NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2004
Col. (Ret.) Chuck McCord pointed his camera through a narrow separation in the dark drapes of his living room window. He didn’t like what he saw. Across the street, the Feldsteins’ lawn was overdue for a mowing—again. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now there was the matter of Mrs. Feldstein loading her bags in her car and peeling away—without her husband.
Strange behavior set off the clanking of alarms in the Colonel’s hair-trigger mind. Col. McCord spent his military retirement keeping his eyes on things from behind the living room drapes, or scanning the street from his immaculately swept porch, or watching from the foot of a driveway that glistened with an annual application of sealant. He methodically entered his observations in his college-ruled spiral-bound notebook, which, once filled with notations, would join a growing collection placed in chronological order in the safe of his “safe room.”
In clear and boxy penmanship he wrote:
“FRI 9/10 0800 hrs. Female suspect departs 19 Soundview Ave. Carrying two bags.”
“So now what are you looking at?” his wife asked as she poked her head in from the kitchen. She held her favorite coffee mug, the one from the Colonel’s secret retirement party, with a picture of Lenin and the imprint: I BROUGHT DOWN THE EVIL EMPIRE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY COFFEE MUG.
“Nothing,” McCord insisted.
“What now, Chuck? Communists at the Meltzers’? Aliens at the Slaters’?”
“How about association with terrorists! At the Feldsteins’!” He swung his body toward her, then back to the window, regretting his disclosure. There was a time when you couldn’t get something out of him with a cattle prod. Literally. His discipline was slipping. He was getting rusty. He would punish himself later. With a cattle prod.
“Terrorists. At the Feldsteins’. Oooh-kay, I’m going to watch Good Morning America. You keep your eyes on the terrorists.”
He had heard that mocking tone before. But history always vindicated his suspicions. Who could see around every corner, think five steps ahead, predict threats, and lay out a response?
Colonel (Ret.) Chuck McCord. Patriot.
He climbed the stairs, the exposed wood creaking under his feet, and entered what his wife liked to call “the bunker,” even though real bunkers are underground and this one had a second-story view of the McCords’ immaculate backyard. McCord locked the door behind him.
He leaned over a desk, connected a cable between a digital camera and a laptop, and began downloading multiple images. Images of Rona loading the suitcases in her car. Images of the car backing out of the driveway. And one unflattering shot of a disheveled Morris Feldstein, loosely wrapped in a bathrobe, bending at his curb to retrieve his morning Newsday. He also e-mailed his summary of the conversation he had overheard the night before, while crouching near the Feldsteins’ shrubs.
The Colonel pressed Send and watched as a tiny envelope fluttered before whisking off the screen.
Fairbanks’s computer pinged with an incoming message: an e-mail from Spymaster432@li.net. He opened the attached photographs. A broad and uncharacteristic smile broke across his face.
“Jesus, Mary, and Morris!”
McCord’s message was received. By now, it had probably been intercepted and processed by NICK. Fairbanks’s fingers raced against the keyboard.
“C’mon. C’mon. C’mon!” he hoped as his monitor blinked.
Then:
NICK ALERT NICK ALERT NICK ALERT
YELLOW WATCH UPGRADE
NICK HAS FOUND MULTIPLE THREAT PATTERN[S] FOR FELDSTEIN, MORRIS SOLOMON
UPDATED TERROR PATTERN
DATA FILE: 22/08/NYLIFO/1515HRS/0-14-1827-1452-R
FILED BY HATTTL (HON AGENTS TERRORIST-THREAT TIP LINE)
FIELD OF INTEREST: LONG ISLAND, NY
SEE LINKS:
FELDSTEIN, RONA JANET
FILE # PPI-FELD136-NY-4268-7010(a)
NICK ALERT NICK ALERT NICK ALERT
UPGRADING FELDSTEIN, MORRIS S. TO:
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