Permanent Record

6.11.2013
Coming out of the interrogation exhausted, late at night, with days of
interrogations ahead of me. They wouldn’t tell me how many exactly.
Eileen drove us to meet Sandra for dinner at some diner, and as we left
Downtown we noticed we still had our tails. Eileen tried to lose them by
speeding and making illegal U-turns again, and I begged her to stop. I
thought her driving like that just made me look worse. It made me look

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suspicious. But Eileen is a stubborn mama bear. In the parking lot of the
diner, Eileen banged on the windows of the surveillance vehicles and
yelled that I was cooperating, so there was no reason for them to be
following. It was a little embarrassing, like when your mother sticks up
for you in school, but mostly I was just in awe. The nerve to go up to a
vehicle with federal agents and tell them off. Sandra was at a table in the
back and we ordered and talked about “media exposure.” I was all over
the news.
Halfway through dinner, two men walked up to our table. One tall
guy in a baseball hat, who had braces, and his partner who was dressed
like a guy going clubbing. The tall guy identified himself as Agent
Chuck, the agent who’d called me before. He asked to speak with me
about “the driving behavior” once we’d finished eating. The moment he
said that we decided we were finished. The agents were out in front of
the diner. Agent Chuck showed his badge and told me that his main goal
was my protection. He said there could be threats against my life. He
tapped his jacket and said if there was any danger he would take care of
it, because he was on “the armed team.” It was all such macho posturing
or an attempt to get me to trust him, by putting me in a vulnerable
position. He went on to say I was going to be surveilled/followed by the
FBI 24/7, for the foreseeable future, and the reckless driving Eileen was
doing would not be tolerated. He said agents are never supposed to talk
to their assignments but he felt that, given the circumstances, he had to
“take the team in this direction for everyone’s safety.” He handed me a
business card with his contact info and said he’d be parked just outside
Eileen’s house all night, and I should call him if I needed him, or needed
anything, for any reason. He told me I was free to go anywhere (you’re
damn right, I thought), but that whenever I planned to go anywhere, I
should text him. He said, “Open communication will make everything
easier.” He said, “If you give us a heads-up, you’ll be that much safer, I
promise.”