The Company Man

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “What could he do?”

  “Something. I don’t know.”

  Garvey sat up. A bird’s cry sounded somewhere out in the night, then faded to a whimper. Samantha looked out the window and her eyes trailed up the gray-white trunks of the pines to the stars above. They seemed to have never been so bright before.

  “Mr. Evans says one day we will reach the stars,” she said.

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “He says McNaughton is making something that will leave this world and rise up and touch the next, up there,” she said, and pointed.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. An airship of some kind, perhaps. Like the one they tried to launch last month.”

  “That one didn’t go so well.”

  “I believe they’re still working on it. Maybe once it works, we’ll have peace. Do you think that could be?”

  He thought about it, then shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “Why not? If people could leave and go where they want…”

  “They said that when we all first started going West,” said Garvey. “They said if people were unhappy in the East then they could just go out West, and find what they wanted. Well, they went West, and they made this place, and others like it, but they never found what they wanted. People don’t leave their problems behind, they don’t stop being people just because they moved. They’ll do the same thing, every time.”

  “But why?”

  He was silent. Then he said, “Because the world is a tough place. Tough and empty. The ones who get by are the ones who are either mean or lucky. And they don’t much like other people like themselves hanging around. It’s the same way all over. I bet it’s the same even there,” he said, and waved his hands at the stars. “If there’s people out there like us, they’ve probably seen the same damn things that we have.”

  She noticed an edge to his voice. “Donald,” she said. “Donald, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He looked away and then said, “Sometimes it seems like everything’s falling apart. Every single goddamn thing.”

  “You can leave,” she told him. “We can leave. Just go away and leave this place. If we want.”

  He looked at her and shook his head. “No,” he said. “We can’t. Don’t you see? We can’t just leave it to die.”

  Samantha returned in the morning and went to work in the clothes she had worn the day before. After a few hours of doing almost nothing to no one’s notice, she returned to her apartment and lay down to rest.

  She awoke to the sound of knocking. She sat up and looked out the window. It was dark. The pounding continued. She went to the door and opened it and found Hayes was standing there, soaking wet and smiling madly.

  “You’re coming with me,” he said. “Put your coat on and let’s go.”

  “What?” she said. “No, wait, where have you been? It’s been days, for Heaven’s sake! I’ve had to keep everything quiet so no one knows you’re gone!”

  “Well, I knew you’d be able to cover for me. But it won’t have been for nothing. I’ve landed something, Sam. Something big.”

  “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

  “Oh, it’s business as usual,” he said. “We’re going to an interview, Sam. Tonight. Only this one is a little different.”

  “What? Please, I’m in no mood for games.”

  “I’ve arranged things,” he said, giddy. “Arranged a meeting. With Mickey Tazz.”

  “You what?” she said. “You’ve got a meeting with Mickey Tazz?”

  “No. We do. We both do. As esteemed representatives of McNaughton.”

  She gaped at him, then said again, “You what?”

  “I want you to come with me. To be my secretarial aid while I talk to this lowborn king of men.”

  “No. No, I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. You have to.”

  “I can’t, I have… I have plans.”

  “Plans?” he said, and scoffed. “What the hell kind of plans? Break your damn plans, we’re seeing the man no one else in the city can even find.”

  “I really cannot…”

  “Some gentleman caller?” asked Hayes. He picked up an umbrella and brandished it about like a sword. “Some gent from Legal who’s here to wine and dine you throughout Newton?”

  “Oh, stop it,” she snapped.

  Hayes lowered the umbrella and looked at her, deflated. Then he said, “You have to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Then find someone else.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Some thug or some knife for hire. Get them.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re the only person I trust,” he said.

  Samantha stared at him. Hayes replaced the umbrella and stood looking down at it.

  “Well, you and Garvey, but I have no clue where he is,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want to bring him into this. The last thing we need is to muddy the police any more.”

  “Oh, God,” she said wearily.

  “Come on, Sam,” he pleaded. “You’re my rock. Come on. Come with me and let’s break this thing in half.”

  Samantha rubbed her forehead and leaned against the wall. “Fine,” she said. “Fine. Just let me leave a note.” She went to grab a slip of paper.

  “Do you really have a gentleman coming, Sam?” asked Hayes. He peeked over her shoulder.

  “Get out,” she said. “Get out and go downstairs and wait for me. I can’t even imagine how you got in here. Just go.”

  She turned to find he had already left. The only signs of his passage were the wet spots on the floor.

  Samantha found Hayes lurking in a niche in the doorway outside the lobby. He stepped out like some clockwork toy and said to her, “Let’s go,” and began walking.

  They went west to the trolley stop and walked down the iron stairway to the platform. “Where are we meeting him?” asked Samantha.

  “Probably not meeting him, at first,” Hayes said. “First we’ll be meeting some of his ambassadors. They lead us to Tazz and then we all have a sit-down. We’re meeting them at the East Bazaar, per his invite.”

  “But what do you plan to say to him?”

