I Just Know

Chapter 1

It was a long shot, but since he had walked all the way into the heart of downtown it only made sense to go by the building where the old one lived. The alcove of the once grand entrance, chrome and glass revolving doors locked for the night, was already home to one passed out drunk. Later that night, others would pass out here as well. Maybe it was the old one's job to run off the drunks in the morning before people came to work at the building, and hose their vomit and urine off to the curb.

Whatever his job was, it really didn't matter. The old one was inside as usual. He could feel him sleeping somewhere up on one of the upper floors. High above the thoughts of the night people on the streets. Safe in his crumbling old tower, sleeping a restless old man's sleep.

The look of the building was deceiving. Though old and deteriorated, it was locked up like a fortress and seemed to have working alarm systems in all the right places. There would be no sneaking up on the old one. He had chosen his living quarters well.

Glancing high up at the luminous clock face on top of the building he saw that time was getting late. He started walking towards the west as fast as he thought he could without attracting unwanted attention.

The night thoughts screamed in his mind. It was painful but he would have to endure it until the job was done. Leaving his mind exposed to the night would be the only way to identify his target, and also the only way to safely walk the downtown streets alone after dark.

There were two of them waiting in a darkened doorway up ahead. He could feel their minds ramp up in anticipation as he approached. It was the typical play. They stepped out and blocked his path just before he reached their hiding place. Demanding money, one said he had a gun in his pocket, though he knew it was just a short piece of pipe. Being in a hurry, he resented the delay. This would have to be over quickly. They dropped unconsciously to the dirty sidewalk.

The two muggers later assumed that a large man had slipped up behind them and bashed their heads together, though in reality it was just the two of them and their seemingly defenseless prey in the area.

Had there been more time he might have searched them for cash, which was tough to come by and there was always the satisfaction of turning the tables, but not tonight. He walked on.

It was an institutional looking high rise building. An uninspiring monolith of concrete and glass. His target was not home yet, which was good. They always went somewhere on Sunday evening and got back around ten. He found a shadowed area to hide in and pulled the small handgun from his coat pocket. A souvenir from another attempted mugging, it had proven to be useful.

A taxi approached and slowed, pulling up to the curb in front of the building. While there was a passenger visible in the back seat, he could only make out the thoughts of the driver. The old bag was a regular fare but a lousy tipper. So his target was an old lady. Did that make things different somehow? No. It just made his mission more important.

For a moment he thought the driver might wait at the curb until the old woman was safely in the lobby of her apartment building. Perhaps if she had given the man a better tip he would have waited. Instead he peeled away from the curb, hoping to beat another driver to a radio call.

She walked slowly up to the glass front door. He could not tell what she was thinking, where she had been, or what she planned to do when she got upstairs to her apartment. This was certainly his target.

Stepping out of the shadows he moved quickly and almost silently across the minimal lawn. The little gun worked best at short range, and since she couldn't hear either his footsteps or his thoughts, sneaking up on her was easy enough. Two quick shots to the head and he turned to walk away before she dropped to the pavement.

Chapter 2

The Ford Mustang wound its way clumsily through the dirty downtown streets. It had been a shiny red when Brandon got the car for his sixteenth birthday. That had been a little over five years ago and now the car was scratched and dented. While a taxicab might wear such blemishes as badges of honor, on the Mustang they just made the car look tired and old.

At last Brandon located the Landmark department store building. It was just one block from Public Square, a distinguished historical building with its ornate and almost vulgar architecture, yet it was somehow hard to find.

He was originally from the little town of Staub, and found the tall buildings, dirty streets, and shuffling masses of people a bit intimidating. After almost making another wrong turn on a one way street, he finally located the entrance to the alleyway behind the Landmark building.

Brandon cursed himself for not paying more attention to Ashley, the lady at the temp agency, who had said the alley was tough to find and had given explicit directions. Her gravely voice over the phone made him picture her as an overweight hag in curlers, but then she greeted him at the agency's office on the north side of town with a stunning super model figure and face to match. She had been wearing what might have been a custom tailored suit, with a skirt a little shorter than normal and her fantastic legs were accented by shiny stiletto heels. His mind had been on anything but street names and which way to turn.

