“Mr. Spondollar, I am told that your cell phone was in the house when this event occurred. Is that correct?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is not important. Was your cell phone in the house?”
“Shit, yeah. Destroyed with everything else—the house, the garage, my car. What does that matter? What happened to my house?”
“Mr. Spondollar, are you wearing an Apple watch, any health-monitoring device, or any device that has internet connectivity?”
“I’m in perfect health, a bull, no reason to monitor anything. My watch is an off-the-shelf piece of shit. What’s it matter?”
“It matters that you’re not putting out any GPS locator signal, so your attacker can’t target you, might even think you’re dead.”
“My attacker? What attacker?”
Raising one eyebrow, casually gesturing toward the mound that had been a house, the stranger said, “You don’t think what happened here was a spontaneous, natural disintegration?”
The eyebrow was so subtly ironic, the gesture so economic and elegant that Spondollar wanted to grab the red necktie, yank, and slam the guy’s face down hard into the tabletop.
He restrained himself. “What the hell happened to my house?”
“I am not at liberty to say, Mr. Spondollar. This is a matter of national security and of the greatest secrecy.”
“Let me see your ID. Who’re you with? The FBI, the CIA?”
“I myself am not an agent of the government. I’m part of a rare cooperative effort between the federal government and the private sector. Both are required to meet a unique threat.”
“What unique threat?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to know, Mr. Spondollar, because if you knew, you’d never sleep well again.”
“I don’t have anywhere to sleep even if I could.”
“I’m here to take care of that. We will spirit you away into a witness-protection program and provide you with a new identity that can’t be traced. We will—”
Spondollar interrupted. “What’ve I been witness to? I haven’t been witness to shit except what happened to the house, and I don’t even know what that was.”
“It’s called a witness-protection program only because it functions like one. We will move you to Arizona—”
“Hey, you know, I’ve got a life right here.”
“And quite a life it is,” the stranger said without the least offensive inflection, smiling and nodding as if he truly believed that Spondollar had deep ties to this town and was a treasure to his neighbors. “Therefore, we will reimburse you for twice the value of this property—–what it was when the house existed. We will provide you with a better house in Arizona, without a mortgage. We will pay you a monthly stipend of four thousand dollars for life and also make a cash settlement equal to twice the funds you currently have in the bank and in an investment account.”
“Are you nuts? That’s a fortune.” He leaned forward in his chair and pointed an accusatory finger at the stranger. “So you must want something from me. What is it you want from me?”
“We want to limit collateral damage. If you were to try to go on living as Harley Spondollar, you would be attacked again, and there might be collateral damage. May I be frank, sir?”
“Be what you want.”
The man in white leaned back in his chair. “We have no special affection for you, Mr. Spondollar. However, if you went to the bank to withdraw funds, the transaction would involve a verification via the internet. Before you received a cashier’s check, you would be destroyed along with the bank and everyone in it. I don’t know anyone in the bank branch you use, but as a fellow human being, I do have special affection for them.”
Spondollar chewed on his lower lip for a long moment before he said, “That wasn’t worthy of you.”
“I know. A low blow. I regret it. But it’s true. You are not a man who inspires affection. All I need from you is your signature on the documents I’ve brought. They include a nondisclosure agreement that, if violated, could lead to your immediate imprisonment.”
“That’s damn harsh.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“What if I said I’ll take everything you’ve offered as long as I can also have my money in the bank?”
The stranger sighed. “I understand those funds have sentimental value for you, because you embezzled them from a man who made the mistake of treating you like his son. But the answer is no.”