High Crimes

At one end of the spacious kitchen was a corner where Annie stashed her vast collection of toys, which included a ragged Elmo, a torn Kermit the Frog puppet, a battle-scarred Mr. Potato Head. There were dozens of others that Annie hadn’t touched or even noticed in months. A large television set faced a tattered, slipcovered sofa stained with a thousand microwaved frozen macaroni-and-cheeses, a thousand sippy-cups of grape juice, a thousand red popsicles (no flavor known to man, just red).

“Come on, kiddo,” Jackie said, “come eat with your mommy and me.”

“No.”

“We’re a family,” Claire said, exasperated. “We eat together. And you’re not having macaroni-and-cheese. Jackie made some delicious chicken.”

Annie ran over to the sofa and defiantly popped the Beauty and the Beast video into the VCR. “I want macaroni-and-cheese,” she said.

“Not on the menu tonight, kiddo,” Jackie said. “Sorry.” To Claire, she said: “You poor thing. What would you do without me?”

“I don’t know,” Claire acknowledged, and said, louder: “Okay, listen, Annie. Come over here.”

Her daughter obediently returned, stood erect in front of Claire as if at an army inspection. She knew she had maneuvered herself onto the shoals of big trouble.

“If you’ll eat the chicken Jackie made, you can watch Beauty and the Beast. On the couch.”

“Okay!” Annie said, running back to the couch. “Excellent!” She pressed the VCR’s play button, and dove onto the couch to enjoy the lengthy previews for other Disney videos and the ad for Disney World.

“That’s laying down the law,” Jackie muttered. “You disciplinarian, you.”

“But just this once!” Claire called out lamely. She dished out roast chicken and mashed potatoes on a plate and brought it over to Annie, with a small fork and a napkin. As she turned back to the kitchen table, she noticed something outside the window, a dark shape visible through the lilac bushes.

A dark-blue government car: a Crown Victoria. Jackie saw Claire staring out the window and said, “Aren’t these goons outside driving you crazy?”

“You have no idea,” Claire said. “One followed me to and from work today.”

“You can’t do anything about it?”

“Well, they’re on public property. They’re respecting the curtilage.”

“The who?”

“Curtilage. The area of privacy around a dwelling. They’re not trespassing. They have the right to be there.”

“What about your freedom of — I don’t know, freedom not to be molested by goons?”

Claire half smiled. “Of course, maybe I could go to court to get a 209-A restraining order against them. Make ’em stay a hundred yards away from me.”

“Yeah,” Jackie said, “I bet that would go over big, trying to get some local judge to order the federal government to back off. I don’t think so.”

“I called Tom’s office,” Claire said. She returned to the table and, stomach tight, tried to regain an appetite for the dinner Jackie had cooked. “Apparently Tom left e-mail messages for his chief trader, Jeff Rosenthal, and his assistant, Vivian, telling them he had to make a sudden, very hush-hush business trip out of the country. Said he’d be gone for a week, maybe longer. They were wondering what’s going on, because everyone at Chapman & Company was questioned at home by FBI agents asking lots of questions about Tom and his whereabouts.”

“That must’ve made ’em suspicious.”

“To say the least. Tom told them in his e-mail that the FBI might be questioning them in connection with a security clearance. I don’t think they were convinced.”

“No,” Jackie said, “I bet not. They’ve got to be wondering, just like we are.”

Annie went to bed without any trouble, and Claire and Jackie sat in the enclosed sun porch, both smoking. Jackie sipped at a tumbler of Famous Grouse; Claire, in an oversized Gap T-shirt and sweatpants, drank seltzer.

“Well, Annie seems to be holding up okay with Daddy gone,” Jackie said, exhaling a lungful of smoke through her nostrils.

“She’s had her difficult moments,” Claire said.

“You’re not surprised she’s difficult sometimes, are you? Don’t forget, you did read Rosemary’s Baby while you were pregnant. What if she’s really the spawn of Satan?”

Claire smiled pallidly.

“You holding up okay?” Jackie asked.

Claire nodded. “I don’t know what to think. I asked Ray Devereaux to look into it, see what he came up with.”

“They’re telling you he used to have a different name, a different identity — you think they might be telling you the truth?”

“You know him, Jackie,” Claire said. “You know he’s not a murderer.” Claire put her cigarette down in the ashtray.

“I don’t know him,” Jackie replied. “Obviously you don’t know him either.”

“Oh, come on!” Claire cried. “You have good character judgment — so do I. Look how much time we’ve both spent with Tom in the last three years. How can you say you don’t know him?”

“Or is it Ron?”

“Fuck you.”