Running Blind (The Visitor)

with all kinds of extra compartments for the disks and the CD-ROM thing and the cables. And some of them have pockets for mobiles, little external leather rectangles the same shape as the cigarettes-and-lighter cases women carried back when people smoked. Those other cases, they don’t always take them with them. If they’re just stepping away to the beverage counter, they often leave them at the table, partly to keep their place claimed, partly because who can carry a pocketbook and a laptop case and a hot cup of coffee?
    But you’re ignoring the women with the laptop cases. Because those expensive leather articles imply some kind of serious purpose. Their owners might get home in an hour and want to check their e-mail or finalize a pie chart or something, whereupon they open their laptop case and find their phone is gone. Police notified, account canceled, calls traced, all within an hour. No good at all.
    So the women you’re watching are the nonbusiness travelers. The ones with the little nylon backpacks carried as cabin baggage. And you’re specifically watching the ones heading out of town, not in toward home. They’re going to make a last couple of calls from the airport and then stuff their phones into their backpacks and forget all about them, because they’re flying out of the local coverage area and they don’t want to pay roaming charges. Maybe they’re vacationing overseas, in which case their phones are as useless to them as their house keys. Something they have to take along, but not something they ever think about.
    The one particular target you’re watching most closely is a woman of about twenty-three or -four, maybe forty feet away. She’s dressed comfortably like she’s got a long flight ahead, and she’s leaning back in her chair with her head tilted left and her phone trapped in her shoulder. She’s smiling vacantly as she talks, and playing with her nails. Picking at them and turning her hands in the light to look at them. This is a lazy say-nothing chat with a girlfriend. No intensity in her face. She’s just talking for the sake of talking.
    Her carry-on bag is on the floor near her feet. It’s a small designer backpack, all covered in little loops and catches and zippers. It’s clearly so complicated to close that she’s left it gaping open. She picks up her coffee cup and puts it down again. It’s empty. She talks and checks her watch and cranes to look at the beverage counter. She wraps up the chat. Flips her phone closed and drops it in her backpack. Picks up a matching pocketbook and stands up and wheels away to get more coffee.
    You’re on your feet instantly. Car keys in your hand. You hustle straight across the court, ten feet, twenty, thirty. You’re swinging the keys. Looking busy. She’s in line. About to be served. You drop your keys and they skid across the tiles. You bend to retrieve them. Your hand skims her bag. You come back up with the keys and the phone together. You walk on. The keys go back in your pocket. The phone stays in your hand. Nothing more ordinary than somebody walking through an airport lounge holding a mobile.
    You walk at normal pace. Stop and lean on a pillar. You flip the phone open and hold it at your face, pretending to make a call. Now you’re invisible. You’re a person leaning on a pillar making a call. There are a dozen of you within a twenty-foot radius. You look back. She’s back at her table, drinking her coffee. You wait, whispering nothing into the phone. She drinks. Three minutes. Four. Five. You press random buttons and start talking again. You’re on a new call. You’re busy. You’re one of the guys. She stands up. Yanks on the cords of her backpack to close it up. Picks it up by the cords and bounces it against its own weight to make them tight. She buckles the catches. Swings the pack onto one shoulder and picks up her pocketbook. Opens it to check her ticket is accessible. Closes it again. She looks around once and strides purposefully out of the food court. Straight toward you. She passes within five feet and disappears toward the departure gates. You flip the phone closed and slip it into the pocket of your suit and you walk out the other way. You smile to yourself as you go. Now the crucial call is going to end up on someone else’s bill.
    THE PHONE CALL to the Fort Armstrong duty officer revealed nothing at all on the surface, but the guy’s evasions were voiced in such a way that a thirteen-year Army cop