EYES EVERYWHERE
by Matthew Warner

Chapter 1

 

With all the subtlety of an airliner flying at full throttle into the Pentagon, the government’s latest “Orange Alert” threat warning reminded Washington, D.C. that it was still the most hated and feared city on Earth—and yet silliness abounded, not only from ludicrous instructions to go about business as usual (yeah right), but from the vagaries of over-caution. For instance, a tobacco farmer who drove his John Deere tractor into the Constitution Gardens pond managed to scare off police for two whole days with only an upside-down American flag and a big mouth. Anxiety versus absurdity.

Charlie Fields regarded his latest office responsibility to be part of the latter category.

“You want me to do what?” he said to the blond woman peering into his cubicle.

Sue Lineberger, the law firm’s personnel manager, shrugged her eyebrows as if this were a question she’d heard many times today. “I’d like you to be an emergency response warden for your floor—in case there’s a chemical or biological weapons attack.”

Charlie opened his mouth and closed it, unsure what to say. He was glad he was sitting down.

“That is, if you got the time,” she added, staring at his empty desk.

Charlie crossed his arms. Since old Bernie’s death last month, he was down to supporting just two attorneys and a paralegal, all of whom were fairly self-sufficient. He needed more work to keep from getting RIFed—that is, from becoming a “reduction in force” candidate—and Sue knew it.

“Yeah, I got time.”

She smiled. “Good. There’s a brown-bag meeting at noon in the Lincoln Room. See you there.” She patted the top of his cubicle like it was his arm and not a piece of wooden railing, then walked off.

Emergency response warden? It sounded ridiculous. But he supposed there were things in life more outlandish—like being a thirty-year-old male secretary, for instance. Of course, to think that way, cringing at the phrase “male secretary,” was sexist, and he certainly wasn’t sexist—although there were only two other men at the firm of Larson & Pack like him. He was just, well, thirty. And a secretary. And one of his bosses was younger than him. Washingtonian white males his age were supposed to be on career paths to six-figure salaries and not supporting those who earned them. More important, though, was the fact that he had a wife and two small children to support. How much longer could he afford this?

“Warden,” he grunted on his way to the meeting two hours later. Wardens kept jails, not silly bureaucratic titles. And the way Sue had cocked her eyebrow at his lack of paperwork still bothered him. Did she snoop through his e-mail, too? Company policy said they could, but this was the first time he’d thought that they might.

Calm down, he imagined his wife Lisa saying. Just play the game. Think about what makes you happy; think about me and the kids.

Loser, he imagined his mother whispering from the grave.

 

The Lincoln Room, or conference room 8-A, contained a mahogany meeting table so large that Charlie had to walk sideways to get to his seat. The dozen people already in the high-backed leather chairs looked up as he entered.

He felt himself blush as he claimed the one empty chair, right next to Sue. “Sorry I’m late,” he whispered.

She frowned and nodded, but kept her gaze on Dwight Mason, the manager of the services department.

The diagram showed the location of everyone’s office or cubicle. The K Street side of the building, where Charlie sat, was outlined in purple magic marker and labeled Charlie Fields. The opposite half was yellow and marked Kel Lewis. A quick scan of the other floors showed similar divisions among everyone present.

“On each of your floors,” Dwight said, “you’ll find a designated ‘safe room’ that has no exterior walls or windows. On the sixth floor, that’s the copy center; seven, the law library; and eight, the Madison Room. If there’s a lock-down situation, you’ll be responsible for directing your area to your safe room. We’ll have food, water, walkie-talkies, and first-aid kits at each location.”

“Wait a minute,” said a mousy woman on Charlie’s left. She had long, greasy hair and an acne-spotted face. “If there’s a chemical weapons attack, we’re not going to have time for this.”

“I don’t know,” Dwight said and shrugged. He laid his palms flat on the table as if to show that he had no tricks up his sleeves. “It could be a situation where the government tells us to stay put for a few hours, or it could be an emergency where we’re stuck here for days. The point is to make what preparations we can.”

“And are we going to have meetings to explain all this to the staff?” she said. Charlie belatedly remembered her name: Kel, the other warden for the seventh floor.

