Once a Spy by Keith Thomson Page A

as his office, and pulled the door shut delicately, so the click wouldn’t wake four-month-old Alfonso—the living room also served as the nursery.
    “The less you know, the better,” Charlie was saying, “but I need you to help me get hold of my mother or Grudzev’s going to be the least of my problems.” It did not sound like the man was calling with any sort of tip. It did sound like he’d been at the bottle.
    “Your mother?” Mickey whispered for the sake of the baby, four feet away. “Wouldn’t you be wanting a lady with a crystal ball to get hold of her?”
    “Listen for five seconds, please?” Charlie said, as sober as Mickey had ever heard him. “The first of her Social Security checks was forwarded to me from general delivery, Monroeville, Virginia. And last night, my father said something that led me to believe she’s actually still there.”
    “So, you’re thinking, what? Your mom, who’s rich enough that she doesn’t give a shit about seventeen hundred bucks a month, can solve your problems?”
    “For our purposes, that sums it up.”
    “I’m guessing you tried calling four one one?”
    “Every permutation of Isadora VanDeuersen Clark I could think of.The closest I got was an Isaiah Clark in Arlington, which isn’t in any way close. I know if anyone can find her, it’s you.”
    “Directory assistance operators are amateurs,” said Mickey, the once and future PI. He lowered himself into his swivel chair at the computer table that, lately, doubled as a diaper-changing table. He toggled a switch and set his hard drive purring.
    “Fasten your seat belt,” he said to Charlie. “I know a back way into the online databases the directory assistance operators use. Unpublished numbers they can’t access, I can, with just a click of the option key.”
    His browser opened. A mouse click and three keystrokes and he was in the national master directory. A few more keystrokes and he relayed, “Nothing listed or unlisted for her. But, relax, we haven’t even gotten started.”
    Placing his icy feet onto the radiator, he accidentally knocked a rubber bath duck from its perch atop the diaper pail. It squeaked softly on impact with the rug. Baby Alfonso awoke in full-on wail.
    “Hang on,” Mickey said to Charlie.
    He stuffed a hand through the crib slats and rubbed the crown of Alfonso’s head. As usual, the baby was back asleep in seconds. But now Sylvia was marching down the hallway.
    “Hey, man, can you call me a little later at the office?” Mickey asked Charlie.
    “I might not be able to, actually, because I might be dead.”
    Mickey didn’t take this lightly. Charlie had been calm in comparison when detailing Grudzev’s cup-of-sand threat. “Okay, okay,” he said, mouse-clicking his way to the board of elections Web site. Its information-rich database was available only to qualified election officials. Mickey could access it thanks to a guerrilla Web site that generated functioning election official pass codes.
    “I thought we were through with this shit, Moby Mick,” Sylvia yelled from the other side of the hollow plywood door. She maintained it was thoughtless to speak inside the nursery while the baby slept.
    “Charlie, hang on one more sec?” Mickey said.
    He balanced the handset atop the hard drive and stepped out of the room, head lowered. The appearance of supplication usually helped.
    “It’s not the horses this time,” he said.
    Her eyes were hot coals. “I don’t care if it’s the weather. You said you don’t want your son knowing you associate with the likes of that dead-beat.”
    Mickey winced. Charlie probably had heard her. This was gracious, though, compared to things she’d said before to his face. Mickey’s concern was Alfonso.
    Indeed, the baby began to cry again.
    “Nice work,” Sylvia said, as if it were Mickey’s fault.
    Mickey rushed back into the nursery, simultaneously picking up poor Alfonso and the handset. He saw that, in his absence, the