Agents of Treachery

by Otto Penzler (ed)

Let Kate scoff at his paranoia. She wouldn’t be scoffing when he flushed out this Nourwood, this man with a fake name and a contrived background and all his tricky driving maneuvers.

  When Nourwood passed the Copley exit, Matt sighed aloud. Then, still changing lanes, speeding faster and faster, Nourwood passed the South Station exit, too.

  Where, then, was he going?

  Suddenly the blue Ford cut clear across three lanes of traffic and barreled onto an exit ramp. Matt was barely able to make the exit himself.

  And when he saw the green exit sign with the white airplane symbol on it, he felt his mouth go dry.

  He hadn’t seen Nourwood load a suitcase into his car, or any other travel bags. The man was going to the airport, but without a suitcase.

  Matt’s cell phone rang, but he ignored it. No doubt the officious Regina calling from work with some pointless question.

  As the blue Ford emerged from the Callahan Tunnel, a few car lengths ahead of Matt’s Escalade, it veered off to the right, to the exit marked Logan International Airport. Nourwood passed the turnoffs for the first few terminals, stayed on the perimeter road, then took the turnoff for central parking. Now Matt was right behind him: living dangerously. If Nourwood happened to look in his rearview mirror, he’d see Matt’s Escalade. No reason for Nourwood to suspect it was Matt. Unless, waiting in line to enter the garage, he glanced back.

  So at the last minute, Matt swung his car away from the garage entrance and off to the side, letting Nourwood go on ahead. He watched the man’s arm snake out—a charcoal gray sleeve, the dark-complexioned hand, the hairy wrist, and the expensive watch—and snatch the ticket. Then Matt followed him inside. He took the ticket, watched the lift gate rise. The ramp just ahead rose steeply: a 15% gradient, he calculated. Nourwood’s blue Ford, once again, was gone.

  Chill, Matt told himself. He’s only going one way. You’ll catch up to him. Or see his parked car. But as he wound steadily uphill, tires squealing on the glazed concrete surface, Matt saw no blue Ford. He marveled at the lousy design of this parking structure, all the wasted space under the grade ramps, the curtain walls and the horizontally disposed beams, the petrified forest of vertical columns taking up far too many bays. When he saw how enormous the garage was, how many possible routes Nourwood could have taken on each deck, he cursed himself for not taking the risk of staying right behind the guy. Now it was too late. How many times had he lost Nourwood this morning?

  Half an hour later, having circled and circled the garage, up to the roof and back down, he finally gave up.

  Matt slammed his fist on the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn, and the guy right in front of him at the exit, driving a Hummer, stuck out his tattooed arm and gave him the finger.

  * * * *

  For the rest of the day, Matt could barely concentrate on his RFP. Who cared about it, anyway, with what was about to happen? At lunch he dodged an invitation from Lenny Baxter, the IT guy, to grab a sandwich at the deli, preferring to go off by himself and think.

  As he finished his turkey club sandwich at Subway, crumpling the wrapper into a neat ball, his cell phone rang. It was Kate.

  “The Doctor called,” she said.

  “Finally. Tell me.” His heart started racing again, but he managed to sound calm.

  “We’re fine,” she said.

  “Great. That’s great news. So, how’re you feeling?”

  “You know me. I never worry.”

  “You don’t have to,” Matt said. “I do it for you.”

  Back at his cubicle, he found the website for the University of Wisconsin’s office of the registrar. A line said, “To verify a degree or dates of attendance” and gave a number, which he called.

  “I need to verify”—Matt deliberately used the word in order to sound official—”attendance on a job applicant, please.”

  “Of course,” the young woman said. “Can I have the name?”

  Matt was surprised at how easy this was going to be. He gave Nourwood’s name, heard the girl tap at her keyboard. “All righty,” she said, all corn-fed Midwestern hospitality. “So you should get a degree verification letter in two to three business days. I’ll just need to get—”

  “Days?” Matt croaked. “I—I don’t have time for that!”

  “If you need an immediate answer you can contact the National Student Clearinghouse. Assuming you have an account with them, sir.”

  “I—we’re just—a small office here. And, um, the hiring deadline is today, or it’s not going to go through, so if there’s any way . . .”

  “Oh,” the woman said, full of genuine-sounding concern. “Well, let me see what I can do for you, then. Can you hold?”

  She came back on the line a couple of minutes later. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have a James Nourwood. I’m not finding any Nourwoods. Are you sure you’ve got the spelling right?”

  * * * *

  At 6:45 P.M. Matt pulled into his driveway and noticed the blue Ford Focus parked next door. So Nourwood was home, too.

  Turning his key in the front door, he realized it was already unlocked. He moved slowly, warily, through the living room, nerves a-jangle, listening, pulse racing. He thought he heard a female cry from somewhere in the house, though he wasn’t sure whether it was Kate’s or whether it was in fact a laugh or a cry, and then the hollow-core door to the basement came open, the one between the kitchen and the half bath, and James Nourwood loomed in the doorway, a twenty-pound sledgehammer in his hand.

