perfidy

From Creative Loafing in Atlanta comes this heart-warmer. Sure, it's not the end of the world, but it is a depressing little story.

"The FBI is here," Mom tells me over the phone. Immediately I can see my mom with her back to a couple of Matrix-like figures in black suits and opaque sunglasses, her hand covering the mouthpiece like Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder. This must be a joke, I think. But it's not, because Mom isn't that funny. . . . Trippi's partner speaks up: "Any reading material? Papers?" I don't think so. Then Trippi decides to level with me: "I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that."

Yeesh. Now, I understand that the FBI need to follow up diligently on leads-- and in fact they probably could be about 150% better at that basic task-- but c'mon!