Due Diligence
Authors: Michael A Kahn
Copyright © 1995 by Michael A. Kahn
Copyright © 2015 Poisoned Pen Press
First E-book Edition 2015
ISBN: 9781464204456 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
For Jake “Shaq” Kahn
A special thanks to Dr. Leonard B. Weinstock and
Mark Zorenskyâexcellent tour guides through their
respective fields of expertise. Thanks, Lenny.
Thanks, Mark.
Down in the darkness it waits. Down in the subbasement of the Gateway Corporate Tower. From its open maw comes the stench of rotting flesh. Its single eye glows red.
The tenants of the Gateway Corporate Tower include lawyers and accountants, architects and insurance agents, advertising executives and business consultants. None have ever ventured down to the subbasement. None have ever imagined what is down there, waiting silently.
The trash chute of the Gateway Corporate Tower is essentially a 240-foot stainless steel tube that runs from the subbasement to the top floor, eighteen stories above Olive Street. It drops through fifteen floors in a straight perpendicular near the north elevator shaft, veers north at a forty-five-degree angle through two levels of the aboveground parking garage and then makes a final, two-story descent, emerging at a steep angle through the ceiling of the subbasement near the northeast corner of the building.
Motionless, it waits beneath the open end of the trash chute. By any standard, it is huge. Twenty-four feet from end to end, nearly eight feet wide, just shy of seven feet at its tallest point. It weighs at least fourteen tons, although, for obvious reasons, no one has ever tried to maneuver it onto a scale for a more precise measurement.
The night cleaning crews cherished that chute. There was access to it on every floor, usually in a utility closet around the corner from the elevators. Better yet, the building's designers had specified access doors large enough to accommodate just about any form, shape, or quantity of trash that the office tenants and the ground-level restaurant and newsstand were likely to produce during a busy day. As a result, there was never need for a time-consuming trip down the freight elevator from the upper floors to the subbasement to unload a cumbersome cloth hamper. Just shove the trash down the chute and get on to the next office.
It is squat and massive, with all that weight resting upon four small legs. Those legs seem almost dainty in contrast to the bulk they support
.
The eight-person night crew from Ace Office Maintenance arrived each weekday shortly after 5:00 p.m., started on the lower floors and gradually worked their way up, usually reaching the top floor a little after midnight.
The consulting firm of Smilow & Sullivan, Ltd. occupied the entire ninth floor. Those at the firm who regularly worked late knew that the cleaning crew reached their floor around nine o'clock and left before ten. The pattern held that night. The first two members of the night crew (Darlene Washington and LaTisha Forest) got off the elevator on the ninth floor at 9:06 p.m. The last departing member of the night crew (Yao-Wen Hsieh) boarded the elevator for the tenth floor at 9:45 p.m.
The police eventually interviewed all eight members of the crew. All remembered seeing him up there, as did Cynthia O'Malley (who saw him in the hall) and Mr. Sullivan (who poked his head in his office on his way out). According to the night crew, he was definitely alive and hard at work when they left, and by then Cynthia and Mr. Sullivan were definitely gone. Yao-Wen Hsieh was in the firm's lobby vacuuming the carpet at 9:15 p.m. when Cynthia boarded the down elevator carrying her purse and jacket. Three members of the crew saw Mr. Sullivan. He arrived in his tuxedo straight from the Barnes Hospital fundraiser around 9:30, picked up a few papers from his desk, and left ten minutes later. The time of Cynthia's departure and Mr. Sullivan's brief visit were both confirmed by the guard downstairs, who saw Cynthia sign out when she left and watched Mr. Sullivan sign in and out.
In short, according to the eyewitnesses and the sign-in sheet, there should have been only one person left on the ninth floor at quarter to ten that night. He was definitely up there.
Unfortunately, he was just as definitely not alone.
Although it has stirred only once in the last twenty hours, it is ready. Day or night, summer or winter, it's always ready. It is, quite literally, programmed for vigilance. Its single red eye, hard-wired into its tiny brain, never closes. And that brainâassuming that something so limited can still be called a brainâis primed to issue the one command that defines its existence
.
The commandâlike the command issued from any brainâis just a weak electronic blip that travels quickly from brain to receptor. Here, that blip means “GO!” And here, the receptor is a crushing jaw, technically known as a power wedge. The power wedge is hidden within the open maw and aptly named: it can exert more than 122,000 pounds of force. Under that kind of pressure, a man's skull will crumple like a soft-boiled egg beneath the wheels of a Mack truck
.
He often worked late. It had been his style ever since joining the firm as the hotshot boy wonder out of Purdue seven years ago. His promotion to manager last winter had not diminished his capacity for long hours. He typically stayed late two or three nights each week. On Saturdaysâtrue to his nickname FILOâhe was usually first in and last out.
Looking back, Mr. Sullivan told the police, the young man had seemed a tad jumpy that night, although, he cautioned, his observation was based on a conversation that lasted less than sixty seconds. Nevertheless, Mr. Sullivan was on target. The young man had been a tad jumpy. More than just a tad. Distressed was a better word.