  Matt dove at Nourwood and tackled him to the floor. He could smell the man’s strong aftershave, tinged with acrid sweat. He was surprised at how easily Nourwood went down. The sledgehammer slid from his grip, thudded onto the carpet. The guy barely put up a fight. He was trying to say something, but Matt grabbed his throat and squeezed it just below the larynx.

  Matt snarled, “You goddamned—”

  A shout came from somewhere close. Kate’s voice, high and shrill. “Oh, my God! Matt, stop it! Oh, my God, Jimmy, I’m so sorry!”

  Confused and disoriented, Matt relaxed his grip on Nourwood’s throat and said, “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “Matt, get off of him!” Kate shrieked.

  Nourwood’s olive-complexioned face had gone a shade of purple. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “What you must have . . . thought,” Nourwood managed to choke out. “I’m—so sorry. Your wife told me to just go down and grab ... all my tools are in storage.” He struggled, was finally able to sit up. “Laura’s been nagging me for days to put up a fence around her tomato garden to keep out the chipmunks, and I didn’t realize how—how much clay’s in the soil here. You can’t pound in the stakes without a decent sledgehammer.”

  Matt turned around, looked at Kate. She looked mortified. “Jimmy, it’s all my fault. Matt’s been on edge recently.”

  Now Laura Nourwood was there, too, ice clinking festively in a tumbler of scotch. “What’s going on here? Jimmy, you okay?”

  Nourwood rose unsteadily, brushed off his suit jacket and pants. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “What happened?” his wife said. “Was it the vertigo again?”

  “No, no, no,” Nourwood chuckled. “Just a misunderstanding.”

  “Sorry,” Matt mumbled. “Shoulda asked before I jumped you.”

  * * * *

  “No, really, it’s all my fault,” Kate said later as they sat in the living room, drinks in their hands. Kate had heated up some frozen cheesy puff pastry things from Trader Joe’s and kept passing around the tray. “Matt, I probably should have told you I’d invited them over, but I just saw Laura in her backyard planting out her tomatoes, and we started talking, and it turns out Laura’s into heirloom tomatoes, which you know how much I love. And I was telling her that I thought it was probably too early to plant out her tomatoes around here, she should wait for last frost, and then Jimmy got home, and he asked if we had a sledgehammer he could borrow, so I just asked these guys over for a drink. ...”

  “
My bad,” Matt said, still embarrassed about how he’d overreacted. But it didn’t mean his underlying suspicions had been wrong—not at all. Just in this one particular instance. Nothing else about the man had changed. None of his lies about his job or his college or what he was really doing.

  “Tomorrow we’ll all laugh about it,” Kate said.

  I doubt that, Matt thought.

  “What do you mean?” said Nourwood. “I’m laughing now!” He turned to his wife, put his big ham hock hand over hers. “Just please don’t ask our neighbors for a cup of sugar! I don’t think I’m up to it.” He laughed loud and long, and the women joined him. Matt smiled thinly.

  “I was telling the ladies about my day from hell,” Nourwood said. “So my sister Nabilah calls me last night to tell me she has a job interview in Boston and she’s flying in this morning.”

  “Nothing like advance notice,” said Laura.

  Nourwood shrugged. “This is my baby sister we’re talking about. She does everything last-minute. She graduated from college last May, and she’s been looking for a job for months, and all of a sudden it’s rush rush rush. And she asks can I pick her up at the airport.”

  “God forbid she should take a cab,” Laura said.

  “What is an older brother for?” Nourwood said.

  “Nabilah’s what you’d call a princess,” said his wife.

  “Really, I don’t mind at all,” said Nourwood. “But of course it had to be on the same day that my car’s going into the shop.”

  “I think she planned it that way,” Laura said.

  “But the car dealership couldn’t have been nicer about it. They were even willing to bring the loaner to a gas station on Washington Street. But I got a late start leaving the house, and then the kid had all kinds of paperwork he wanted me to fill out, even though I thought we’d gone over all of this on the phone. So there I am on the highway in this rented car, driving to the airport like a madman. Only I don’t know where the turn signal is, and come to find out the parking brake is partly on, so the car’s moving all jerky, like a jackrabbit. And I don’t want to be late for Nabilah, because I know she’ll freak out.”

  “God forbid she might have to wait a couple of minutes for her chauffeur,” Laura said acidly.

  “So right when I’m driving into the parking garage at Logan, my cell phone rings, and who should it be but Nabilah? She got an earlier flight, and she’s been waiting at the airport for half an hour already, and she’s freaking out, she’s going to be late for the interview, and where am I, and all of this.”

  Laura Nourwood shook her head, compressed her lips. Her dislike for her sister-in-law was palpable.

  “But I’ve already taken the ticket from the garage thingy, so I turn around, and I have to plead with the man in the booth to let me out without paying their minimum.”

  “What was it, like ten bucks, Jimmy?” said his wife. “You should have just paid.”

