’s how Morris felt the split second after his lips tossed that little bit of patronizing sarcasm at Rona.

  But he couldn’t take it back. And so he jiggled the change in his pockets faster, blinked helplessly, and waited for Rona to swing away.

  Which she did.

  “I’m sorry, Morris, that you find it so hard to believe that there are people who want me to travel to Florida to receive my professional services.” />
  There’s a long fly ball . . .

  “I’m sorry they seem to believe in me. And you don’t.”

  It’s well hit. It’s way back, way back . . .

  “And one more thing.”

  Morris is at the warning track . . .

  “Why should I ask you who I should spend my time with?”

  It’s at the wall . . .

  “When you didn’t ask me what woman you should spend your time with?”

  It’s going, going . . .

  “If you know who I mean!”

  It’s gone! Rona Feldstein hits a grand slam of guilt!

  “Now, go get the Greek food. I have more to pack.”

  Morris Feldstein loses! Loses again!

  There was little talk during dinner. Morris pushed his chicken souvlaki back and forth across his plate, his shoulders in a resigned slump. Rona angrily chewed on her Greek salad. He has some nerve! He gets to have his midlife crisis, cheat on me, then gives me an attitude about a two-day business trip to Florida! All of a sudden he’s found a little backbone?

  You know what? He can sit in that chair for two days. Watching his movies and his Mets and not once will he have to watch Wolf Blitzer! Maybe a little loneliness will teach him something. This will be good for us both.

  Still, watching Morris’s eyes staring at his plate, Rona couldn’t help feel some guilt. Suddenly, in the guilt department, she was getting as much as she could give.

  They continued eating in silence. Ignoring the raccoons in the bushes. Or whatever it was.

  NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2004

  Col. (Ret.) Chuck McCord pointed his camera through a narrow separation in the dark drapes of his living room window. He didn’t like what he saw. Across the street, the Feldsteins’ lawn was overdue for a mowing—again. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now there was the matter of Mrs. Feldstein loading her bags in her car and peeling away—without her husband.