by Ian Bull
The guard nods and then allows Sam to spend the rest of the morning creeping around inside the elevator shafts and examining the inner workings of the Flood Building. He learns everything about the electrical system, the garbage chutes, the mail drops, and the security system, and the layout for each floor of the building. In truth, he learns enough that he could become a decent maintenance worker for the Flood Building if he wanted, which the building management needs…but that's not how Sam thinks.
On another day, Sam poses as a bike messenger with a leather satchel across his back. He stops for a cigarette break in an alley across the street and lights a match for a young African-American man named Devon. Young Devon is a student at San Francisco State, with plans on becoming a doctor. But to earn cash, he pushes a food cart for the catering company that delivers meals to the different accounting, legal, and financial offices in the Flood Building.
Starting at seven a.m., men and women wearing black pants, white shirts with black bow ties and white aprons push metal trays on wheels through the halls, bringing fresh breakfast to all the mid-level young executives so busy they never leave their desks. In the morning, they can choose fruit salad, yogurt, orange juice, breakfast burritos, bacon and eggs, fresh bagels, dry cereal and even pancakes. At lunch, the servers return with carts with hardboiled eggs, salads, sandwiches and smoothies. There is no reason for the young workers to leave the building.
“Where do you get your uniform?” Sam asks Devon. He’s the same size and shape as Sam. They lean against opposite brick walls in the alley, inhaling and exhaling their nicotine. Devon also wears a silver name pin on his breast pocket that says, “Apex Catering – Devon.”
“Linden Lane Tailoring. It cost me twenty-five bucks. They have them on racks, ready to go. You just walk in and say you work for Apex Catering. They measure you, hand you one off the rack and you’re an instant servant, ready to feed the worker bees,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette butt. “Time to get back to the hive.”
The kid’s boredom with his job reassures Sam about his own career choices, forgetting the months of crushing boredom he endured in his prison cell not so long ago. It’s all part of the necessary self-delusion he must create to make this job happen.
That afternoon Sam buys a uniform at Linden Lane Tailors and gets a fake silver Apex Catering pin that says “Bob – Trainee.” Kath also gets her own uniform, and her pin says “Joanie – Trainee.”
At five the next morning, Bob and Joanie join the gaggle of ten young cart pushers as they exit the BART station at Halliday Plaza and walk the downtown streets to the Flood Building. They all walk up the loading dock steps before anyone notices that “Bob and Joanie” are with them. When they do, Bob and Joanie give their new colleagues a wave.
“Hey,” Sam and Kath both say.
“You two didn’t punch in,” the guard in his little wire-covered kiosk says to them. He points at the paper punch cards in racks lining the wall alongside the old metal punch time clock, where each employee must stick in a daily time card to get marked, once coming in, and then again going out.
“Yeah, I don’t recognize you,” Theresa, the young blonde senior caterer says.
Sam and Kath point to their trainee pins and shrug. “Haven’t been officially hired yet,” Sam says. “Probationary period.”
The ten young cart pushers glance sideways at the newcomers. Devon is not one of them; Sam and Kath made sure to come to “work” on the day Devon has biology class at SF State. They all move to the large refrigerator on the loading dock, the one Sam and Kath can see from the Marlin Spike restaurant at lunchtime, when the sun lights up this cement cavern. The Apex delivery truck fills this refrigerator twice a day with food, so all the worker bees can eat.
For weeks, Sam and Kath have been watching these youngsters load cardboard boxes and plates of food onto rolling metal carts that they then push into the service elevators. Sam and Kath each grab a rolling cart and do the same.
Ten minutes later Sam and Kath exit the service elevators on the sixteenth floor, in the kitchen area of Kearne Securities. An older secretary with a bouffant hairdo waits for them.
“You’re new,” she says, eyeing Sam and then Kath.
“Apex trainees,” Sam says, pointing at his pin. “Didn’t they call?”