  “I don’t need to say anything,” Hayes said darkly. “I just need to get close.”

  They took the 41A to one of the few Shanties stops and walked two blocks down to the bazaar square. The frames of booths were still set up, tiny roofs and walls laid out on the wet pebbled cement like a ghost town. They walked down through the aisles and the small paths. The faint smell of spice and old vegetables still hung in the air. Then Hayes gestured to her and they hid behind the folds of one empty booth. Once they were stowed away he crossed his arms and leaned up against the wall and Samantha did likewise.

  They waited for what felt like hours. Then he tilted his head as though he had heard something. He told her, “Wait here,” and slipped away.

  She waited in the darkness and eventually put her eye to the crack in the wall. She saw two men in overalls walking down from the street to the center of the bazaar. They had on knit caps and one wore an old overcoat. They came to the center and stood there, waiting, and seemed to grow frustrated as the minutes ticked by. Then Hayes returned to her, slick as a snake, and whispered, “Let’s go.”

  They walked out of the booth toward the two men, feeling absurd, like some quaint couple just out for a midnight walk. When they came before the men Hayes nodded at them and said, “Hello. Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

  The two men glanced at one another. One was older and thicker with ash-gray sideburns. The other was short and thin, his hair slicked back. The older one said, “You the man we’re supposed to be escorting?”

  “I believe so. Are you Tazz’s men?”

  “Don’t know nothing about Tazz,” the older one said. “Orders were just to take someone from the bazaar to a meeting.
Escort-like.”

  “Alone?” asked Hayes.

  The younger one nodded. “Alone.”

  “And it’s just you two?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because there’s a man hiding behind the bazaar wall. Hunkered down with a pistol,” said Hayes. “Is he supposed to be there?”

  The two union men shared another glance, this one dismayed.

  “He’s protection,” said the older one.

  “Leave him here,” Hayes said. “There’s no need for protection.”

  “We won’t. We don’t know who the hell you are.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you are, either. You’re leaving him behind, anyways. And only one of you is coming.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because your protection needs someone to help him,” Hayes answered primly.

  The men shared yet another glance. The older one nodded and his partner ran off into the bazaar. After he was a good ways away the gray hair said, “If you’ve hurt a hair on his fucking head…”

  “He’ll be fine,” Hayes said. “In the morning. He’ll just need to lie down for a while. I left the gun with him, too, so you don’t have to worry about that, though it’s empty now.”

  “Fucking bastard,” said the gray hair.

  Soon the young one came running back, face streaked with tears. In between panting breaths he said, “What’d you do to him? You piece of shit, what’d you do?”

  “Put him to sleep,” Hayes said coolly. “You’ll want to keep an eye on him. So one of you will have to take us to the meeting spot. Alone.”

  The two union men withdrew and discussed it. After a while they returned and the old one said, “Fine. I will. But I am armed. And if you do one fucking thing that I think warrants it I’ll kill you both myself, you fucking snake. You and your goddamn woman.”

  “Fair enough,” said Hayes.

  The older one led them farther west, down High Street. It was wide and deserted, no cars and no pedestrians. Abandoned buildings marched down the left side, windows broken and sunken roofs yawning wide. Bright yellow signs cheerfully informed them that this block was set for demolition. Then they came to an intersection cordoned off with sandbags. The old man walked by the bags and led them to a long, tall temporary fence circling a part of the street Samantha could not see. They went to a spot where the boards were missing and the old man motioned to climb through. Beside the hole in the fence was a small oil lamp. He knelt and lit it and picked it up. “This way,” he said.

  They walked across the cordoned street, passing over more walls of sandbags, and soon came to an immense sunken hole that went right down through the cement. A set of steps had been made with yet more sandbags, their misshapen forms descending into the dark.

  “Oh,” said Hayes. “The Dockland trolley.”

  “Yeah,” said the old man. “Follow me. Carefully. You can trip and die if you damn well please, though.”

  The old man held the lantern out before him and they walked down the shifting steps. Scaffolding and piping crawled around the walls and water ran down into the dark in pattering streams. As they came to the bottom they found they were at the start of an enormous stone tunnel, more than thirty feet high, the walls smooth and sloping and bone-white. At the bottom were tracks for the trolley lines and up above were faint yellow lights. Most were dead, leaving the tunnels in near darkness.

  “What is this place?” Samantha asked.

  “The Dockland trolley,” said Hayes. “Still in development. Like Construct. Problem with this one wasn’t the ocean, though. No, the contractors soon just found themselves running out of workers, and those that chose to work found themselves beaten in the streets.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the old man savagely.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “They worked us like animals,” the old man said. “Worked us like dogs.”

  “Hm,” said Hayes.

  “I was there on one shift when two men were mauled by equipment. Two men, do you hear? And the overseers didn’t care. Didn’t care at all. When the north tunnel flooded after Construct began tipping an entire crew drowned. They told us to go in and start baling it out by hand. That freezing water, always rising. They didn’t care if we died. That was two years ago now and I don’t regret a single thing we done since.”

