time. He flipped burgers, folded over an omelette, checked the french fries. His eyes were everywhere—the cash register, the clientele at both the tables and the counter, the kitchen to his left.
“Oh that,” Hector said. “It’s in the back. In the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?”
“Yes, sir.” Still polite.
“A pay phone in the kitchen?”
“Yes, sir,” Hector said. He was on the short side, thin under his white apron and polyester black pants. His nose had been broken several times. His forearms looked like steel cords. “It’s for my staff.”
“Don’t you have a business phone?”
“Of course we do.” His voice spiked up a bit now, as if the question was an insult. “We do a big takeout and delivery business here. Lots of people order lunch from us. We have a fax machine too. But I don’t want my staff tying up the lines, you know? You get a busy signal, you give your business to someone else, yes? So I put a pay phone in the back.”
“I see.” An idea came to Myron. “Are you telling me customers never use it?”
“Well, sir, if a customer truly insists, I would never refuse him.” The practiced politeness of a good businessman. “The customer must come first at the Parkview. Always.”
“Has a customer ever insisted?”
“No, sir. I don’t think any customers even know we have it.”
“Can you tell me who was using the pay phone at nine-eighteen P.M. last Saturday?”
That question got his attention. “Excuse me?” Myron started to repeat the question but Hector interrupted him. “Why would you want to know that?”
“My name is Bernie Worley,” Myron said. “I’m a product supervising agent with AT&T.”
“Cheat you?”
“A Y511.”
“A what?”
“A Y511,” Myron repeated. You start tossing the bull, your best bet is to just keep tossing. “It’s an electronic monitoring device built in Hong Kong. It’s new on the market, but we’re onto it. Sold on the streets. Somebody used one on your phone at nine-eighteen P.M. on March eighteenth of this year. They dialed Kuala Lumpur and spoke for nearly twelve minutes. The total cost of the call is twenty-three dollars and eighty-two cents, but the fine for using a Y511 will be at least seven hundred dollars with the potential for up to one year in prison. Plus we’ll have to remove the phone.”
Hector’s face became a mask of pure panic. “What?” Myron wasn’t thrilled with what he was doing—scaring an honest, hard-working immigrant like this—but he knew that the fear of government or big business would work in a situation like this. Hector turned around and shouted something in Spanish to a teenager who looked like him. The teenager took over the grill. “I don’t understand this, Mr. Worley.”
“It’s a public phone, sir. You just admitted to a product supervising agent that you used the public phones for private use; that is, for your employees only and denying public access. This violates our own code, section one- twenty-four B. I wouldn’t report it normally, but when you add in the use of a Y511—”
“But I didn’t use a Y511!”
“We don’t know that, sir.” Myron was playing Mr. Bureaucrat to the hilt; nothing made a person feel more impotent. There is no darker pit than the blank stare of a bureaucrat. “The phone is on your premises,” Myron continued in a bored singsong voice. “You just explained to me that the phone was only used by your employees —”
“Exactly!” Hector leaped. “By my employees! Not me!”
“But you own this establishment. You are responsible.” Myron looked around with his best, bored expression—the one he learned while waiting on line at the Division of Motor Vehicles. “We’ll also have to check out the status of all your employees. Maybe we can find the culprit that way.”
Hector’s eyes grew big. Myron knew this would hit home. There wasn’t a restaurant in Manhattan that didn’t employ at least one illegal alien. Hector’s jowls slackened. “All this,” he said, “because someone used a pay phone?”
“What someone did, sir, was use an illegal electronic device known as a Y511. What you did, sir, was refuse to cooperate with the product supervising agent investigating this serious matter.”
“Refuse to cooperate?” Hector was grasping at the possible life preserver Myron had offered up. “No, sir, not me. I want to cooperate. I want to very much.”
Myron shook his head. “I don’t think you do.”
Hector bit down and set his polite meter on extra-strength now. “No, sir,” he said. “I want to help very much. I want to cooperate with the phone company. Tell me what I can do to help. Please.”
Myron sighed, gave it a few seconds. The diner bustled. The cash register dinged while the guy who looked homeless with the Thom McAn sneakers picked out greasy coins from a dirty hand. The griddle sizzled. The aroma from the various foods battled each other for dominance with none winning outright. Hector’s face grew more and more anxious. Enough, Myron thought. “For starters, you can tell me who was using the pay phone at nine-eighteen P.M. last Saturday.”
Hector held up a finger imploring patience. He shouted something in Spanish to the woman (Mrs. Hector maybe?) working the cash register. The woman shouted something back. She closed the drawer and walked toward them. As she drew closer, Myron noticed that Hector was suddenly giving him an odd look. Was he starting to see through Myron’s rather husky load of bull-dooky? Perhaps. But Myron looked back at him steadily and Hector quickly backed down. He might be suspicious, but not suspicious enough to risk offending the all-powerful bureaucrat by questioning his authority.
Hector whispered something to the woman. She urgently whispered back. He made an understanding “ah” noise. Then he faced Myron and shook his head.
“It figures,” he said.
“What?”
“It was Sally.”
“Who?”
“At least I think it was Sally. My wife saw her on the phone around then. But she said she was only on for a minute or two.”
“Does Sally have a last name?”
“Guerro.”
“Is she here now?”
Hector shook his head. “She hasn’t been here since Saturday night. That’s what I mean by, figures. She gets me in trouble and then she runs out.”
“Has she called in sick?”
“No, sir. She just up and left.”
“You got an address on her?” Myron asked.
“I think so, let me see.” He pulled out a big carton that read “Snapple Peach Iced Tea” on the side. Behind him, the griddle hissed when fresh pancake batter touched down upon the hot metal. The files in the box were neat and color coded. Hector pulled one out and opened it. He shuffled through the sheets, found the one he was looking for, and frowned.
“What?” Myron prompted.
“Sally never gave us an address,” Hector said.
“How about a phone number?”
“No.” He looked up, remembering something. “She said she didn’t have a phone. That’s why she was using the one in the back so much.”
“Could you tell me what Ms. Guerro looked like?” Myron tried.
Hector suddenly looked uncomfortable. He glanced at his wife and cleared his throat. “Uh, she had brown hair,” he began. “Maybe five-four, five-five. Average height, I guess.”
“Anything else?”
“Brown eyes, I think.” He stopped. “That’s about it.”
