But no movie victim had ever screamed like that. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was right.
She was also sure she was right when she followed her first instinct. Look where that got her. Out of work.
She was ready to face the firing squad.
Helen clocked in at seven fifty-eight A.M. on what she knew would be her last day in the boiler room.
Taniqua was spraying her phone with Lysol. She said she hated when the night shift used her desk and left their trash on it. Taniqua had style. She looked like she walked off a New York runway in her red silk crop top, tiny skirt and sexy four-inch satin heels with rhinestone buckles. She’s young, pretty and ready to party, Helen thought, and she’s stuck here.
Nick, skinny and jittery, came in carrying his usual breakfast of orange soda and jelly doughnuts. Marina’s toddler, Ramon, was trying to put a hairy pink piece of chewed gum in his mouth. His mother snatched it from his chubby hand, and Ramon burst into loud sobs. Marina swung the howling child onto her hip with an easy motion. The woman has the balance of a tightrope artist, Helen thought, lifting that kid when she’s wearing tight jeans and skinny heels. Ramon cried and clutched his mother’s long dark hair while she soothed him into silence.
The computers came on at precisely 8:01. This morning, they were dialing New Hampshire. Helen glanced at her screen.
“Hello, Mr. Harcourt. This is Helen with Tank Titan...”
Mr. Harcourt had just finished cussing her for waking him when she was called into Vito’s office.
Vito looked more like a sausage than ever, with a tight red shirt for a casing. He was not his usual chipper self.
“They want to see you upstairs,” he said. “I hear you called the cops on a survey client and accused him of murdering some broad. Helen, did you have to pick a rich one on the A-list? You’re a good seller. I’d like to keep you. But I hired you. It’s my heinie in the wringer, too.”
Helen didn’t say anything. It wasn’t Vito’s fault. For all she knew, the New York lizards would come down and fire him or break his legs or whatever those scary guys considered corporate discipline.
Helen rode up the elevator up to Girdner Surveys, feeling like she was ascending into heaven for final judgement. She would be cast out into boiler-room hell soon enough. When the doors opened, Helen was once again startled by the contrast between the boiler room’s dirt and the survey side’s elegance.
Melva, the dignified day receptionist, said, “You’re supposed to go to Penelope’s office. Some lawyer’s been in there since seven thirty. And Helen... good luck.”
“I’ll need it,” Helen said.
She knocked and went in. Penelope was sitting more rigidly than usual, like an Egyptian stone statue. She did not invite Helen to sit down. Helen stood there like a kitchen maid who’d dropped the best teapot, while Penelope talked about her. Penelope’s buttoned-up suit had a tight bow at the throat, as if she needed to hold in her rage.
If I get to tell her to go to hell, it just might be worth it, Helen thought.
A sleek, plump man in blue pinstripes was sitting across from Penelope. This must be the lawyer. Penelope indicated Helen with a nod of her head. “This woman used this office to create an incident last night. It was unforgivable, but Mr. Asporth has graciously decided to overlook it. You’re sure you don’t want her fired?” Penelope acted like a queen, casually offering to execute a worthless slave.
“Mr. Asporth has specifically requested that she not be fired,” the lawyer said. “It is his express wish that she return to her job as a—what is it?” He looked at his notes. “Oh, yes, a survey taker.”
Smart man, Helen thought. Mr. Asporth is afraid if I’m fired, I’ll make a stink and have plenty of time to do it.
“But if she discusses this incident with anyone, including the authorities, we’ll be forced to take action against your company. After all, she is an employee of Girdner Surveys and its parent company as well.”
I don’t have any money, Helen thought. But Girdner was loaded. Asporth knew what he was doing.
The lawyer rose, fat with confidence, and left without a goodbye.
Helen was still standing. Penelope turned furious eyes on her and said in a hissing whisper, “You heard him. You’ll keep your job, but not because I want you to. If I hear you’ve been talking to anyone, you’re out on the street. I’ll make sure you never work in Broward County again.”
Helen breathed a sigh. By some miracle, she still had her job. She went back down to the boiler room and told Vito.
“Good,” he grunted. “Sit down and start selling.”
Helen tried to concentrate on her sales pitch, but she couldn’t. The scene in the office had been humiliating. Her hands itched for that crowbar. She longed to smash Penelope’s computer. And that was just the beginning. But she tamped down her rage. She still had her job.
She had something else, too. Hank Asporth’s actions had just confirmed that he’d murdered that woman. An innocent man would demand she be fired, not send a slippery lawyer to shut her up—and make sure she kept her job. An out-ofwork Helen would have time to stir up trouble. She would trust her instincts once again and hope she didn’t get herself into trouble. But she knew better.
Maybe Helen couldn’t talk about the murder here at work, but she could do some background checking. She had to sell so she could get survey duty again and look at those computer files.
“I gotta get a sale,” jittery Nick said. He had the computer next to hers. “I really want to keep this job.”
“Me, too,” Helen said.
“But you’re selling,” Nick said, biting into his fifth jelly doughnut of the day. “I saw your numbers on the board yesterday. I haven’t had a sale in two weeks. If I don’t sell anything soon, I’m gone.”
He was right, and they both knew it. Nick was a junkie trying to go straight. He’d been on the street, then moved into a halfway house. Now he was living in a rented trailer. He was touchingly proud of that. But the less he sold, the more twitchy he grew. Now Nick could hardly sit still long enough to sell anything. Helen suspected he was back on drugs.
“I’ve got to work, Nick,” she said.
Helen tried to sell all morning. But the more she pushed her potential clients, the more phones were slammed down.
She was cursed, insulted and propositioned. The computers were calling Kentucky and Tennessee in areas where the gene pool needed some chlorine.
“Hi, Mr. Moser, this is Helen with Tank Titan. We make a septic-tank cleaner that is guaranteed to help reduce large chunks, odors and wet spots.”
“Wet spots?” Mr. Moser had a Gomer Pyle accent. “Wet spots are a big problem for me, honey. Got them all over my mattress. You wanna come over and—”
Helen hung up and hit REMOVE FROM LIST so no other telemarketer would be subjected to him.
No one was selling that morning. There wasn’t a single sale posted on the board. All around her, she heard the rustle of candy wrappers and chip bags. Telemarketers ate through their stress. Jittery Nick ate yet another jelly doughnut and popped the top on his third can of orange soda. Marina, the Latina single mother, was scarfing Snickers. She couldn’t afford day care. Ramon, her dark-eyed toddler, played at her feet on the dirty carpet, a truck in one hand and a melting candy bar in the other.
Taniqua was popping Pringles. Helen noticed a slight bulge above her red skirt. When Helen first met Taniqua, she’d had a model’s flat stomach. Now, like nearly everyone else in the boiler room, she’d packed on pounds. Helen had put on five pounds in two weeks, which was why she struggled to ignore the call of the salt- and-vinegar chips in her desk drawer.
“I don’t hear you talking,” Vito said. He walked the aisles with a fat black monitor phone, listening in on conversations, trying to get the staff to say the right stuff and sell. Finally, even he gave up.
“Break time!” Vito said. “Everyone clock out and come into my office.”
The telemarketers groaned. They would have to listen to a Vito lecture at their own expense. Sixty telemarketers piled into Vito’s plywood-paneled office. The crowd pushed Helen forward until she was sitting on the edge of Vito’s dusty desk.
Vito marched up and down behind it, a rotund general trying to rally his dispirited troops.
“You!” he said, pointing at Taniqua. “Why didn’t you make your last sale?”
“When I say she ought to buy it from me, she say she want to think about it,” Taniqua said in a soft
