The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 8

The duty roster read like a crossword puzzle with half the words missing, Garfunkel thought, annoyed. Mirisch in particular had a checkered attendance record; he was a moonlighter and didn’t actually need the job, which probably explained it. He’d show up the next duty shift with some elaborate excuse but it was a cinch he wouldn’t show, tonight. Garfunkel was damned if he would call him; that was Mirisch’s obligation. Well, there were plenty of men on his waiting list; he’d pick a returned vet they needed the work and they were usually reliable.

Better to hire a new man and go to the trouble of breaking him in than to have a man continue to crap out just when you needed him. You had to be a hard nose, Garfunkel thought, or you’d get it jammed up your butt every time. He picked up the copies of the check lists that Jernigan and the lobby guard had given him and ran his eye quickly down the names. Not many people were working late, which was understandable, and it looked like the bulk were away for the weekend. He would have headed south himself and spent the holidays at his sister’s if it hadn’t been for the mass truancies among the guards. He took a final glance around the lobby-the dinner crowd was showing up in force now-then walked up the short flight of stairs to the surveillance room.

It was a small office, about the size of offices in automobile agencies, with one wall lined with sensor indicators for heat and smoke, plus about a dozen monitoring screens that covered the sensitive areas of the building-the lobbies, the garage, the tellers’ cages in the bank as well as the vault area in National Curtainwall’s Credit Union, and similar stations. Ordinarily he’d have two men on duty to spell each other at the screens and make fire patrols, but Sammy was also out for the evening.

“Things under control, Arnie?”

Arnold Shea twisted in his chair and said, “Hi, chief, glad you’re here. You know, I almost think we’re going to have a heist in the Credit Union.”

Garfunkel quickly moved in to look at the scope. On screen, Hughes was counting money and banding the bundles of bills, occasionally looking up at the camera with a thoughtful glance.

“I don’t like it, chief, if I ever saw a guy who was planning on beating it with all the money, that’s him.”

“You’re out of your mind. Give Lex Hughes a chance and he’ll quote the Bible at you until it’s running out of your ears; he’s a member in good standing at one of those revivalist churches.”

“They’re not above passing the plate in church, are they?”

“If Hughes saw you drop a penny on the sidewalk, he’d run a mile to give it back and you better believe it. I made the mistake of showing him the screens once and he turned white; probably thinks it’s the eye of God watching him and every once in a while he can’t resist watching back. The time to worry is when he starts talking to it. Not a bad guy otherwise; poor bastard’s stuck with a wife who’s forty and thinks she’s still sixteen.”

Shea smiled. “What’ve you got against women, chief?”

“Nothing-I was married to one once, wasn’t I?” Garfunkel glanced at his watch. It was close to seven o’clock and in a few minutes the electrical locks would be activated on the stairwell doors and the whole building would be buttoned up. If he wanted to, he could head for home after that; Arnie could handle the scopes and Jernigan the residential floors and he had three other men scattered throughout the building, which should be enough to cover everything. And it would sure as hell be nice to be able to take his shoes off; physically, as well as professionally, he had become the complete flatfoot.

Shea was Yawning. “These things can really hypnotize you. I’ve damned near fallen asleep a dozen times; it’s different when you’ve got somebody here to talk to.”

The bastard had read his mind, Garfunkel groaned to himself. It was part of a plot, anything to keep him from being able to wriggle his toes in the privacy of his own apartment. He couldn’t trust Shea to last until the next shift, let alone be sure that the next shift would even show up.

“I don’t know,” Shea said thoughtfully, back at the screen again.

“I tell you, Dan, that guy’s got the South America look in his eyes.”

“He’s probably thinking of the Virgin Mother Mary,” Garfunkel grunted.

“I told you, he’s the most honest guy in the building-with the exception of myself.” He sat down on a nearby chair and glanced through the tenant lists again, matching’them up with the Promenade Room reservations. Quite a few were eating upstairs, including Lisolette Mueller and Harlee Claiborne-now there was a deadbeat for you. But he couldn’t blame them; it would be nice to eat out on Thanksgiving Eve but not with the kind of weather that was blowing up outside.

Shea suddenly tensed. “Hey!”

Garfunkel was immediately at his shoulder. “what’s up?”

Shea was relaxing now but still obviously uneasy. “The lobby screen-thought I saw somebody running across the far corridor. Just caught it out of the corner of my eye.” They both watched the screen for several sweeps of the lobby camera. Only tourists, Sue, and the guard. “It was probably nothing,” Shea said. “Maybe a phantom image, something like that. Or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t, Garfunkel thought, but that settled it for sure-he wasn’t going home. They were too shorthanded for one thing. And for another … With Quantrell’s broadcasts, it would be just like some nut to pick this evening to try and torch the building.