“I was just getting to that …”

As Dwight droned on, Charlie leafed through the other hand-outs: a memo entitled “Emergency Procedures,” a map showing city evacuation routes, and a huge “Family Preparedness Guide” from the D.C. Emergency Management Agency.

He scanned the credenzas along the walls to see if the in-house caterer had provided any drinks or food, as during client meetings. But aside for one starfish-shaped speakerphone for conference calls, he found nothing. Guess this really is a ‘brown bag’ lunch, he thought. You’d at least think a lunch hour meeting would have—

“Charlie?”

He snapped his attention back to Dwight. “What? I’m sorry.”

A flutter of laughter crossed the room.

Dwight was handing him a clear plastic bag with some other items in it. Inside was a red-white-and-blue pen light to clip onto his key chain, and a white painter’s mask. He turned the bag over to discover a small rectangular filter affixed to the center of the mask.

“The mask won’t protect us from everything,” Dwight said as he passed bags to everyone, “but it’s better than nothing.”

The meeting dragged on, using up time that Charlie would have rather spent eating, while the described procedures grew evermore silly. For example, while the “safe rooms” were presumably to insulate employees from areas adjacent to the ten-story building’s exterior walls, people would still be permitted to walk around to the bathrooms during a lock-down. When Charlie suggested that they have port-a-potties available in each safe room, he earned another round of laughter.

“No no, that’s a good suggestion,” Dwight said, and wrote something on a steno pad. It was hard to see from this angle, but Charlie thought that it might be an “X” next to a list of names, maybe his own.

“All I’m saying,” Charlie said, “is that if we’re serious about creating these quarantine rooms—or whatever they are—then let’s encourage people to stay there.”

A secretary named Rachel Woods, seated by the window, spoke up: “Don’t know about you all, but if something happens, I’m getting the hell out of the city.”

The rest of room chorused agreement.

“And that’s another thing,” Charlie said to Rachel, finding it odd to be defending the new procedures, “unless there’s an actual evacuation, we should generally encourage people to stay off the streets when there’s an emergency.”

“Why do you say that?” Dwight said.

“Because there could be a riot. First thing D.C. is gonna do is start throwing rocks through windows. It won’t be safe out there.”

Sue, who’d been quiet until now, said, “But the city didn’t do that on Nine-Eleven. Everyone just evacuated.” She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and scratched something on her pad. “I don’t think there’ll be any riots.”

Charlie sat back. “Sorry, I didn’t think of that.”

They moved on to other topics. Rachel pointed out that the odds of an electrical fire were greater than a mustard gas attack, and Sue and Dwight, frowning, marked their steno pads. Charlie was glad to be out of the spotlight. He vowed to keep a lower profile from now on—after all, that’s what people in danger of being RIFed were supposed to do.

The meeting finally ended. Charlie dashed out the door to Len’s New York Deli without stopping first to get his overcoat. The chill March air outside left him shuddering and worsened his already hammering headache. It’s not like there was any work to do, but he was eager to return to his desk. In the rare event that someone needed a label printed or a letter formatted, he wanted to be there or risk attracting further attention. He ordered a beef-on-weck to go.

His message light was blinking when he got back. Lisa, he thought. His wife and their two children, aged three and four, all had the flu today. She’d stayed home and given the babysitter the day off.

But the message wasn’t from Lisa. It was from Sue Lineberger. “Charlie, could you come see me when you’re back? Thanks.”

Short, to-the-point. Worrisome.

RIF RIF RIF, his gut chanted.

A few minutes later, Sue looked up as Charlie knocked on her half-open door. Her face wasn’t unkind, but she wasn’t smiling, either. “Hi, Charlie. Come in and close the door. Sit down.”

Once he was seated, Sue folded her hands on her green desk blotter. “I just wanted to talk to you about the meeting today. First of all, what did you think of it?”

Something told him that she really didn’t care what he thought. Charlie kept his face blank. “It was fine. I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but …” He shrugged.