  “I don’t like throwing away money,” Nourwood replied. “You know that. So I race over to Terminal C and I park right in front of arrivals and get out of the car, and all of a sudden this state trooper’s coming at me, yelling, and writing me a ticket. He says I’m not allowed to park in front of the terminal. Like I’ve got a car bomb or something. In this little rented Ford!”

  “You do look Arab,” his wife said. “And these days . . .”

  “Persians are not Arabs,” Nourwood said stiffly. “I speak Farsi, not Arabic.”

  “And I’m sure that Boston cop appreciates the distinction,” Laura said. She looked at Matt and shrugged apologetically. “Jimmy hates cops.”

  Annoyed, Nourwood shook his head. “So as soon as I get back in the car to move it, Nabilah comes out, with like five suitcases—and she’s not even staying overnight! So I race downtown to Fidelity, and then I have to floor it to get to Westwood because my eleven a.m. got moved up an hour.”

  “Don’t tell me you got a speeding ticket,” Laura said.

  “When it rains, it pours,” Nourwood said.

  “Westwood?” Matt said. “You told me you work for ADS. They’re in Hopkinton.”

  “Well, if you want to get technical about it, I actually work for Dataviz, which is a subsidiary of ADS. They just got acquired by ADS six months ago. And let me tell you, this isn’t going to be an easy integration. They still haven’t changed the name on the building, and they still answer the phone ‘Dataviz’ instead of ADS.’”

  “Huh,” Matt said. “And . . . your sister—did she go to UW too?”

  “UW?” Nourwood said.

  “Didn’t you tell me you went to Madison?” Matt said. He added drily, “Maybe I misheard.”

  “Ah, yes, yes,” Nourwood said. “James Madison University. JMU.”

  “JMU,” Matt repeated. “Huh.”

  “That happens a lot,” Nourwood said. “Not Wisconsin. Harrisonburg, Virginia.”

  Then that would explain why the University of Wisconsin had no record of any James Nourwood, Matt thought. “Huh,” he said.

  “And no, Nabilah went to Tulane,” said Nourwood. “I guess we Nouris feel more comfortable in those southern colleges. Maybe it’s the warmer climate.”

  “Nouris?”

  “I married a feminist,” Nourwood said.

  “I’m confused,” Matt said.

  “Laura didn’t want to take my name, Nouri.”

  “Why should I?” his wife put in. “I mean, how archaic is that? I was Laura Wood my whole life until we got married. Why shouldn’t he change his name to James Wood?”

  “And neither one of us likes hyphenated names,” Nourwood said.

  “This girlfriend of mine named Janice Ritter,” Laura said, “married a guy named Steve Hyman. And they merged their names and got Ryman.”

  “That sounds a lot closer to ‘Hyman’ than to ‘Ritter,’” Kate said.

  “And the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villar, married Corina Raigosa,” Nourwood said. “And they both became Villaraigosa.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Kate said. “Nouri and Wood become Nourwood. Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie become Brangelina!”

  Nouri, Matt thought. Even if he had gone to the University of Wisconsin, they wouldn’t have had a record of a Nourwood.

  “Well, but that’s just the tabloid nickname for them,” Nourwood objected. “They didn’t change their names legally.”

  “Neither did we,” Laura Nourwood said.

  “When you give me a son, we will,” her husband said.

  “Give you a son?” his wife blurted out. “You mean, when we have a child. If we have a child. I got news for you, Jimmy. You’re not back in the old country. You’ve never even been to the old country.”

  * * * *

  Early the next morning, Matt was glugging the almost-spoiled milk down the sink drain when Kate entered the kitchen.

  “Hey! What are you doing? That’s perfectly good milk!”

  “It tastes sort of suspicious to me,” Matt said.

  “Now you’re getting paranoid about dairy products?”

  “Paranoid?” He turned to face her, speaking slowly. “What if I’d been right about them?”

  “But you weren’t, you big goofball!”

  “Okay, fine,” Matt said. “We know that now. It’s just that I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were . . .”

  “Undercover FBI agents?”

  “They just had that vibe. And when I think about Donny, doing five consecutive life sentences in supermax back in Colorado just because he dared to fight for freedom on our native soil, you know? I just get the willies sometimes.”

  “Man, you’re always jumping at shadows.” She handed him a small red plastic gadget. “Here’s the LPD detonator the Doctor sent over. I told you he’d come through.”

  “I hope the Doctor is absolutely certain this one’s going to work. Remember Cleveland?”

  “That won’t happen again,” she said. “The Doctor wasn’t running that operation. If there’s one th
ing the Doctor knows, it’s explosives.”

  “What about the RDX?”

  “The Escalade’s already packed.”

  “Sweetie,” Matt said, and he gave her a kiss. “How early did you get up?”

  “Least I could do. You’ve got a long day ahead of you. You’re taking the Stuart Street entrance, right?”

  “Of course,” he said. “All four of us are. No CCTV camera there.”

  “So, we’ll meet up in Sayreville tonight?” Kate said.

  “As planned.”