3
In the next two months I had a couple more jobs like that, which made me dislike myself and other people. I was approached with questions that had a very limited range of possible answers, and none that would make the asker happy. I earned grocery money by upending the minor privacies that people were able to maintain in the busy neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the Bronx. And then one day in December, the telephone on my desk rang and the woman from my service announced a Mr Ibarra. A low voice came on the line.
‘Good morning?’ he said.
‘Good morning,’ I answered, and there was a pause that I hated.
‘I would like to speak to the investigator,’ he said.
‘Speaking.’
There was another hesitation. ‘You are?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are trained in counterintelligence?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘It’s unu
