The positive outcome of all of this was that Andy talked to me less and less as the months went on. What he did instead was talk to the manager.
On a day when I was planning to head to a buddy’s place right after work, I brought in a dozen beers. When Andy saw me putting them into The Cooler, he asked me what I was doing.
“I’m chilling some beer,” I said, although it should have been obvious to him.
He said nothing, but twenty minutes later, Dan Turnbull came up to me. “Did you bring a case of beer in here?” he asked.
“Not a two-four,” I said. “Just twelve.”
“Get them out of here. Now.”
“I’m not drinking them or anything,” I said.
“Now,” he said and went back to his office.
I took the beer to my car and avoided Andy for the rest of the shift.
The computers went down on a Tuesday afternoon for the second time that day, shortly after Andy had come in for his evening shift. Dutifully, I picked up the phone and dialed the library, then put myself on hold and sat back while the guys who actually knew what to do worked on getting everything back on line. I was minding my own business, reading a Raymond Chandler novel, when I felt someone staring at me. It was Andy. He was looking alternately at me and at the flashing red hold button on the phone.
“Is that one of the users on hold?” he asked.
“It’s just the library,” I told him. “It’s what we do.”
He did not respond. He picked up the phone, pushed the button to release the hold and hung up. Then he almost looked me in the eye and turned away. Immediately, the phone rang. It was a user wanting to know what was wrong and how long it would take to fix. Every time I hung up it rang again. I repeated the same useless non-answers over and over. It was a waste of everyone’s time and energy. And it was the new and annoying way of doing things whenever Andy was around.
Two days after the incident with the phones, Turnbull called all the operators together. “Under no circumstances,” he said, “are you to tie up the phone lines when any one of the systems goes down. Never again. Is that clear?”
Everyone nodded, but one thing was clearer to me than to the rest of them: Andy was a rat. No one else would have said anything, and that method had worked fine for years. Now we faced constant nuisance phone calls when we had better things to do. I looked at Andy to see how he was taking all of this. As usual, his eyes did not meet mine.
The next salvo was directed at Rich. Andy found him walking on his hands one afternoon, to the delight of everyone else. Ten minutes later, Turnbull was in the room.
“Rich,” he said, “stop walking on your hands. If you slip and crack your head open we’ll have lawyers all over us.” He paused, then added, “Given what you’ve got up there, I doubt you’d do yourself much damage, but it would hurt the company and your future with it.”
Rich and I both knew that the last thing either of us wanted was a future with the company. But that just showed how out of touch Turnbull was.
Turnbull had been one of the most popular users when he worked in department 292. He was a small, rumpled man with a thick East London accent and a pronounced contempt for bureaucracy and bosses - or so I thought. But as soon as he was promoted to computer room manager, all that changed. No more joking around about the users, at least not in his presence. And he’d walk in the computer room a few times a day for no other discernible purpose than to stride around and make sure nobody was doing anything that they shouldn’t. It made me regret any time I’d said anything negative to him about the company and its employees, even in jest, just to get a laugh, because it seemed as if he was circling around now, waiting for me to say something similar so he could pounce.
The final insult came on the night I was fired.
Leaving early was one of the advantages of working four to midnight. The idea to leave was never mine, and I never suggested it. But if the offer was made, I never turned it down. Why would I? The shift was almost always dead quiet, and by ten o’clock there was usually nothing to do but read or sit around and talk, especially on Fridays. And, in Andy’s case, talking with him was best avoided unless utterly essential.
I didn’t always get sent home, of course. When I worked with Jerry, he would usually let me go. I think because he wanted to do things that he didn’t want anyone else to see. Julio would let me go because he would have left too if he could. With some of the others, I always stayed right to closing time, and that was not a problem. I was lazy, but I wasn’t greedy.
On summer Friday nights, only the most pathetic and nerdy users were upstairs working away on who knows what. One night shortly before the end, when Andy and I were working together, I decided to clean the tape drives, which had to be done anyway. It was a tedious task, but it got me away from Andy for awhile. I was just finishing when I heard his squeaky shoes approaching. He pointed to the two drives on the end. “You didn’t do these,” he said.
“Don’t need to. They weren’t used today.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Clean them anyway,” he said. “Just in case.” He turned, then said, “After you do that, you might as well go home. It’s pretty quiet.” This came as a surprise because it was so unlike him to do anything that wasn’t by the book.
I looked at my watch. “It’s only ten-fifteen.”
Andy shrugged. “All the drives will be clean. The tapes are filed. The paper is set for tomorrow. There are only three people on the system. There are only a few files left to print. I can do that.” He waved a hand towards the door. “You go home.”
I was never one to look a gift horse, so I gave the drives a quick wipe down, grabbed my stuff and left before he changed his mind. After that, Andy turned me loose almost every night that we worked together. Then came the Friday when it all fell apart.
