Casual
BARNES, FRED
Casual TRICK OR TREAT? Halloween night was neither dark nor stormy in Washington, but it did get eerie when my doorbell rang at 1 a.m. My wife Barbara was up late, working on party invitations. I...
...This placated no one...
...We left the package on the front stoop in case he came looking for it...
...He put it on the floor and began to remove the paper wrapping...
...Our conclusion: It was a mistaken delivery or a practical joke...
...The answer was no— until three days later when a neighbor pleaded with us to do something...
...Nor had anyone else in the neighborhood...
...Suspicious, no...
...The light was on in his room...
...Suddenly I feared the worst...
...The next morning, it was still there...
...There was barely legible writing on it...
...Had we gotten a hazardous materials team to come by and check it out...
...on a weeknight...
...True, I'm not a high-visibility anchor like Tom Brokaw...
...At 1 a.m...
...And the person at the door was no teenager...
...He was smiling...
...Speaking with a heavy accent, the man said he was delivering the sandwich we'd ordered...
...Nothing for us or Tom Ridge to worry about...
...A lethal biochemical might have seeped out and wafted around the neighborhood...
...It flashed through my mind that it might bear a message like "Death to America" or "Slay the Infidel...
...Soon the plot thickened...
...And we don't take the terrorism or anthrax threats lightly, especially since I'm in the media and have been noisily critical of Osama bin Laden, radical Islam, and Muslim fellow travelers in this country...
...And we didn't know any carry-out that stayed open this late anyway...
...Had we found out what it was...
...Barbara finally called the local police station...
...Telephone calls began coming in from friends and neighbors, inquiring about the package...
...I wrapped my hand in a paper towel, picked up the package, put it in a plastic grocery bag, and deposited it in a trash can in the garage...
...He questioned us about the circumstances of the package's arrival and asked to see it...
...Our neighbors didn't like the looks of the whole situation either, and I couldn't blame them...
...Nobody knew of a carry-out that was open that late on a week-night...
...He looked up from the package...
...The sandwich—or whatever was inside—felt warm and smelled like some kind of food...
...What it says," the hazmat guy announced, "is 'bacon cheeseburger.'" FRED BARNES...
...She scrounged up some money and paid the delivery man (including a tip...
...Sandwich we'd ordered...
...He was a Middle Eastern-looking man holding a package...
...She was told to throw the package away and leave it at that...
...Barbara opened the door, checked out the caller, and immediately yelled, and yelled loudly, for me to come downstairs...
...Barbara called 911...
...Freddy, it turned out, was sound asleep...
...We didn't open the package, for safety reasons...
...Now there would have been no reason for me to hop out of bed like a soldier at reveille, except we live in terrorism-conscious and anthrax-spooked Washington, or more precisely a couple miles outside in Alexandria, Virginia...
...Perhaps we should have summoned the hazmat inspector days before...
...It also sent a hazmat guy...
...They said to call the fire department, which immediately sent a large fire engine...
...So maybe it was the college kid who lives next door who'd ordered the sandwich...
...His small white car was parked in our driveway...
...But it was wrapped in paper with no markings from any carry-out or food store...
...Barbara figured it must have been Freddy, who sometimes stays up late doing homework...
...The fellow departed...
...They were suspicious...
...If we left it outside much longer, our two dogs or other dogs from the neighborhood were sure to get hold of it...
...At school, no one asked Freddy if—ha, ha, ha—he'd got a late delivery at home...
...I was asleep, though not for long...
...The kid next door hadn't ordered a sandwich...
...In the garage, he plucked the package from the trash can...
...But you never know who might have caught my comments on Fox News Channel or read THE WEEKLY STANDARD and decided to take hostile action...
...I thought it might be Arabic...
...A sandwich-shaped object was inside, wrapped in aluminum foil...
...I asked the hazmat man what it said...
...This struck us as strange since we hadn't ordered anything...
...He wasn't wearing a uniform from a carry-out...
...Barbara mentioned the mysterious delivery to her friends at a Bible study...
...Of course we don't get many late-night visitors either—other than friends of my son Freddy, who's 16...
...And I mean very Middle Eastern-looking...
...We examined the package...
Vol. 7 • November 2001 • No. 10
