A Quarter for a Kiss

by Mindy Starns Clark

  It was empty, but the cleaners had left a bill for their services on the kitchen counter. “Sid’s Glass” had also shown up and replaced the broken window, as their bill sat on the table next to that of the cleaners.

  “Poor Stella,” I said, putting down the note. “Imagine having to deal with this while your husband clings to life in the hospital.”

  “You should probably get down there,” Tom said. “I’m sure she’s wondering what’s going on with us.”

  “I don’t think we should tell her much about what we’ve learned,” I said, thinking of the more intimate details of this case. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Whatever you think’s best.”

  “I also don’t know how much we should tell the police, either,” I said. “Some of the things Eli did in his investigation aren’t exactly—”

  “For now, we don’t tell the police a thing,” Tom interrupted. “Let them work the case from their own angles.”

  He was acting odd, almost antsy, still jingling his keys. I wanted to talk, but something in his face was closed off to me. Instead, I reached for his hand.

  He squeezed mine in return but then let it go and gestured toward the door.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drop you at the hospital so you can sit for a while with Stella.”

  “Then where are you going?” I asked.

  He looked away.

  “I have to make a phone call,” he said finally.

  “A phone call?” I asked. “Why don’t you make it here before we go?”

  He shook his head, not meeting my eyes.

  “I need to make a call on a secure line.”

  I studied his face for a moment, trying to understand what he was telling me. Secure, as in private?

  Or digitally secure, as in scrambled?

  “And where will you go to make this phone call?” I asked slowly. “Is this regarding Eli’s situation or something of your own?”

  He looked at me for a long moment.

  “Both,” he replied finally. “I have to make a digitally scrambled call, Callie, which means going somewhere that has that type of telephone equipment.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like a local FBI office, maybe, or a military base. Something like that.”

  “You should try the Kennedy Space Center,” I said. “It’s not far from here. I bet they could help you.”

  “Good idea. Either way, this is not a call I can make on just any telephone. And I’m sorry, but you can’t come with me.”

  There it was. Laid out for me, plain and simple. Except I didn’t understand it one bit.

  From the set of his chin, I could tell the conversation was over for now. Without responding, I picked up my purse and walked past him to the car.

  We didn’t speak on the drive. When we pulled under the front awning of the hospital, I reached for the file, but Tom put his hand on it.

  “I’ll keep it for now,” he said.

  We sat there with the engine idling. I removed my hand and placed it on my lap.

  “How long will you be gone?” I asked evenly.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “As long as it takes. But I’ll pick you up when I’m finished.”

  I nodded, a part of me wanting to reach out and grab his shirt by the collar and shake the truth out of him. Instead I opened the door and got out.

  “Take as long as you want,” I said, shutting the door a little harder than I probably needed to. Then I turned and walked into the hospital as quickly as my legs would carry me—uncertain if my overriding emotion was one of anger, hurt, or fear.

  Eleven

  Once inside the hospital, I walked across the lobby, around a corner, and then doubled back and hid behind a large plant. I watched Tom’s rental pull out of the hospital parking lot onto the road. I quickly ran back outside, thinking that if there were a cab anywhere in the vicinity, I would jump in and say “Follow that car!”

  Unfortunately, no cabs were to be seen. I stood there a moment on the pavement and watched Tom’s car disappear around a corner. Suddenly I decided I was now ready to cross that line in the sand.

  What was it he had said to me that time he caught me digging around? You can investigate me or you can work for me, but you cannot do both. I wondered what he would say if I investigated him now.

  Half of me knew that would be wrong. Tom was a good man, and if there were secrets in his life, they were necessary secrets. The other half of me burned to know what it was that connected Tom with this case, and I didn’t care what it would take to get some answers. I didn’t have much time, and I didn’t have many resources, but I thought if I could spend at least one hour searching for the connection, and if I could find something, it would shed a whole new light on what was going on. I told myself that if something about Tom had an impact on this case with Eli, then I had the right to know what that was.

  I didn’t have my laptop with me, but the woman at the hospital information desk said a public library was a few miles away. She offered to call a cab, and I waited for it under the portico out front.

  By the time I got to the library, it was 30 minutes to closing time. At least it was a nice facility, very clean, with ample space for bookshelves and groupings of chairs. Fortunately, I didn’t need a library card to use the computers. I chose the one in a back corner where I could use it without anyone seeing what I was doing, and then I got down to business.

  I worked quickly, hoping to get as much information as I could in the time I had. I knew that any number of my actions could somehow trip Tom’s security and alert him to what I was doing. At this point I didn’t care. I told myself that my main concern here was Eli. I would do anything to figure out exactly what was going on.

  I started with a simple Google search for “Tom Bennett,” but it didn’t do me much good. As I had feared, the name was just too common. My search netted more than 2 million hits, far more than I would ever have time to go through one by one to weed out the particular Tom Bennett I was interested in.

  Just in case, I clicked through the first few pages’ worth of links, but none of them panned out. Instead, I found myself viewing websites about artists and lawyers and even a commissioner—all named Tom Bennett. All not him. I tried again with “Thomas Bennett,” but it simply returned more of the same.

