Barry Eisler - Rain Storm aka Choke Point

I approached through the large carport, opened one of the two sets of double glass doors with the backs of two fingers, and stepped into a vestibule defined by another set of glass doors opposite the ones I had just come through. As I extended my hand to try one of the inner doors, a buzzer sounded. I looked through the glass and saw a young Caucasian girl, shoulder-length brown hair and freckles, who looked like a college student working a part-time doorman’s gig so she could keep hitting the books while she worked. Part-time would be good. She wouldn’t know the residents, the delivery people, the feel of the place, the way a full-timer would, and would be easier to deal with as a result.

I opened the door and moved into a lobby decorated in some sort of nouveau colonial style, lots of reproduction period furniture and wood paneling and shiny brass lamps. The girl sat behind an imposing built-in desk, behind which I imagined would be electronic access controls and video feeds from security cameras.

“Delivery?” she asked, with a friendly smile.

I nodded. I had multiple contingency stories prepared for the questions and events that might follow: What apartment? Funny, they didn’t mention a delivery. Wait a moment while I buzz them. Hmm, no answer. Are you sure about that number.. .?

But instead she asked, “Are you new?”

I nodded my head again, not liking the question, wondering where it was going.

She looked through the glass doors at the carport beyond. “Because you can park under the carport for deliveries. Sometimes it’s tough to find a nearby space in the parking lot.”

“Oh. Thank you,” I said, in an indeterminate but thick Asian accent.

She looked at the logo on my shirt, then said something in a language that I couldn’t understand, but that I recognized as Korean.

Oh fuck , I thought. You can’t be serious .

“Uh, I not Korean,” I said, keeping my expression and posture uncertain, vaguely subservient, not wanting to cause offense, just a recent immigrant, and not necessarily a legal one, working a minimum wage job and trying not to fall through the cracks.

“Oh!” she said, flushing. “My boyfriend is Korean, and I thought, because of the restaurant… never mind. Sorry.”

Her embarrassment about the mistake, and my apparently embarrassed reaction to it, seemed to combine to cut off further questioning. Thank God.

“I just…” I said, gesturing vaguely to the area behind the desk, where the elevators would be.

“Yes, of course, go right ahead.” She smiled again, and I nodded shyly in return.

I snuck a peek as I passed the desk. One open textbook, front center; one video monitor, off to the side. An easy bet as to which one got her hourly-pay attention.

I knew from the position of the custodial entrance in back that the access point would be to the left of the elevators, and I headed in that direction, passing an internal stairwell on the way. There it was, a swinging wooden door. Beyond it, a short corridor, lined in linoleum, at the end of which, the exterior door.

I looked the door over quickly. I couldn’t tell if it was alarmed. Its heft, and the presence of three large locks, indicated that the building’s management might not have bothered. And even if it were alarmed, the alarm would likely be deactivated during business hours, when the door might be in use. There was a wooden doorstop on the floor, which supported the notion that there was no alarm or that it was currently disengaged. The custodians wouldn’t be able to use the doorstop otherwise.

I used the cuff of the windbreaker to open the locks and turn the knob. I opened the door and examined the jamb. No alarms. I looked outside. There were several mops propped against the exterior wall, apparently to dry there, and a number of industrial-sized, gray plastic garbage containers on wheels, too.

I thought for a moment. The girl in front was obviously more interested in her books than she was in that monitor, and I had a feeling she would be habituated to seeing maintenance men moving in and out the back door during the course of the day. It looked doable.

I propped the door open a crack with the wooden doorstop and moved back inside. When I reached the elevators, an elderly black woman hobbling along with a four-way walker was emerging from one of them. She paused and squinted down at my galoshes, then looked at me. “Raining today?” she asked.

Christ , I thought. They ought to hire you as the doorman .

I shook my head. “New shoes,” I said, still with the ersatz accent. And if you speak Korean, too , I thought, I’ll surrender here and now . “I try decide if I keep, and like this no dirty soles.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Don’t tell, okay?”

She laughed, exposing a bright row of dentures. “It’ll be our secret, sonny,” she said. She waved and moved slowly off.

I smiled, glad I’d had a lesser crime to which I was able to confess.

I couldn’t very well leave with the Kim’s bag after having supposedly entered the building for the express purpose of delivering its contents, so I deposited it at the bottom of a trashcan half full of junk mail in the mailroom to the right of the elevators. Then I counted off four minutes on my watch. I didn’t want to pass the old woman again right away-she was a sharp one, and might wonder what had happened to the Kim’s bag I’d been carrying just seconds before. If I overtook her in the lobby now, the four minutes could account for a quick delivery to a low floor, if the elevators had come right away. As for the longish time it had now been since I first passed the girl at the front desk, I deemed this acceptable. The main thing was that she should see me leave. She didn’t strike me as the type who would pay attention to small discrepancies, like a deliveryman taking a little longer inside the building than might ordinarily be expected.

At four minutes, I walked out through the lobby. The old woman was gone. Maybe someone had picked her up in front. The girl at the desk looked up from her book and said, “Bye-bye.” I waved and headed out to the carport, then left into the parking lot, beyond her field of vision.

Back at the car, I put the wig, glasses, and baseball cap in the glove box, zipped up the windbreaker, and pulled on the deerskin gloves. I grabbed the briefcase and headed back to the building, this time to the back. I hugged the exterior wall as I walked, wanting to get in and out of the camera’s ambit as quickly as possible, and grabbed one of the mops and garbage cans on the way. As I reached the door, I leaned forward, as though there was something heavy in the garbage can and I was laboring to push it, and let the mop head obscure my face, which was in any event facing down as I pushed.

I pulled open the door and went straight in, pausing inside, waiting. If the girl at the front desk noticed something and came to investigate, she’d be here soon, and I wanted the door open if that happened for a maximally quick disappearing act.

I counted off thirty tense seconds, then slowly let my breath out. Good to go. She probably never even noticed the movement on the monitor. Maybe I was being overcautious.

As though such a thing were possible.

I closed and locked the door, parked the mop and garbage can next to it, and headed into the stairwell next to the elevators. A minute later I emerged on the eighth floor.

I took the JICC flyers out of the briefcase, walked down to 811, and knocked on the door. If someone answered, I would ask in Japanese-accented broken English if he or she would be interested in some of the exciting cultural activities planned by the JICC for the winter and leave one of the flyers to backstop the story. Then I would bow and depart and figure out some other way to get to Crawley.