The ghostly jogger froze in mid-step, glancing around him. He felt the power of the ghost trap slowly draw him farther and farther down toward the earth.
Within seconds the ghostly jogger was gone.
Trapped.
Stantz slowly got to his feet. Venkman, still ponder ing the joke in today's Hagar, swallowed his doughnut and joined Stantz in closing the rectangular ghost trap.
Stantz held up the glowing trap. Venkman checked his watch. "Do you know that he ran that last lap in under six minutes?" he said.
"Yeah," Stantz agreed. "If he wasn't dead, he'd be an Olympic prospect."
Stantz guided the screaming EctolA up in front of the towering World Trade Center, near Manhattan's Wall Street. Venkman, riding shotgun, gazed up at the build ings looming above him and smiled. Big money, he thought.
Winston and Spengler climbed out of the back of the ambulance, carrying their basic monitoring devices.
Stantz made a move for one of the proton packs. Venkman waved him off. He didn't think they'd need any heavy combat equipment.
The four jumpsuited men entered the building.
Moments later they were ushered into the ornate office of Ed Petrosius, a short, sweating, super-successful and very tightly wound bond salesman.
Petrosius gaped at the Ghostbusters as they marched into his office. He was in the middle of a phone conversation but he clearly wasn't pleased at seeing the quartet in full ghostbusting regalia. He placed a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
"What is this?" he hissed. "I'm trying to keep this quiet. Couldn't you put on a coat and tie? You look like janitors."
Venkman glanced at Stantz. They both nodded. Pinhead, they concluded. Rich, spoiled pinhead.
Petrosius barked into the phone, "I'll call you back, Ned. Watch Southern Gulf. If it goes past eight, start buying. Later."
He slammed down the phone and swiveled his chair to face the four Ghostbusters.
"All right," he said impatiently. "How long is this going to take, and what's it going to cost me?"
Venkman offered him a sincere insincere smile. "Well, it depends. Generally we charge an arm and a leg."
Petrosius punched a button on his desktop with a closed fist. His office door automatically slammed shut.
"Look, I got a lot to do and I can't afford to waste a lot of time on this, so don't jerk me around."
Stantz tried the reassuring tack. "Why don't you just tell us what the problem is."
Petrosius stared at his hands.
"Puh-leeeze?" Venkman said, wheedling.
"All right," Petrosius muttered. "Sometimes, every once in a while, things just sort of—well, they just ... they just kind of burst into flames."
He looked up at the Ghostbusters. "You know what I mean?"
Venkman nodded scientifically. "Sure. Things just kind of burst into flames."
"Yeah, you know," Petrosius continued. "Like, I'll be working or talking on the phone and the top of my desk will just catch on fire. You've heard of that, haven't you?"
Venkman rubbed his chin. "Oh, yeah, happens all the time."
"You have a lot of paper around," Stantz offered. "It could be simple spontaneous combustion."
Spengler furrowed his thick brows. "Or it may be pyrogenesis."
Petrosius was baffled. "Pyrowhatsis?"
Spengler adjusted his glasses. "Pyrogenesis is the ability some people have to generate great amounts of heat."
Before Petrosius could take that in, the phone on his desk buzzed. "Damn," he muttered, yanking the phone up to his ear. "Yeah? What?"
His eyes grew large. "What are you talking about? I worked the whole thing out with Bill! Forget that crap! Tell Donald to talk to Mike. He okayed the whole thing. And now, one word from Donald and he wants out? No way. We have a deal! Oh, really? My lawyer is an ex-Green Beret!"
He picked up a contract from his desk and began waving it in the air.
Spengler slowly lifted the small, ebony Giga meter and scanned Petrosius while he screamed into the phone.
"No, Bob," Petrosius said, boiling. "You eat it! You want to come over here and make me? Anytime, you lying sack of—"
To the right of Petrosius's desk, a wastepaper basket suddenly exploded into flame.
The Ghostbusters exchanged startled looks.
Petrosius glanced at the smoking wastebasket. "Damn it!"
The contract in his hand began to smolder and smoke. He dropped it onto the desktop. It, too, burst into spirals of orange and yellow. Tongues of flame shot forth from the in and out boxes on his desk. And the desk calendar. And the blotter.
Venkman watched more and more of Petrosius's world explode. "Whew! Somebody get the burgers and weenies. This guy is incredible."
Venkman reached over the desk and grabbed a pitcher of water. He tossed it into Petrosius's steaming face. Winston ran to the corner and yanked the inverted plastic bottle from the watercooler. He rushed back to the desk and doused the fire in the wastebasket.
Petrosius watched the water drip from his face and cascade down onto his clothing. He glared at Venkman. "This is a twelve-hundred-dollar suit!" he bellowed.
At that point the curtains behind him caught fire.
Stantz marched bravely up to Petrosius. "I hate to do this, sir," he announced, "but you are a public fire hazard."
Ray Stantz cocked his left arm back and threw a haymaker that caught Petrosius squarely on the jaw. The yammering businessman pitched back into his swivel chair. His chin dropped to his chest.
"Out cold," Winston noted.
"Good policy, Ray," Venkman said, staring at the unconscious man. "From now on let's beat up all our customers."
The curtains behind the desk continued to burn, the tongues of flame licking upward. High above the
room, the automatic sprinkler system suddenly kicked into action.
The entire office was caught in a machine-made downpour.
Undeterred, a cogitating Spengler walked over to the watercooler. He stuck his hand into the open top and found that the interior sides of the cooler were coated with psycho-reactive slime.
"Interesting," he said.
He glanced at his three companions. They were lifting Petrosius out of his chair.
They carried the unconscious man out of his office and into the reception area like a sack of wet laundry.
Venkman paused momentarily before Petrosius's shocked secretary. "I think Ed's going to be taking some time off."
The EctolA pulled up in front of the high-priced store on New York's Fifth Avenue.
A crowd of people was gathered in front of the store's window gazing inside, dumbfounded.
The Ghostbusters jogged up to the locked front door. "Ghostbusters," Winston announced.
The small, frightened manager of the store let them in immediately.
The four Ghostbusters gazed at the strange sight before them.
The high-priced shop sold mostly precious glass. At this moment all the expensive pieces of crystal were floating in the air, several feet above the glass shelves and display tables that had once supported their weight. Stantz and Venkman walked up to the worried, mousy manager while Winston and Spengler set up their small battery of electronic devices in each corner of the room.