The alley was a desolate oasis compared to the congestion of the downtown streets. It widened into an area where trucks had maneuvered at one time and backed up to the long row of loading dock doors.

He parked the Mustang in front of a short flight of concrete stairs that led up to a steel door with a small dark square of a window. The battleship gray paint on the door was hanging in rusty flakes around the edges.

It was obvious that this was the right place because even before he got out of the car, Brandon could see the doorbell button beside the old door. It was mounted up near the top of the door frame, where it would be easily overlooked by anyone who didn't know it was there.

He locked his car, surveying the dim alleyway and wondering if it would be safe. The stereo was old, but it was still a good one. The rims were aftermarket, but years out of style. Hopefully the car would be okay.

Fumbling through his paperwork from the agency, he saw his scribbled note. At least he had written down something important, a code for the doorbell. Reaching up, he pressed the button twice, and then held it in for several seconds. He hadn't heard any bell ringing inside the old building but he waited as Ashley had told him to, leaning uncomfortably against the rusted railing made of welded pipes.

Chapter 3

The fifth floor had its own feel. Government offices of some kind had been here in the fifties and were then abandoned in the seventies. The place reeked of the drudgery of the rank and file.

Most of the light came in though the windows, while a handful of the overhead florescent lights sputtered weakly. The few private offices around the perimeter still remained. Out in the massive bullpen you could see the dirty outline on the tile floor where cubicle partitions had been, packing the office workers into equal and uninspiring boxes to waste out forty hours a week of their lives. A few old gray metal desks and institutional looking chairs were still abandoned here.

He looked out a dirty window at the street below. He could feel the people on sidewalk from five floors up. That was okay. He was used to it. On the lower floors though, it would be a different story. The feeling was sometimes distracting, like a TV set in a room that you aren't watching, but it’s on in the background so you can't focus like you'd want to.

That feeling hadn't been as bad lately though, and he attributed that to the fact that downtown was dying a slow but inevitable death. Vacancies here in the Landmark building and other office buildings throughout the city were the proof. There was some night life and some high end shopping downtown to attract people from the suburbs, he supposed. However, it really wasn't anything you couldn’t find in the suburbs, where parking was free and there was little chance of being mugged. Unless they worked downtown, most people just stayed away.

A trickle of dirty rusty water ran from the antiquated baseboard heating system and pooled at the edge of one of the few remaining office partitions. Years ago he might have said a few choice words when he spotted it, but really that was no use.

Walking by the row of dirty windows, he stooped at the trickle of foul water and shined his heavy-duty flashlight inside the decorative metal casework of the baseboard heater. A threaded connection, old and corroded, had a dark globule of a drip hanging from it. It dangled from the rusty pipe for a while, and then plopped onto the tile floor with barely a sound, and would eventually snake its way across the floor.

Walking down past a few windows, he opened an access panel in the metal casing and twisted the knob for the valve. Surprisingly, it wasn't stuck. There would be no need to come back later with a wrench to force the valve. With that section of radiator now shut off and with heating season being months away, there was no urgent need to make a repair.

The abandoned floor didn't need heating to keep it comfortable, but the water in the pipes had to keep circulating in the winter or else they would freeze and break.

As he continued to make his rounds, a bell rang somewhere off in the distance. Two short rings followed by one long clanging that echoed through the dusty shadows. The temporary help was here.

Chapter 4

Brandon had waited for what seemed like a long time. He considered pressing the button again in that secret code. Maybe it meant something in Morse code. He only knew SOS so he couldn't be sure.

He expected a light to come on behind the porthole window in the door or a face to peer out of the darkness, but there was no warning and he was startled when he heard the heavy metal on metal sounds as the door was being unbolted from the inside. The door swung outward abruptly and Brandon had to jump back to stay on his feet.

A wiry old man in dirty coveralls and heavy work boots stood in the darkened doorway. He still had a full head of hair, though it was graying and looked as if it hadn't seen a comb or a barber in weeks. The stubble of a beard matched his hair.