  Sitting back in my chair, I decided to type “Tom Bennett” along with certain keywords to pull up only articles that featured his name plus the additional word or words. I tried “Tom Bennett + Eli Gold.” “Tom Bennett + NSA.” “Tom Bennett + spy.” “Tom Bennett + Russia.” All of my entries netted a lot of sites to wade through but no true hits.

  It wasn’t until I tried “Tom Bennett + computer” that I got something that caught my eye.

  It was from an old archived magazine article about a famous cryptographer who created an unbreakable e-mail computer encryption program. With the article was a photo of a group of people, and the caption on the photo said “Water walkers—the best and the brightest.” It went on to list the names of the people in the photo, including Tom Bennett. I would’ve thought it was another useless site except that there, in the picture, was a younger Tom—my Tom—looking back at me.

  “Water walkers?” I whispered. I had never heard that term.

  Suddenly, the loudspeaker announced that the library would be closing in ten minutes. I had spent 20 minutes finding something, and now they were telling me to wrap it up!

  I skimmed the article, and what I read made my heart pound.

  Apparently, “water walker” was a cryptology term for a person who seemed to know exactly what direction to take when breaking a secret code. Like walking on water, they seemed to perform miracles in code-breaking, almost effortlessly.

  Was Tom really a water walker, a breaker of secret codes?

  I sat back in my chair and thought for a moment. I didn’t know all that much about cryptology. I knew it was a science that dated back thousands of years but one that had changed dr
astically with the advent of computers. I knew that the World War II allied code breakers were credited with shortening the war when they finally broke the great German code, Enigma. I knew that even in times of peace the government had legions of code breakers working around the clock to decipher messages from across the globe. But that was about all I knew.

  Time was running short, too short to sit and simply think, so with one eye on the clock, I clicked on the links that were attached to the article. I finally hit pay dirt on the third one.

  It was an article from a 1996 issue of Time magazine, a list of the 25 most influential people on the internet. “Most of these people you’ve never heard of…” the article began, “but rest assured they are the key movers and shakers of the internet revolution.” The introductory paragraphs were followed by a photo and a short profile of each person. There, at number 19, was Tom Bennett. Beside his name was the heading “Crypto Genius.”

  “The library will be closing in five minutes,” the voice on the loudspeaker said. Looking up, I saw a library employee headed my way, trying to catch my eye. My time was up.

  I clicked “Print” and hoped this computer allowed printing. Sure enough, there was a small printer next to the machine, and after a moment it sprang to life.

  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to get off the computer now,” the woman said to me sweetly. “We’ll reopen again at nine o’clock Monday morning.”

  “How do I pay for this?” I asked, pointing to the printer.

  “Ten cents a page. You can pay at the desk,” she said before walking away.

  When the printing was finished, I removed my pages, clicked off the website, and went to the front counter to fork over 60 cents. From the corner of my eye, I watched the employee return to the computers and shut them down. Then I folded the pages I had printed into thirds and walked out into the street.

  It was growing dark, too dark to stand there and read the entire article, though I desperately wanted to. I called the cab company on my cell phone, and while I waited for them to pick me up, I read as much as I could. My heart quickened as I reached the part about Tom:

  19. Tom Bennett, Crypto Genius

  Looking more like a movie star than a techno-nerd, Tom Bennett has emerged as one of a handful of bright young cryptologists to set the world of internet privacy on its ear. Bennett’s e-mail encryption program allows users to encode computer messages for complete e-mail security. Though Bennett is a hero of privacy advocates and civil rights leaders worldwide, he is also the target of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation regarding the violation of U.S. export restrictions.

  Criminal investigation? The FBI?

  Hands shaking, I folded the paper, tucked it into my purse, and climbed into the cab that had pulled up in front of me.

  “Cape Canaveral Hospital, please,” I said, my head spinning.

  Was this Tom’s big secret? That he’d been convicted by the FBI and sent to prison? All sorts of wild scenarios played out in my head. He often alluded to the work he did “for the government.” Maybe he’d been convicted and had negotiated a trade: code breaking for the FBI in exchange for his freedom?

  I refused to believe it! Tom, my Tom, my sweet and generous Tom, would not have broken the law, would not have kept from me a secret of this magnitude. As we sped toward the hospital in the darkness, I decided I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I’d show him the article and let him tell me what had really happened.

  By the time we reached the hospital, I was convinced it was all a terrible mistake. Whatever connection Eli shared with Tom, it could be explained. Whatever FBI matter this article alluded to had certainly come to naught.

  The cab pulled under the portico, and I paid and got out, nearly walking into Jodi and Stella in the lobby.

  Stella looked terrible. She was leaning heavily onto Jodi, who wasn’t looking much better herself.

  “Hi,” I said, trying not to look flustered. “Looks like I caught you on your way out.”