At 10:20 on the night in question he was standing at the worktable just outside the copy room collating a stack of documents to make a working copy to take home with him that night. The hallway was carpeted, he was agitated, he hadn't been sleeping well, and the document on top of the pile was clearly the most troubling oneâall of which may explain why he didn't hear the approach.
The attack was swift, professional, and nearly painlessâa powerful arm grabbing from behind, a sharp pressure on the side of the neck, and then fade-out.
Echoing down the steel tube
comes
the sound of an access door opening
.
It doesn't hear the sound
.
It doesn't hear a thing. Unable to hear, or to even detect the presence of sound waves, it remains unaware of the noise above, unaware that something is about to come sliding down the tube
.
But that doesn't matter. It's programmed for vigilance. It simply waits. Patiently
.
Unconscious, he plummeted down the chute in total darkness. The medical examiner surmised that he may have stiffened just before his body hit the forty-five-degree bend, which would have only made it worse. The impact shattered both ankles and splintered his right tibia, jamming shards of bone through the skin of his lower leg. If he was unfortunate enough to regain consciousness during that descent, he surely lost it upon impact.
It took a full five minutes for his limp body to work its way through the bend in the tube. The blood helped lubricate the passage. Once through the bend, his body started sliding, feet first, down the tube, which passed at an angle through the two levels of the aboveground parking garage. His body gradually accelerated as it approached the final drop-off. Unconscious, he slid over the edge and plunged the final fifteen feet, landing facedown on top of several large bags of trash.
The single red eye detected motion. The falling body briefly broke the narrow beam of red light when it dropped into the open mawâbarely a flicker, far too quick to trigger the countdown
.
Perhaps it was the stench. Perhaps it was the pain. Perhaps it was the thud of yet another bag of trash landing on his back. Whatever the cause, he regained consciousness inside the chamber, according to the medical examiner.
It was pitch-black, the air heavy with the stench of putrefaction. The large bags beneath him felt like bunchy, crinkly cushions. When he opened his eyes, he saw the eye. It was directly in front of him, about two feet above his head. There was a thin beam of red light emanating from the eye.
He would have been confused, of course. In the total darkness, the red beam would have seemed almost unearthly. He may have reached up to pass his hand through the beam. It would have made a fuzzy red dot on his palm.
The interruption is long enough to trigger the countdown: tenâ¦nineâ¦eight
â
He let his hand fall forward onto the bag of trash.
âseven.
The countdown stops. The timer resets
.
Somehow, despite the excruciating pain, he managed to pull himself into a sitting position. It took a long time, and the effort left him shaking and drenched with sweat.
The sensor triggered the countdown: tenâ¦nineâ¦eightâ¦sevenâ¦six
â
As he waited for his jagged breathing to return to normal, the intense pain muddling his thoughts, perhaps he looked down at the beam. The red dot would have been centered on his chest.
â
five
â¦
fourâ¦three
â
According to the medical examiner, he probably lunged toward the front wall, toward the single red eye.
â
twoâ¦oneâ¦zero
.
The brain fires its one command
: GO!
Exactly 2.5 seconds later, the power wedge system responds, precisely in accordance with the manufacturer's specs
.
He was leaning against the wall when the 35-horsepower engine kicked on with an electric growl. The noise came from somewhere just beyond the wall. At first he would not have realized the deadly relevance of the sound.
And then the lurch.
It would have seemed as if part of the wall was moving toward himâwhich is precisely what was happening. The lower half of the wall was actually the business end of the power wedge ram system, pressing toward him at the rate of two inches per second.
As the power wedge slowly shoved him backward into the bags of trash, he must have strained for the answer. The stench, the bags of trash, his plunge down the metal chute.
Where am I? What the hell is happening
?
Based on his final body position, he must have tried to shove the power wedge back, grunting and gasping, struggling to hold it at arm's length. But the trash behind him began to compress, to solidify. His arms strained against the advancing metal. Perhaps he screamed for help. The increasing pressure would have constrained his voice.
Eventually, his arms buckled.
As designed by the mechanical engineers at the Vanguard Trashpacker Corporation, the compacting cycle on the Model 7800 lasts 42 seconds. The power wedge ram is designed to push forward 84 inches into the receiving chamber without stopping. That distance, in the industry jargon, is known as the “ram stroke.” With 122,000 pounds of pressure supplied by the latest in hydraulic cylinder technology, the Model 7800's ram stroke is as close to unstoppable as modern engineering techniques can achieve
.
On this occasion, the power wedge performs as designed. When it completes the 84-inch journey forward into the chamber, the gears shift and it slowly retracts until flush again with the rest of the front wall. The electric motor shuts off with a metallic shudder
.
Other than the occasional crinkling sound of a bag of compressed trash expanding, there is no motion and there is no sound inside the compactor
.
Bags of trash continued to plunge down the chute from higher and ever higher elevations within the Gateway Corporate Tower. The mound grew closer and closer to the red beam until, around 12:30 a.m., a falling bag came to rest in the middle of the beam, triggering one last compacting cycle for the night.
The cleaning crew left the building at 1:05 a.m.
Down in the darkness it waits. Down in the subbasement of the Gateway Corporate Tower. From its open maw comes the stench of rotting flesh. Its single eye glows red
.