Agents of Treachery – Spy Stories

NEIGHBORS by Joseph Finder

“I can’t shake the feeling that they’re up to something,” Matt Parker said. He didn’t need to say: the new neighbors. He was peering out their bedroom window through a gap between the slats of the Venetian blinds.

Kate Parker looked up from her book, groaned. “Not this again. Come to bed. It’s after eleven.”

“I’m serious,” Matt said.

“So am I. Plus, they can probably see you staring at them.”

“Not from this angle.” But just to be safe he dropped the slat. He turned around, arms folded. “I don’t like them,” he said.

“You haven’t even met them.”

“I saw you talking to them yesterday. I don’t think they’re a real couple. She’s, like, twenty years younger than him.”

“Laura’s eight years younger than Jimmy.”

“He’s got to be an Arab.”

“I think Laura said his parents are Persian.”

“Persian,” Matt scoffed. “That’s just a fancy word for Iranian. Like an Iraqi saying he’s Mesopotamian or something.”

Kate shook her head and went back to her book. Some girl novel: an Oprah Book Club selection with a cover that looked like an Amish quilt. At the foot of their bed, the big flat-screen TV flickered a blue light across her delicate features. She had the sound muted: Matt didn’t get how she could concentrate on a book with the TV on.

“Also, does he look like a Norwood to you?” Matt said when he came back from brushing his teeth, a few stray white flecks of Colgate on his chin. “Jimmy Norwood? What kind of name is Norwood for an Arab guy? That can t be his real name.”

Kate gave a small, tight sigh, folded down the corner of a page and closed her book. “It’s Nourwood, actually.” She spelled it.

“That’s not a real name.” He climbed into bed. “And where’s their furniture? They didn’t even have a moving van. They just showed up one day with all their stuff in that stupid little Toyota hybrid sardine can.”

“Boy, you really have been stalking them.”

Matt jutted his jaw. “I notice stuff. Like foreign-made cars.”

“Yeah, well, I hate to burst your bubble, but they’re renting the house furnished from the Gormans. Ruth and Chuck didn’t want to sell their house, given the market these days, and there’s no room in their condo in Boca for-”

“What kind of people would rent a furnished house?”

“Look at us,” Kate pointed out. “We move, like, every two years.”

“You knew when you married me that was how it would be. That’s just part of the life. I’m telling you, there’s something not quite right about them. Remember the Olsens in Pittsburgh?”

“Don’t start.”

“Did I or did I not tell you their marriage was in trouble? You insisted Daphne had postpartum depression. Then they got divorced.”

“Yeah, like five years after we moved,” Kate said. “Half of all marriages end in divorce. Anyway, the Nourwoods are a perfectly nice couple.”

Something on TV caught Matt’s eye. He fumbled for the remote, found it under the down comforter next to Kate’s pillow, touched a button to bring up the sound.

“-officials tell WXBS NightCast that FBI intelligence reports indicate an increased level of terrorist chatter-”

“I love that word, chatter,” Kate said. “Makes it sound like they bugged Perez Hilton’s tea set or something.”

“Shh.” Matt raised the volume.

The anchorman of the local news, who wore a cheap pin-striped suit and looked as if he was about sixteen, went on, “… heightened concerns about a possible terrorist strike in downtown Boston just two days from now.” The chyron next to him was a crude rendering of a crosshair and the words “Boston Terror Target?”

Now the picture cut to a reporter standing in the dark outside one of the big new skyscrapers in the financial district, the wind whipping his hair. “Ken, a spokesman for the Boston police told me just a few minutes ago that the mayor has ordered heightened security for all Boston landmarks, including the State House, Government Center, and all major office buildings.”

“Isn’t it a little loud?” Kate said.

But Matt continued to stare at the screen.

“-speculates that the terrorists might be locally based. The police spokesman told me that their pattern seems to be to establish residence in or near a major city and assimilate themselves into the fabric of a neighborhood while they make their long-range plans, just as law enforcement authorities believe happened in the bombing in Chicago last year, also on April nineteenth, which, though never solved, is believed to be-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate said.

