Agent Under Glass

"Jaysus God in the morning!" exclaimed Parish, snatching at the earphones. "Don’t do that when I’m listening in on these apes!"

"You don’t lock that door you’re gonna get an ice pick in the neck some night."

"Aw, they can’t tell what’s behind all that eyewash out front."

The phony offices of Federated Boxmakers, Inc.--they liked the FBI touch in the company name--occupied the second floor of the two-story brick building in Clermount Bluff, a small country town in southern Illinois across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. James remembered the metallic taste in his mouth the night two months earlier when they’d inserted the bug in the wall of the mob-owned restaurant downstairs.

"Piece’ve cake," Parish had said as he picked the lock on the back door leading in from the secluded alley. It was three o’clock in the morning, cold and windy, rain about to turn to snow. They’d cased the joint for weeks, knew exactly the comings-and-goings of the restaurant personnel. The night crew had left at two, the morning shift would arrive at four-thirty. They had a little more than an hour to get inside, set the bug in the wall, do a quick plaster-and-patch job and get the hell out of there before the staff arrived.

"Piece’ve cake," Parish had repeated as they’d made their way single file through the darkened kitchen into the dining area.

James had been the lookout up front. Another agent remained in the rear while Parish assisted the "sound man," a technical specialist sent out just for this specific job from SOG--Seat of Government, as J. Edgar Hoover ostentatiously referred to his FBI headquarters. The techie was an impish-looking fellow with thinning gray hair, an expanding paunch, the nimble fingers of a brain surgeon and the brass balls of a cat burglar. He was in his fifties and James guessed he’d been pulling illicit jobs of one kind or another like this for the Director for the last twenty years or so. He hoped this wouldn’t prove to be his last one. If so, it would be James’s first and last.

And all it would take was for a cook or a janitor to come strolling in early for a change. But Parish had assured them that it almost never happened.

James had watched with bated breath as the techie opened his black leather satchel and Parish began handing him his tools and instruments with such practiced efficiency that it was obvious that he, too, was an old hand at such surreptitious incursions. Next, the sound man drilled noiselessly into the wall beside the target booth, set the mike--an object the size of a small grapefruit--and then ran an attached wire inside the wall into the waiting hands of a colleague on the second floor in Fed Box’s suite of rooms.

James’s mouth, meanwhile, had gummed up and his heart hammered so hard against his breast plate that he feared the noise would reveal their mendacity to the entire town.

But the truth was, he was more excited than he’d ever been in his life. He watched as the techie plied his arcane trade in the narrow beam of a small pen-flash clutched like a lighted cigar between his teeth. When Parish shot James one of his trade-mark thumbs-up gestures, he’d nodded in return from his shadowy perch in the window alcove across the dining room. Then, with his hand resting tensely on the butt of his revolver, he turned back to the outside and scanned the street in front of the restaurant, dark and deserted at that hour save for a stray cur making its way down the center of the road as a light snow tattooed its nappy pelt.

In spite of the chill in the room, James’s armpits were soaked in sweat. Jesus, he’d thought; this is what it’s all about. Heaven help him, he was happier than he’d ever been. By God, he was a G-Man.