I'm writing as part of my commitment to the American Cancer Society to write for 30 minutes a day in May.
"Not to be a nervous Nelly, Simon, but are you sure that meeting these guys here was a good idea? We kinda stick out like a sore thumb here."
I glanced around at the screaming kids. Chuck E Cheese's was not my normal venue, but considering the circumstances I felt it was perfect.
"Look at it this way, Jack. There are a lot of variables for how this can play out with these guys. Some of them are not so great in our favor. Here, we have all of these parents looking at us and wondering if we are some kind of pervs to be the only adults without any kids hyped up on soda pop and pizza, screaming at the games, or on the playgrounds. You're right, we do stick out like sore thumbs, which means that these government guys are going to be noticed too. I bet that more than half of the security cameras in here are focused on us right now, which means that everything these guys do is going to be on camera too. I'm not in any hurry to disappear at some black ops site. Are you?"
"I gotta hand it to you. Sometimes your thinking outside the box is really quite amazing. I'd have never thought of using a place like this as a meet."
"Well, they aren't about to whip out any guns since they have to come through the metal detectors just to get in, and even if they didn't, they'd have to really think twice about a shoot-out with a hundred kids around, and maybe half as many parents who would be willing to lay down their lives for their kids."
"How did you even get us in here without a kid in tow?"
"I told the manager that we were interviewing to become adoptive parents, and this was where the agency wanted to meet us to see how we coped with kids."
"Define 'we.' You didn't tell them we were a couple, did you?"
"I think they just assumed, and I followed the 'if they don't ask, don't tell' rule of thumb. Consider it an undercover ops."
Loud screams and laughter kept me from hearing what I'm sure was a colorful response from Jack at that moment, and before he could repeat himself, two men in black suits sat down at the table across from us.
"Gentlemen. I understand that you may be in possession of some information you illegally obtained from the Artisan's Loft."
Jack leaned back in his chair. "How about before you jump right into the thick of it, you introduce yourselves and show us some identification?"
Both of the men pulled slim wallets out of their inside coat pockets. CIA. I knew it. I felt Jack kick me in the ankle under the table.
"How about you two show us some identification as well?"
Jack started to reach for his wallet, and this time I kicked him. "Let's just say we are concerned citizens who would rather stay anonymous for the moment. Considering that you probably already know who we are and have bugged our phones and homes. We're just interested in making sure that the death of one of our neighbors is properly investigated, as well as the arson of several shops in the downtown area. We wouldn't want to hear that someone tried to sweep it all under the rug as some government conspiracy."
The Chuck E Cheese's theme song started playing and several animatronic characters rolled around onto the stage. We were sitting right next to a speaker, I specifically picked out when we first came in. The restaurant had been packed. Screaming kids crowded to the front of the dining area, close to the stage.
Jack shouted over the music and noise. "We just want some honest information about what is going on. We don't want to see anyone else in the community get hurt, and this is starting to look like a coverup of something much bigger. If this was just about some fake movie coins that someone was trying to pawn off as real from the future stuff, there wouldn't have been a need to kill the old man or torch his building."
One of the men started to rub his temple, and the atmosphere at the table suddenly changed from a friendly chat between professionals to something a little more threatening.
"Look, I'm not in any mood to barter with you for the information you stole from the attic. This is a matter of not just national security, but international security. You either give us the answers and items we came here for, or this is going to get ugly really fast."
Jack stood up so fast that the chair he was sitting in fell to the floor with a loud bang. At the next table, a child screamed in fear and began crying. Balloons on the other side of the room suddenly popped, and someone yelled "Gun!" In a flash, the entire restaurant was in chaos with children screaming and crying, parents yelling for their children, and everyone rushing for the exit doors.
The government men stood and one of them reached for Jack before getting pushed to the ground and tased by a security officer who had been watching us closely. The other man in black reached into his pocket as if to show his identification to the security guard, but I had already palmed their wallets when they first pulled them out while Jack was distracting them by refusing to offer his identification. Another security guard arrived quickly, and now both men were on the ground writhing in agony as they were tased again.
Jack pushed me ahead of him through the crowd and we made it out to the parking lot just as half a dozen police cars pulled up, sirens screaming. Officers piled out of their vehicles with guns drawn, waving away the parents and children streaming out of the parking lot. We jumped into my car, and within minutes we were on the highway, heading out of town.
"What the hell just happened, Simon, and where the hell are we going?"
For the first time that week, I started to laugh, and when I finally caught my breath I told Jack what I had done. Coming into Chuck E Cheese's I had 'embellished' our situation to the manager by telling him we were undercover detectives investigating a pedophile trafficking ring that kidnapped children from family restaurants across the country like theirs. I had shown him a print of the images we had taken off the thumb drive of the men in black at the Loft so that he would know who to watch for when they came in. When I had casually mentioned to Jack that probably half the cameras would be watching us, I wasn't lying. I knew for a fact that they would be. Trusting that Jack would behave like he usually did and lose his temper at some point, I told the manager that the cue to have his security guards move in and call 911 would be when Jack stood up suddenly.
As much as I hated sitting so close to the speaker, it allowed us to sit with our backs to the camera focused on the table. Other than being able to see what we were wearing and the color of our hair, or lack of hair on Jack's head, it would be difficult for anyone looking at the security videos to positively identify us. The balloons popping had been unexpected, but worked to our advantage in creating the chaos that allowed us to get out of there without having to explain anything to the local police.
I handed him the government IDs that I'd palmed and told him we should be able to verify whether or not they were authentic when we got to our new alternate office that I had discretely set up during the week in another town. Rose was waiting there for us. On the off chance that they really had bugged our phones and homes, I hadn't said anything to either of them during the week while I was scrambling to pull it all together. Before picking Jack up to go to the meet, I'd gone by Rose's apartment under the pretense of bringing her breakfast, something I had started earlier in the week so it wouldn't appear suspicious to anyone watching either of us. I'd written a note and placed it on top of her egg sandwich that simply had the address and instructions on how to get there by bus so as to avoid being followed, and to say nothing to anyone but to wait there until we arrived later that day.
In the meantime, since we had their identification, the men in black would have to either wait for their credentials to be faxed if they were indeed CIA, or for their prints to come back which would buy us time to figure out what our next steps would be.
Jack looked at me, mouth gaping, while I explained everything I had done then burst into laughter.
"Simon, my man, you have just become my most favorite person in the universe!"