Sue nodded. Her gaze drifted to the yearbook portraits on her bookshelf of two highschool kids—her children, Charlie guessed—before returning to his face. She looked away again. She can’t meet my eyes, Charlie thought, and started to grow angry. If she was going to fire him, he wished she’d just get it over with.

Sighing, Sue unfolded her hands and leaned back. “Look, there was a complaint. Remember when you said there’d be riots if there was an emergency?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I didn’t interpret it this way myself because I’m not black, but …”

“Interpret it what way?”

“Someone said your comment was racist.”

Charlie’s jaw dropped.

“Don’t you see, maybe, how it could’ve been taken that way?” she said.

“Not really.”

Sue held up her hands in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger pose. “I’m not accusing you of anything. It’s just that’s what was said to me. There’s some sensitive people around here.”

“Obviously.” He resisted the urge to ask who it was. “Look, if I can’t speak openly at these meetings, then I don’t want to participate.”

“I understand.” Sue stood up. “Just watch your step.”

Charlie stared at her before also standing. He’d meant to resign his warden position by that last comment, but she hadn’t taken it that way. He bit his lip, imagining his mother’s specter in the room with them, laughing at his weakness.

Screw it.

“Sue?”

She paused in the act of walking him to the door. “Yes?”

“Just tell me, straight up. Am I going to get RIFed?”

Frowning, she put her hands on her hips. “I don’t make those decisions.”

“I mean, I don’t know what to think of all this. You know I need another biller to support—I’ve asked for another one—and instead you make me a floor warden. Now even that’s working against me.”

“No one’s against you, Charlie. I called you in here to convey an employee complaint; nothing more. As for billers, I’ll get you one if one’s available. You’ll just have to be patient.”

“And if one’s not available? What if I cause another complaint?”

Sue sighed and opened her door for him to leave. “I’ve told you all I’m at liberty to say. This meeting’s over.”

 

The next morning, Charlie arrived at work to learn that Rachel Woods had been laid off.

Rachel, of course, was the secretary who had pooh-poohed the firm’s plans to prepare for bio-chem attacks, saying that electrical fires were more likely. Charlie remembered how Sue and Dwight had tallied demerits on their steno pads as she spoke, just like they had black-marked his own name.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked the secretary leaning into his cubicle.

Theresa Evans, a woman whose solid-gray hair reminded him of his mother’s, nodded. “Sue told her it was for economic reasons, but Rachel thinks it might’ve been performance-based. She got a bad review last year.”

Charlie bit his lip, believing every word. Theresa was a twenty-seven-year veteran of the firm, and people liked to talk to her—calling her “Mother Theresa”—so the quality of her hearsay was excellent.

“I feel sorry for her,” she said. “The job market’s tight as hell right now.”

“Hmm.” Charlie looked at the picture of his kids, which he kept in a small frame by his phone. Can’t ever let it come to that with me.

“And more RIFs are coming, you just wait,” Theresa said. “You know why our pay raises are late, don’t you?”

“Why?”

“Because they want to wait until the layoffs are completed.”

“Yeah, right.” Still, he found himself opening his desk drawer, searching for his employee handbook.

“Scout’s honor.” Theresa placed a hand over her heart. “Ask me why I can’t sleep at night.”

“Oh, they’re not going to get rid of you.”

“Sure they will. I’m two months away from retirement. If they fire me now, they pay less.”

Charlie grinned. “Fire you, or maybe just get rid of you?”

“Oh, you mean—” she hooted, “a Larson & Pack hit squad?”

“Sure, happens all the time.” Charlie laughed along with her. “Maybe you’d sleep easier with a gun under your pillow.”

Theresa patted the top of his cubicle before walking off; he wished she wouldn’t do that.

After she left, Charlie sobered as he again stared at the picture of his kids.

RIF. It was one letter removed from RIP.

 

The phone rang, and he answered it.

“Honey?” Lisa said.

“Yeah—how’re you feeling?”

“I’m feeling better, but April’s still throwing up, and Brian won’t stop crying. I’m taking them to the doctor at eleven.”

“Want me to call the sitter again?”

“Yeah. Tell her I might stay home tomorrow, too. Dunno yet. And would you call my office for me? I’m trying to get the kids out the door.”

