Page 31 of The Lie Maker

So then she tried the two senators’ offices. Got through to the communications departments and said she was trying to get an email address for a Jack Givins. They said they didn’t believe they had anyone working for them by that name, but if Lana wanted to hold, they would check.

When they came back on, they said they didn’t have any Givins in their directories. Lana said she must have made a mistake, and offered quick apologies before hanging up.

Hmm, she thought.

So her initial hunch, that Jack had been hired to write speeches for some local politico, appeared to be a nonstarter. That didn’t mean he wasn’t doing that kind of work for someone at some lower level of government, but there were thousands of those.

Lana only had so much time to devote to this foolishness. But it sure would have been fun, next time she saw Jack, to have been able to say, “So, how’s it going putting words into the mouth of so-and-so?” She’d have to dig a little more another day.

Eighteen

Jack

Three days went by before my favorite U.S. marshal, Gwen Kaminsky, got back to me. The cell phone started buzzing a few minutes after ten in the morning.

I picked up.

“Yeah.”

Gwen said, “Grab your notebook. Be out front in five.” Before I could say anything, she’d ended the call.

One of the pluses of working from home is that there’s not what you would call a strict dress code. I was not, at this hour, wearing anything more than a pair of boxers. Nor had I showered or shaved.

I’d stayed up past midnight, watching one talk show after another but not really registering what the hosts and their vapid guests were saying. I was having a hard time getting to sleep.

This whole thing with Gwen was bothering me. When she didn’t get back to me within twenty-four hours of our last conversation, I figured the gig was over. She wasn’t going to let me talk to her person for whom I was creating a past, and if that was the case, I didn’t see how I could proceed. It was like grasping at air. There was nothing to latch on to. And I was still not convinced that Gwen had come to pick me randomly. I felt there was more to it than she was letting on, and that was making me uneasy.

Maybe, at some point, I’d press the issue.

And as Lana had pointed out the other night, I was always, figuratively or literally, looking over my shoulder. A couple of times that night I’d pulled back the curtain and looked down at the street. Twice I had noticed some low-slung sports car—an older-model Corvette, maybe—with someone behind the wheel. I could tell someone was there by the orange, glowing dot. The driver was having a smoke.

The third time I looked, the car was gone. I finally flopped onto the couch and fell asleep around one in the morning.

I awoke after nine and drank some coffee while I read the news on my laptop at the kitchen table.

And then at ten, my five-minute warning.

Five minutes was more than enough time to get my act together. I showered, skipped shaving, and pulled on jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. As I was coming out the front door, pushing one arm into my windbreaker, then switching my notebook to my other hand so I could get my other arm in, that familiar black van did a U-turn out front and stopped at the curb.

The side door, its window tinted almost to black, slid open. Gwen, in the center seat, beckoned me with a finger.

I stepped forward, hesitating briefly because I didn’t know whether she wanted me next to her, or to take a spot in the back row. She pointed a thumb that way, so that was where I parked myself. I put my notebook on the seat beside me.

“Did you bring a cell phone?” she asked, turning in her seat to face me.

“My own or the one you gave me?”

“Both. Either.” When I nodded, she said, “Hand them over.”

I dug the two phones out of my jacket pocket. “What’s the problem?”

As she took them she glared at me like I was a clueless two-year-old. “Why don’t we just tell the bad guys where our witness is?”

“Are you saying I’m being tracked?” I asked, a chill running through me.

“I’m saying we have to be careful. Always.”

The side door slid shut magically, no doubt at the touch of a button from the guy behind the steering wheel, my friend Scorsese. As the van began to move, Gwen handed me a long strip of black cloth.

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