The Wiretap at Third Base

The coaxial cable had been fraying for months, its exposed wire visible beneath the peeling paint of my apartment wall. I kept meaning to call Comcast, but work at Langley Strategic had been consuming me—fourteen-hour days reviewing competitor intelligence, trying to prove my worth to the vice president who'd hired me straight out of my MBA program.

Then came the Tuesday night when Marcus showed up with baseball tickets, third base line, Dodgers versus Giants. We'd been friends since freshman year at Berkeley, through bad breakups and worse haircuts. His hair was thinning now, just like mine, and we laughed about it over overpriced stadium beers while the crowd roared around us. He kept looking at his phone, but I didn't think much of it. Marcus was always checking his stocks, always worrying about money, always one step away from being broke.

"You think Peterson suspects anything?" he asked suddenly, as the Giants' batter struck out swinging. Peterson was the VP I'd been trying to impress for six months.

"About what?" I said, though my stomach had already tightened.

"About the quarterly projections. The ones you've been working on."

The way he said it made everything crystallize. The timing of his promotion. The way he always knew which projects to avoid. The questions he asked about my work that I'd mistaken for friendly interest. I set my beer down carefully on the concrete floor and watched the next pitch fly by without really seeing it.

"How long?" I asked, and Marcus didn't pretend to misunderstand.

"They approached me after your divorce," he said, his voice low. "When you were drinking too much and talking too much about work. I told myself it was just harmless background checks, just a little extra income. But then..."

"Then it became actual spying."

"I never gave them anything classified," he said, but his eyes wouldn't meet mine. "Just strategic direction. Competitive analysis. The kind of information you trade on when you're trying to survive in this city."

The cable was still waiting for me when I got home. I called Comcast the next morning and scheduled the repair, though I knew the connection had been irreparably broken for a long time. Marcus still texted sometimes, asking if I wanted to grab a drink or catch a game. I never replied. Some betrayals don't deserve a second act.