Ashley send you? he asked irritably.

Yeah, uh, Brandon said and clumsily held up his wrinkled paperwork.

One fine looking woman, the old man said and jerked his head as if in invitation for Brandon to come inside.

The interior was as dark and welcoming as the alleyway, and as the old man bolted the door behind them, the echo of metal latches reminded Brandon of an old prison movie.

Despite the long row of roll up doors, the inside of the loading dock was relatively small. Just a long narrow aisle behind the doors, packed with old conveyor belts and an overhead track system for clothing on hangers, like he had seen at the dry cleaners. The one wide spot in the loading dock was taken up with an old white cargo van, sporting little rust or damage despite its age. Brandon wasn't sure how the van had gotten inside the building since the dock doors were about four feet above the pavement outside.

There was little time to look around as the man led him past a dark, glass fronted office, and a dusty wooden bench where drivers might have loafed while waiting for their trucks to be unloaded. He was ushered into a cavernous freight elevator that resembled a steel cage. The grizzled man pulled the heavy doors closed with an overhead rope and instead of pressing a button for a floor he engaged an archaic lever control that started the elevator upwards.

You'll be working in the basement, the man said. We gotta go upstairs first though because it’s time for my coffee break.

You're uh, Mr. Cole? Brandon asked.

Yeah, the man said sharply. Charles Cole. Just call me Charles. People used to call me Chuck a long time ago. It was kind of a joke. Chuck Cole, like stoking coal in a boiler, but you wouldn't get something like that and Chuck isn't a name for an old fart like me. Just don't call me mister again.

After rising past a seemingly endless series of closed doors, Charles stopped the elevator and opened the heavy steel doors to reveal a large and surprisingly well-lit shop space. Some old display cases and shelving were stacked up to one side. A large table saw was in the center of the room, and there was other equipment that Brandon couldn't identify. He hadn't taken shop classes in high school. Those were for burnouts.

Charles escorted him through the shop and through a large chamber filled with enormous machinery connected to a tangle of piping, most of which was the diameter of a household garbage can. All of the machines were silent and covered with a thin veil of dust.

Past the machine room, they entered a passageway that had offices on one side. Most of the offices appeared to be vacant like the one down on the loading dock, and they had windows that looked out onto the rooftop. Then they passed an office that had a twin bed in it, and another office with a TV set and a couch.

The corridor ended at what must have been the break room for the maintenance men. Old kitchen equipment in a hideous shade of blue, formica topped table in some outdated pattern, surrounded by mix and match chairs. Besides a large window, a doorway out to the roof was propped open and let light and fresh air into the otherwise dark and stagnant building.

You drink coffee? Charles asked as he poured himself a cup from a half-full pot that sat on a hot plate. Brandon didn’t normally drink coffee, but he accepted the offer just to be polite. If you do that cream and sugar bit you're out of luck, but I got some milk in the fridge if that will work for ya. Brandon just decided to drink the brew straight. They pulled up chairs at the table.

Ashley tells me you played football in high school, Charles said in a challenging tone but before Brandon could answer, the old man cut him off. I don’t give a shit about sports, but I need someone with a strong back. A sprinkler main blew out a week ago in the basement and caused a bunch of water damage. I got a bunch of old plaster down there that’s fallen off the ceiling and needs to be shoveled up. You think you can handle that?

Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem, Brandon replied. They sipped their hot coffee in silence.

Yeah, the boy could do the job okay, Charles was sure of that. An all American type that hadn't gotten too soft yet now that he had entered the real world outside of high school, but Charles had been hoping for something more and this kid just didn’t have it. He could tell that just riding the freight elevator down to let him in. Maybe he could give him the worst of the scut work and it would eventually run him off so he could ask Ashley to send a replacement, and maybe the replacement would have the mind that he was looking for.

Charles knew it was probably unrealistic, but he also knew that there were others like him out there in the world, so he hoped to land one for his temporary help. Someone with a younger and stronger mind.

Not this kid though.