In the Company of Liars

ONE DAY EARLIER
MONDAY, MARCH 1

Allison sits in her living room, stirring a cup of tea aimlessly, as the workers go through each of her rooms. There are actually companies that specialize in cleanups of crime scenes. This doesn’t qualify, exactly; there is no blood or guts here, but the place has been tossed to the state of being almost unrecognizable since the county sheriff’s deputies searched her house Saturday.

Men and women in blue uniforms are restoring everything to where it was, leaving the obvious question of how they wouldknow where everything was. She imagines that when they are finished, she will have to improve on their work. But it’s still preferable to give them the first shot, picking up everything off the floor and putting things back in drawers.

Okay, to be fair: The cops tried not to obliterate the place when they came through. The sheriff’s deputies didn’t whip clothes out of drawers but just felt around. A marble statuette hidden in a lingerie drawer could be detected without having to pull out all of her bras. But they pulled the drawers out, moved furniture, pulled up the edges of some of the carpeting, even took a loose floorboard in her hallway and yanked it out. Plus, they didn’t wipe their shoes very well when they came in. The place was a mess. At the end of it all, they walked away empty-handed.

What, she’s dumb enough to hide that trophy in her house?

She hears two vacuum cleaners shut off, almost in sync, upstairs. There must be ten of them, which makes their work go quickly. It’s not yet noon, and the leader-foreman?-approaches her with an invoice. He doesn’t look her directly in the face. He knows who she is. It’s hard to live in this city right now and not recognize the nameAllison Pagone.

“All done, ma’am,” the man says.

“Please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It makes me feel old.”

“You don’t look old-Ms. Pagone.” He smiles at her as he hands her the invoice on a clipboard. “Five hundred even.”

“Can I pay with a credit card?”

“Oh-yeah, okay. We prefer checks.”

“I prefer credit.”

“It’s out in my truck.”

“I’ll go with you. Anything to be out of the house for two minutes.”

She goes without a coat and instantly regrets it. She walks up to the white van, with the nameAAA -AFTERMATHemblazoned on the side, and smiles to herself. These guys will do anything to be first in the phone book.

“Door’s unlocked,” he says. She gets into the passenger seat, he takes the driver’s side.

Once inside, the man leans in to her. “It’s what’s called an Infinity transmitter,” he says to her. “Very, very high-tech stuff. There’s one in your bedroom and one in your living room. Right where you were sitting just now, on that purple couch.”

Allison’s mother, God rest her soul, would hate to hear that couch described as purple. “What does that mean?” Allison asks, gathering her arms around herself. “What’s an Infinity transmitter?”

“Well, for your purposes-think of it two ways. First, anything you say on your phone will be overheard. But it’s a dual-purpose-think of it as a microphone, too. They can hear anything you say in the house, pretty much. It can probably cover about three, four hundred feet. So I’d say”-the man raises his chin, purses his lips-“the living room and the kitchen. Anything you say in either of those rooms, and obviously anything you say on the phone in there, will be heard and probably recorded. Then, your bedroom. Anything you say in the bedroom or the master bath, they can hear. I can’t give you a guarantee beyond that. The hallways, the foyer, I don’t know. But they’ve got both phones covered. And they’ve got the main places in your house where they’d expect you to have conversations. You really want to talk in private, go outside, and even then, keep your voice down.” The man nods. “These guys know what they’re doing.”

“So let me make sure I understand this.” Allison stares at her house as if it’s a prison. “If I talk on either phone, or talk in my living room, or kitchen, or master bedroom-they will hear everything I say.”

“Yes. And record it, no doubt. They can listen to it contemporaneously or later, at their convenience.”

“Okay,” Allison says, a chill coursing through her. “They can’tsee me, though, right?”

“Correct. It’s only audio.”

“Super.”

“The bad news is, you have a serious loss of privacy here. But the good news is, you know about it. You can work it to your advantage. They’re wearing a blindfold, Ms. Pagone. And they can only hear what youlet them hear.”

“Okay.” Allison sighs, braces herself for the cold outside. “Only what I let them hear,” she repeats.