Charlie winced at this news. Reliable babysitters who charged less than daycare were damn near impossible to come by in the Washington area, so it wasn’t good to keep RIFing them. “Okay,” he said, “and I’ll see if I can get the afternoon off to come home.”

Why not? he thought. It wasn’t like the bosses needed him.

A half hour later, he’d called the babysitter and Lisa’s boss at Focus Graphic Design. He had also browsed all the major news sections of CNN.com, procrastinating by reading about the Orange Alert. Finally, he took a deep breath and looked up Sue Lineberger’s extension.

He stopped dialing halfway through the four-digit number.

Sue was probably sitting there with her steno pad tally of demerits, just waiting for a call like this. If it wasn’t her steno pad, then it was some sophisticated H.R. computer program that cross-referenced performance reviews, individual paid-time-off balances, company profit reports, workload summaries, and ratios of personal-versus-professional e-mails sent from his computer.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. But he still didn’t feel comfortable requesting the rest of the day off—even if his entire family was sick and there was no pressing work for him to do.

So he waited. I’ll do it after lunch, he thought, then clicked on the Washington Post website to see if their news was any different from CNN’s.

Yesterday’s beef-on-weck from Len’s New York Deli had cost him seven dollars, so today he’d been smart and brought along a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. That’s what he normally took anyway, or a ramen soup packet that he purchased from Safeway, ten for a dollar. The headache had made him forget to bring something yesterday—maybe it was the early stages of flu, caught from Lisa and the kids. The fact that his head still ached only seemed to confirm his theory.

At one o’clock, Charlie sighed, threw away his used sandwich baggie, and picked up the phone to call the personnel manager.

Again, he stopped halfway through Sue Lineberger’s number. He hung up, and closed his eyes for a long moment.

He called home instead.

No answer. They were probably still at the doctor’s. Okay, so now what?

Stay put. Think.

He hadn’t told Lisa what happened after yesterday’s meeting. She was sick and wouldn’t want to hear about that. Worse, relating his fears of being RIFed might only get her as stressed-out as he was. He propped his elbows on his empty desk and covered his face.

In that way, he passed the next two hours until the phone rang again.

“Honey, why haven’t you left?” Lisa said.

“Well, some—some work came through.” He pushed paperclips across his empty in-box. “I’ll be home at my usual time.”

Lisa sighed. In the background, Brian cried, “Ma ma ma ma ma-meeeeee … !” She shushed him.

“Do you want me to bring home dinner?” Charlie said.

“No, it’s all right; we’ll heat up some soup. Be careful coming home.”

“I will. Love you.” They hung up.

Nope, there was no need to go into his worry about being RIFed. Lisa might think he was whining—or worse, would try to tell him that his fears were unjustified. Better to just sort it out on his own.

What the hell had Sue Lineberger and Dwight Mason written on their steno pads about him?

 

At five-thirty, Charlie shut down his computer, turned off his lights, and closed up his empty briefcase. He placed a steno pad inside his in-box so that it looked like he was working on something.

On the way out, he peeked into old Bernie’s now vacant office. The wall gouges left by the runners of his rocking chair still hadn’t been repaired. “Been using a rocking chair for the past twenty years, and I don’t plan to change,” Bernie had said when they first started working together. He’d used it right up to the end, when he died of a heart attack—during sex, no less. Charlie figured there were worse ways for an eighty-eight-year-old man to go.

He missed him. Vowing to write Bernie’s widow a note sometime, Charlie continued into the elevator and pressed “L”.

The way out passed a security desk that he regarded as the biggest joke in northwest D.C. For about a year after Nine-Eleven, they’d been strict about requiring everyone who entered the building to show their blue credit-card-like door keys—strict to the point of harassing longtime office workers like Charlie whom they recognized on sight. But in recent months they had let it slide, even despite the government’s “Orange Alert” threat warning.

Ah, fuck it. Everything’s going to hell.

“Good night,” he called on his way to the revolving doors. The woman behind the security desk glared at him as she buzzed a car into the underground parking garage.

