"Look what the cat dragged in," Elliott commented as I slipped into the mail room five minutes past nine.
"Sorry about that. I lost track of time," I told him.
"Lose track of time a few more times and you'll lose your job," he warned me.
I pursed my lips, but nodded. "Yes, sir."
Elliott grabbed a large cardboard box of envelopes and handed it to me. "Good. Now take this bundle of hate-mail to Reggie before he starts thinking people like him. I'd do it myself, but the damn mail carrier forgot half his shipment at the post office and he's supposed to be coming back any time now."
"Sure."
I trudged to the elevator and stepped inside. A few more people climbed in at the lobby floor and rode up with me for a few levels. One of them was a pair of guys who I recognized worked in the entertainment department.
"So you hear? There's been another sighting of that thing from the lab explosion," one of the guys commented.
"With that large dog?" his companion guessed.
The first man nodded. "Yep. It was seen around 132nd street."
My pulsed quickened. That was only a few blocks from my apartment.
"Why hasn't the dog catcher caught it?" the second man asked the first.
The first man snorted. "You try catching a six-foot tall dog."
The second man whistled. "Is it that big?"
His friend grinned. "Would I lie?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm not lying now."
"So why don't you write a story about it? It could sell a lot."
The first man frowned. "Because his Royal Highness won't let me. I tried to get one in the paper two days ago and he nixed it."
"What an idiot. Doesn't he want to keep this paper going?" the second man wondered.
His friend shrugged. "I don't know. I guess he'd rather please the Emperor."
"So there's a Fox angle?" the guy guessed.
"I'm not saying there isn't, but I'm not saying there is, either, if you know what I mean," his friend replied.
The elevator stopped. The men got off and other people replaced them. I continued on my journey, but with troubled thoughts. I couldn't shake the conversation between those two men.
A creature near my apartment the day after I had a strange feeling of being watched. Most people would've brushed off the two as a coincidence, but I didn't believe in those. Not when it came to my doldrum life. My normal life didn't allow for more than one strange occurrence at a time. When two oddities happen within a day of each other, that means they're related.
The elevator reached the top floor. My stop. I stepped out into the lobby of the managers' floor. Here was where the brain factory played God and decided what would be published and what ended up on the cutting room floor. Headlines were buried and gossip was spouted as fact. This was the worst and best of mankind, an information conglomerate of lies and truths.
I just wish I knew which were the lies and which were the truths.
A semi-circular desk stood at the wall opposite the elevators. To my left and right, and in front of me, were long hallways that led to the offices of the managers of each section of the paper. The man I wanted to see, the editor, lay beyond the desk down the central hallway.
But first I had to get past the last line of defense against annoyances: the secretary of the floor, Miss Bao. She was a middle-aged woman of Asian descent who ruled the desk and wielded her power with all the grace and majesty of an angry hippo. Her beady, bespectacled eyes glared at me as I approached her domain.
"Can I help you?" she asked me.
I set the box of hate mail on her desk and jerked my head towards the hall behind her. "Mr. Regis' mail." Reggie was a nicknamed none dare utter in his presence.
Miss Bao stood and pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose. "Very well. You may leave the mail with-"
"It has to be delivered in person by me. Mr. Booker's orders," I reminded her.
Her twenty years of service to the company had taught her the rules of the company, but never how to follow them. Elliott demanded all mail be delivered in person to avoid blame on the mail department for missing correspondence. It was a cover-your-ass policy that worked for everyone. Everyone, that is, except Miss Bao.
She frowned. "I can-" I pulled the box off the desk and moved around her towards the hall.
"You can tell Mr. Regis I have his mail and I'm coming to deliver it," I called to her.
Reggie's office lay at the end of the hall behind a pair of massive doors. People joked that he was compensating for a pair of something else, but those were people who evidently never met the man. I stopped at the doors and knocked.
"Come in," came a gruff voice.
I pushed open a door with my shoulder and stepped inside the lair of a man obsessed with his job. Cups of coffee littered the tops of the half-dozen file cabinets scattered around the room. A couch to my right sported a thick pillow and blanket. In front of me was a desk covered in papers. Folded newspapers, inked and printed paper, the shiny gloss of magazine paper. The stacks were as high as the stakes in these days of cutthroat competition and falling ad revenue.
The man himself, Regis, sat behind the desk. He was a man of sixty with a balding head and a clean-shaven face. His constantly-narrow eyes watched everyone like a hawk prepared to strike its prey at a moment's notice. His eyes flickered up from a stack of papers for a moment before they returned to his work.
"Miss Bao sounded perturbed," he commented.
"I'm sorry, sir. She insisted on-"
"I don't know nor care why you two were squabbling. I just don't want it to happen again, got it?" he commanded.
I bit my tongue. The answer I wanted to speak didn't come out. "Yes, sir.
"Good, now put the box on the edge of the desk," he instructed. I did as was told and turned to leave. He wasn't finished with me. "You live on 126th street, right?"
I paused and half-turned to him. His head was raised and his eyes bore into mine. "That's right."
"There's been rumors about a large dog in those neighborhoods. Have you heard anything about it?" he wondered.
I shrugged. "Just rumors."
He studied me for a moment longer before he returned to his work. "All right. You can leave."
I exited the office and walked down the hall. Miss Bao tried to sear a hole in my head with her eyes, but I ignored her until I turned around in the elevators. The doors were shutting. I raised my hand and waved at her. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree that caught fire. She opened her mouth, but the doors closed on her words.
I leaned back against the rear of the elevator and furrowed my brow. My mind went over the facts: a large dog spotted in the neighborhood. Ben mentioned hearing something howling in the night. The rumors about the paper suppressing this juicy story. Why then did Reggie want to know if I knew anything? It didn't make sense.
I tilted my head back and sighed. "People don't make sense. . ."
The day ended like every other day, and I drove home. The gray skies stood out against the darkness of night. My headlights reflected the scattered clouds of fog that floated across the road. A soft rain drizzled on my windshield and pattered the top of my car.
I arrived at my block and found the parking situation was worse than usual. Everybody had wanted to park as close to their apartment as possible. There wasn't an empty spot for two blocks. I parked my car and pulled out my gun and holster from the glove compartment.
"At least I can rely on you," I whispered as I tucked the weapon into its holster.
I stepped out of the car and into fate.
CHAPTER 8