Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

A white van pulled up nearby, and a number of navy-blue-uniformed men and women got out. One of them opened the van’s rear doors and began taking out mops and buckets and distributing them. The cleaners were here for their evening shift, just as people were vacating their offices.

I walked over to the van and, while my device was capturing their ID card data, I asked one of them, a small woman of indeterminate age, how to get to Route 95 South.

Depending on the company, and the security precautions it takes, cleaners of office buildings often have wide access. Their RFID badges could be particularly valuable.

“Pardon?” she said.

“Ninety-five south,” I repeated, gesturing toward the exit.

She shrugged and kept wheeling her mop-and-bucket. She joined a line of blue-uniformed employees, all pushing carts or pulling buckets behind them.

I had what I needed now. I’d stolen enough creds.

I drifted away from the loading dock and headed back to my car.

That handy device that Devlin had lent me, the Boscloner, could generate its own blank keys, but because I wanted it to look as close to a real badge as possible, I preferred to use the ID card printer I’d bought for around a thousand bucks.

Dorothy figured out how to operate it, and back at the office she made me one that looked a lot like the real thing. A medium blue PVC card key with the Phoenicia logo on it. The name “GRANT James.” Meanwhile, my receptionist, Jillian Alperin, was hunting down for me the simple gray uniform that Phoenicia’s security staff wore. I had a small collection of uniforms, but not that.

At seven in the morning, I arrived at the silvery cube that was Phoenicia Health Sciences’ headquarters in Waltham. Very few cars in the parking lot; several in the clinic and clinical patients spaces. There was a separate entrance to the research clinic at the back of the building, by a row of manicured cedars, just for people taking part in medical studies here.

A very nice receptionist guided me to a waiting room, where a very nice nurse greeted me and handed me a bunch of forms to fill out. All the chairs and couches in the waiting room looked brand-new. There were just a few other people there, two small, dark-haired young women, who seemed to know each other, and a heavyset guy of around thirty with long, greasy blond hair.

I found myself filling out a consent form that indemnified the company in case of all types of possible calamities, including “mutilation or death.” I didn’t like the sound of that one. And there were all kinds of other forms that protected Phoenicia from being sued.

Within a couple of minutes the waiting room had filled up with twelve visitors. The head nurse led us all into the adjoining room and made us watch a short video that was basically propaganda about all the good we were doing for science and humanity. The guy with the greasy blond hair turned around and said, “I’ve seen this one, like, ten times already,” and he chuckled. He sounded like a regular.

Another woman came out, a research coordinator. She was tall and broad and clearly comfortable being in charge. She explained to us how the study was going to work. Nothing very complicated. They were testing a new acid-suppression medicine. They’d give us a pill, give us three meals, and measure our stomach acid throughout the day and night.

She didn’t explain how.

She gave a little wave to the guy with the greasy blond hair. “Hi, Winston,” she said. “Welcome back.” By now I was starting to get hungry. They required you eat nothing after midnight the night before. I could drink water; that was all. Don’t take any antacids.

A few minutes later my name was called and I was shown to a curtained-off area full of medical machinery, like blood pressure monitors and such. A sprightly redheaded nurse named Denise measured my blood pressure and drew blood. She gave me a cup, asked me to fill it with urine. I went to the nearby bathroom and did it.

Meanwhile, I was looking around at the layout, the floor plan in my head. Looking for cameras. Making mental notes of where the exits were located and how visible they were.

Denise left and came back a few minutes later with a coil of thin plastic tubing sealed in a ziplock bag. She didn’t explain what it was. “You haven’t eaten anything since midnight, is that right?”

“Right. What’s that?”

“The pH probe.”

“I see. And where does it go?”

“Into your stomach.”

“How?”

“Through your nose, down your esophagus, into your stomach.”

“That tube goes down my nose?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” I said.

I had endured far worse. But I hadn’t counted on this little complication.

She unwrapped a long syringe, filled it with a topical anesthetic, and stuck the thing in my nose. She squeezed out some cold viscous liquid into my right nostril. Then she refilled her syringe and asked me to open my mouth and squeezed some more of the liquid onto the back of my throat. My nose went numb, and so did my throat. The stuff tasted nasty. She gave me a cup of water with a straw.

Then she wiped some kind of goop on the thin plastic tube and inserted it into my left nostril, which felt weird. She kept pushing it in, threading it down, and asked me to take a sip of water and swallow, to help move the tube down my throat. I almost gagged. My eyes watered.

“Sip and swallow,” she said.

I took another sip. It slid down farther. I could feel it slithering down my throat and I almost gagged again. She taped the probe to my nose and then connected the probe to a small plastic computer-looking box, which she said was the data recorder.

I sneezed. Then I asked, “I have to carry this thing around?”

“This can just be clipped to your belt during the day.”

“What about at night?”

“You can put it on your beside table,” she said.

Then she gave me a large red pill and asked me to swallow it. She told me that this was the medication they were testing, that it was supposed to suppress stomach acid for twenty-four hours. I swallowed, and the tube pulled at my nose from the inside.

She showed me to my bedroom. It looked like a college dorm, with a bunk bed. My roommate was already there. The heavyset guy with the greasy blond hair. He was sitting on the bottom bunk. The tube was already in his nose and taped to his face.

“Hi, I’m Winston,” he said.

“Nick.”

We shook hands.

“Breakfast is coming,” Denise said as she left.

So I didn’t have my own room. That could be a problem. I didn’t plan to stay in my room all night.

“You’ve done this kind of thing before?” I asked.

“Not with the nasal probe. But I do clinical studies all the time.”

“Pay good?”

“Better than working at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, I don’t mind getting paid to piss in a bucket, you know what I mean? So I’m a human lab rat, man.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“To advance medicine and help humanity.”

“And the money.”

I shrugged. “I won’t turn it away.” It paid a few hundred dollars.

“The overnight studies is where you make the real money,” he said. “I did a bedrest study for NASA. I basically lay in bed for ninety days and got paid fifteen thousand bucks. I mean, fifteen thousand bucks to watch TV and play video games? I’m there.”

I nodded. “That’s three months of lying in bed?”

“Fifteen thousand bucks. What do you do, Nick?”

“I’m an actuary,” I said. That’s usually a conversation-killer. Most people don’t know what that is and won’t ask.

“Uh-huh. Anyway, I did one study where I got twenty-five hundred bucks for doing painkillers and drinking booze!”