Savant

should come together: first, you guys get me somebody who…' Victor Trask tuned halfway out as the meeting continued and Flynn put the 'Discoveries Made in Therapy' program together.

They eventually went back to their cubicles and Trask made a cursory search of his phone and office. Nothing looked out of place, but how would he know if he saw something? He gathered up a briefcase full of papers and looked at his watch: six-fifteen P.M. Buzz, his old engineer buddy, was still working dayparts last he'd heard. He'd check at the 'Zoo' first.

Trask left the KCM building and found a pay phone. It was still bright daylight at six-twenty. He dropped money, dialed, and after a half-dozen rings, a young girlish voice answered.

'Z-60.'

'Hi. Is Buzz Reid working, do you know?'

'Is who working?'

'Buzz Reid? Engineering?'

'Um. One moment please.' The line went dead. He waited. It was hot and smelly in the alcove where he was calling. There were two coin phones side by side, with a small divider for privacy between them. Old tobacco smoke and God-knows-what-all made him wrinkle his nose. There were no directories, which had gone the way of phone booths years ago. Vandalism had seen to their demise. Most of the public phones near KCM were card-type or third-party-billing-number-type. Again, coin ops had been phased out because of vandals. He flipped his pen out and scrawled the word vandalism on a pad. This was the kind of stuff he fed off of. He might be able to get a show out of that one thought. Now he'd start a file on the topic and see just where it led him. He was writing locked churches when a voice said hello.

'Buzz?'

'Yo.'

'Vic.'

'Hey, man. What's up?'

'Not too much. I wondered if I could buy you a cold one when you get off? Talk about a couple things.'

'I can't do it tonight. I got a game.'

'When?'

'I'm going to be leaving in about…fifteen or twenty minutes, matter of fact.'

'Would you have time to grab a cup cross the street? Five minutes or whatever? It's kind of important.'

'Yeah, if you wanna come on by right now. I could give you ten minutes or something. Say—meet me at Sammy's in five minutes?'

'I'll be there. Thanks.' Trask hung up, started to walk, and changed his mind. Went around the comer and saw a couple of taxis in front of a nearby hotel, got in the first one and had them take him the eight blocks to the greasy spoon across from the radio station. He got there before Buzz Reid did. He had his coffee in front of him when the engineer walked in.

'Hey, stranger,' Reid said, settling down beside him in time to have a cup of coffee set in front of him. 'Thanks.'

'I appreciate it,' Trask said. 'I know you're runnin' but I wanted to shoot the shit a minute.'

'No problem.' Buzz was notorious in Kansas City radio. He was forever trying to get guys to screw his wife, a plain woman in her thirties, who, Trask recalled, had long red hair and an Olive Oyl shape. Reid and his wife were 'into swinging,' so he claimed. Trask had always managed to slip out of such invitations. It was all but impossible to fire an engineer, but his sexual 'misconduct' had somehow gotten him terminated from KCM, in spite of a ferocious shop steward and an unforgiving union, back in the days before they'd worked together at the Zoo. He hated KCM, and had a great deal of expertise in what Trask thought of as 'bugging.'

'You remember how you always used to say they taped the phone calls and stuff at KCM?' he whispered to the small, thin man at the counter beside him.

'Um.'

'Is that something you knew for a fact or were you saying what you thought they were doing?'

'Fact. They tape everything. Not just the phones.'

'How did you know? Mind if I ask—confidentially?'

'I heard the fuckin' tapes is how. Jimmy Olfanski who used to be the chief at KCM showed me all that shit downstairs. I heard private conversations made in the sales manager's office, in the fuckin' control room. Et cetera, et cetera.'

'Downstairs.'

'In the manager's office it used to be. Now it's all in the security room down there next to the supplies 'n' shit. Everybody knows about it. They been doin' that shit for years.'

'And they play all that back and listen to it? Everybody's conversations? Why?'

'Who the fuck knows, man. They like to keep an upper hand. You know how management is, pops. Always fuckin' with everybody's head. They sit down there and watch the tapes, I guess, and make random checks and that. Old Inspector Higgins his bad self. I guess that's what he does all day. Sits there watching the tapes and jerkin' his wire.'

'Watching—you mean they got videotapes?'

'You see the cameras, man. What did you think?'

'I knew they could see, but I never imagined they would be taping with video. What the hell's the point of it all? What do they expect to see or hear?'

'Hey. Go figure. I suppose…employee theft or some shit. I really don't know. I know I could sabotage the shit out of their security systems and they'd never fuckin' know what hit them.'

'Yeah? How would you do that?' Trask asked.

'I know some shit about that place, man.' Buzz Reid leaned close and whispered conspiratorially, 'I know how to get into Security…' Trask just looked at him. '…from above, baby.'

'How?'

'Engineering.'

'Yeah?'

'You know where the equipment room is across from those offices like Copy and Purchasing?' Trask nodded. 'In the early days that's where the other stairwell was. You could drop a ladder down through the back of the equipment closets and climb right down to the ceiling of the security room, pull the partitions out—' Reid proceeded to detail a break-in somewhere between Topkapi and the Brink's job.

'Judas! I wouldn't have the cojones for that, brother.'

'Well, anyway—it could be done easily. Tear all that Big Brother bullshit up, man.'

'Is there a way to stop that sort of surveillance? You know—make it so they can't hear what you're saying over the phone or in a private conversation in an office?'

'Sure. In theory, they got every kind of bug jammer you can want—stop any sort of pickup from phone taps to reflection bugs. Cost you a few hundred bucks to get a real good one, but they're available.'

'Um.'

'I got to get my ass in gear, man. Anything else?' Reid took a last sip of coffee.

'No. But I may call for more advice.'

'Anytime. Whyn't you come out to the house sometime? Party with us.'

'Might just do that one of these days. Hey, Buzz, I really do appreciate your time. I'll holler at you again, maybe.'

'Sure thing. Good to see you.' Reid got up and waved a salute.

'Same here.'

Trask took a mouthful of cool coffee and held it for a few seconds, not wanting to swallow.

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8

Back at KCM that evening he found a 'progress memorandum,' as Flynn liked to call them, from The Man himself, telling Trask—in effect—you're letting down, looking for excuses; get your shit together. Not in so many words, but that was the sum of the long memo. He'd have been willing to bet good money that Barb Rose hadn't