Did you mean: James Norwood
No, dammit, he thought. I meant what I typed.
All Google pulled up was a scattering of useless citations that happened to contain “James” and “wood” and words that ended in “-nour.” Useless. He tried typing just “Nourwood.”
Nothing. Some import-export firm based in Syria called Nour Wood, a high-pressure-laminate company founded by a man named Nour. But if Google was right, and it usually was, there was nobody named Nourwood in the entire world.
Which meant that either their new neighbor was really flying under the radar, or that wasn’t his real name.
So Matt tried a powerful search engine called ZabaSearch, which could give you the home addresses of just about everybody, even celebrities. He entered “Nourwood” and then selected “Massachusetts” in the pull-down menu of states.
The answer came back instantly in big, red, mocking letters:
No Results Match NOURWOOD
Check Your Spelling and Try Your Search Again
Well, he thought, they’ve just moved here. Probably too recent to show up yet. Anyway, they were renters, not owners, so maybe that explained why they didn’t show up on the database yet in Massachusetts. He went back to the ZabaSearch home page and this time left the default “All 50 States” selected.
Same thing.
No Results Match NOURWOOD
What did that mean, they didn’t show up anywhere in the country? That was impossible.
No, he told himself. Maybe not. If Nourwood, as he’d suspected, wasn’t a real name.
This strange couple was living right next door under an assumed name. Matt’s Spidey Sense was starting to tingle.
He remembered how once, as a kid, he’d entered the toolshed in back of the house in Bellingham and suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, thick as cleats. He had no idea why. A few seconds later, he realized that the coil of rope in the corner of the dimly lit shed was actually a snake. He stood frozen in place, fascinated and terrified by its shiny skin, its bold orange and white and black stripes. True, it was only a king snake, but what if it had been one of the venomous pit vipers sometimes found in western Washington State, like a prairie rattlesnake? Since that day he’d learned to trust his instincts. The unconscious often senses danger long before the conscious mind.
“What are you doing?”
He started at Kate’s voice. The wall-to-wall carpet had muffled her approach.
“Why are you awake, babe?” he said.
“Matt, it’s like two in the morning,” Kate said, her voice sleep-husky. “What the hell are you doing?”
He quickly closed the browser, but she’d already seen it.
“You’re Googling the neighbors now?”
“They don’t even exist, Kate. I told you, there’s something wrong with them.”
“Believe me, they exist,” Kate said. “They’re very real. She even teaches Pilates.”
“You sure you have the right spelling?”
“It’s on their mailbox,” she said. “Look for yourself.”
“Oh, right, that’s real hard proof,” he said, a little too heavy on the sarcasm. “Did they give you a phone number? A cell phone, maybe?”
“Jesus Christ. Look, you have any questions for them, why don’t you ask them yourself, tomorrow night? Or I guess it’s tonight by now.”
“Tonight?”
“The Kramers’ cocktail party. I told you about it like five times. They’re having the neighbors over to show off their new renovation.”
Matt groaned.
“We’ve turned down their last two invitations. We have to go.” She rubbed her eyes. “You know, you’re really being ridiculous.”
“Better safe than sorry. When I think about my brother, Donny—I mean he was a great soldier. A true patriot. And look what happened to him.”
“Don’t think about your brother,” she said softly.
“I can’t stop thinking about him. You know that.”
“Come back to bed,” Kate said.
* * *
—
For the rest of the night, Matt found himself listening to Kate’s soft breathing and watching the numbers change on the digital clock. At 4:58 A.M. he finally gave up trying to sleep. Slipping quietly out of bed, he threw on yesterday’s clothes and went downstairs to pee, so he wouldn’t wake Kate. As he stood at the toilet, he found himself looking idly out the window, over the café curtains, at the side of the Gormans’ house, not twenty feet away. The windows were dark: the Nourwoods were asleep. He saw their car parked in the driveway, which gave him an idea.
Grabbing a pen from the kitchen counter and the only scrap of paper he could find quickly—a supermarket register receipt—he opened the back door and stepped out into the darkness, catching the screen door before it could slam, pushing it gently closed until the pneumatic hiss stopped and the latch clicked.
The night—really, the morning—was moonless and starless, with just the faintest pale glow on the horizon. He could barely see five feet in front of him. He crossed the narrow grassy rectangle that separated the two houses, and stood at the verge of Nourwood’s driveway, the little car a hulking silhouette. But gradually his eyes adjusted to the dark, and there was a little ambient light from a distant streetlamp. Nourwood’s car, a Toyota Yaris, was one of those ridiculous foreign-made econobox hybrids. It looked as if you could lift it up with one hand. The license plate was completely in shadow, so he came closer for a better look.
Suddenly his eyes were dazzled by the harsh light from a set of halogen floods mounted above the garage. For a sickening moment he thought that maybe Nourwood had seen someone prowling around and flicked a switch. But no: Matt had apparently tripped a motion sensor.
What if they kept their bedroom curtains open and one of them wasn’t a sound sleeper? He’d have to move quickly now, just to be safe.
