Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

  The executives and their visitors entered through a row of shiny brass doors at the top of a short flight of steps from the sidewalk and emerged into an extravagant pink marble–lined lobby. Aside from its garishness, the area had a number of other disadvantages. There were security guards watching everyone who came in. Receptionists, checking IDs. And automated barriers blocking the way to the elevators. That’s why I continued around the building until I came to the loading dock. The access is on Pine Street, which is really more of an alley that far east, where it’s dwarfed by a tall black glass building, all angles and points like a kid’s drawing of a space rocket.

  The security guard was in his booth. He was leaning back in his chair. His collar was open, his tie was loose, and he had his phone propped up on the narrow shelf beneath the window, with a TV show playing on it. He saw me, ran his fingers through his wild curly hair, slid the window a quarter of the way open, and grunted an incomprehensible greeting.

  “Morning.” I held up a driver’s license in the name of Paul McNulty and gestured to the overall I’d borrowed from the courthouse. “It’s my first day. Can you tell me where the janitors’ room is?”

  The guard picked up a clipboard and scanned the sheet of paper that was attached to it. “You’re not on the list.” He dropped the board and turned back to his phone.

  I rapped on the glass to make sure I had his attention. “I didn’t ask if I was on some list. I asked where the janitors’ room is. I need to get to work.”

  “You’re not on my list”—he twisted his neck around and glowered up at me—“you don’t work in this building. Now get lost.”

  “You wait just a minute, pal.” I crossed my arms. “This building’s managed by Silverstein Properties, correct? Well, Josh from Silverstein’s head office sent me. He screwed up the paperwork, that’s not my fault. I can’t help who is or who isn’t on your dumb-ass list. And what do you think, anyway? I came down here to clean other people’s bathrooms for fun? Because let me tell you, they might wear smart suits and fancy dresses, but those people upstairs live like animals. The mess they make? You wouldn’t believe it. And if I don’t clean it up, who will? Your list? Will it magically sprout arms and legs and pick up a mop? Or will you do it? Because if no one does, there’ll be hell to pay. Someone will have to answer.”

  “What’s your name again?” The guy struggled a little more upright in his chair, picked his clipboard back up, and reached for his reading glasses.

  “McNulty.” I split it into three slow syllables and held out my ID. “Paul. I should be on there. If I’m not, just write down my details. Or if it’s easier, copy my license. Use your phone. Take a picture. That way, if there are any questions, you’re bulletproof.”

  He took my license and squinted at it. “This picture doesn’t look much like you.”

  I shrugged. “What can I tell you? It was taken when I’d just got out of the army. I’ve maybe put on a little weight since then.”

  “You were in the service?”

  I nodded. “Twenty years. Logistics. All over the world.”

  “And now you’re a janitor?”

  “It’s an important job. The world couldn’t function without janitors. All those people upstairs, with their high-powered jobs and their Porsches and their summer homes in the Hamptons, they wouldn’t have any of that without us. The same goes for security guards, if you think about it.”

  “I guess.” He looked at his watch. “It’s early. No one’s here yet to show you what’s what.”

  “Don’t worry.” I slid the license back into my pocket. “I know what I’m here to do.”

  * * *

  —

  The janitors’ room in that building was smaller than the one I was used to at the courthouse. There was no space for tables and chairs or couches. The ceiling was lower, giving it the air of a large closet. Minus the amenities, though, it had the same general layout. Only it was reversed. The supply shelves were on the left, and the carts were lined up on the right. Rather than using numbers there were names stenciled on the wall. That was a nice touch. I thought I’d maybe suggest it to Carrodus.

  There were ten bays in the room. The first eight were occupied. Some of the carts were customized in familiar ways, with cloth holders slung around the bins to carry bottles and brushes, or trash bags twisted into ropes to support mops and brooms. The ninth bay was empty. The final one had no name attached, but it was home to an empty cart with a broken wheel. I guessed it was awaiting repair, or disposal. I pulled it out and gave it a test run up the center of the room. It was a pain to keep straight and it squealed like a spoiled toddler being dragged out of a toy store, but I figured it was good enough for what I needed. I pulled my overalls on top of my clothes, grabbed a few bottles of polish, some dusters and a mop, and set off in search of the service elevator.

  Klinsman’s suite was at the northeast corner of the building, above the level where it narrowed. The area outside its doors was set up for visitors to wait in. There was a brown leather couch in a generic mid-century style facing a pair of cube armchairs with a coffee table between them. It was made of rough reclaimed wood and held stacks of magazines about golf and yachts. The walls were plain white, but they had no need of adornment due to the views from their four windows. Two looked out over the river toward Brooklyn. The others, up toward Midtown. I paused and watched a long, low boat loaded down with garbage steam steadily beneath the bridge, trailing seagulls in its wake. Then I turned, pushed open the doors, and went through, towing my cart behind me.

