Page 12 of The Children of Eve

Suddenly, her mother was close, so close that the blurring could no longer conceal what the Traveling Man had done to her. When she spoke again, she sounded almost human.

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CLASSIFIED

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

File Number:REDACTED

Requesting Official(s):REDACTED

Task Numbers and Date Completed:1000210, Work Request Number 1000210, 3/11/24

Source File Information/Name of Audio File:031124_0638_pm BERN_Phone_Call.wav

VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION

Participants:Aldo Bern B

Devin Vaughn V

Abbreviations:Unintelligible UI

031124_0638_pm BERN_Phone_Call.wav

BERN:The Mexican didn’t make his medical appointment.

VAUGHN:Maybe he had second thoughts about the treatment.

B:For lung cancer?

V:He had a hard road ahead.

B:And went to a lot of trouble to be able to afford to walk it.

V:If I were him, I’d want to take a few days to enjoy myself before they started poisoning me. Once they got going, I might not have the chance again for a long time, or not ever.

B:I never met him, but from what I hear, he wasn’t that kind of guy.

V:I never met him either, but you hear the clock ticking and you become that guy. Have you tried calling him?

B:It goes straight to the machine. He doesn’t own a cell phone. He’s old.

V:The fuck does that have to do with it? Your mother’s old, and she has a phone.

B:He’s real old, like his stock.

V:If something happened to him, how would we know?

B:Maybe it would make the papers, and maybe it wouldn’t. Depends.

V:On what?

B:On what happened.

V:We have someone we can ask?

B:You mean to knock on his door? No, we keep our distance. Right now, nothing links him to you, but if I go asking people to ask other people, that changes.