Crystal Trino's Journal Oct 17 2006 Entry

October 17. Tuesday Night.

Hi Journey.

News from Sid on the painter. This month I felt I was making good progress in letting go of Casey. Sometimes my gut is so balled up over her I just want to puke.

And then this morning Sid’s FedEx package lands on my desk. I stared at it for thirty seconds, half- afraid of what I’d find inside. Then I grabbed a scissors and slashed it open.

Inside were several photocopies of newspaper articles, a printout of a webpage, and a note, folded in thirds and taped shut with duct tape. On the outer third, the portion I could see, he wrote:

"C--

Jealous!!

--S"

Only Sid.

The articles were all from either the Des Moines Register or the Ida Grove, Iowa Courier. Only one had a photo of the painter, standing alongside a fence in New York City. The fence was swathed in photos and paintings and drawings of the twin towers or of 9/11 victims. The painter stood next to a very vibrant watercolor of the twin towers in the foreground. Behind an eagle landed atop a flagpole on which the Stars and Stripes flew grandly, blown by an unseen breeze.

The caption underneath read: Ron Tagdow of Ida Grove helps out with Ground Zero Rescue Efforts and Adds his Tribute to the Twin Towers.

The date was Sept 28, 2001.

There wasn’t much in the article about Ron; he had completed his Associates degree in business and was working as the assistant manage of a Wendy’s in Ida Grove when he heard the call to aid the victims. He drove straight through to Manhattan. A reporter from the Courier had followed him three years later for another brief article. Apparently Ron liked the big cities. He was in Madrid, painting a hotel.

The international bug chomped Ron, hard. There were several other articles over the years, mostly short ones from the Courier: Ron Tagdow, son of Bill and Judy, home visiting from Mumbai for Christmas; or, a few years later, just home from London for the Thanksgiving holidays. Most merely mentioned him as, "Ida Grove’s own international hotel-lobby makeover artist.

I glanced through the articles. They were your typical small-town visits, the type of local news the county papers print, and a big reason why people still subscribe; they like to see a record of how much they loved their children and--maybe just a little--show off to the neighbors that they were still on good terms with the kids who had moved away to the big city.

Of course, for most of Iowa’s families the big city was Chicago or Dallas or maybe Atlanta; not Mumbai or Madrid. Ron had certainly ventured afar.

And Sid was right--he was a pleasant-enough looking fellow. He had a solid chin that looked like it could take a prizefighter’s punch, but set just above that was an easy-going smile. He had just a trace of orneriness about the eyes; no doubt he had been a class goof-off, if not the class cut-up.

The webpage was merely a bigger, color printout of the painting. But it was the page it was on that surprised me: the subtitle underneath said: "Submissions to the Dept of Interior Freedom Exhibition, 1998". And the title of the piece was "#342: Freedom Flies High".

A 7th grader from Modesto California had entered it.

I spun over to my computer, keyed in the beginning of the url on the bottom of the page for the site. The pictures were still there, archived. Every other photo was still up there years later, working fine. But not 342. It’d been removed. Nothing.

Then I looked closer at Sid’s picture. He’d found it using the Wayback Machine.

Funny thing about the www; it has a heckuva memory.

Tagdow had painted an homage to the twin towers and hung it on a fence…but all he had really done was simply rip it off from somebody else…he could trace, and he could fake it, but he couldn’t do a really good job of it.

I sliced the thick duct tape that held Sid’s note closed. No way could anybody else have opened it and snooped through. Sid wrote the body of his note on a second sheet of paper tucked inside the first, so that the only part of the note that showed through on the outside was his smart-aleck comment from the top.

Inside, he wrote:

"Crystal, just imagine for a minute you worked for an intelligence service and were assigned to create a cover for a pleasant young patriot that was just dying to serve his country. You know you’ll need to insert him in multiple cities around the globe. Wouldn’t hotel makeovers be a great cover?

Good bet that our man Ron here can hold a brush and even do an OK job of laying down paint, but he has zero artistic originality. Every hotel lobby he contracts for is photographed ahead of time. Then the new pattern is designed back here in New York but a high-priced agency that the government contracts with. Other members of Tagdow’s crew trace out the pattern for him to follow.

Not a bad cover for a spy, hmmm? International hotel-painter to the upscale and famous.

Crystal, don’t talk to anybody about this in your family. No written or spoken communication of any type. You must just assume that your calls are monitored.

I don’t think this guy is a threat; he’s certainly not full-time Agency--more like a low-level outsourced temp. But, there is some reason DC wants to keep tabs on your sister. What that reason is, I have no idea.

Next time you are in NYC, we need to meet.

PS. I think she’ll be OK; don’t do anything at this point to alarm her. No communication, not even written. It’ll have to clear customs.

Love, Sid."

Thanksgiving can’t come soon enough.

Goodnight, Journey.

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Crystal Trino's life journey