It was quiet around eight o’clock. There was nothing going on, and I was avoiding Andy, who was skulking somewhere in the bowels of the room. I was being productive, writing a letter to a girl I knew who was visiting family overseas for the summer. Much to my surprise, Turnbull, who was usually long gone by this hour, came into the room and walked straight towards me.
“What are you typing?” he asked.
“It’s a letter,” I said, darkening the screen.
“Is it company business?”
“No.”
“Well who’s it to?”
“It’s personal.”
“To whom?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He looked at me intently for a few seconds and then turned and walked away, surprising me again. I kept typing, but the reprieve did not last long. A few minutes later, he returned.
“Come in to my office,” he said. When there, he said, “Everything that happens in this department is my business. Who were you writing to?”
“A friend,” I said.
“What friend?”
“It makes no difference.”
He changed his tack. “I understand that you’ve been leaving early on second shift.”
“Who told you that?”
“Have you?”
There was no point in denying it. “On any of those nights all the work had been done,” I said, “and there’s always been someone else here.”
It was over, and I knew it. And I knew why. Jerry wouldn’t have ratted me out. Julio wouldn’t, nor would Rich. Only Andy was slimy enough to have done it.
“Go home,” Turnbull said. “You’re fired. Give me your pass card.”
Handing the card over, I said, “I have some things in the computer room.”
“Get them and get out.”
Frankly, I didn’t care about getting fired. I had no interest in computers or in making a career in a multi-national conglomerate. I figured my severance would be about five hundred bucks, and I’d have no trouble getting another job. A buddy of mine had already told me that the warehouse he worked at was lookin
g for people. But what really pissed me off was that creepy Andy had played me for a sucker, and I’d been stupid enough to fall for it. I should have known something stank when the sneaky bastard sent me home early the first time.
I gathered up my few things as well as a pen that I wanted. Andy had made himself scarce in the library, obviously knowing what was happening and not having the guts to face me. This suited me too, as I had no desire to see his smarmy face. It also allowed me to take his entry pass from the jacket that he always left hanging on the back of his chair. He wouldn’t miss the pass for ages as he never went further than the men’s room and had been there not ten minutes before. I wouldn’t need the card for long anyway.
Outside, in a dark corner of the parking lot, I watched until Turnbull climbed into his car and left. I waited a few minutes longer, then went back into the building. There was nobody around. The security guy from the front desk was either making his rounds or had gone for a leak. There must have been cleaners somewhere in the building, but they were out of sight and earshot. And I could move quietly when I needed to. Man, I love desert boots.
You have to remember how things were then, even in a huge company in a high-tech industry. Cameras weren’t ubiquitous. You could move around just about anywhere in those days without being photographed or videotaped. It was a kind of freedom that people born in the last twenty years couldn’t begin to imagine. No one was tracking your movements through your mobile phone. It was beautiful. So I was able to walk back into the building with nobody the wiser. I figured that Andy would be pleased that I was gone. He’d be sitting at his console typing code, totally transfixed by the screen.
I made my way through the deserted corridors, letting myself onto our floor with Andy’s pass. At the entrance to the computer room, I typed the code and opened the door as slowly and quietly as I could. I’d been right: Andy was tucked away at one of the back consoles.
He was sitting enraptured by the screen. The only sounds were the hum of the air conditioners and his rapid clacking on the keyboard. I went to the bank of computer disks and lifted one gently from its cradle. Then I approached Andy at such an angle that he wouldn’t see my reflection in his screen but not so far to his side that I’d show up in his peripheral vision.
I wasn’t sure what would happen to somebody who was hit in the head with a computer disk and was curious to find out. I lifted the heavy disk above my head and held it there a moment before bringing it down swiftly. Andy made a small grunting sound, and his body shook violently. Then he slumped in his chair, and that was all.
Before putting it back, I checked the disk to see that the bottom of it was not damaged in any visible way. There was a bit of blood that wiped off easily and a few hairs that I plucked away and dropped beside Andy’s chair. He had tilted sideways, but he was still breathing. I’d figured when he came to he’d have learned his lesson.
At first I was just going to leave him where he’d slumped. Then I saw The Tit sitting next to his console. I took up two of the tiles a few yards from his chair and dragged him over to the hole. He started making odd noises and thrashing around a bit, which made the job more difficult than it should have been.
I dropped his head and shoulders into the open space. Then I had to take up two more tiles and step down onto the lower floor myself, so I could grab his shoulders and pull him down beneath the supporting framework. When he was stretched out, looking more or less comfortable, I got his jacket and replaced the passcard. Then I folded the jacket and tucked it under Andy’s head, and put the tiles back.
He’d be okay. The tiles were easy to move from underneath and, if worse came to worse, somebody usually went in on the weekend. I got on the highway and headed for my buddy’s cottage. To this day, I still can’t figure out what went wrong.