  A woman in her early twenties was sitting behind an L-shaped reception counter by the right-hand wall. She had scarlet hair. Her skin was so pale it was almost transparent. She was so thin and so studiously disinterested in her surroundings that I figured she must be either a wannabe fashion model or a heroin addict. Or both. I nodded vaguely in her direction and continued into a corridor. There was a line of offices on the right—four of them—which would be against the outside wall, and therefore have river views. To the left—with no view—there were three cubicles. I guessed they were for the admin staff, or people who were not yet fully fledged in the black art of making money without making things. Beyond them, at the far end of the corridor, a glass-walled conference room took up the full width of the suite.

  Each office had a blond wood door flanked by a pair of vertical obscured-glass windows. All the doors were closed, and the first three had brass nameplates mounted at chest level. The one on the nearest door read James J. Klinsman. I was about to open it when the receptionist zipped past me with a file in her hand and went inside. I didn’t want an audience for what I was planning to do, so I continued along the corridor. There was a light on in the next office, so I kept going. The third was dark, but when I paused to listen my eye was drawn to the floor outside the final office. Something was lying there near the foot of the door. A strip of metal. It was facedown, surrounded by sawdust and slivers of wood. I wheeled my cart past, bent down, and flipped it over. It was another nameplate. It read Trevor W. Francis. The typeface was the same as Klinsman’s, but the font was a few points smaller.

  “Wait!” The receptionist closed Klinsman’s door and scurried down the corridor toward me. “What are you doing? Don’t clean that up.”

  I thought it best not to tell her I had no intention of cleaning anything in that place. “What happened?” I straightened up. “Did this Francis guy throw a tantrum?”

  “What?” She stopped moving. “No. How do you figure that?”

  “Well, it looks like someone slammed the door and the nameplate fell off. So I’m thinking, one, you need a new carpenter. Two, this is Francis’s office, so he probably did the slamming. And three, you’re leaving the mess for him to clear up to make sure he learns his lesson.”

  The receptionist turned her head halfway to the side and looked at me out of the corner of her eye as if she
was trying to decide if I was joking. “You can clear it up another day, OK? After Trevor’s seen it. Otherwise, how will he know he’s been fired?”

  “Francis has been fired?”

  She nodded.

  “And he doesn’t know it yet?”

  She shook her head.”

  “This is how he’s going to find out?”

  She nodded again. “This is how Mr. Klinsman does things. If you don’t help earn it, you can’t help spend it. Everyone knows that. You carry your weight, or you’re out. And you know you’re out when you arrive in the morning and find your nameplate on the floor.”

  “For real? That’s barbaric.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Really? Is that right? Who are you to judge? Have you ever had to end someone’s career?”

  Actually, yes, I thought. Several people’s. Some of them permanently. “Hey, don’t bite my head off.” I held my hands out, palms first. “You’re right. What would I know? Still, I was just thinking, maybe Klinsman could have sat down with the guy. Explained what he was doing wrong. Given him the chance to put things right. Helped him, if he needed it. Given him some training. Some encouragement. And if he still couldn’t make the grade, thank him for his service. Wish him well for the future. And look him in the eye when he did it.”

  She started to smile as if she thought I might be joking, then her lips curled into a frown and she shook her head. “No. That wouldn’t work for Mr. Klinsman. He’s far too busy to waste time on losers and flakes.”

  “I guess he must be. But tell me, what did Francis do wrong, anyway?”

  “He missed his quota, two months running.”

  “Ouch.” I nodded gravely. “I guess he had to go, in that case. Where is he now? Did he see the writing on the wall and decide to use up his vacation days?”

  “Associates at KAM don’t take vacations.” She rolled her eyes. “No. Trevor’s still in the hospital. He should get out later today. The doctors said it wasn’t a heart attack, after all. Just a panic thing. He should be back at work this afternoon. Tomorrow morning, at the latest.”

  I was sorry to hear that Francis was due back so soon. The way Klinsman was acting reminded me of an incident at a company I was sent to infiltrate in England one time. It was a startup ISP that we thought had been compromised by the Russians to launch a bunch of denial-of-service attacks on US utilities. It turned out we were wrong, but anyway, the startup bubble soon burst. The company needed to cut costs, so it decided to lay off half its staff. The task of breaking the news fell to the Human Resources director, and being the warm, empathetic character he was, he chose to do it by sending a group email. And not just to the people who were getting fired. He sent it to everyone. Not the smartest move when you’re dealing with the nation that invented soccer hooliganism. The staff rioted. Literally. They tore the place to pieces. Smashed the furniture. Wrecked the computers. Broke the windows. Tore up the carpets. There were a couple of medium-sized fires. The directors feared for their lives. They locked themselves in a bathroom and waited for the police to rescue them. Which they did. Several hours later. I was thinking that if Klinsman was around when Francis learned his fate, he could see if Francis had the same kind of backbone as the Brits I’d worked with. And if Francis wasn’t up for full-scale civil commotion, he could at least give his boss some pointers about improving his office etiquette. Which I’d be more than happy to help hammer home…

  “Good, then.” I stepped closer to my cart. “I’ll be back on this floor tomorrow. I’ll check in with you first thing. See whether the sword of Damocles has swung, or if its thread is still intact.”

  “What?” She tipped her head to one side.

  “It’s not important. Just janitorial humor.”

