Warren Murphy: Ghost in the Machine

"I'm told there's a man from the sheriff's office with him."

"Sheriff's office? What do they think I am, some nickel-and-dime Savings and Loan?"

"What shall I tell the guard captain?"

"Don't let him in. In fact, have security throw them out on their asses."

Randal Rumpp severed the intercom connection.

A phone rang. At first, Rumpp didn't know which phone had rung. There were so many in the office it looked like an AT . A beeping red light on his desk cellular console began flashing.

It was his private direct number, available only to his main squeeze of the month and close friends. The number was changed often.

Smiling, he picked it up. "This is the Rumppster," he announced, primping the four and a quarter pounds of hair that squatted on his head like a startled sea anemone.

"And this is your ex!" a throaty voice purred.

"Igoria?"

"Of course, dahling. A little birdie tells me you're about to undergo foreclosure. I just wanted to be the first to say how very, very sorry I am."

"You're not sorry at all," Rumpp snarled.

"You know, dahling, you're right. And how is that little blond thing? The one with the inverted nipples?"

"How did you know about those?"

"You should never have canceled your subscription to Spy, dahling."

Randal Rumpp's simpering expression went prim. "Igoria, you know how you're going to end up? Like Zsa Zsa Gabor-your face stretched to the tearing point, slapping traffic cops to get ink."

"If you ever need a place to crash, dahling, I just bought this insouciant little Louis XIV couch. Bring your own bedding."

Randal Rumpp hung up. "Hag."

His face screwed up into his trademark scowl. He thought a moment. "I gotta get back. I gotta get back." Rumpp snapped his fingers. "I know. I'll leak the name of her plastic surgeon to Vogue."

He picked up the main phone. It was dead. He tried another. It, too, was dead.

"What's going on with the phones?" Randal Rumpp demanded of his executive secretary through the intercom.

"Sir?"

"I can't get a dial tone."

"Let me see."

Soon, it became clear that none of the phones in Randal Rumpp's suite of offices was working.

"Maybe . . . maybe the phone company cut service," Dorma Wormser ventured.

"They wouldn't dare!"

"They have been threatening to terminate if the bills weren't paid."

"Call them. Tell them the check's in the mail."

"How? The lines are all dead."

"Go down to the corner and use a pay phone. Get it done."

"Right away, Mr. Rumpp," said Dorma, hurrying into her coat and out the reception area.

Randal Rumpp threw himself behind his massive desk, which looked like a cherry wood pool table without pockets, thinking that if he docked the broad for her time out of the office he not only wouldn't have to reimburse her the quarter, he'd come out half a buck ahead. These days, a businessman needed every cent.

Dorma hadn't been gone long when suddenly every phone in the office began ringing. It was as if a starter gun had been fired. Every phone erupted into song at once. Some beeped, others warbled, and still others buzzed shrilly.

Seated at his desk, Randal Rumpp goggled, wide-eyed, at the banks of insistent instruments. They sounded angry. Like electronic rattlesnakes.

He decided not to answer any of them.

Then the faxes started emitting warning beeps and whistles.

"Incoming!" Randal Rumpp shouted, lunging to the table on which four fax-phones sat like circled wagons. Paper began rolling out in long white tongues. He hit the OFF switches. Just in time.

The exposed sheets were all blank. He didn't know if it was legal to fax foreclosure notices, but there was no sense taking unnecessary chances.

Back at his desk, the phones kept up their discordant accompaniment.

Randal Rumpp worked his way down the bank, picking up receivers and instantly hanging up again. This helped not at all. The phones continued to compete for his attention.

In desperation, he grabbed one up and shouted into the receiver, "Leave me alone!"

To his surprise a weak voice responded. It said, "Help me. I am stuck in telephone."

"Dammit! What's going on with these things?" Rumpp complained, slamming the receiver down. It resumed its annoying ringing. Only the cellular unit was silent.

A moment later, his executive assistant stumbled into the office, glassy-eyed and white-faced.

"Mr. Rumpp . . ." she began breathlessly.

"I asked you to restore service, not test the electronics! What is this crap?"

Then Randal Rumpp saw the ghostly pallor that had drained his executive assistant's face.

"What's with you?"

The woman took a deep, steadying breath. "Mr. Rumpp! I . . . never . . . left . . . the . . . building."

"There goes my profit," he muttered. Aloud, he said, "Why the hell not?"

"Because I didn't want to . . . fall in. Like the . . . others."

"Fall into what?"

She gulped more air. "The sidewalk, Mr. Rumpp. People were sinking into the sidewalk. It was awful. Like quicksand. They couldn't get out."

Randal T. Rumpp had ascended to the pinnacle of his chosen field because he knew how to read people. He read his secretary now. She wasn't drunk. She wasn't high. She wasn't trying to scam him. She was frightened. She was serious. So no matter how inane it sounded, Randal Rumpp knew he would have to look into her story.

"Are the people from the bank still down there?" he asked firmly.

"Yes."

"Did they see what you saw?"

"I don't think so."

"Did the guard?"

"No, Mr. Rumpp."

"Go back downstairs and tell the guard to throw them out."

"But Mr. Rumpp!"

"Out the main entrance. So I can see what happens."

The secretary was in tears. "But Mr. Rumpp!"

"Or I can go down there myself and have him throw you out."

"Right away, Mr. Rumpp." She hurried off, sobbing.

Randal Rumpp's executive assistant stumbled away. Rumpp went to the north wall, which was decorated with framed magazine covers depicting his own face. He opened the Vanity Fair portrait. It revealed a closed-circuit TV monitor.

There were cameras concealed throughout the building. Rumpp hit the button labeled CAMERA FOUR. A clear picture appeared. It showed the atrium entrance and the Fifth Avenue sidewalk beyond.

Randal Rumpp noticed that a crowd had gathered. Like at a fire. They were pressed close to the building facade, touching it curiously. He wondered why they were doing that.

Then, through the main entrance, came one of his black-coated guards, escorting a man in gray flannel and another uniformed person. These would be the bank officer and the sheriff.

They had taken no more than four steps beyond the brass-and-pink-marble confines of the atrium lobby when all three men threw up their hands, as if losing their balance. They twisted on their feet like surfers trying not to go under, faces incredulous.

Randal Rumpp watched curiously.

Then, they began sinking into what was apparently solid pavement.

It was a slow process. The crowd recoiled from the sight. Some scattered, as if afraid that the ground under their feet was going to swallow them, too.

But only the three men were affected. The video monitor captured no sound. Randal Rumpp fiddled with the volume control without success. All he got was the desultory gurgle of his eight-million-dollar atrium waterfall.

The way the three sinking men's faces and mouths worked was enough to convince Randal Rumpp that he would rather not hear their screams of terror anyway.

They were up to their waists within a minute and a half. They started to beat at the sidewalk with their fists. Their fists simply dipped into the ground. They yanked them back, undamaged, eyes astonished.

When their chins were only an inch or so above the pavement, the bank officer began to cry. The tower guard just shut his eyes. The sheriff was flailing his arms like a panicky blue bird. His arms appeared and disappeared, as if he were sinking into calm gray ice water.