Double blast, p.28
Double Blast, page 28
I’d applied for the job six weeks earlier. It was two hundred miles from where I lived. Most of the interviews had been all-day ordeals. It had already not gone quickly.
Richard Sanders’ office had museum qualities: everything was quiet, valuable, and illuminated. Natalie directed me to a leather chair. “He’ll be right in.”
Right in, for the record, was almost an hour later.
I’d just helped myself to a fifth Red Hot cinnamon candy from the crystal bowl on Mr. Sanders’ desk when a hidden door on the right side of the room slid open and a man stepped through, then froze, staring at me as if I was a ghost. I wondered who he was expecting. From the look on his face, not me.
He cleared his throat, then cautiously crossed the room with a guarded smile, hand outstretched. “Richard Sanders.”
I skipped around the candy. “Davith Wathe.”
He took his seat behind his desk and reached for the folder in front of him. I could see the right angles of a stack of photographs. Of me. The dress-up interview.
I sat up straighter, looking for somewhere to lose the candy. I gave him the once-over while he looked at the photographs, the whole time discreetly working the candy at top speed, the roof of my mouth on fire. Mr. Sanders was in his early forties, six-two, strikingly fit, blond, and either perpetually tan or just back from the Bahamas, since it was the dead of winter and he had a late-July glow about him.
He looked up. Baby blues. “Davis?”
The cinnamon disk burned going down. “Family name.”
“Davis Way,” he tried it on. “And you’re from Pine—?”
“Apple.” The hot candy brick was stuck sideways in my throat.
“Two words?”
“Ach.” I discreetly pounded my chest. “Garkle.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I was anything but.
He pushed a button on his phone. Two seconds later Natalie returned. She gently patted me on the back, then landed one between my shoulder blades that almost knocked me into the next week. She poured me a glass of water while he slid the candy dish out of my reach. As soon as it appeared I would live, Natalie said, “Well then,” and disappeared, leaving me alone with Richard Sanders again.
“Why don’t we start over, Davis?”
“That’d be great.”
“Where is Pine Apple, Alabama?”
“South of Montgomery.”
Other than the Red Hots, the real-live Monet on the wall, and the expensive Oriental rug under my feet, I was in very familiar job-interview territory. I’d applied for everything with a heartbeat, and the resulting interviews had all had common elements. First, my name threw people off. In my thirty-two years it had been pointed out to me thirty-two thousand times that Davis Way sounded more like a destination than a person. After that, potential employers liked to suggest that I’d written down my hometown incorrectly. My resume clearly stated my credentials, including two college degrees, one in Criminal Justice and the other in Computer and Information Science. As such, would I really forget where I lived? Next, he would bring up my size, because I was considered undersized in general, but especially so for the line of work I was in. (I’m five foot two.) (And a half.)
He surprised me when he asked instead, “How large is the police force in Pine Apple?”
“There are two of us.” There were two of us. Surely he’d read that far.
“Is there a lot of crime in Pine Apple, Alabama?” He leaned back, elbows to armrests, his hands meeting mid-chest. He rolled a thin platinum wedding band round and round his left ring finger.
“The usual,” I said. “Domestic, vehicular, theft. We double as fire too.”
“So you’ve had EMT training?”
“Yes.”
“And you write computer programming?”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” I said. “Pine Apple’s a small country town, not exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. I had a lot of time on my hands and spent most of it on the computer.”
“It says here you rewrote the program for incident reporting nationwide.”
I hadn’t put that on my resume. What else did it say there? “Not so much, Mr. Sanders. I only eliminated the inefficiencies of the old program and it went viral.”
“Why do you want to leave Pine Apple, Davis?”
Oh, boy.
“You know what?” He looked at his watch. “Let’s save that for later.”
Yes. Let’s.
He started up with the wedding band again. “I’m going to say something that could be construed as politically incorrect.” He made direct eye contact. “With your permission, of course.”
“Sure.”
“I have a thirteen-year-old son who has at least five inches and fifty pounds on you.”
There it was. “Is he my competition?”
Richard Sanders unexpectedly laughed. “Not hardly. Maybe if we were looking for someone to play Xbox.”