  “What—” Her phone started to ring. She looked at the screen for a second, then hit the answer button and pressed the phone to her ear. “Yes. Not yet. I will! Don’t worry. I know they’re coming. I know how big it is. I have. There’s plenty of time. I know how you like to rehearse. Look, I’m doing it now.” She hung up and jammed the phone back into her pocket. “I’m sorry.” She held up a memory stick and started moving toward the conference room. “We have an important client coming in. I have to get the slides ready.” She turned back for a moment and glared at the door next to Klinsman’s. If looks could shatter wood, there’d have been more to clear up than a nameplate.

  I watched her go inside, open a cupboard in the left-hand wall, and plug the memory stick into a machine in a rack of AV equipment. She reached for a keyboard, and as soon as she was busy tapping away I retraced my steps toward the entrance until I reached Klinsman’s door. I pushed, and it opened.

  His office was fitted out with fairly standard executive fare—a single pedestal desk, a chair with wheels, a couch under the window, a coat stand. It was all pretty bland, except for the crocodile. It was silver, standing with its legs planted solidly in the center of the room, six feet long from nose to tail. It had rubies for eyes. Diamond-studded teeth. And an irregular slab of greenish glass that flowed all around the creature’s body to form the surface of a table. I looked more closely to see what was causing the opaque effect, and I realized it was etched with the image of hundreds of twenty-dollar bills. I ignored the urge to drop something heavy on it and wheeled my cart back so that it was blocking the door.

  There was a charging wire protruding from a grommet at the center of the desk, but no sign of a laptop. The bottom drawer was full of gun brochures. Mainly ones that specialized in big-game hunting rifles. At one time I’d thought seriously about moving to Africa when my final tour was up, and hunting elephant poachers. Maybe it wasn’t too late, now that reconciliation with my father was off the table. I pushed the thought away and moved to the next drawer. It was fitted with a wire mesh organizer separating a bunch of pens, pencils, paper clips, and elastic bands. There was also a wooden cigar box that contained two business cards from every job he’d had from high school to the present. I wondered if he was saving them up, ready to put in a frame. He did seem to like displaying things. I put the box back and moved on to the top drawer. There were three folders inside. Each one had a printed label stuck to its top corner. The first, For Signature. Next, Correspondence. And last, Filing.

  The signature file contained two bundles of papers. The first was at least twenty pages thick, and seemed to relate to a company that Klinsman was purchasing. The other was even bigger. Maybe sixty pages, about all kinds of assets he was planning to sell. It wasn’t clear if there was a connection, so I took out my phone and photographed the key pages so I could figure it out later. The correspondence file was mostly full of invitations to fundraisers from politicians. There were also some requests for support from alumni groups and smaller museums and galleries, but one page at the back of the file really grabbed my attention. Klinsman’s company name and address were stated in Arabic. But the rest of the letter was in Chinese. I photographed that, too, then checked the final folder. It was empty. I guess the receptionist wouldn’t last long if she didn’t keep the filing up-to-date, even if she didn’t have a nameplate to pry off.

  I returned the files and checked for hidden compartments in the desk, but there weren’t any. I examined the walls. There was only one thing hanging on any of them. It was a fluted gold frame, like the kind you’d expect to find around a priceless renaissance oil painting in a dusty Italian gallery. Only this one held just an ordinary piece of letter paper, yellowing slightly with age. It had three words emblazoned across it, in bold handwritten capitals—DO IT NOW!!!—with the initials JK inscribed below and to the right. A museum-style brass plaque screwed to the lower edge of the frame proclaimed, James Klinsman, 1995. I looked behind it, thinking its job must be to conceal a safe. Why else would it exist? But there was no steel door. No keypad. Klinsman must have hung it there for sentimental value. Or to guard against the risk of procrastination. All of a sudde
n a picture formed in my mind of the guy Francis. I’d never met him. I had no idea what he actually looked like. But somehow I could see him staggering home from the hospital and dragging himself straight into work, only to find he’d been discarded with no more regard than a cheap strip of brass.

  I took the frame off the wall and carried it to the desk. Laid it facedown. Unpicked the metal tags that held the back in place. Removed the paper. Set it the right way up. Fished a pen—the thickest I could find—out of the middle drawer. And wrote in the space below Klinsman’s words, REGRET IT LATER, PMC. Then I reassembled the frame. Replaced it on the hook. Moved my cart, and left the suite.

  * * *

  —

  Sometimes their attempts were clumsy. Sometimes they failed. But when I was at the courthouse, I felt like I was surrounded by people who were at least trying to do the right thing. Whose work was necessary. As the inscription along the base of the portico said, THE TRUE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IS THE FIRMEST PILLAR OF GOOD GOVERNMENT. It was refreshing to be there, after spending time at Klinsman’s office. I felt like I was cleansing myself, not just cleaning the fabric of the building. I started with the octagonal corridor on third and continued all the way around, slowly and thoroughly. Then I moved on to room 310, and I’d almost finished when my phone rang. It was Harry.

  “I’m thinking, a Jaguar. British Racing Green.”

  “Have you been overdoing the caffeine again?” I put my broom back on my cart.