"What time do you have?" Ben asked, walking over to the sink to check his appearance in the mirror.
"Almost ten."
"They'll be closing," Ben said. "You'd better hit the road."
"In a minute."
"Now."
"I really do have to take a leak," Street told him.
Ben laughed. "Sorry." He leaned over, pretended to peek. "Wow! You have a big dick!"
Street grinned. "But of course."
There was a knock on the rest room door, and they both froze.
"Is anyone in there?" someone called.
"I'll be out in a minute!" Street answered. He flushed the urinal and ran the sink tap. Covered by the noise, Ben locked himself in the far stall, crouching on the toilet seat.
"I owe you," he whispered.
"Check in with me when you're finished. I want to know that you're safe."
"Will do."
Street unlocked the door, stepped out, and Ben heard a Store employee say, "Is there anyone else in there?"
"Just me and my diarrhea," Street announced cheerfully.
"That door's supposed to remain unlocked during business hours."
"Sorry," Street said. "I just don't like people to hear me making disgusting noises."
The door closed, and it did not reopen. Ben waited. Fifteen minutes, a half hour. An hour. The lights did not switch off, but no one returned, and when he checked his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight, he realized that they'd gotten away with it.
Carefully, quietly, he stepped down from the toilet, nearly falling from the sudden shift of weight on his cramped, weakened muscles. He stood in place for a moment, stretching, then walked across the tiled floor and pushed open the door to peek into The Store proper.
The building was silent.
All of the lights were still on, but The Store appeared to be empty.
He walked out carefully, practically tiptoeing, listening for noise but hearing nothing. Even the air conditioner had been shut off. There might be a security person around somewhere, maybe someone monitoring the other video cameras, but there was no one else around. No one could be this quiet unless they were asleep.
The other video cameras. He'd forgotten about them. He should've brought a mask to wear, something to hide his features so they wouldn't be able to identify him on videotape There was the sound of an elevator door opening.
Ben's blood began racing, his adrenaline pumping. He ducked quickly behind a shelf of CD players and adjusted his angle so he could peer through the stacked merchandise to the source of the sound.
They emerged from the elevator and the stairwell next to it, one after the other, a line of whey-faced men dressed entirely in black: black shoes, black pants, black shirts, black jackets. They moved silently, and there was something about the absence of sound that bespoke danger.
The Night Managers.
The elevator and stairwell were only a few yards down from the rest rooms, and he realized that if he had waited a few moments longer, if he had spent even another minute stretching his cramped muscles, they would have caught him.
But what would they have done to him?
He didn't want to find out. There was something terrifyingly unnatural about the appearance of those blank white faces, and he suddenly wished that he had heeded Street's advice and given up on this whole infiltration idea.
Of course, now that he was here . . .
He checked the miniature tape recorder in his shirt pocket, took out the tiny camera with which he planned to surreptitiously photograph the Night Managers.
The lights in the building winked off.
He jumped, startled, and nearly fell, almost knocking over a CD player. He caught himself before anything happened, and the only sound was a slight click as his hand steadied the stereo component, but even that noise seemed outrageously loud in the stillness, and he remained tensed, unmoving, waiting to see if he'd been caught.
The lights came back on.
He was safe. The Night Managers were walking up and down various aisles, robotically, in groups of three, not looking around, not stopping, not slowing, simply pressing onward, like unstoppable windup toys. They did not even know he was here.
He moved away from the CD players, saw three Night Managers moving down an aisle away from him, and he quickly snapped a picture of their retreating backs.
To his left, two rows over, three others were passing by, not looking to the left, not looking to the right, facing straight ahead, and he took a profile photo. The lights went off again.
He didn't panic this time, simply waited. This was obviously part of some standard chain of events, some sequence that happened nightly, and he stood in place until the lights came back on.
A hand fell on his shoulder, gripping him tightly.
He dropped his camera, startled, and turned to see one of the Night Managers.
Grinning at him.
They'd known he was here all along.
They'd been playing with him.
No, he thought. Not playing. The Night Managers of The Store did not play.
The others surrounded him, their trips up and down aisles all ending at precisely the spot where he was standing.
"I can explain . . ." he began. He trailed off, expecting to hear a "Shut up," or a "There's nothing to explain," or some other such order, but there was nothing, no noise, only silence, only those grinning white faces surrounding him, and it was the absence of noise that scared him more than anything else.
He tried to break away, tried to run.
The grip on his shoulder kept him from moving.
"Help!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Help!"
A cold white hand clamped around his mouth. Over the white knuckles that covered half his face, he saw the other Night Managers all withdrawing knives from somewhere on their persons. Long, shiny knives with sharp, straight edges.
He tried to squirm away, tried to kick, tried to lash out, but he realized that all of his limbs were now being held, and then he was lifted into the air and then he was dropped flat on his back on the floor.
Something snapped in his spine, and suddenly he couldn't move, and the hand was still over his mouth as the knives began carefully entering his flesh, cutting his skin.
He prayed for unconsciousness from the depths of his screaming agonized mind, and when he finally felt himself slipping away, he was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief, grateful that the end had come.
But it was not the end. He regained consciousness sometime later, in a dark room in one of the basements, and he learned that it was nowhere near the end. It was only the beginning.
2
From the first, there seemed something wrong with the deal. Night Managers or not, there was no reason for Ben to sneak into The Store and spend the night.
It was not necessary for the article and, as far as Street was concerned, it was unnecessarily dangerous.
He told this to Ben. Several times on the way over. But Ben was in his Woodward-and-Bernstein mode and nothing could dissuade him from what he perceived to be his higher calling, his mission to uncover The Truth.
Ben told him to hit the road after leaving him in the men's room, to get out of there, and The Store director who caught him coming out of the bathroom had been a pretty good impetus to do exactly that, but he couldn't simply abandon his friend, and he left The Store lot and parked along the edge of the highway instead, waiting.
He waited for nearly an hour, but then the lights in the parking lot went out, and when they turned on again a few seconds later, they were pointing not down at the parking lot but out toward him, trained on his truck like searchlights, and he quickly turned on the ignition, put the truck into gear, and took off.
_Maybe they'd gotten Ben_.