She scoffs and leads them to the newest technology in the office break room – the four-hundred-dollar microwave oven that Mr. Kearne bought himself. He is what the tech crowd will eventually call an “early adopter,” and like the microwave oven that he bought to reheat food, Mr. Kearne always invests in the latest computers and monitor screens for his traders. He wants to create a “network” of computers that can directly trade with the traders on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange a few blocks away, and then use the phone lines to do the same with Wall Street. The floor traders at the Stock Exchange think Mr. Kearne is a fool to create such a network with the Exchange so close by, but Mr. Kearne will soon prove them all wrong.
The secretary shows Sam and Kath how to “reheat’ the small cardboard boxes with the locking lids. The yellow ones have bacon and egg sandwiches and the red ones hold pancakes with sausages, the blue ones have breakfast burritos and the muffins and bagels are on small paper plates. The older secretary watches them load and unload the microwave oven, making sure that the catering staff does not damage this new and valuable machine.
“Don’t reheat more than two boxes at a time, the machine can’t take it,” the woman says to Sam when he tries to fit in a third egg sandwich box. “And the bagels get too hot on the inside, no more than twenty seconds.”
They load the warm food on the top shelf of the rolling cart. The cold fruit salad and yogurt cups and fresh orange juice sit in a long tray of ice on the second shelf. The bottom shelf has plenty of napkins and metal cutlery.
“Do we serve them coffee too?” Kath asks, gesturing at the large metal coffee maker in the corner, with the tall stack of Styrofoam cups.
“These boys don’t need more caffeine,” the secretary says. “And it tastes terrible.”
“Got it,” Sam says. He thinks for a moment about his coffee store idea, and how he could expand it to deliver great coffee to businesses like Kearne Securities, but the idea passes by fast.
“Make two passes on the trading floor, then go to the window offices and the front reception,” the secretary says, and she leads them through a metal door and onto the trading floor.
The trading floor is loud. They push their rolling carts down rows of desks lined with men in suits, their jackets hanging on the back of their chairs, looking at black monitors with the green cursors, all of them talking on phones and yelling out their trades.
Sam and Kath wheel their carts behind the traders. There’s an amazing view of the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco Bay out the window, but everyone faces the middle of the room so they can look at their trades and shout at each other over the partitions. A big electronic ticker tape hangs on the wall with rolling red LED lights zooming past with all the trades for the day.
“Breakfast, fruit, yogurt, orange juice,” Sam says, and the men spin and grab food and plastic containers of fruit off the rolling cart. No orders, no bills, just food that rolls past and they can grab it, never saying thank you and never making eye contact. That lack of connection bothered young Devon when he told Sam about it on one of their smoke breaks, but for Sam it’s perfect. Sam rolls his cart slowly and scans the room, learning everything. Kath does the same one row over.
Sam notices that the four security cameras are aimed only at the trading floor. The partners are more worried about employees stealing from within than from thieves coming in from outside.
Sam finishes feeding one row of traders, turns and makes his run past the offices with the windows. The sun is rising over the Oakland Hills to the East, and it fills the entire sixteenth floor with soft morning light.
Where on this 2,000-square-foot 16th floor would they hide a safe? From his day as an “ele
vator maintenance worker,” Sam knows there’s no point in searching the middle section, which houses the guts of the building: there’s a square cement shaft that holds two elevators that face the lobby, and another two service elevators that open facing the back-loading dock. The central shaft also holds the pipes for the bathroom plumbing, the electrical wiring, and the air-conditioning ducts that branch off on each floor. Throw in the kitchen, and the bathrooms, and there’s no space left in that middle section to put a vault, or even a closet.
The rest of the 16th trading floor surrounding that middle section is wide open. There are some walls around the reception area, but you wouldn’t put a safe there. The safe that holds the actual stock certificates that Paul wants so badly must be in one of these window offices, where an executive works.
