27
Spiritual Adviser

As I put the burner phones in my day pack, I realized that if Baggetto cared enough about me to track me through my smartphone’s GPS, I should ditch it. Come to think of it, the car also had a GPS tracker. As did my tablet. For all I knew, so did my dressy boots. After all, Samsung sells refrigerators with computer chips embedded in their skins.

If the bartender was surprised at my request for aluminum foil, he didn’t show it. I took the roll into the toilet with me and lined the inside of my day pack with four layers of foil for a kind of DIY Faraday cage. I hoped it would work: if I locked my phone or computer in the car, it would be a cinch for Gisborne or Baggetto to get into the car and retrieve every detail of my private and business lives from my devices.

Assuming they were interested. Assuming I wasn’t being paranoid. Lining the pack reminded me uncomfortably of Stan Wolinsky, who’d lived across the street from us when I was a child. He drove a garbage truck for the city and covered his head in foil every morning before he went to work to block signals from outer space. Kids at school were merciless with his son, Stanley Jr.—“Tinhead” was only the most printable insult they used. Still, as Yossarian or Satchel Paige or someone said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t gaining on you.

It was about a mile from the Hippo to Nell Albritten’s house. Another outing in the cold November air would do me good, I firmly told my calves and hamstrings: they were a bit wobbly from hiking through the muddy ground around the silo. Paved roads all the way, so there wouldn’t be a risk to my treasured Lario boots.

I parked in the free lot attached to the library and headed for the river. Halfway across the bridge, I stopped to look down at the water and covertly glance behind me. I was alone on the footbridge. Someone was fishing on the far side—perhaps the same man who’d been there yesterday. On the town side, no one seemed to be lingering.

Below me the water tumbled brown and dirty over a dam. Gulls swooped in and out. Something moved on the top of a dead tree: an eagle. I’d never seen one in nature before and watched, fascinated, while it dove after a creature that wriggled helplessly in its claws. I shuddered, walked on across the bridge, over to Sixth Street, past the driveways laden with old furniture, and up to Nell Albritten’s house. A Nissan sat in front, old, but well cared for. Maybe the son’s, not the kind of car that drug dealers or dogfighters drove.