Weekend staff at 1919 Market was kept to a minimum. Just four guards—three on at all times, while breaks and lunch were rotated. There wasn’t much downtime. Somebody always needed help. Not much difference there between corporate security and hotel security—always undermanned and underfunded. Often, Vincent could barely read a page uninterrupted. He did most of his reading on breaks, which never lasted long enough. Three up, one down. At all times.
To check out the shattered-glass thing, Vincent put Carter on the desk and had Rickards check floors eight through twenty–two, starting with twenty-two and working his way down. Floors one through nine were lobby and garage, so that meant there were only twenty-eight floors to check. One at a time.
By the time Vincent reached twenty-nine, he had settled into a rhythm: Punch STOP on the elevator control panel. Pray the floor had a single tenant. If so, pop the master key in the double security doors, enter through the lobby, and make a counterclockwise sweep of the floor, checking every window on the north side.
On one floor, it was easy; there were no offices partitioned off, just cubicles. But the other floors used their prime window space to reward employees with private offices. Some had large windows covered with aluminum blinds. Very few people kept their blinds up—most preferred privacy on the job. Which meant he had to key into every single office. Sometimes the lock would stick, which would piss him off.
Ah, weekend work.
He knew he shouldn’t complain. He was lucky to have this gig after flaking out last year. In fact, he’d been out of work from Halloween through Presidents’ Day of this year, trying to get his act together. A few prescriptions, a couple of sessions with an occupational therapist—not fully covered on his insurance, by the way. Nothing helped.
His teenaged son, whom Vincent saw only on weekends, gave him the best advice of all, “Just chill, Dad.”
So he tried to chill, best he could.
After a good long while of chilling, Vincent saw some improvements. His heart stopped racing for no reason. He stopped hearing phantom noises. His dreams weren’t as horrifying as they used to be.
A year ago, he’d been employed as a security guard on the night detail at the Sheraton, a reasonably expensive hotel on Rittenhouse Square, the richest slice of real estate in Philadelphia. The Sheraton had since closed. But one hot August night, a year ago to the month, Vincent had been called up to the seventh floor to check out a suspected domestic dispute. These things happen, even in a nice hotel. Before he reached the door, though, some ape in a suit tackled him, pounded the crap out of him. Vincent put up the best fight he could—he fought mean and sloppy, and this kind of approach had served him well in bars over the years. But it didn’t matter to this guy. Next thing he knew, there was a big fat ape arm around his neck, and he was plunging into darkness.
Vincent woke up in bizarro land. His kid read these Japanese manga things, which you flip through from back to front. That was how life felt after he had been assaulted. Back to front. Nothing made much sense. Maybe it did to others. Other people who knew how to read this stuff.
As it turned out, the ape who’d attacked him was believed to be part of some terrorist cell—I know, right? Vincent would say whenever he told friends this story, which wasn’t often. The DHS guy who showed up, somebody with a Polish name, thanked him for his bravery, slapped him on his back, and disappeared into the night. Vincent checked the Inquirer and Daily News, but never saw any follow-up. The hotel manager gave him a few days off, told him to shake it loose.
Vincent had a hard time “shaking it loose.”
Eventually, the Sheraton shook him loose.
You go through life thinking you know your place in the natural pecking order. You know which creatures are easy pickings, and you know which ones outweigh you. Keep your head down and beat a steady path between the two, and you’ll make it out all right.
Problem was—and this was a first for Vincent—somebody who seriously outweighed him had broken him.
Forget outweighing him—the thing that attacked him was of a different species entirely.
All of a sudden, the universe seemed way too friggin’ whimsical. The threats too great. The chances for failure too large.
It had taken him until Presidents’ Day to work up the courage to apply for another job. Security was all he’d known for fourteen years; it wasn’t as if he could go and open a flower shop in Manayunk. A pal recommended 1919 Market: all corporate tenants. Whiny, self-absorbed people, but no crazies, like you get in a hotel. Even swank ones like the Sheraton.
By Easter, Vincent Marella was on weekend-day and weekend-night detail.
So now here he was, on a miserably hot August day, checking every single window on the north side, all because a crackhead saw broken glass in the alley behind the building.
Up on thirty now.
Hit STOP. Go to the double security doors. Pop the mas—
Wait.
What was this on the door? Looked like a small dent, right near the handle. And a black friction mark. Vincent felt a cold tingle in his spine. He had a feeling he was going to find himself a broken window on this floor.
He couldn’t help himself. Before he unlocked the security door, Vincent put his ear to it. Listening for another ape.
David Murphy was thinking about popcorn.
This August marked the fifth anniversary of Murphy, Knox, and he wanted to let the whole building know it. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t care who in the building knew it. But a gift needed to be sent anyway. After consulting with the right tech guys—a team of chem-lab geeks he’d worked with back in Bosnia—he’d cooked up the perfect gift. A five-gallon tin of popcorn, divided into three sections: salt and butter, cheese, and caramel.
David was looking up at a row of those tins now. He had even more in his office, and at least a dozen stacked behind Molly’s desk.
He’d sampled some of the popcorn. The cheese was a bit too orange, and a bit too cloying—not to mention vaguely reminiscent of a foot. The caramel stuck to his teeth, and wasn’t so much sweet and caramelly as it was dark and syrupy. The salt-and-butter variety … now that was something he could get into.
Not that he did. He sampled only a few handfuls to convince himself that yes, this tasted like the kind of popcorn office denizens would get into, keep around the office for a while. They’d probably skip the cheese and caramel, though. But what was it Meat Loaf once sang? One out of three ain’t bad? Something like that.
David hired a company to insert the popcorn and trifold cardboard divider; he supplied the tins himself.
The exterior of the tin featured a wraparound skyline of Philadelphia, with the text in a hunter green oval on two sides:
MURPHY, KNOX & ASSOCIATES
PROUD TO CALL THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE HOME …
… 5 YEARS RUNNING!
Molly had written that. She had been good at those things.
Before she shot him in the head.
Yesterday, dozens of popcorn tins were delivered to every single tenant of 1919 Market Street, from floors thirty through thirty-seven. This included three law firms, an accounting office, a local lifestyle magazine, the private office of a state supreme court justice, two philanthropic concerns, and a few other random businesses that didn’t mean much to David.
If any tenants in floors twenty-nine or lower were to have felt slighted, David was prepared to cheerfully reply: Ah, you see, the delivery service could only do so much in one day. The rest were to be delivered on Monday. Hope you don’t mind waiting!
There were no more popcorn tins to be delivered, though. He’d ordered only enough for the eight floors at the top with some left over for special clients.
Was this a loose end? Would a nameless researcher for a congressional investigatory commission check the order later?
Like it really mattered.
Even though David was paralyzed, lying in a pool of his own blood in the conference room, he imagined himself smiling at the stack of popcorn tins on the small table against the wall. Six little popcorn tins. The one part of this morning that hadn’t completely gone to hell.
Whatever Molly had planned, David hoped for her sake she was going to finish it up quickly.
Maybe she’d come back and do the right thing. Finish him off.
Which would be perfect.