He goes slow, making sure to peek into every office, even making eye contact with some of the guys talking on their phones. They all ignore him except for the man in the corner office who gestures for him to stop.
“Bring me an egg sandwich and a muffin,” he says in a thick Queens accent and snaps his red suspenders that hold up his black suit.
“Here you go, sir,” Sam says, and lays the paper plate with the muffin and the carton with the egg sandwich down on his table.
That's when Sam spots it. Behind the executive is an oak end table that doesn't match the rest of the sleek, space-age furniture. It's a Honeywell Steel Security Safe, made to look like an oak end table. It's perfect for holding valuable papers, like stock and bond certificates.
Sam pauses for a second too long, because the trader speaks.
“You want a tip or something? Buy Walmart and don’t stop buying. That’s your fucking tip. Now leave,” the trader says. He runs his hands through his thin grey hair and then grins at his sandwich before devouring half of it.
“Thank you, Mr. Kearne,” Sam says, taking a chance.
“Don’t call me that. That son of a bitch is in the corner office. My name is Smythe and I’m the CFO,” the man says, and stuffs the rest of the sandwich in his mouth.
“Sorry, Mr. Smythe,” Sam says and leaves.
The CFO hates the CEO. He has a motive to steal. The safe happens in his office. If it’s an inside job, he may be the one who has communicated with Paul, letting him know about the safe full of certificates. Sam is learning a lot.
Sam and Kath wait until they are out of the building, back in their street clothes and driving away in the microbus before speaking.
“We’re getting close,” Sam says.
"Can you get into that safe?" Kath asks after she hears his story.
“I’ll figure something out. I’m more worried about their office security.”
On another day, Sam wears a wig, sunglasses and his bike messenger outfit, and he delivers a package addressed to Mr. Kearne himself. It’s a package with nothing inside, but it has plenty of rush and urgent and time-sensitive stickers on the outside. He makes his fake delivery at six p.m. on a Thursday.
“We’re closing,” the young receptionist tells him as Sam exits the elevator. She’s got teased-up brunette hair and a turquoise jacket with padded shoulders, which is hip in 1980. She jingles the ring of keys in her hand.
“Urgent. For a Mr. Kearnes,” Sam says, holding up the package.
“Leave it on the counter,” she says.
“I need a signature,” Sam says.
The receptionist sticks the elevator security key in the silver slot in the wall, leaving the keyring dangling in the lock. Sam stares at it as she walks back to the desk and grabs a pen.
“Aren’t you a little old to be a bike messenger? You’re at least thirty,” she says, as she grabs Sam’s clipboard and signs.
Sam points to the Grateful Dead t-shirt he's wearing. "If you follow the Dead, this the best part-time job you can get. I’m on the road with Jerry a lot. When I’m not following the band, I stay in-shape doing deliveries.”
She rolls her eyes and tosses Sam's package on her counter then points at the open elevator. “Let’s go. I got places to be.”
Sam gets on the elevator. He watches the receptionist twist her key in the lock and turn on the security system. She steps into the elevator and twists another key into the slot next to the “sixteen” button, sealing off access to the top floor. She pushes the lobby button and she and Sam ride down in silence.
Sam wishes he could ask if her security key automatically locked off the service elevators too, but that would be too obvious. Instead, he watches her put the keyring away in her large purse. It’s a keyring with a Hello Kitty keychain, and the purse has no zipper, just a magnetic clasp. They ride the elevator down in awkward silence, and Sam disappears out the front glass doors.
The next day, Sam and Kath follow the receptionist after work. She walks through the maze of downtown buildings to the House of Shields bar and restaurant on New Montgomery Street, across from The Palace Hotel. At half past six, she eats bar snacks and drinks gin and tonics with her friends and colleagues. They are all well-dressed men and women, young urban professionals who work hard at corporate jobs in finance or accounting or advertising. All of them are smart. All of them have plans to make it big, and each is hoping to meet someone of the opposite sex who also has big plans. Sam and Kath watch the Kearnes Securities receptionist through the window. She laughs and flirts with her friends, pointing and talking, with her purse on the stool next to her. They’d stand out if they walked in right now, dressed in their funky bohemian jeans, scarves and leather jackets, so they linger outside in the fog.
