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today, I’m happy to expedite it, because it makes our stats look better when we can close out something that quickly.”
    â€œYou can do that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œExpedite requests.”
    â€œSure, if I’m asked to, and if I think there’s a good reason to approve it.”
    Dunphy sipped his beer thoughtfully. After a long while, a smile dawned, and he turned back to Roscoe. “Do me a favor,” he said .
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou get an FOIA request from a guy named . . . I dunno—what?—Eddie Piper! Any requests you get from someone named Eddie Piper, I want you to expedite them, okay?”
    Roscoe thought about it. “Okay.”
    â€œAnd send them over to me. Anything Eddie Piper asks for, I wanta handle it.”
    Roscoe nodded, then cast a wary glance in Dunphy’s direction. “Who’s Eddie Piper?” he asked .
    Dunphy shook his head. “I dunno,” he said. “I just made him up. The point is, will you do it?”
    â€œYeah. Why not? It’s not like I’ve got a whole lot left to lose, is it?”

Chapter 10
    Renting a mail-drop under a phony name was more difficult than Dunphy had expected, but it was essential to his scheme. Though he did not intend to release so much as a single document, correspondence between the Agency and Edward Piper could not be avoided. Every FOIA request had to be acknowledged in writing, and every denial required an explanation or a recitation of exemptions. These letters would have to be mailed. And if they were then to be returned with the notation Addressee Unknown , the Office of Privacy and Information would become curious. And they would begin to ask questions .
    The difficulty with obtaining a mail drop, however, was that the post office insisted on a passport or a driver’s license before it would rent a P.O. box to anyone. Even the commercial companies wanted some form of identification “to protect ourselves”—though against what was never said. It occurred to Dunphy that the requirements for establishing a Panamanian corporation or a bank account on the Isle of Man were fewer .
    Still, it was hardly an unmanageable problem. He typed a phony address label in the name of Edward A. Piper and affixed it to the front of a used envelope, covering his own name and address. He then set off for Kinko’s Copies in Georgetown, cruising down the G. W. Parkway toward the Key Bridge .
    It was one of those rare, sparkling days in Washington, when the air blows in from the north, and a brisk wind kicks at the Potomac. The spires of Georgetown University rose at the edge of what he knew was a sea of louche boutiques, while eight-man crews rowed upriver in a regatta .
    The sculls reminded Dunphy of his college days, rowing on Lake Mendota, and before he knew it, he was humming the maudlin “Varsity”— Yooo raah raah WisCONNNsin a—and wondering where his letter jacket had gone. At Kinko’s, he paid forty-five dollars for a set of five hundred business cards, picking an italicized Times Roman font for
    E. A. Piper
Consultant
    With the phony envelope and one of the business cards in hand, he drove back the way he’d come and, stopping at the Fairfax County Library, used the envelope to obtain a third piece of identification in the form of a library card .
    By late afternoon, the fictitious Eddie Piper had a mail drop in Great Falls, a “suite” that (Dunphy knew) measured four inches by four inches by one foot .
    Writing the actual FOIA request was even easier. Dunphy could by now recite from memory the boilerplate with which all such requests were girded. And while it would obviously not be prudent to request his own 201 file, there was nothing to stop him from seeking details about the late Professor Schidlof. In that way, he might find a clue to the situation in which he found himself. Accordingly, he wrote and mailed his first request that same