Now, at least, he could make out the license plate clearly. He wrote the numbers on the register receipt, then turned to go back, when he collided with someone.
Startled, Matt gave an involuntary shout, a sort of uhhh! sound at exactly the same time as someone said, “Jesus!”
James Nourwood.
He was a good six inches taller than Matt, with a broad, athletic build, and wore a striped bathrobe, unruly tufts of black chest hair sprouting over the top. “Can I help you?” Nourwood said with an imperious scowl.
“Oh—I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I’m Matt Parker. Your, uh, next-door neighbor.” His mind was spinning like a hamster on a wheel, trying to devise a plausible explanation for why he’d been hunched over his neighbor’s car at five in the morning. What could he possibly say? I was curious about your hybrid? Given the Cadillac Escalade in Matt’s garage, whose mileage was measured in gallons per mile, not exactly.
“Ah,” Nourwood said. “Nice to meet you.” He sounded almost arch. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and a dark complexion that made him look as if he had a deep suntan. Nourwood extended a hand and they shook. His hand was large and dry, his clasp limp. “You scared the living daylights out of me. I came out to see if the paper was here yet….I thought someone was trying to steal my car.” He had the faintest accent, though hardly anyone else would have picked up on the telltale traces. Something slightly off about the cadence, the intonation, the vowel formation. Like someone born and raised in this country of parents who weren’t native speakers. Who perhaps spoke Arabic since infancy and was probably bilingual.
“Yeah, sorry about that, I—my wife lost an earring, and she’s all upset about it, and I figured it might have dropped when she came over to visit you guys yesterday.”
“Oh?” Nourwood said. “Did she visit us yesterday? I’m sorry I missed her.”
“Yep,” Matt said. Did Kate say she’d gone over to their house yesterday,
or was he remembering that wrong? “Pretty sure it was yesterday. Anyway, it’s not like it’s fancy or anything, but it sort of has sentimental value.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, it was the first gift I ever gave her when we started going out, and I’m not much of a gift-giver, so I guess that makes it a collector’s item.”
Nourwood chuckled politely. “Well, I’ll let you know if I see anything.” He cocked a brow. “Though it might be a bit easier to look after the sun comes up.”
“I know, I know,” Matt said hastily, “but I wanted to surprise her when she woke up.”
“I see,” Nourwood said dubiously. “Of course.”
“I notice you have Mass plates—you from in-state?”
“Those plates are brand-new.”
“Uh-huh.” Matt noticed he didn’t say whether he was or wasn’t from Massachusetts. Just that the license plates were new. He was being evasive. “So you’re not from around here, I take it.”
Nourwood shook his head slowly.
“Yeah? Where’re you from?”
“Good Lord, where aren’t I from? I’ve lived just about everywhere, it seems.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, I hate to be rude, but I have some work to do, and it’s my turn to make breakfast. Will we see you tonight at the Kramers’ party?”
* * *
—
“I thought I heard voices outside,” Kate said, scraping the last spoonful of yogurt and Bran Buds from her bowl. She looked tired and grumpy.
Matt shrugged, shook his head. He was embarrassed about what had happened and didn’t feel like getting into it. “Oh yeah?”
“Maybe I dreamed it. Mind if I finish this off?” She pointed her spoon at the round tub of overpriced yogurt she’d bought at Trader Joe’s.
“Go ahead,” he said, sliding the yogurt toward her. He hated the stuff. It tasted like old gym socks. “More coffee?”
“I’m good. You were up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He picked up the quart of whole milk and was about to pour some into his coffee when he noticed the date stamped on the top of the carton. “Past the sell-by date,” he said. “Any more in the fridge?”
“That’s the last,” she said. “But it’s fine.”
“It’s expired.”
“It’s perfectly good.”
“Perfectly good,” he repeated. “Ever notice how you always say something’s ‘perfectly good’ when something’s actually not-quite-right about it?” He sniffed the carton but couldn’t detect any sour smell. That didn’t mean it hadn’t begun to turn, of course. You couldn’t always tell from the smell alone. He poured the milk slowly, suspiciously, into his coffee, alert for the tiniest curds, but he didn’t see any. Maybe it was okay after all. “Just like the Nourwoods. You said they were ‘perfectly nice.’ Which means you know something’s off about them.”
“I think you drink too much coffee,” she said. “Maybe that’s what’s keeping you up nights.”
The Boston Globe was spread between them on the small round table, a moisture ring from the yogurt container wrinkling the banner headline:
FBI: PROBE POSSIBLE LOCAL TERROR PLOT
Security heightened in high-rises, government buildings
He stabbed the paper with a stubby index finger. “See, that’s what’s keeping me up nights,” he said. “The Nourwoods are keeping me up nights.”
“Matt, it’s too early.”
“Fine,” he said. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He took a sip of coffee. “Why’d they move into the neighborhood, anyway?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Was it for a job or something? Did they say?”
Kate rolled her eyes, in that way that always annoyed him. “He got a job at ADS.”
“In Hopkinton?” ADS was the big tech company that used to be known by its full name. Andromeda Data Systems. They made—well, he wasn’t sure what they did, exactly. Data storage, maybe. Something like that.