Christmas Help
(Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2018)
“DO YOU LIKE RUM?” THAT WAS THE FIRST thing of any sig-nificance that Alex said to me. There had been the odd hello and a polite “Nice to meet you” when we were introduced, but other than that there had been no conversation at all until I found him in the kitchen with a Styrofoam cup in one hand and a hip flask in the other.
“I guess I could choke some down,” I said. He poured two stiff measures and our friendship was sealed.
Alex’s hair was blond almost to the point of whiteness. His skin was pale and he usually wore white slacks, a white shirt, a pale yellow tie and a crisp blue sports jacket. He was always polite and his voice was soft. Until he offered me that first drink, I had assumed he was pretty much a straight arrow.
The kitchen was in the basement of the bookstore where we worked. We had been hired as short-term help, from late October through the rush of Christmas. Our last day was supposed to be the hectic Boxing Day Sale, held in those years on December 27. It was then illegal in Toronto for retailers to open on the day after Christmas.
I was hired on a Tuesday and Alex started two days later. He was given the task of helping Mrs. Winters, who managed the stationery department. Greeting cards and giftwrap made up a large part of the store’s annual sales, and Christmas was a very profitable time.
Most of the time, I worked one of the two cash desks by the front door, helped keep the shelves stocked and neat, and was expected to know what was in the store at all times. I was paid two dollars and ten cents an hour, not bad money.
The store had a staff of seven in addition to the Christmas help. Miss Walters, the manager, was in her thirties and much loved by the employees and by Mr. Jenkins, the Area Manager, who stopped in frequently. I liked her because she hired me within an hour of my interview, saving me from the tedious chore of further job hunting, an indignity that I loathed. She was a stickler for procedure and formality. She always referred to herself, and liked to be referred to, as Miss Walters. It was quaint and old fashioned. I thought of her as Rebecca.
The rumour was that she had her heart set on an Area Manager position followed by further moves up the corporate ladder. It was a modest ambition, at best, but one she clearly clung to. At the time, my hope was even simpler, that one of the full-timers would leave before Boxing Day and I’d be given the vacant job.
It was already apparent that I knew more about books than Rebecca did. In my interview, she asked me what I was reading. I told her The Judas Boy by Simon Raven. The blankness on her face led me to add, “And I’m halfway through Cry Wolf by Wilbur Smith”. She smiled at a title and author that she recognized.
The store was on two levels. Books and stationery were on the ground floor. Children’s books were in the basement, along with the kitchen, the washrooms and the furnace room.
Gunther, who handled shipping and receiving, was also the lead singer in a punk rock band. He was soft spoken and thoughtful, but with his spiky hair, black clothes, crooked, yellow teeth and his walleye, that wasn’t the first impression he created. For some inexplicable reason, Rebecca had Gunther work in the children’s department when Jessica, who was there full time, took her lunch and coffee breaks.
I will never forget the day a distraught woman raced up the stairs and hurried to the cash desk to tell me that we had a child molester working in the basement. She had just left the store when Gunther came up looking around in bewilderment, his good eye staring at me and the other looking off balefully somewhere to his right.
The rest of the staff included Lillian, a charming British woman who was knowledgeable about English literature and poetry; Edward who was keenly interested in music and went on to a career as a record producer, and Mrs. Winters. She had managed the stationery department for years and was a stern woman with little sense of humour. She was efficient and obsessed with keeping all the card racks fully stocked and orderly.
As I had hoped, in late November one of the full time staff got a better job. Rebecca asked me to take her place. This was not surprising since I knew more about the books on the fiction, mystery, and science fiction shel
ves than anyone else. It was all part of making myself invaluable.
I suppose that I should have been looking for another, more lucrative job, but the path of least resistance has always seemed the best one to me. To my disappointment, my wage did not increase, but I did get a key to the back door of the store, which is how staff came and went before opening in the morning and after closing at night.
Everything was going calmly and quite well until the day Mrs. Winters was fired. This came as a shock to everyone, especially to Lillian. The two women had worked together for more than fifteen years and, although there seemed to be little warmth between them, there was a comfortable familiarity and professional respect.
There were two shifts at the store, from nine o’clock in the morning, in advance of store opening at nine thirty, until five in the afternoon, and from one o’clock until the store closed at nine p.m.
We found out about the firing when we came in to work for our respective shifts. We were given no reason for the dismissal. It was not our concern, I suppose, but I was curious to know why, and I could only assume that everyone else felt the same.
Since he was Mrs. Winters’ assistant, Alex was promoted to stationery manager. It seemed an unlikely choice, switching from a reserved, middle aged woman to a young man who frequently drank rum in the basement on his lunch hour. Much to my annoyance, they also gave him a raise.
Finding out why Mrs. Winters had been fired turned out to be easier than expected. It was just a matter of waiting until somebody did something careless.
Kickback and Other Stories Page 2