“Shh!”

“-FBI undercover operatives throughout the Boston area in an attempt to infiltrate this suspected terrorist ring,” the reporter said.

“I love that,” Kate said. “It’s always a ‘ring.’ Why not a terrorist bracelet? Or a necklace.”

“This isn’t funny,” Matt said.

Matt couldn’t sleep.

After tossing and turning for half an hour, he slipped quietly out of bed and padded down the hall to the tiny guest room that served as their home office. It was furnished with little more than a couple of filing cabinets, for household bills and owner’s manuals and the like, and an old Dell PC atop an Ikea desk.

He opened a browser on the computer and entered “James Nourwood” in Google. It came back:

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 tool-shed 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 uhhhl 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 the 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.

By then it would be too late.

He clicked on yet another website, which instantly spawned a dozen lewd pop-up ads that took over his whole screen.

And then Matt noticed his manager, Regina, approaching his cubicle. Frantically he looked for a power button on his monitor but couldn’t find one. That was the last thing he needed-for Regina to sidle into his cubicle asking about the RFP, a Request for Proposal, he was late on and see all this porn on his computer screen.

But when she was maybe six feet away, she came to an abrupt halt, as if remembering something, and returned to her office.

Crisis averted.

As he restarted his computer, he found himself increasingly baffled: How could this guy, this “James Nourwood,” not appear anywhere on the Internet? That was just about impossible these days. Everyone left digital grease stains and skid marks, whether it was phone numbers, political contributions, high school reunion listings, property sales, corporate websites…

Corporate websites. Now there was a thought.

Where was it that “Nourwood” worked again? Ah, yes. The big tech company ADS, in Hopkinton. Or so he had told Kate.

Well, that was simple to check. He found the ADS main phone number. An operator answered, “Good morning, ADS.”

“I’d like to speak with one of your employees, please. James Nourwood?”

“Just a moment.”

Matt’s heart fluttered. What if Nourwood answered his own line? Matt would have no choice but to hang up immediately, of course, but what if his name showed up on Nourwood’s caller ID?

Faint keyboard tapping in the background, and then absolute silence. He held his index finger hovered just above the plunger, ready to disconnect the call as soon as he heard Nourwood’s voice.

Then again, if Nourwood really did answer the phone, then maybe it wasn’t some cover name after all. Maybe there was some benign explanation for the fact that he couldn’t be found on the Internet.

His finger hovered, twitched. He stroked the cool plastic of the plunger button, ready to depress it with the lightning reflexes of a sniper. There was a click, and then the operator’s voice again: “How are you spelling that, sir?”

Matt spelled Nourwood for her slowly.

“I’m checking, but I don’t find anyone with that name. I even looked under N-O-R-W-O-O-D, but I didn’t find that either. Any idea what department he might be in?”

Matt’s twitchy index finger couldn’t be restrained anymore, and he ended the call.

After the staff meeting, he stopped by Len Baxter’s office. Lenny was the head of IT in Bristol’s Boston office, a bearded, gnomelike figure who kept to himself but had always been helpful whenever Matt had a computer problem. Every day, no matter the season, he wore an unvarying uniform: jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and a Red Sox baseball cap, no doubt to conceal his bald spot. Everyone had something to hide.

“Mattie boy, what can I do you for?” Lenny said.

“I need a favor,” Matt said.

“Gonna cost you.” Lenny flashed a grin. “Kidding. Talk to me.”

“Can you do a quick public-records search on LexisNexis?”

Lenny cocked his head. “For what?”

“Just a name. James Nourwood.” He spelled it.

“This a personnel matter?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. He’s just some sales guy at ADS who keeps trying to sell us a data recovery program, and I don’t know, I get this funny feeling about him.”

“I can’t do that,” Lenny said gravely. “That would be a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974 as well as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.”

Matt’s stomach flipped over. But then Lenny grinned. “Just messing with you. Sure, happy to.” He crunched away at his keyboard, squinted at the screen, tapped some more. “Spell it again?”

