FUNKYWORLD: CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

Meanwhile…

Dygart James was just settling in to read one of the many paperback books that had been arranged into piles here and there around his living room when his cell phone rang. Rolling his eyes and laying The Simon and Schuster’s Guide to Cats aside, he retrieved the phone from the end table that served as his coffee table.

“Yeah,” he said.

“It’s me.”

Annoyed, Dygart retorted, “Who else would it be?”

“Meet me in one hour. Mary Poppins.”

Dygart returned the telephone to the table and laid his cat book down on the pile atop “Bogle on Mutual Funds.” After checking his watch, he figured he had just enough time for a shower before he needed to leave.

Fifty-nine minutes later…

Dygart sat in his BMW looking at his watch, waiting for his meeting to arrive. He was sitting in the parking lot of Café Mozart on Northwest H Street in Washington, D.C. (codenamed “Mary Poppins” for the purpose of these meetings). A light drizzle of rain had started coming down as Dygart was en route to the meeting place. Now the rain was making a full assault—pattering down on his BMW relentlessly.

Dygart, who had never been late for an appointment in his life, was annoyed when his watch ticked to 04:01 (one minute past the meeting time) and his meeting was nowhere to be found.

Finally, a pair of headlamps pulled into the lot—the most recent model Cadillac DeVille. The other car pulled up to Dygart’s, facing the opposite direction so as to align their driver’s side windows.

Dygart rolled down his window. “You’re late,” he told his meeting.

“What?” the meeting asked, cupping his ear. His voice was barely audible over the rain, which was soaking the interior of Dygart’s BMW. “Fucking rain,” the meeting said as he handed a plastic expanding portfolio over to Dygart. “There’s the job! She got off a plane in Houston this morning. But I think that’s bullshit. She used an alias that she would have to have known that we knew. Anyway--” The man waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

“How do you want it done?”

“What?”

“How do you want it done?!”

The meeting threw a smoldering cigarette butt down on the ground. “I want it done soon! We don’t know exactly how long she’s been out of pocket. God knows what she’s been up to. Zero exposure!”

“Something like the Maryland job?”

The meeting’s eyes widened. “Jesus fucking Christ, no! Nothing like the Maryland job, you sick fucking bastard! Nothing like the Maryland job!”

“I thought that was a good, clean job.”

“Good and clean, right. A good, clean horror!”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it worked! It fucking worked, all right! But ya got bodies stacked up like—“ He stopped himself, took a deep breath. Then, holding one hand to his chest, the meeting took four or five steady, regulated breaths before continuing in a much calmer tone: “Nothing like the Maryland job. Nothing like the Maryland job ever again. Is that clear?”

“Gotcha!” Dygart replied, smiling to himself.

“Call me when it’s done!”

“Listen,” Dygart warned, “If you’re late for one more meeting, the next job is you.”

It was apparent that this statement was a serious disruption to the meeting’s breathing exercises. “I was two fucking minutes late, you crazy mother fucking son of a bitch!”

“Talk to ya soon, Deepak.”

Dygart sped away from the now hyperventilating bureaucrat. On his way back to his apartment on K Street, he opened the portfolio while waiting for a traffic light. He read the name on the primary file aloud:

“Ramona Funk.”

Several hours had passed by the time Dygart got home, got comfortable in his boxer shorts and T-shirt (both neatly pressed), and read all of the documents in Ramona Funk’s portfolio. It was an odd collection of documents, as it was the first job he’d received that had large sections of the paperwork redacted. Most of it was in regards to her training as a deep-cover “free agent,” which meant that if things ever went bad for her, no government agency would claim her.

“You and me both, sweetheart,” he said with a nod toward Ramona Funk’s photo.

Concerning her current location, the paperwork included notations of a certain high-level PLO member negotiating with the CIA through “an unnamed temporary asset” for repatriation to the United States. After logging on to the CIA database from his home computer, he discovered that this high-level PLO émigré was last known to be residing in Memphis, Tennessee.

Good enough for a start, he decided.

He had to search for a while to find his regular Agency cell phone, which he finally found under a pile of books that had fallen from atop his one, rickety bookshelf. He dialed the number for the CIA’s in-house “travel agency.”

“I need to thumb wrestle,” he said when a perky young woman answered the telephone, wondering who in the hell was coming up with these silly telephone codes lately.

“Sneaky snake?” was the proper response given by the girl on the other side.

“It’s all good.”

“Until you lose.”

“Or until you give it up for Lent.”

He heard the girl clacking on her keyboard a moment; then she asked, “How may I help you?”

“I need a ticket from D.C. to Memphis, Tennessee.”

“Next available?” the girl asked.

“Yes, please.”

“One moment.”

Dygart sat for a full 30 seconds with nothing but the clack-clacking of a keyboard on the other end of the line. Finally, the girl said, “I have a ticket under the name of Terrance Jones leaving at 3:15 pm.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“All righty. We’ll get it right out.”

“Thanks.”

An hour later a courier arrived at Dygart’s door with a bulky, brown envelope. Dygart signed for the delivery and gave the courier a $3 tip. Now dressed in suit pants and a perfectly starched, open-collar shirt, Dygart opened the envelope and inspected its contents: one driver’s license with his picture in the name of Terrance Jones (from the great state of Texas), two credit cards and a flight itinerary. It was now thirteen-hundred-three hours by Dygart’s watch. If Ramona Funk was in Memphis, Dygart figured, he could have the job done within 24 hours.

He packed two pieces of luggage: one carry-on bag with his shaving kit, one change of clothes, and “Simon and Schuster’s Guide to Cats” (to read on the plane). The other bag was larger and filled with two unread stacks of paperbacks including “The 1999 Time Almanac,” “They’re Here: ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’: A Tribute, “Planet of the Apes,” “Culture of Narcissism,” and “The Biographical Sherlock Holmes” among others. The weight of the case was bound to incur an extra fee, but Dygart figured it would be well worth it should he get stuck in a Memphis hotel room for days on end.

  ¶ 4:50 AM