Chapter 18: I’m from the Government and I’m Here to Help You

Several hours later I walked out of the courthouse wearing clothes my attorney bought at Target. Looking for a taxi, a dark blue sedan pulled away from the curb and drew abreast of me. The passenger window came down. “Can I give you a lift?” said a female voice. I looked in. It was my favorite FBI agent.

“Agent Ferraro, what brings you downtown?”

She leaned across and opened the passenger door. “I heard that you had a little trouble.”

“Yeah, well you should see the other guy,” I said bending down to see in the taxi.

“Where have I heard that line before?” She paused just for a second. “Get in.” I did and closed the car door as we rolled away from the curb. “So how are you feeling about your

neighbor now?”

“I’m going to kill him, “ I thought to myself, but sat there silently, looking straight ahead. “We’d like your help Mr. Henderson. Tony Monassario is a very bad person. We want him off the streets.”

“Well, that makes two of us. How are you going to help me and my wife?”

“Well for starters we can probably get the charges against you dropped.”

That, I had to admit sounded like a good start. “What about Melissa?”

“Just give us access to his financial records and then you and your wife take a vacation. You need to get her away from him before it’s too late you know.”

“Yes, I know,” I said looking over at her for the first time. “If you can get the charges dropped, why didn’t you intervene before now?”

“Because Tony has too many friends in the police department and we didn’t want him to find out that we were talking to you. We don’t want you and your wife to end up dead.”

“What would you like for me to do?”

“I can have a team of agents at to your office tomorrow night. If you let us in, we will make copies of everything and no one will be the wiser.”

“You can’t use any of it against him. You don’t have a warrant.”

“True, but if we can get a few leads, we can gather the rest under a warrant.”

I didn’t recognize where we were going, and I needed to get home. “Where’re we headed? I need to get home.”

“First we’re going to get your dog at the pound and then I’ll drop you off near your house. But you need to stay away from his house. If your wife comes home, you get her someplace safe. Lock your house up and don’t come back until I tell you it’s safe. Understand?”

“Can’t you get her away from him?”

“We have no way of legally doing that Mr. Henderson. Be patient. She’s bound to come home soon.”

We picked up Ginger and Agent Ferraro drove me a few blocks from my house and let me out. “We’ll see you tomorrow night at your office at seven p.m., ok?”

“Ok.” Ginger and I walked the block to our house. The front door had been left unlocked by the police. Inside was a shamble. There was no sign of my wife. I got water and food for Ginger and then saw the light blinking on our answering machine.

Besides from me, there were several from Marissa’s clients wondering about the status of their Web sites. One of her sites had crashed and they needed her help right away. That message was two days old and apparently, she’d missed a deadline on another project. I gathered that she hadn’t been home the entire time. She still didn’t know that I’d been in jail or cared enough for our marriage to find out where I was.

I was afraid that my marriage was doomed. I loved Marissa with all my heart. When we were apart, I felt like half of me was gone. What was going to happen now?

I went up to our bedroom and took a long, hot shower; shaved and picked up clean clothes that were strewn around the floor.

What could an average guy like me do? The police wouldn’t help. The FBI only wanted my help to put him in prison. By then my wife would be a junkie, working in a strip club to support her habit; or worse, turning tricks. I saw the spare key to Tony’s house on Marissa’s dresser. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew that I had to try something drastic.