Matt did.

“Funny. Not coming up with anything.”

Matt swallowed. “You’re not?”

Lenny’s stubby fingers flew over the keyboard. “Very peculiar,” he said. “Your guy isn’t registered to vote and never got a driver’s license, hasn’t purchased any property… You sure he’s not a figment of your imagination?”

“Know what? I must have gotten his name wrong. Never mind. I’ll get back to you.”

“No worries,” Lenny said. “Anytime.”

Matt was hardly a party animal. He disliked socializing, particularly with the neighbors. Wherever he lived, he preferred to keep a low profile. Plus, he didn’t much like the Kramers. They had the biggest house in the neighborhood and a lawn like a golf course, and every year they resealed their driveway so it looked like polished onyx. They were throwing a party tonight to show off their latest renovation. Matt found this annoying. If you could afford to spend half a million dollars remodeling your house, the least you could do was keep quiet about it.

But this was one party that Matt was actually looking forward to. He wanted to ask the “Nourwoods” a few questions.

The party was already in full swing when he arrived: giddy, lubricated laughter and the smells of strong perfume and gin and melted cheese. He smiled at the neighbors, most of whom he didn’t know, said hello to Audrey Kramer, and then caught sight of Kate chatting amiably with the Nourwoods. He froze. Why was she being so friendly to them?

As soon as Kate spied Matt, she waved him over. “Jimmy, Laura-my husband, Matt.”

Nourwood was dressed in an expensive-looking blue suit, a crisp white shirt, and a striped tie. He looked prosperous and preening. His wife was small and blond and plain, solidly built, with small, pert features. Next to her husband she looked washed-out. They really didn’t look like a married couple, Matt thought. They didn’t seem to fit together in any way. Both of them smiled politely and extended their hands, and Matt noticed that her handshake was a lot firmer than her husband’s.

“We’ve met,” Nourwood said, his dark eyes gleaming.

“You have?” Kate said.

“Early this morning. He didn’t tell you?” Nourwood laughed, showing very white, even teeth. “Very early this morning.”

Kate flashed Matt a look of surprise. “No.”

“Did you ever find your earring?” Nourwood asked Kate.

“Earring?” she said. “What earring?”

“The one Matt gave you-his first gift to you?”

Matt tried to intercept her with a warning look, but Kate gave him no chance. “This guy?” she said. “I don’t think he’s ever given me a pair of earrings the whole time I’ve known him.”

“Ah,” Nourwood said. His eyes bored right into Matt like an X-ray. “I misunderstood.”

Matt’s face went hot and prickly, and he wondered how obvious it was. He’d been caught in a transparent lie. How was he going to explain what he’d really been doing in Nourwood’s driveway at five in the morning without sounding defensive or sketchy? And then he rebuked himself: This guy’s a liar and an undercover operative, and you’re acting like the guilty one?

The two women launched into a high-spirited conversation, like old friends, about restaurants and movies and shopping, leaving the two men standing there in awkward silence.

“My apologies,” Nourwood said quietly. “I should have thought before I said anything. We all have things we prefer to keep hidden from our spouses.”

Matt attempted a casual chuckle, but it came out hollow and forced. “Oh no, not at all,” he said. “I should have told you the whole story.” He lowered his voice, confiding. “Those earrings were actually a surprise gift-”

“Ah,” Nourwood said, cutting him off with a knowing smile. “Not another word. My bad.”

Matt hesitated. Without further elaboration, his new, revised story made no sense: why the pointless lie, how had these imaginary earrings ended up on Nourwood’s driveway, all that. But Nourwood either didn’t need to hear more-or didn’t believe him and didn’t want to hear more.

Matt’s Spidey Sense was tingling again.

Laura and Kate were laughing and talking a mile a minute. Laura was saying something about Neiman Marcus, Kate nodding emphatically and saying, “Totally. Totally.”

Instead of trying to salvage a shred of credibility, Matt decided to change the subject. “So how do you like ADS?”

