Jill was too competitive to walk away from a problem like that. She simply tapped a pencil on the counter in front of her, tried to clear her mind, and waited. Whenever the phone company fixed the problem, she’d get back to work. The problem was, with the phones out, she couldn’t even prepare for the god-awful mess she knew would appear when they came back on.
The Napoli was a small Italian restaurant on Detroit’s West Side. It wasn’t a four-star or even a three-star restaurant, but it served a good lunch and had a regular dinner clientele.
Joe Millunzi, the owner, spotted trouble as soon as it came in off the street. Three black kids in their teens, dressed in dark, dirty, loose-fitting clothes. They all wore Detroit Pistons hats or shirts gang colors, probably. They glided in the front door in a carefully studied strut, hard looks on their faces. He knew his customers, and these people were not here to buy lunch.
One hung back by the door while the others headed for the cash register and his daughter, Carla. Millunzi shivered. Carla was busy with a customer. She hadn’t noticed the boys.
He had been standing a few yards away at the entrance to the dining room, going over the reservations book. Moving as quickly as he could without running outright, he managed to get to the register before the two gangbangers. Whispering “Get Mama and everyone out the back!” he shooed her toward the kitchen.
They saw Millunzi come up and watched the girl leave, but they didn’t seem to care. They just stopped in front of the register, coldly regarding him. He was a big man, over six feet and a little overweight. The two teenagers were both shorter, possibly not even fully grown.
Millunzi felt like a slab of meat being inspected.
His hands were hidden as he desperately pressed a small button on the underside of the register stand. The alarm system was linked via a dedicated phone line to an alarm service and from there to the police. In a few minutes the cops would know there was a robbery in progress. And Millunzi knew there were usually two police cars in this area at this time of day. He’d made it his business to know. With luck, the police could be outside in five minutes. Ten tops. just keep cool, Joe, he thought nervously.
The two teens looked around to make sure no one else was paying much attention. The shortest pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket, showing Millunzi a silver-grey automatic pistol. It looked-immense in the boy’s hand.
“Give us the money, man,” the teenager demanded in a small, even voice. Having shown his weapon, he then folded his other hand over it and stood quietly, waiting arrogantly for his chosen victim to comply.
Millunzi nodded hastily, swallowed hard, and rang up “No Sale” on the register. It beeped and spat the cash drawer out at him. He carefully scooped up the twenties, tens, and fives, and offered the wad of cash to the one with the gun.
“All of it, fool!” the taller, older teen said in a harsh voice. He savagely grabbed the bills out of Millunzi’s hand and stabbed a hand down at the register again.
The restaurant owner nervously gathered up the ones and rolls of coins and started to offer it to them, but the triggerman snarled, and showed him the gun again. “Not that shit! Give us what’s under the drawer!” Millunzi sighed and lifted the cash drawer, showing three bundles of twenties in bank wrappers. He pulled them out, fighting the urge to look at the clock or check his watch. It had been at least a minute. Maybe two. Probably not three. Were Carla and Rosa out the back? His brain seemed to be spinning, overheated with fear. Where were the police?
The two robbers smiled triumphantly as the older one took the bundled cash. They both turned away toward the door, but the one holding the gun suddenly swung around, whipped the gun up to point at Millunzi, and fired.
The first round caught him in the stomach and slammed him back against the wall. He instinctively clutched at his belly and groaned aloud gasping as a wave of sharp, piercing agony struck him.
The triggerman fired twice more, this time into Millunzi’s chest. As the restaurant owner’s consciousness faded, he noticed that’ the teenager still wore the same, small, triumphant smile.
The patrons in the restaurant reacted to the noise by turning startled faces toward the cash register. They saw foe Millunzi sliding down the blood-smeared wall behind the cash register and the young black men in dark- colored Pistons jackets walking quickly outside.
Three blocks away, Officer Bob Calvin continued his patrol. He never saw the three robbers, who escaped without a trace. There would be many clean getaways that afternoon.
Bob Calvin’s radio pulled his attention away from the heavy traffic building up on the neighborhood streets.
“All units, this is the watch commander. This phone out age is a big one. We’re getting radio calls from neighboring jurisdictions. Their land links are out too.
“Latest word from the phone company is that it’s going to be some time before they fix the problem, so the commissioner has decided to mobilize the force. We’re also coordinating with the hospitals and the fire department. Ambulances and fire engines will be dispersed throughout the city. Everyone look sharp, and we’ll let you know when things get back to normal.”
Calvin whistled sharply. This situation must be even more serious than he’d first thought. Mobilizing the force meant pulling all shifts in and keeping everyone on duty until the emergency was declared over. It also meant calling up the city’s police reserves. The reserves had only limited arrest powers, but they were armed.
Mobilizing the force and its reserves would put a lot more needed manpower on the streets although at the cost of overtime pay. On the other hand, Calvin realised, under the present circumstances, ordering a mobilisation was a lot simpler than carrying it out. Without phone service the department would have to send someone to knock on the door of every officer or reservist being summoned to duty.
Still, that was the smart move to make, even if it meant he had to stay on for a second shift. The city was ready to blow, and it was their job to keep the lid on.
Of course, Calvin thought to himself with a tinge of regret, his date with Linda for tonight was now in jeopardy. A citywide emergency was not an excuse, not in her eyes, and she’d be worried sick. He was scheduled to get off at four, and their date was set for eight. Surely, Midwest Telephone would have its technical glitches sorted out by then.
The piece was third, after an update on the continuing and fruitless FBI counterterrorist investigation and the equally fruitless Balkan negotiations.
“Midwest Telephone technicians are scrambling to deal with a major telecommunications outage affecting the company’s entire service area.”
A map flashed into view behind the anchorman’s head showing the six affected states. Together they formed an irregularly shaped red blob in the heart of the country.
“For more than half an hour, the outage has paralysed industries, businesses, stock markets, and commodities exchanges across a vast area. Phone company spokesmen reached by emergency satellite downlink are unable to explain the cause or offer a firm estimate for the resumption of service…”
“You’re sure the masters were clean?”
It was a stupid question, even if Johnston did have to ask it, and Maggie Kosinski shot him a hard look. “They’re only three months old, Jim. We made a new set after the last software revision.”
Johnston had come down from his upper-floor office to watch them bring the system back on-line. First the switching computers were powered down and all the operating disks and tapes were removed. When the computers were brought back up, Kosinski’s technicians reloaded master copies of the system software and rebooted.
It was an exacting, step-by-step procedure, one as carefully planned as a satellite launch. It also hadn’t worked. No calls came in, no connections were made.
The two of them stood intently studying the operations center’s main control console. Banks of CRT screens offered them a visual representation of the telephone system’s cybernetic organism. They shook their heads simultaneously, utterly baffled. By rights, the machines should be fine.
“Taylor’s gonna be pissed,” was Kosinski’s only comment.
John F. Taylor was the president and CEO of Midwest Telephone. He was not an easy man to bring bad news