  “And this is where Tazz has gone to ground?” said Hayes. “Interesting choice.” Yet he seemed unsurprised at the revelation.

  They continued on through the tunnels, the old man keeping his lantern aloft like some hobbling Charon, leading them to darker, stranger depths. The air grew cold and the tunnel walls were cracked in places from lack of maintenance. Sometimes they heard machinery far beneath them, some massive piston endlessly rotating. Samantha suppressed a shiver at its sound.

  The old man took lefts and rights and eventually turned up a long, sloping branch that took them to warmer levels. He veered toward one wall and set into it was a small maintenance passage. As they entered the old man froze and turned to peer back down the tunnel lengths from where they’d come.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “What was what?” said Hayes.

  The old man shushed him and held the lamp high and squinted down the shaft. There was nothing below but gloom and water. The old man grumbled something and lowered the lamp and they entered the maintenance network.

  They passed through pipes and maintenance sheds long unused and covered with dust. Shovels and picks and shoes were scattered on the tunnel floor. Many had been gnawed by rats and more than once they saw pink naked tails fleeing into the shadows. Finally they came to a long tunnel that ended in a small door, and as they walked through the wall completely fell away on one side. They stopped short, shocked, and blinked, and saw they were standing on a small stone pathway that ran along one side of what had to be an enormous room, but it was so dark they could not see beyond several feet out. A small iron railing ran along one side but below that the wall dropped away. Samantha could feel the pressure change upon her skin and knew the room had to be incredibly vast. Sometimes there was the sound of dripping, but otherwise the immense hall was silent.

  At the far end of the pathway they saw four men standing patiently in the weak yellow light along the wall. As they entered one of the men turned up a lamp at his feet. They saw a broad, boyish face illuminated bright white, eyes clear and untroubled with an easy smile. He was short and stocky but well built, sporting a plain haircut and simple overalls with leather gloves and brogans.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” he called.

  Before they could answer two men stepped out from behind them, crowbars and wrenches in hand, and fenced them back.

  “What’s this?” said Hayes. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “My apologies, Mr. Hayes,” called the stocky man at the far end of the tunnel. “I’m afraid in the interest of my security we have to keep you as far away from me as possible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have your informants. I have mine,” said the man, and saluted. Then his face grew solemn and he said, “I know what you are. And you’ll not come within a hundred feet of me.”

  The hall was silent for a good while. Samantha tried to see Hayes’s face in the dark but she could read nothing there.

  “You would be the famous Mickey Tazz, then,” Hayes said, and stepped back and brushed himself off.

  “I would,” said the man. “And you would be Cyril Hayes. The least famous of all McNaughton employees. As intended. And there next to you, is that Miss Fairbanks?”

  Samantha nodded but did not speak. She glanced to Hayes again to see how he took this but his face was closed and still.

  “There’s no need to be afraid,” Tazz said.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “Well, that’s good. I’m surprised Mr. Hayes has brought you to such a meeting. Then ag
ain, I’m not sure why I’m here, either. Though he seems to have made it impossible for me to avoid.”

  “What is this place?” asked Hayes.

  “Don’t you recognize it? After all, it’s one of yours,” Tazz said. He pointed behind them at the corner where the pathway ended. Inlaid in the wall were the rungs of an iron ladder leading down into the dark, and stamped at the top of the ladder was the imperial M of McNaughton.

  “Have you never seen it? Or heard of it?” asked Tazz.

  “No. I haven’t,” said Hayes.

  “I’m not surprised, Mr. Hayes. Your company keeps its secrets close, and they only share what they have to. Such is the way of all industry. But to keep such a secret from you, their personal secret-keeper? Well. I suppose they didn’t have to tell you, now did they? You’re more of a personnel watchdog. The real treasures they keep far from you, maybe intentionally. As to what this room is, I mean really is, I don’t know. It’s just another one of McNaughton’s many secrets, to me. Though by no means the worst. Fascinating, isn’t it, though?”

  “Maybe so,” said Hayes. “But I’m afraid I didn’t come here to talk just about rooms. Or McNaughton.”

  “That’s plain,” he said. “Then what about, Mr. Hayes? Politics? Fishing? Cabbages and kings?”

  “About the murders.”

  Tazz’s eyebrow twitched. “The murders? Just the murders?”

  “Just the murders,” said Hayes calmly.

  “Are you serious, Mr. Hayes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you expect for me to say about them?”

  “Anything. Anything about what you think of them. About who did it and what they mean,” said Hayes. He smiled as though he’d said what he’d come to say, but Samantha got the strong impression he was improvising.

  “I think it should be obvious what I have to say about the murders.”

  “Then say it anyway. I want to hear it. After all, no one else has heard it yet.”

  “That was in the interest of my security.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Tazz placed his hands behind his back. “What do I think of what’s happened? I think that this is no longer a struggle. No longer just class tensions. I think it’s warfare now, Mr. Hayes. Pure and simple.”