Nourwood stared at him blankly. “ADS?”

“Andromeda Data Systems. You don’t work there?” Now he wondered whether Kate might have just heard wrong.

“Oh, right,” Nourwood said, as if just now remembering. “It’s fine. You know-it’s a job.”

“Uh-huh,” Matt said. Maybe it was Nourwood’s turn to get caught in a lie. “You just started there, right?”

“Right, right,” Nourwood said vaguely, obviously not eager to talk about it.

“How’s the commute?” Matt persisted, moving in for the kill. “You must, like, live on the turnpike.”

“Not at all. It’s not too bad.”

There was no question about it: Nourwood didn’t work at ADS at all. He was probably afraid to be asked too many questions about the company.

So Matt bore in. “What kind of work do you do?”

“Oh, you don’t want to know, believe me,” Nourwood said in an offhanded way. His eyes were roaming the room over Matt’s shoulders, as if he was desperate for an escape from the grilling.

“Not at all. I’d love to know.”

“Believe me,” Nourwood said, feigning joviality, though there was something hard in his eyes. “Whenever I try to explain what I do, people fall asleep standing up. Tell me about yourself.”

“Me? I’m an engineer. But we’re not done with you.” Then Matt flashed a mollifying grin.

“I guess you could say I’m an engineer, too,” Nourwood said. “A project engineer.”

“Oh, yeah? I know a fair amount about ADS,” Matt lied. He knew nothing more than what he’d gleaned from a quick glance at their website this morning and skimming the occasional article in the Globe. “I’d love to hear all about it.”

“I’m an independent contractor. On kind of a consulting project.”

“Really?” Matt said, pretending to be fascinated. “Tell me about it.”

Nourwood’s restless eyes returned to Matt’s, and for a few seconds seemed to be studying him. “I wish I could,” he said at last. “But they made me sign all sorts of nondisclosure agreements.”

Matt wondered whether Nourwood was a harmless king snake or a venomous prairie rattlesnake. “Huh,” he said.

“It’s just a short-term project anyway,” Nourwood went on, his eyes gone opaque. “That’s why we’re renting.”

Matt’s stomach flipped over. A short-term project. That was one way of putting it. Of course it was short term. In a couple of days Nourwood’s true mission would be finished. Matt cleared his throat, attempted another approach entirely. “You know, it’s the weirdest thing, but you look so damned familiar.”

“Oh?”

“I could swear I’ve met you before.”

Nourwood nodded. “I get that a lot.”

Matt doubted it. “College, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where’d you go to college?”

Nourwood seemed to hesitate. “Madison,” he said, almost grudgingly.

“You’re kidding me! I’ve got a bunch of friends who went there. What year’d you graduate?”

He caught Kate giving him a poisonous look. She had this astonishing ability to talk and eavesdrop at the same time. In truth, Matt didn’t know a single person who’d gone to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. But if Matt could get Nourwood to give him a year of graduation, he’d finally be able to unearth something on this guy.

Nourwood looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t really socialize much in college,” he said. “I doubt I’d know any of your friends. Anyway, I didn’t-I didn’t exactly graduate. Long story.” A taut laugh.

“Love to hear it.”

“But not a very interesting story. Maybe some other time.”

“I’ll take a rain check,” Matt said. “We’d love to have you guys over sometime. What’s your cell number?” Of course, Matt had no intention of inviting the Nourwoods over. Not in a million years. But there had to be ways to trace a cell phone number.

“I should have my new mobile phone in a day or two,” Nourwood said. “Let me take yours.”

Touché, Matt thought. He smiled like an idiot while he scrambled for a response. “You know, it’s funny, I’m blanking on it.”

“Is that your mobile phone right there, clipped to your belt?”

“Oh,” Matt said, looking down, flushing with embarrassment.

“Your number’s easy to find on the phone. Here, let me take a look.”

Nourwood reached for Matt’s phone, but Matt put his hand over it. Just then, Matt felt a painful pinch at his elbow. “Excuse us,” Kate said. “Matt, Audrey Kramer needs to ask you something.”