“We need those keys,” Sam says, staring at the purse through the window. “She’s got two keys on a Hello Kitty keychain. One is for the elevator floor and the other is for the security system. They’re stamped ‘Do Not Duplicate.’ We need one security key and two elevator keys. I’m just guessing, but I think I’m right.”
“Are those keys the last thing we need?” Kath asks.
“Yep. But I’m no purse snatcher, and neither are you. And no following her home and breaking into her place. We’re commercial burglars. Businesses only, never people.”
“We’re running out of time,” Kath says.
“Let me think.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“I’ll figure something out,” he says.
Kath doesn’t talk anymore. Instead, she does some thinking of her own.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
T he next evening, Kath sips a cocktail in the House of Shields, dressed in a blue pencil skirt with a blue blouse. She glances at her watch every so often, to make it seem like she is waiting for someone who is late, but no one notices her. The receptionist arrives with her group of friends. Kath stares into her drink and listens to them talk about Stanford and Cal, Oracle and Apple, and their own plans to buy San Francisco real estate before the prices skyrocket. Kath wonders if she should have spent her twenties thinking about buying real estate too, and envies their youth and their plans.
She waits until the group of young men and women are loud and ordering their third round of drinks. Kath walks past them on the way to the bathroom, just as the bartender server their drinks – and she knocks the receptionist's purse off her stool onto the floor. Kath picks it up and puts it back on the stool for her.
“Sorry about that,” she says, and keeps walking with her own purse toward the bathroom.
She walks out the back of the bar and into Stevenson alley, then turns right into a two-story indoor garage, where a parked Vespa is waiting. She hops on and zooms down Stevenson Alley, turns right on 2nd Street, right on Mission, right on 4th Street and right up on the curb in front of Fox and Cole Hardware, the only real hardware store in downtown San Francisco. She walks inside, opens the purse, pulls out the keychain and hands them to the man behind the counter, along with an envelope.
The man checks the envelope, counts the cash inside, then pulls the keys labeled “Do Not Duplicate” off the keychain and twists the first one into the duplicating machine. Kath glan
ces at her watch. She’s been gone two minutes.
Five minutes later he finishes one copy of the security key and two copies of the elevator key and hands everything back to her. She pockets the copies and twists the originals back onto the Hello Kitty keychain.
“Will they work?” she asks.
“You won’t know until you try. But don’t come back.”
Kath walks out, hops back onto the Vespa, zooms through traffic back to the parking lot, parks the Vespa, smooths her skirt and re-enters the House of Shields through the back. She glances at her watch. She’s been gone exactly ten minutes.
The young urban professionals are right where she left them, now talking about Charles Schwab’s new 24-hour stock price quotation service, and they’re on their fourth round of drinks. As Kath passes the stool, she knocks the purse off it a second time.
“Sorry, I keep doing that,” she says, sliding the keychain back into the receptionist’s purse. She then puts the purse back on the stool and then walks down to her own.
The receptionist looks at her purse, checks the inside, and then her eyes follow Kath as she sits back down on her stool by the entrance. Kath watches the group out of the corner of her eye for a few minutes, then finishes her drink and leaves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
S am and Kath vibrate across the shaking mattress, climaxing at the same time. There are no giggles, no laughing, no sweet talk. They disengage, roll away from each other like two opposing football players picking themselves up after a tough play.
Sam untwists the wires in the broken Magic Massage unit on the headboard. They are in the Buena Vista Motor Inn on Lombard Street, close to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“We’re running out of motels on Lombard. We’re going to have to move to Fisherman’s Wharf next,” Sam complains as he pulls out a charred fifty-dollar bill from a plastic bag and puts it on the bedside table.