  “Our pastor came and prayed with us,” Stella replied. “The deacons are going to take turns staying through the night. They’re insisting we go home and go to bed. I don’t think I’ve stayed up for this many hours straight since Jodi was a baby.”

  I felt a surge of guilt that this afternoon, while Stella was keeping the vigil at her husband’s bedside, Tom and I were napping at the neighbor’s. Still, he and I were pretty much running on empty as well. It had been a long day, long night, and another long day.

  “How is Eli?”

  “Exactly the same,” said Jodi. “He’s still unconscious, still listed as critical.”

  “Do you have any news for me?” Stella asked, leaning toward me. I saw desperation in her eyes, and I wished I could answer her in the affirmative.

  “I’m sorry, Stella,” I said. “We’ve been investigating all day, but so far we don’t have any solid theories.” She looked so devastated, I added, “Though we do have some leads.”

  “The police are being idiots about the whole thing,” she said. “They’ve been questioning Jodi, questioning my sons—”

  “Are your sons in town?”

  “No. They can’t get here until tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  “The police refuse to look at the obvious, which is that Eli was working on a case and it got him shot.”

  “That’s why Tom and I are here,” I said softly. “To take that theory and run with it.”

  The three of us talked for a moment longer, but they were looking so tired I suggested they go on home. Stella insisted that we come and stay there too, and though she was mostly being considerate, I think a part of her was frightened as well and she wanted safety in numbers. After her husband’s shooting and the subsequent looting, I didn’t blame her. I said we would pick up something to eat on the way and meet them back at the condo where we would, indeed, stay the night.

  Fortunately, Tom showed up to get me not long after they left.

  “How’s Eli?” he asked as soon as I got into the car.

  “About the same,” I replied.

  Except for a quick stop at a Wendy’s, the rest of the ride was silent.

  As we steered across town and then through the maze of the condominium complex, I wondered what he was thinking. Had his secure phone call netted him any sort of information? Was he ready to sit and tell me everything he had learned? As exhausted as I was, I didn’t think I would sleep until I knew where he had gone and what he had found out.

  Whether I was willing to tell him the same about myself, I just wasn’t sure.

  Twelve

  Dinner was a somber affair, with Tom, Stella, and me eating at the table and Jodi nearby at the counter, alternating bites of her food with returning the numerous phone messages that had been left on Stella’s voice mail. Certainly, Stella and Eli were popular, as there must have been at least 20 calls from friends who had heard the news and wondered how he was and if there was anything they could do. Many offered cakes or casseroles, which made me smile. That was the Southern way, I knew: When tragedy strikes and all else fails, bring food.

  Jodi handled the calls with surprising aplomb, thanking each person for their concern, updating them on Eli’s condition, coordinating meals so there would be something here to eat all week, and conveying her mother’s request for prayers. For their closer friends, Jodi also organized times that each of them could come and sit at the hospital, either with Stella or in her place. By the time all of the calls had been returned, I was exhausted just listening to them.

  “That was impressive,” I said when she rejoined us at the table. “You sure know how to get all your ducks in a row.”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Stella said, beaming at her daughter with the first smile I’d seen on her face all evening. “We call Jodi the Great Coordinator. She was born to administrate.”

  “A weird sort of skill, I’m sure,” Jodi added modestly.

  “Don’t be shy,” Stella said. “Jodi was student body secretary
in college, not to mention president of her sorority.”

  Stella went on to talk about her daughter’s numerous accomplishments, which served to embarrass Jodi and enlighten me. I had to admit, until then I had been thinking of her as a bit of a lightweight.

  I was most interested in the work Jodi had done between college and grad school, supervising several large fund-raisers on behalf of some local nonprofits—a golf event, a formal ball, and a few auctions. According to Stella, each event had gone flawlessly and had brought in record-breaking donations. As she talked I was reminded again of Jodi’s desire to give away her trust fund to charity, and I made a mental note to talk to her about it sometime when we were alone. I thought it was a wonderful idea, of course, but I felt I could give her some guidance for choosing the appropriate charity.

  “We were so disappointed when Jodi traipsed off to Europe to study fashion design,” Stella said, rolling her eyes. “Forget all that! If ever there was a born MBA, this is the girl.”

  Jodi shrugged, looking down at her plate.

  “I didn’t get very far with it anyway,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter now.”

  Sensing a minefield between mother and daughter, I feigned a yawn and steered the conversation toward sleeping arrangements. This was only a two-bedroom condo, so I suggested that either Tom or I sleep over at the neighbor’s place.

  “That sounds good,” Tom said, jumping into the conversation for the first time since dinner began. “I’ll stay there.”

  I didn’t blame him, as I’m sure he wasn’t all that comfortable sharing a bathroom with three women, two of whom he hardly knew. Stella offered me the guest room, but I insisted on taking the couch. I had a feeling Jodi might be here a while, and she might as well get settled into the spare room from the beginning.

  “I told Eli we needed a three- or four-bedroom unit for when company comes,” Stella said, looking as if she might tear up. “But there wasn’t much available at the time, and we had to choose between the extra bedrooms or the ocean view. We took the view.”