“Hope you find your earrings,” Nourwood said with a wink that sent a chill down Matt’s spine.

“What the hell do you think you were doing in there?” Kate said on the walk home.

Matt, embarrassed, snorted softly and shook his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

“What?”

“The way you were interrogating him? That was out-and-out rude.”

“I was just making conversation.”

“Please, Matt. I know damned well what you were doing. You might as well have put him under the klieg lights. That was way out of line.”

“You notice how he was evading my questions?”

“Fine, so let it drop!”

“Don’t you get it? Don’t you get how dangerous this guy might be?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Matt. You’re doing that Rear Window thing again. Laura seems perfectly nice.”

“There you go: perfectly nice.’ Like that milk that’s about to go bad.”

“The milk is fine,” she snapped. “And I’m not even going to ask what you were doing in front of their house at five in the morning.”

A moment passed. The scuff of their footsteps on the pavement. “You still haven’t heard back from the doctor, have you?”

“Will you please stop asking?”

“But what’s taking him so long?”

“Matt, we’ve been through this three times before.”

“I know,” he said softly.

“And we always come through just fine.”

“There’s always the first time.”

“God, you’re such a worrier.”

“Better safe than sorry I worry for both of us.”

“I know,” she said, and she linked arms with him and snuggled close. “I know you do.”

The next morning, as Matt was backing the Escalade out of the garage, he glanced over and saw Nourwood getting into his tiny Toyota, and another idea came to him.

Halfway down the driveway, he stopped the car. For a minute or so he just sat there, enjoying the muted throb of the 6.2-liter all-aluminum V-8 engine with its 403 horsepower and its 517 foot-pounds of torque. He watched Nourwood back his crappy, holier-than-thou subcompact out into the street with a toylike whine and then proceed down Ballard to Centre Street.

James Nourwood was going to work, and Matt Parker was going to follow

Let’s see where you really work. Whoever you really are.

He called his manager, Regina, and told her he was having car trouble and would probably be a little late. She sounded mildly annoyed, but that was her default mode.

Matt kept his Escalade a few cars behind Nourwood’s Yaris, so Nourwood wouldn’t notice. At the end of Centre Street, Nourwood signaled for a right. No traffic light here, just a stop sign, and the morning rush hour was heavy. By the time Matt was able to turn, Nourwood was in the far left lane, almost out of sight, signaling left. That was the way to the Mass Pike westbound. The direction of Hopkinton and ADS headquarters. Maybe he really did work there after all.

Matt followed him around the curve, but then Nourwood abruptly veered into the right lane, onto Washington Street, which made no sense at all. This was a local road. Where was the man going?

When Nourwood turned into a gas station, Matt smiled to himself. Even those damned gas-sipping toy cars needed to fill up from time to time. Matt drove on past the gas station-he couldn’t exactly follow him in-and parked along the curb fifty feet or so ahead. Far enough away that Nourwood wouldn’t notice but close enough to see him leave.

But then Matt noticed something peculiar in his rearview mirror. Nourwood didn’t pull up to a gas pump. Instead, he parked alongside another car, a gleaming blue Ford Focus not much bigger than his own.

Then Nourwood’s car door opened. He got out, looked around quickly, then opened the passenger’s side door of the blue Ford and got in.

Matt’s heart began to thud. Who was Nourwood meeting? The strong morning sun was reflected off the Ford’s windows, turning them into mirrors, impossible to see in. Matt just watched for what seemed an eternity.

It was probably no more than five minutes, as it turned out, before Nourwood got out of the Ford, followed by the driver, a slender, black-haired young man in his twenties wearing khakis and a white shirt and blue tie. With crisp efficiency, the two men switched cars. Nourwood was the first to leave, backing the Ford out of the space, then hanging a left out of the gas station onto Washington Street, back the way he’d come.