“For all I know, Mr. Sanders, you are looking for someone to play Xbox.” I surrendered. “I’ve been interviewing for this position for six weeks now, and I still don’t know what it is.”
“I don’t either.”
Could we get someone in there who did?
“Did Paul and Jeremy not go over it with you?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Paul and Jeremy,” he said. “My security team.”
I had nothing.
“Big guys,” Mr. Sanders said.
Ah. Those guys. I remembered. The two mammoth men from my tenth interview I’d been trying hard to forget. One had no hair and the other had the biggest, brightest teeth I’d ever seen in my life. The bald one wore strange neckties and the one with the teeth dressed monochromatically—everything, tip to toe, the same color. Natalie introduced them as if I had no idea who they were. As if they hadn’t been following me around since my first interview. I’d spotted one, the other, or both giants every time I’d been there. They’d jumped on elevators with me, the bald one had been at the shooting range, and the one with the teeth had actually followed me all the way home once. But on the day I officially met them, I played along. Nice to meet you, large total security strangers.
Then they drilled me for three solid hours on subjects far from security. My waitressing skills, or rather my lack thereof, had been heavily discussed. How did I feel about gambling? (I felt like you shouldn’t do it with other people’s money.) Would I care to explain that? (No, thank you.) How did I feel about hundreds of pounds of dirty linens? (Opposed.) How about scrubbing shower stalls? (Again, opposed.) Did I know or had I ever known or had I ever seen photographs of someone named Bianca? (No. Wasn’t that a breath mint?) How many times had I been married? (None of your business.) Could I type? (How many fingers were we talking about?) Had I always been a redhead? (I wasn’t one of those pale, freckled, flaming-red redheads. My hair was a coppery-caramel color, and my eyes were the same color, only darker.) Had I ever been convicted of or committed a felony? (Which one? Convicted or committed?) Either. Both. (There’s a big difference.) Let’s hear it. (I’d like to use a lifeline.) Did I have culinary skills? (Could I cook Pop Tarts? Yes. Do I know what to do with a dead chicken? No.) Had I ever held a customer service position? (Not specifically. More no than yes. Okay, no.) The hairless one asked me if I could operate an industrial vacuum cleaner. I didn’t know such a thing existed.
If I thought I knew what the job was before those two, I sure didn’t know after. And there I sat in my final interview with the president, and he didn’t know.
I picked up my purse.
“Wait,” Richard Sanders said.
I put down my purse.
“It’s a new position, Davis, and a highly classified one. If I knew exactly what you’d be doing on a day-to-day basis, I’d tell you.”
Finally, some bottom line.
“You’ll be working undercover throughout the casino and hotel, and if you want to know more than that,” he said, “you’ll have to agree to the terms.”
“Are you offering me the job, Mr. Sanders?”
“Do you want the job, Davis?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I was very sure I needed it. “The terms,” I said, “what are they?”
“In a word? Discretion.” He steepled his fingers, then used them as a pointer. “Your job is to be discreet.”
“And?”
“Use discretion,” he said.
Use discretion while being discreet?
“Don’t talk to anyone on or off this property about your job,” he said. “And don’t reveal your identity under any circumstances.”
“When do I start?”
“How soon can you start?”
“I’m good to go, Mr. Sanders. You say when.”
“Today’s as good a time as any.” His hand went for the phone. “You can start now.”
My eyebrows shot up. I didn’t mean that very minute. I was thinking Monday. Or the Monday after that.
“Do you need time to think about it?” His hand hovered over the phone. “Because the iron is hot now.”
Wait a minute. No one had said a word about ironing.
“Davis? Do you need a little time?”
Yes. “No.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Welcome to the Bellissimo.”
And with that, I was well on my way to prison.
Gretchen Archer is a Tennessee housewife who began writing when her children, seeking higher educations, ran off and left her. She lives on Lookout Mountain with her husband and a misbehaving sheepadoodle named Kevin. Double Blast is the twelfth Davis Way Crime Caper. You can visit her at www.gretchenarcher.com.
Gretchen Archer, Double Blast
