Chapter 4
Really?
It’s unusual to meet off campus, but I don’t question it.
Maybe this gig is more undercover than I realized.
I head north, wending my way past hundreds of men and women in charcoal suits—lawyers, judges, and government workers, all rushing off to jobs that must seem important. Just as mine once did.
I spot Metcalf at a booth way in the back.
He’s frowning at a corn muffin. Who could be annoyed at a corn muffin?
It doesn’t take much to set this guy off.
Years ago, when I worked for him, someone taped a hand-lettered sign to his door: EASILY IRRITATED.
We all thought the guy who did it would be fired.
He wasn’t. Turned out, Metcalf enjoyed being known as a dick.
I slide in opposite him.
“What do you know about the art world?” he asks.
“And good morning to you too,” I say. The art world? I’ve got a couple of Happy Birthday, Miss Gilbert finger paintings from my music students taped to my refrigerator. That’s about it.
“We got an anonymous tip,” he says. “Some guy who runs an art gallery in Mamaroneck may be laundering money for a Mexican cartel. Las Serpientes,” he says. “You look surprised,” he adds.
I am. “A small art gallery? In a small Westchester County suburb? Hardly sounds like it would be worth a cartel’s time.”
Metcalf sneers just a bit.
Uh-oh. My first demerit. I backpedal. “What I mean is, if it was one of those established New York galleries—”
“Then it wouldn’t be under-the-radar, would it?” he says. He breaks off a piece of corn muffin and butters it. “C’mon, Elinor. You should know how these things work. You’ve been to the rodeo before.”
Now I’m the one who’s EASILY IRRITATED. True, I worked in fraud for a while, but never in money laundering. Still, I know how huge a problem it is. At one point, the Medellín Cartel had so much cash, they spent two thousand a month just on rubber bands.
“The guy is an art dealer named Ben Harrison,” Metcalf says. “We think the cartel is buying art from Harrison, then holding it in storage.”
“In Westchester?”
“Westchester, Geneva, could be anywhere. When they’re ready, they sell it for wildly inflated prices.
Harrison gets a cut on both ends, dirty money gets clean, and some rich sucker somewhere owns a piece of art he thinks is valuable because he trusted a sketchy dealer.
So everybody’s happy. Well, except the US government. ”
“And my job would be…”
“Find proof. We want to know everything about Ben Harrison. Who he meets. Who he talks to. Neighbors he’s suing.
Hookers he’s screwing. Habits, hobbies, fetishes.
Anything we can use to flip him. Hell,” he says, taking his final bite of the corn muffin and brushing crumbs off his green-and-yellow polyester tie, “if he has an unusual bowel movement, we want to know about it.”
“You’re a classy guy, Metcalf, you know that?” Most people would be insulted by this. But Metcalf is not most people. He smiles.
Surveillance gigs usually mean sitting in a car outside a suspect’s home or digging through phone records and checking credit histories. But there’s only so much you can glean from that.
“And, uh, exactly how close do you want me to get to this guy?” I ask.
“You’ll be living with him.”
“What?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he says. “He’s married. Second marriage. Trophy wife. New baby.”
“So I’ll be—what? His social secretary?”
“No.”
I hope he doesn’t ask me to be the guy’s personal chef. I use my oven to store sweaters.
“Actually, we’d be putting you in there as a baby nanny.”
I start to laugh. “You gotta be kidding. I don’t know anything about babies.”
“You’ll learn,” he says.
He takes a book out of his briefcase and slides it over to me: What to Expect the First Year. This is my official FBI briefing? I mean, I know the government has a thirty-four-trillion-dollar budget deficit. But still.
“People have been taking care of babies since the cavemen,” he says.
“Cavewomen,” I say. I slide the book back to him.
“Men, women, what’s the difference? Everybody likes babies. You do too, don’t you?”
“Sure I do. Love ’em. In other people’s arms or homes or uteruses. Just not mine.”
“Elinor, you’re being unreasonable.”
“Metcalf, this is nuts. There’s gotta be someone else more suited for this. Some bright-eyed young summer intern who wants to jump-start her career.”
“True,” he says. And is it my imagination, or is he starting to smile? “But at your age, you’ll be able to dig around without being noticed.”
Of course. I’m the Invisible Woman. For a moment I almost forgot.
He pulls a thick envelope from his briefcase. “Here,” he says, handing it to me. “A license plate for your car…”
“I don’t have a car.”
“… plus two new credit cards and the burner phone you’ll use from now on. It has end-to-end encryption.”
“Meaning?”
“Only you and me can read our texts. Hide your old cell someplace. In a shoe, under your vibrator, I don’t care where. Just get rid of it.”
“Listen, Metcalf—”
“You graduated from Penn State in 1985.”
“No, I—”
“It’s already part of your Instagram account.”
“I don’t have an Instagram account.”
“You do now,” he says. “An account on Facebook too. Your new name is Caroline Babulewicz. Feel free to google it.”
“That’s a terrible name. I don’t even know how to spell it.”
“Check your new driver’s license. That’s in here too.
Oh, and I already notified the school where you work that you’ve had a family emergency and won’t be coming back for a while.
Tomorrow, we’ll fit you for your new uniform.
You’ll go for an interview the next day and start the day after that,” he says.
“I’m out of here,” I say.
I start to stand but Metcalf grabs my wrist. He holds it tight. Too tight.
The coffee shop is filling up now. A lot more people. Lots more noise. He leans in a little closer so that when he speaks, I’ll hear every word.
“It’s an FBI-DOJ-approved Group Two undercover operation,” he says. “Do this for us, and we’ll rehire you and pay you what you would have been making now had you stayed at the FBI all these years, including benefits.”
“Metcalf, let go of my wrist—”
“Plus we’ll reinstate your pension and backdate it. It’ll be like you never left.”
“I said let go. You’re hurting me.”
“The previous ten years? Let’s just call that an extended sabbatical. That’s all anyone has to know. Oh, and we’ll throw in a GOV starting right now. What do you think?”
I hate what I’m thinking.
Cash. My pension back. Health insurance. Long-term disability. A chance to reclaim my reputation. And a government-owned vehicle.
Even with all that, I want to say no. But I can’t. And I’m embarrassed to say what finally tips the scales in his favor.
I’m a New Yorker. He agreed to throw in free garage parking.