Matt, facing the wrong way on Washington Street, didn’t dare attempt a U-turn: too much oncoming traffic. There was nowhere to turn left. Frantic, he pulled away from the curb without looking. A car swerved, horn blasting and brakes squealing. Just up ahead on the right was a Dunkin’ Donuts. Matt turned into the lot, spun around, and circled back. But the blue Ford was gone.

He cursed aloud. If only he had some idea which way Nourwood was headed. West on the turnpike? East? Or maybe not the turnpike at all. Furious at himself, he gave up and proceeded toward the Mass Pike inbound. He’d surely lost the last chance to flush the guy out: Tomorrow was the big day. In the morning, it would be too late.

As he drove onto the ramp and merged with the clotted traffic on the pike, his mind raced. Why had Nourwood switched cars? Why else except to elude detection, to avoid being spotted by someone who might recognize his vehicle?

The inbound traffic was heavy and sluggish, worse than usual. Was there an accident? Construction? He switched on his radio in search of a traffic report. “-According to a spokesman for the FBI’s Boston office,” a female announcer was saying. Then a man’s voice, a thick Boston accent: “You know, Kim, if I worked in one of those buildings downtown, I’d take a personal day. Call it a long weekend. Get an early start on my weekend golf game.” Matt switched the radio off.

Just outside the city, the lines were long at the Allston/ Brighton toll plaza, but not at the Fast Lane booths. Matt had never gotten one of those E-ZPass accounts, though. He didn’t like the idea of putting a transponder on his windshield, an electronic dog tag. He didn’t want Big Brother to know where he was at all times. Sometimes it amazed him how people gave up their right to privacy without a second thought. They just didn’t think about how easily tyranny could move in to fill the vacuum. His brother, Donny, back in Colorado-he understood. He was a true hero.

As he glanced enviously over at the Fast Lane, he saw a bright blue car zipping past. The man behind the wheel had dark hair and a dark complexion.

Nourwood.

He was quite sure of it.

Miraculously, Matt had caught up with him on the highway-only to be on the verge of losing him again! Stuck in the slow lane, with three cars ahead of him. The driver at the booth seemed to be chatting with the attendant, asking directions or whatever. Matt honked, tried to maneuver out of the line, but there was no room. Then he remembered that even if he’d been able to get over to one of the Fast Lanes, he couldn’t just drive through without a transponder. A camera would take a picture of his license plate and send him a ticket, and that was exactly the kind of trouble he didn’t need.

By the time he handed the old guy a dollar bill and a quarter and cleared the booth, Nourwood was gone. Matt accelerated, moved to the left-hand lane-and then, like some desert mirage, caught a glimpse of blue.

Yes. There it was, not far ahead. Nourwood’s cerulean blue Ford was easy to spot, because it was weaving deftly in and out of traffic, crazy fast, like Dale Earnhardt at Daytona.

As if he were trying to shake a tail.

Matt’s Escalade had far more cojones than Nourwood’s silly little Ford. It could do zero to sixty in 6.5, and its passing power wasn’t too shabby either. But he had to be careful. Better to stay back, not draw Nourwood’s attention. Or get pulled over by the cops: Now that would be ironic.

Just up ahead were the downtown exits. Matt normally took the first one, the Copley Square exit. He wondered-the thought dawned on him with a dread that seeped cold into the pit of his stomach-whether Nourwood was headed toward one of the city’s skyscrapers to conduct surveillance, as these guys so often did when a terrorist operation was in the works.

Maybe even the Hancock.

Dear God, he thought. Not that. Of all buildings in Boston, not that.

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 thing 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.”

“We’re going to be Robert and Angela Rosenheim.”

“That almost sounds like one of those blended names,” Matt said.

“It’s what the Doctor gave us. We’d better get used to saying it. Okay Robert?”

“Bob. No, let’s make it Rob. Are you Angela or Angie?”

“Angie’s okay.”

“Okay.” He paused. “But what if I had been right about the neighbors? Because one of these times I’m going to be. You know that.”

“Well,” Kate said, almost sheepishly. “I did take the precaution of letting the air out of their tires.”