The phone number on the screen was not one she knew. She stood still and waited. The answering machine kicked in. A moment later, she heard Michael’s voice say, “bloody wrong number.” The bloody was a work of genius. It didn’t mean anything. It was some swear word people used in England. It wasn’t the kind of thing anybody in America would use. Unless, of course, the Illuminati got wind of what was going on. Then they could use it to try to trick her into betraying herself, or Michael. In this case, though, Michael’s voice had been clear and unmistakable. She turned the ringer on and waited.
The phone rang. The bell was harsh and overloud. The call-waiting screen flickered. Kathi picked up.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen the news today?” Michael asked.
“No.” Kathi bit her lip. She didn’t want to defend herself. It made her feel small. Michael should know by now that she never saw the news before she went out in the morning, and then she only saw it, or heard about it, secondhand.
“Go out and buy yourself a paper,” Michael said. “Don’t read just the front page.”
“What I’m looking for isn’t on the front page?”
“Some of it is. Read the business section too. The really important thing is in the business section.”
“Is there something in particular in the business section?” Kathi hated this part. She hated the business section. It always seemed written in code.
“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “You’ll see what it is as soon as you lay eyes on it. And you’ll see the other thing too. On the front page. The small thing they’re going to pretend is the big story. Go now. I’ll call you back at eight and we can go over what our response should be. Can you get hold of Susan?”
“Yes.” Kathi didn’t want to.
“Good. Get hold of her and have her at your place at eight. Turn on the speaker on the speakerphone. We’ll have a conference call. Now I’ve got to go.”
“But—” Kathi said.
The phone had gone to dial tone in her ear. She hated that sound. She hung up. Her coat was lying across the couch that wasn’t really a couch. It was too small. A “love seat,” people called them. She made a face at it and at the worn spots in what had once been fake velvet but now looked like matted mush. She put her coat on and took her wool hat out of the left-hand pocket. Her gloves—wool gloves, not leather ones—were inside the hat. She hated going out before she had to. Being outside was different from being at home. You were much more exposed. Somebody could shoot you and take all your identification, and even your best friends wouldn’t know for weeks that you were dead.
She went out and locked the door behind her. She had triple locks on all the doors, although she wasn’t in the least worried about ordinary, garden-variety burglars and rapists. She went down the front steps and up the block. This was not a good neighborhood, although it was not one of the worst, either. Here, the houses were interspersed with dry cleaning stores and candy stores and hardware stores. None of the big chains had bothered to venture here except for McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. To go to the bookstore, to go to Starbucks or Radio Shack, you either had to go to better neighborhoods or to the Main Line to the malls.
There was a candy store at the corner that served as a newsstand. The newspapers were out front in a wire rack. There were lots and lots of copies of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a few of both the New York Times and the Washington Post. The headlines in the Times and the Post were about something President Bush was doing that involved Attorney General John Ashcroft. The headline on the Inquirer said:
WIFE OF SLAIN FINANCIER MURDERED
Kathi picked up a copy, found some change in her pocket, and went into the store. The picture of Charlotte Deacon Ross was a posed one that had been taken in a studio. She was shown only from the shoulders up, looking as if she were wearing nothing but pearls.
The newsstand owner took her money and grunted. Kathi ignored him. She thought he might be a spy, but Michael didn’t agree with her. In the long run, it probably didn’t matter. She had tried to give him some of America on Alert’s pamphlets, and he had called her a lot of unpleasant names.
Out on the street again, she stopped and began to page through the newspaper, looking for the financial section. She was not very interested in the death of Charlotte Deacon Ross. It might mean that the police would have to back off on America on Alert, since there was no reason at all why patriots would want to harm a silly Society woman who spent her life planning parties, but the police could always find some way to justify doing what they wanted to do. Besides, she was prepared for everything and anything to come of the murder of Tony Ross, which had been carried out in the way it was carried out precisely because that would make it possible for the authorities to “do something” about the threat that America on Alert posed for them. Nothing was an accident. Nothing was a coincidence. Everything was planned.