“That what he told you?”
She nodded.
“There you go. If he really got a job at ADS, why didn’t they move somewhere closer to Hopkinton? That’s the flaw in his cover.”
She looked at him disdainfully for a long moment and then said, “Can you please just drop this already? You’re just going to make yourself crazy.”
Now he saw that he was upsetting her, and he felt bad. Softly, he said, “You ever hear back from the doctor?”
She shook her head.
“What’s the holdup?”
She shook her head again, compressed her lips. “I wish I knew.”
“I don’t want you to worry. He’ll call.”
“I’m not worried. You’re the one who’s worried.”
“That’s my job,” Matt said. “I worry for both of us.”
* * *
—
The engineering firm where Matt worked was right in downtown Boston, in the tallest building in the city: a sleek sixty-story tower with a skin of blue reflective glass. It was a fine, proud landmark, a mirror in the sky. Matt, a structural engineer by training and an architecture nut by avocation, knew quite a bit about its construction. He’d heard stories about how, shortly after it was built, it would shed entire windowpanes on windy days like some reptile shedding its scales. You’d be walking down the street, admiring the latest addition to the Boston skyline, and suddenly you’d be crushed beneath five hundred pounds of glass, a hail of jagged shards maiming other passersby. You’d never know what hit you. Funny how things like that could happen, things you’d never in a million years expect. A flying window, of all things! No one was ever safe.
A Swiss engineer even concluded, years after it was built, that in certain wind conditions the tower might actually bend in the middle—might topple right over on its narrow base. How strange, he’d often thought, to be working in such a grandiose landmark, this massive spire so high above the city, and yet be so completely vulnerable, in a glass coffin.
He eased his big black Cadillac Escalade down the ramp into the underground parking garage. A couple of uniformed security guards emerged from their booth. This was a new procedure as of a few days ago, with the heightened security.
Matt clicked off the radio—his favorite sports-talk radio show, the host arguing with some idiot about the Red Sox bull pen—and lowered the tinted window as the older guard approached. Meanwhile, the younger one circled around to the back of the Escalade and gave it a sharp rap.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Parker,” the gray-haired guard said.
“Morning, Carlos,” Matt said.
“How about them Sox?”
“Going all the way this year.”
“Division at least, huh?”
“All the way to the World Series.”
“Not this year.”
“Come on, keep the faith.”
“You ain’t been around here long enough,” Carlos said. “You don’t know about the curse.”
“No such thing anymore.”
“When you been a Sox fan as long as me, you’re just waiting for the late-season choke. It still happens. You’ll see.” He called out to his younger colleague, “This guy’s okay. Mr. Parker is a senior manager at Bristol Worldwide, on twenty-seven.”
“How’s it going?” the younger guard said, backing away from the car.
“Hey,” Matt said. Then, mock-stern, he said, “Carlos, you know, you guys should really check everyone’s car.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Carlos said.
Matt wagged his finger. “It only takes one vehicle.”
“If you say so.”
But it was true, of course. All someone had to do was pack a car—not even a truck; it wouldn’t have to be any bigger than this Escalade—with RDX and park it in t
he right location in the garage. RDX could slice through steel support pillars like a razor blade through a tomato. Part of the floor directly above would cave right in, then the floor above that, and pretty soon, in a matter of seconds, the whole building would pancake. This was the principle of controlled demolition: The explosives were just the trigger. Gravity did the real work for you.
It always amazed him how little people understood about the fragility of the structures in which they lived and worked.
“Hey,” Matt said, “you guys ever get the CCTV cameras at the Stuart Street entrance fixed?”
“Hell didn’t freeze over, last I checked,” said Carlos.
Matt shook his head. “Not good,” he said. “Not in times like these.”
The senior guard gave the Escalade a friendly open-handed pat as if sending it on its way. “Tell me about it,” he said.
* * *
—
The first thing Matt did when he got to his cubicle was call home. Kate answered on the first ring.
“No word from the doctor yet?” he asked.
“No,” Kate said. “I thought you were him.”
“Sorry. Let me know when you hear something, okay?”
“I’ll call as soon as I hear. I promise.”
He hung up, checked his online office calendar, and realized he had ten minutes before the morning staff meeting. He pulled up Google and entered “license plate search,” which produced a long list of websites, most of them dubious. One promised, “Find Out the Truth about Anyone!” But when he entered Nourwood’s license plate number and selected Massachusetts, he was shuttled to another page that wanted him to fill out all kinds of information about himself and give his credit card number. That wasn’t going to happen. Another one featured a ridiculous photo of a man dressed up to look like someone’s idea of a detective, right down to the Sherlock Holmes hat and the big magnifying glass, in which his right eye was grotesquely enlarged. Not very promising, but he entered the license plate number anyway, only to find that Massachusetts wasn’t one of the available states. Another site looked more serious, but the fine print explained that when you entered a license plate and your own credit card information, you were “assigned” to a “private investigator.” He didn’t like that. It made him nervous. He didn’t want to be exposed that way. Plus, it said the search would take three to five business days.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 119
