"Hire them all."
Chip made a frowning face, "To do what?"
"To look for the gas leak."
Chip brightened. "It's low tech enough that maybe they could do it without screwing up."
'' My thinking exactly.''
Darnell Jackson had never had a job in his life. None of his friends had ever worked—worked in the honkie sense of working, that is.
A lot of them worked their asses off hustling and boosting and doing grafts now and again. But the concept of walking into the imposing XL SysCorp building through the front door by invitation in broad daylight was a new one to him.
Darnell was more of a back-door kinda dude.
"This feels weird," he whispered to his main man, Troy.
"Know it," Troy whispered. "But it's a big payday for maybe a week tops in this place."
"Yeah, and we can boost stuff, too," added Pip.
"Don't be a chump," Troy snapped. "They catch you boostin' in here, they run your dumb ass right off the lot. Then you lose out on the long payday."
"Yeah. You won't catch me boostin' anything," said Darnell.
"Maybe on my last day when they be carryin' me out on that golden stretcher," laughed Troy.
They were taken to a conference room with long cherry-wood tables and chairs so comfortable they felt weird sitting in them in their scruffy street clothes.
The white guy who had opened the door and invited them in to put in for a job was handing out sheets of paper and sharpened yellow pencils. He was sweating bullets.
"Just fill these out," he said nervously.
"Then what?" asked Darnell.
"Then I'll come back and look them over."
"This like a test?"
"No. All you have to do is fill in the blanks."
Darnell blinked. Troy looked at him.
"He talking bullet?"
"Ask him."
Darnell raised his hand because he had a dim recollection of doing that in the third grade, just before being expelled for stabbing that mouthy teacher whose name he'd long ago forgotten.
"Do you mean like blank bullets?" Troy asked.
"No. I mean the empty spaces in the application."
"Is this what these are—applications?"
"Yes. Just write your names, addresses and Social Security numbers."
This time Troy raised his hand. "Which Social Security number?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Social Security number we used to get our welfare checks, or the one we use on our driver's license, or the one we give to the cops when they catch us?"
"You're only supposed to have one."
"Hey, You never know when an extra will come in handy."
"Give your correct Social Security number," the white dude said.
"Right. Got it," said Darnell, nudging Troy. They made up the numbers, just in case.
Another hand shot up. It belonged to Pip. "What about this address thing?"
"Where do you mean?"
"It's asking for my address, and I ain't got one."
"Where do you live?"
"With whatever bitch will have me this week."
"Use that. Any other questions?"
"Are street names okay? I don't wanna use my own on account of I'm what they call known to the police."
The white dude went even whiter and he mumbled, "Street names are fine." Then he shut the door after him real fast.
Everyone laughed at the nervous white dude. The laughter died when they looked at the application forms.
They scratched heads, arms, crotches and shifted in their chairs while making faces at the sheets of paper.
"Anybody here can read?" Darnell asked suddenly.
"I read some," said Pip.
"What's this say?"
"Dunno."
"I thought you said you read some." "I read only numbers. I don't go in for letters and words."
"Why not?"
"Mostly all I gotta know for home invasions is a street number and the color of the house."
"Who reads words here?"
A hand went up. Everybody shoved their applications under the hand raiser's unhappy face.
"Hey, I ain't doin' all this. I got my own application to fill up."
Hands went into baggy pants and into the pouches of gray hooded sweatshirts and came out holding a wide array of small firearms. These were pointed at the man who could read words.
"You help us out, jack. Or we help you out the window."
"All right, all right. But this is gonna take all day."
"So what? We already in the sick building breathing the bad air. That gives us all a day up on getting sick enough to quit and live off the insurance company."
This made sense to all, so they took their time filling out the applications. To pass the time, they carved their initials on the cherry-wood conference tabletops.
"Wonder how come no one ever thought to do this before?" mumbled Darnell, scratching out a big D in one corner.
"Fools probably couldn't write their own damn names," said Troy.
When the white guy came back, he looked even more nervous than before. He took the applications, and they asked him one question.
"We hired now?"
"I have to evaluate the applications first."
"Then we hired?"
"Probably."
"If you don't hire us, it'll be discriminatory, you know."
The white dude rolled his eyes. "I know," he said, backing from the room.
"I like that word 'discriminatory,'" said Troy.
"Yeah," Darnell added. "It always work."
It worked this time, too. The white guy was back inside of ten minutes and said, "You're all gas inspectors."
"Since when?"
"Since the front office just accepted all your applications."
"What's the salary?"
"What's a salary?" Pip asked.
"That's what they gotta pay you, fool."
"Hey, I ain't settling now. It's too early. I ain't sick yet."
"That's later," Troy hissed. "Salary is what you get for working. Insurance settlement is what you get for not working."
"You know," Darnell added as they followed the white dude to the elevator, "I think I'm gonna miss working in this place."
Everyone laughed as they rode the elevator to the basement where the air was thin and cool and there wasn't much light.
"Somewhere down here," the white guy was saying, "there's a gas leak. Find it."
"How?"
"With your noses."
"What's gas smell like?"
"You don't know?"
"Sue me."
"It smells bad."
"Fart bad or skunk bad?"
"It smells like a butane lighter that won't light up."
Everyone understood that. "What do we do when we find it?" Pip wanted to know.
"There are intercom boards all over the basement.
Just hit the button and ask. I'll answer."
It sounded simple enough, especially since there were fourteen of them looking for the gas leak. They farmed out.
Chip Craft rode the elevator back to the fifteenth floor, feeling his shirt stuck to his skin.
He walked past his secretary without a glance. Her rig brown eyes followed him sadly.
Behind his desk, Chip said, "They're looking."
"Excellent."
''But what do we do with them after they find it?"
"Let's see if they can find it," said Friend.
" What did you have a gas line put in for?"
"Two reasons." "Yeah?"
"First because I determined that installing the line would lead to the destruction of a secret telephone cable."
"What secret telephone cable?"
"The one that connects my enemy Harold Smith to the White House."
"White House! What's the White House have to do with this?"
"When we attack the banking system, we will arouse the interest of the United States government. The White House will be very interested in what we do."
"Listen. I don't want the White House after me."
"You haven't heard the second reason."
"I'm not sure I want to," Chip admitted.