Interface

Mary Catherine was stark naked by this point. She ripped open one of the bags to expose folds of dark green cloth, and a few pairs of ru

The change of clothes ate up about thirty seconds and then they were ru

The path dead-ended at the fence of Oak Hill Cemetery, which ran downhill from Georgetown and all the way to the creek's edge. They made a left and ran parallel to the fence, following a footpath in the red, rocky soil, terraced by i

Cemetery gates loomed on their right and they had emerged into the city again. They were in Montrose Park. It was two blocks long and a couple of hundred feet wide, bordered on one side by the woods and on the other by an alley that ran behind a row of old four-story red brick apartments. This was a bad stretch of blacktop, patches on top of older patches, covered with mud, leaf litter, and parked cars with the usual odd D.C. mixture of license plates. A delivery van, painted with the logo of a ubiquitous local diaper service, was sitting there with its motor ru

Mary Catherine ran up to it, hauled open the back doors, and motioned James and William in. They climbed in the back and she followed, pulling the doors shut behind them. They all collapsed, unable to do much more than suck in oxygen. But Mary Catherine was laughing, James was sputtering and starting to ask questions, and William's mind was elsewhere.

Mary Catherine was thinking that, no matter what else happened today, they had all gone out for a vigorous run together, just like the old days, and they had gotten wet and messy and enjoyed themselves. Now she was ready for all hell to break loose. She caught her father's eye for a moment and realized he was thinking the same thing.

They drive for fifteen or twenty minutes, not really knowing where they were, and then the truck stopped, and they could hear a garage door grinding shut behind them.

They staggered upstairs and found themselves in an old town house with plywood windowpanes. Mattresses and a few pieces of junk furniture were scattered around. But it had a few touches that made them feel at home: a coffeemaker on the floor, its red light shining cheerfully, and a sack of bagels next to a stack of paper plates, and, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, chewing on a bagel and going over some papers, one Mel Meyer.

"Willy, if you can hear me, get your left hand over here and grab this pen. You have a hell of a lot of papers to sign before we get you dressed," Mel said.

"James," Mary Catherine said, "grab some coffee. I have a few things to tell you."

59

In downtown Rosslyn, Virginia, a man in a nice suit and a trench coat, wearing a neatly trimmed beard, and hair so short that his scalp almost showed through, emerged from a Metro station and walked up the street to a mailbox. He removed a standard legal-sized envelope from his breast pocket, held it between his hands, and contemplated it for a few moments. Then he dropped it into the mailbox. He continued down the street, turned a corner, and walked downhill toward Key Bridge. Ahead of him, on the far side of the Potomac, he could see Dixie Liquors, which was on M Street, which would take him through the center of Georgetown and on to Pe

Unfortunately Floyd Wayne Vishniak's Fleischacker was not quite powerful or accurate enough for that. He would have to follow much the same route on foot. But that was okay. He had pla

Floyd Wayne Vishniak, esq.

Parts Unknown

United States of America

Letters to the Editor

Washington Post

Washington D.C.

Dear Mr. (or Miss, Mrs., or Ms.) Editor:

As of yesterday A.M. I have spent, or maybe the right word is wasted, a total of $89.50 on your worthless rag, and this is not counting money spent on the other papers and magazines I had to buy just to cross-check all of the so-called facts you printed and find out which were true and which were false.

So I know full well that you will screw everything up. So here is some information. The name is spelled V-I-S-H-N-I-A-K (see top of page). I am not a psycho. Just a concerned American citizen.

And please don't screw this up: I - me - Floyd - did this ALL BY MYSELF. I did not get help from anyone - no co-conspirators, foreign governments, terrorist groups, or anyone else.

Yes, hard as it might be for you smug East Coast bastards to comprehend, a hick from the sticks is actually capable of doing something ALL BY HIMSELF.

See you in Hell - where we can look forward to many interesting conversations.

You will be hearing from me again soon, I am sure.

Sincerely,

Floyd Wayne Vishniak

By the time he had made it across Key Bridge he had decided that it was a good letter. He turned right underneath the red neon sign of Dixie Liquors and headed for the center of Washington.

On the southeastern fringe of Capitol Hill, just beyond the boundary between the yuppified zone and the ghetto, a tour bus made a difficult turn into a narrow alley ru

Most, but not all, of the men were enormous. They ranged in age from their early thirties to their mid-fifties. Some of them were wearing dark suits already and some were carrying them in garment bags. They filed into the building, which was a single huge room. It was mostly empty; its concrete floor was scarred where huge pieces of machinery had been uprooted and dragged away. Most of the illumination was provided by skylights. But when all of the men had come inside, the door had been closed, more lights were turned on.

Already in the room was a busload of more men matching the same general description, drinking coffee from a couple of big industrial percolators set up on a folding table, eating vast quantities of doughnuts. A lot of these men knew each other and so in some ways the atmosphere was like that of an old class reunion. But they were generally subdued and serious. This was especially true of those men who weren't huge.