Her dirty look bothered him as he walked down the street. He knew it shouldn’t have—maybe she was just having a bad day—but it felt like it was personal, as if she knew something about him. Maybe the news of his allegedly racist comment had filtered downstairs. After all, the emergency response wardens were connected to building management through Dwight Mason. Further, both Dwight and the security guards were black.

Nah.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it as he neared the McPherson Square metro station. Chewing his lip, he glanced over his shoulder.

—And saw a man wearing a dark business suit duck back behind the corner.

Charlie gaped. He stood there for several seconds, staring at the corner of the building where the man had been. Was he being followed? No. Yes. He was pretty sure the man’s skin was black. The man appeared at the corner, talking on a cell phone. Seeing Charlie, he hid once again. He plainly saw him—Charlie was sure this time. And the man was indeed black.

The hell?

A cold tension clutched his gut. Should he confront the guy? Go on home?

Thoughts of Lisa and the kids, ill and waiting for him, propelled him again towards the subway. Married men with children shouldn’t seek out trouble. Besides, he might just be misinterpreting the situation.

 

The subway was late. Usually they came every few minutes during the evening rush hour, but tonight an electronic billboard flashed, ORANGE LINE DELAY. An unusually large crowd spilled across the underground platform. Charlie threaded his way farther down the tracks, where he hoped the less-crowded middle of the train would stop.

A few minutes later, his pursuer walked past.

Charlie felt like he’d been shot with nerve gas. He even believed it for a second, too, as a tingling sensation raced to his toes and the tips of his fingers.

Fuck.

The mass of bodies absorbed the man, and Charlie lost sight of him as the Orange Line train arrived.

He surged forward with the crowd to get onboard. But as was often the case on days like this, the train was already a sardine can, and it was impossible to board. People tried to get on anyway, smushing their way into already overcrowded cars that had never been designed for so many passengers.

“Clear the doors, please,” the train operator said through an onboard P.A. system. Nobody moved. “There’s another Orange Line train right behind me. Please clear the doors.” The operator had to repeat himself twice more.

After the doors finally closed, additional minutes passed before departure while the operator exhorted passengers not to lean on them. Charlie watched this from the platform, resisting the urge to yell at them to knock the shit off.

Finally the train pulled away. Charlie tried to locate the man who’d chased him, but he couldn’t find him.

Shit, I probably imagined it anyway.

He mopped a hand over his face and told himself not to let all the stress get to him. The work day was over; the shit hole was behind him. Lisa had once taught him a relaxation technique that he tried now: When you leave for the day, imagine that a huge vat full of hydrochloric acid dumps over your office building. It all turns it into sludge. See? Nothing left for you to worry about.

Charlie smiled at the thought. Sorry, hon; we got “safe rooms” for that sort of thing now.

The next train rolled in, and this time, he squeezed onboard. He made it two feet into the subway car—a woman’s elbow in his face and a man’s open newspaper against his stomach—before it reached capacity and the doors shut. He had a clear view of all the people standing in the center aisle, all the way to the far end.

That’s where he saw the man in the business suit.

He was fiddling with his cell phone again, but when he saw Charlie, he returned it to his pocket and stared back.

Thirty feet and fifty people separated them, but Charlie still felt vulnerable and exposed. My god, who are you?

The man was of average size with closely cut hair and a goatee so thin that it might have been penciled onto his face. His dark suit was impeccable to the point of appearing custom-made. He carried no briefcase or papers—as if to keep his hands free and ready.

He was young, maybe Charlie’s age, and resembled Dwight Mason so closely that he might have been his son. Could it be? Charlie mused on this as he hung onto the ceiling bar and tried to relax. Why not? Both were black, both were well dressed, and Charlie had spotted him near the Larson & Pack building. It was as good a theory as any, even if only to pass the time until the train arrived at the East Falls Church station. If anything, he was sure now that the person who’d complained about his supposedly “racist” comment was indeed Dwight. Dwight was the only person at that meeting with whom he’d ever argued about anything. Their last fight had been about services’ inability to deliver the correct mail.

But that was all just a theory, he reminded himself.

The only thing he was positive about was that a strange man was following him home.

 

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