Killing Time

Seventeen

The burglar alarm wasn’t working. The first thing I noticed were the new scratches in the wood of the door, around the lock. I looked down at that for a few seconds, then raised my hand with the first key, planning to unlock the alarm box.

But I didn’t have to. The metal front was scratched, bent out slightly by the lock. I pulled on it, and it opened.

The wiring inside was a mess. Wires were showing that were usually behind a metal plate, and there was a lot of electric tape wrapped around wires here and there, done slapdash, hurriedly.

Somebody had cut me out of the system, rewired so the alarm wasn’t hooked up any more. If they’d just cut the wiring, the alarm would have sounded at headquarters. But they’d kept the circuit closed by adding wiring and simply having the juice bypass my alarm.

I didn’t waste time trying to unlock my door. I just pushed on it and it curved noiselessly back, and I went on in.

The filing cabinet had given the guy a lot of trouble. It was dented and battered, and the face had been knocked off the combination lock, and finally the guy had managed to slam the drawer-faces in far enough to insert a jimmy or a crowbar, and he’d literally torn the thing apart. The smashed drawers lay around on the floor, emptied, the remaining files strewn all over the place. It looked like Fifth Avenue after a confetti parade.

I sighed with relief, congratulating myself for having sense enough to move any of the files that might have proved useful to my caller. He’d undoubtedly tried here first. Not finding anything, he’d gone on to my place and torn that up. He still hadn’t found anything, so he got mad and threw a grenade in the window after he saw me come home.

Now, if I only knew which of those files I’d moved was the one he’d been after...

The phone jangled, catching me off balance. I stared at it stupidly, and after a while it stopped, but I knew it was just inhaling, getting ready to jangle again.

In the interval, I took a second to wonder why he hadn’t ripped the phone out here, as he’d done at my apartment. I supposed he hadn’t been mad enough yet to wreck things for the sake of wrecking them.

Then the phone started again, and I stepped over a twisted drawer and picked it up.

It was Cathy, and she was screaming. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling and calling and calling.”

“I just got to the office,” I told her. I knew I should explain more than that, but I was looking at the wreckage that was supposed to have been an impregnable filing cabinet, and I was just a little too distracted.

“I heard there was an explosion,” she said, rapid and excited. “I heard you’d been in an explosion, and you were taken to the hospital—”

“I just fell down and cut myself,” I told her. “That’s all. They let me out right away.”

“I’ve been trying everywhere,” she wailed. “Your home phone wasn’t working, and nobody seemed to know where you were, and I’ve been going absolutely frantic here—”

So I told her about my night and my morning and what there’d been so far of my afternoon, and about Harcum keeping me in the clink overnight, and when I was finished, she said, “Tim, I’m scared.”

“I’ve been scared for hours,” I told her. I thought about the bomb in the car, which I hadn’t told her about, and I knew it was true. I’d been scared for hours, and I’d been too keyed up to notice it.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me.

“At four o’clock I’m going to talk to Jordan Reed.”

“What can he do? He promised you yesterday there wouldn’t be anything else like this.”

“I don’t know what he can do,” I told her truthfully.

“What if he can’t do anything?”

“Then I go see Paul Masetti.”

“You ought to go see him now,” she said. “You ought to see him right away.”

“I’ll wait till after I talk to Jordan Reed,” I said.

“Tim, you can’t trust these people, you can’t try to get along with them, it’s too late to smooth things over.”

I was afraid she was right, and I didn’t want her to be right, so I got annoyed and said, “I’ll handle it, Cathy. Don’t worry about it, I can take care of myself.”

“Tim, please. Listen to me.”

“I’ll pick you up at five o’clock,” I told her. “I’ll let you know what happened.”

“Tim, please.”

“I’ve got to hang up, Cathy,” I said.

“Tim...”

I hung up, and stood looking out the window toward City Hall. Why had this all happened, why had the whole thing blown up in my face like this? I’d made the best deal I could, I’d balanced everything, worked to get along with everybody, worked to do my own job well and be both accepted and needed, and everything was going along fine. Everything had been going along fine for a decade and a half. And now it was all blowing up in my face.

The phone jangled again. My hand was still on the receiver, and I automatically picked it up, the second it started to ring. Then I regretted the movement, afraid it was Cathy again, with more of her fears and advice.

But it wasn’t. A voice like gravel said, “Tim?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Jack Wycza,” he said. “What the hell is going on downtown?”

“Everything,” I told him. “Or do you mean something in particular?”

“I mean Reed and that gang trying to crucify me,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” I told him. “One of them is trying to murder me, so I don’t suppose they’d stop at crucifying you.”

“Listen,” he said. He sounded harsh and frantic. “Listen, I don’t like phones. Come out here. I got to talk to you, Tim, come on out here. Out to the candy store.”

I had three hours before my meeting with Jordan Reed. It might not be a bad idea to be up on the North Side, away from my usual haunts, until the time to see Reed arrived.

“Tim, listen,” he said into my hesitation. “I always played square with you, you know that. I’ve done you favors. You got to come out here.”

“All right,” I said.

“The candy store,” he said again.

“I’ll be right there,” I told him.

I hung up, stepped over the demolished filing cabinet, and went out to the hall. I didn’t bother to close the office door behind me.

I was midway down the hall when the elevator door slid open ahead of me and Harcum stepped out, with Ed Jason and Hal Ganz in his wake. I thought at first he had come up to see me, but the surprise and uneasiness on his face when he caught sight of me told me different.

“Hi, Tim,” he said, awkwardly, and hurried on by me.

Hal Ganz gave me a big smile. “Well, Tim,” he started, “we found the—”

“Shut up!” Harcum had wheeled around and was glaring at Hal.

Hal blinked and looked confused, but he didn’t say any more.

“By the way, Harcum,” I said. “You might take a look in my office while you’re up here.” Then I went on down to the elevator. Jack, the operator, was holding it for me. I stepped on board, and we dropped toward the street.

I wondered what Harcum had found, that he didn’t want me to know about.