David Wallace - The Pale King - An Unfinished Novel

‘Glendenning himself sent the memo, or the secretary?’

Sylvanshine held the thumb flat and got the overhead light on it and turned it this way and that. ‘You would not believe how hot it is here. And muggy. The air’s like somebody breathing right in your face. Philly on its worst summer day doesn’t equal. 047’s drinking fountains aren’t refrigerated; they’re low white toilet-porcelain fountains like some elementary school and the water’s room temperature, which is to say hot.’

Reynolds exhaled so the phone transmitted the sound. ‘I apologize for the tone, Claude.’

‘What tone?’

‘All right? Happy now?’

‘You overestimate me, friend.’

‘And yes, I am your friend. We’re a team. I shouldn’t have squeezed your shoes with the underling-tone like I did. It’s high-pressure this week. I’ve had the same tension headache all week. I don’t feel well at all. And none of that’s an excuse, and I really am apologizing.’

If there were lines they weren’t visible. ‘Secretary or head secretary sent it I’m afraid. Oooley, Carolyn or Caroline maybe. File not located, it’s not on the Support router. Crisp little woman, dry tight little face. Sweater over her shoulders like a cape. Main building’s air-conditioned out the wazoo; that’s where Exams is, so tell Mel the good news is the work environment itself is AC’d already although no halon, but the VAX room’s haloned so we can assume SS has the wherewithal; if you want I’ll call and—’

‘So the memo was from the secretary, not Glendenning himself.’

‘I’d urge Mel not to read anything into that. Glendenning’s been gone two days out of three. He’s been up to Region twice since last Wednesday.’

‘He’s running to Region a lot already? You wait till now to include this and when you do it’s an aside on the secretary’s sweater?’

‘From the way they approach her desk she’s formidable, Oooley. You know how it is in the provinces. She may dominate Glendenning; she may be the real link. Small picture of a cat on her desk, but no visible cat hair on the sweater. Odd. And glasses on a little chain around her neck, those old-fashioned little silvery chains, what’s the word. Potentially a formidable part of the equation. So far I’ve asked after the cat and given her a flower someone was selling on the median of the big road out here. To this comatose town. Tell Mel I’m working her already.’ He didn’t tell Reynolds there’d been no sign of the flower on her desk the next day.

Letting Sylvanshine hear him breathe again—‘And did the memo specifically say heard good things from Henzke, from Bill, or from Bill Henzke?’

‘Just Henzke.’

‘Damn.’

‘Other secretary or liaison or whatever’s been gone. Supposedly young and the District knockout, two separate Collections fellows told me it’s worth cooking up fallacious business and coming when Oooley’s at lunch just for the full-frontal view.’

‘I already apologized, Claude.’

‘Rosebury’s secretary’s a big sheet-white woman named Bernays. Looks the ghost of a draft horse.’

Each Motorola mobile phone cost the Service $349 as opposed to the $380 retail and looked like an enormous walkie-talkie and weighed over two pounds and was something someone as dapper and diminutive as Reynolds Jensen Jr. looked a little silly holding.

‘So. Let’s sketch the week then.’ Reynolds would be able to tell Dr. Lehrl they’d talked and he’d tried if what came next week wasn’t what he wanted. Watching Reynolds try to maneuver politically was like watching a lumberjack dance, Harold Adny’d said. ‘Need cogent relevant say again cogent relevant bios, Personnel data, evals, and impressions for Examinations by the seventeenth. This is the protocol I’m reading. The crew is what? There’s Rosebury in Admin, there’s this Yeagle as GM — group size is what, twenty? Exam budget’s 2.4 times the size of Rome’s, right, so what, twenty-two?’

‘Twenty-four, maybe — five. There are some kind of unorthodox split-shift arrangements I haven’t gotten a fact-pattern on yet, that Glendenning apparently vetted. Glendenning’s done a lot of custom-tailoring of Exams which of course we can anticipate this will intensify. Say twenty-four to twenty-six, which doubles with then another whole twenty doing punch and sort work on cards during the Storm, though word is Glendenning’s fought hard for Service personnel instead of Storm part-timers, which is understandable given the town; it’s not like there’s a sharp talent pool out there out here.’

‘That’s nice data. That’s cogent.’

‘Say twenty-six. Contact’s been tough.’

‘Guarded are they?’

‘More like stupefied. They’re full-timers. Glazed. What’s the other word. Average burn here’s three years. Obtundated is the word. Oh’—Sylvanshine winced at forgetting this before—‘and the big one’s that Glendenning’s first big move on arrival was the elimination of first-years on Exams.’

‘You’re kidding.’ By Service custom, graduates of the three national IRS Training Centers spent their first years assigned to Examinations, which was the most brutal and unpopular assignment in the Service. A percentage then hurried to pass their certified exams, since a GS-11 revenue agent must have a CPA, and Audits was the natural promotion out of Exams. That Glendenning had eschewed first-years in his Exams branch indicated something important, though neither of them was sure quite what. It was so important Reynolds didn’t even take time to squeeze Sylvanshine’s shoes for waiting till now to tell him. ‘Mel you know is going to want follow-up. Move that immediately to number one on next week’s protocol.’

‘I provisionally agree.’

‘Glad you agree.’

‘Glad you’re glad.’

‘Outstanding.’

‘Though this is pending the rest of the report, as when I get to flows and outputs.’

‘Outstanding. What’s the flow look like then?’

‘First individual Exams is one room, couple dozen desks plus Yeagle’s little frosted cubicle thing. Either the room’s symmetries are off or there are rough divisions — might be one section of 1040, one of 1040A, a smaller one for Fats the way Keene was. There’s a Corporate branch that’s a whole separate room.’

‘If Corporate changes over it won’t be till after, they’ve run the experiment with the DIF so—’

‘Hence my not mentioning it.’

‘If you’re cozy with Glendenning’s dry-skin lady then you must have a line on the specs.’

‘The specs are a mess. They’re not even on cards. They use old 904 forms I haven’t seen since the Training Center.’

‘Huge surprise.’

‘They’re all in horrible old dark-green cabinets in a basement complex even spiders would be hesitant to go into.’

‘But you boldly went down there with a flashlight, you want Mel to know.’

‘Today or tomorrow I have to get somebody in Martinsburg to input them and tabulate the mean values; the spec forms are a mess because the work’s so periodic. Underline for Mel that they get returns from both Region and the St. Louis SC with no set procedures or even rhythms that I can see.’

‘The trucks just back up and unload the returns you’re saying.’

‘So what I’ve got pending tabs — this is going to look very strange — is for the last six months a total 1,829 returns go through 047’s Exams branch per month, but that figure includes everything from individual EZs to nightmare Fats with twenty schedules each to EST-reconciliations that Rosebury lets Danmeyer hit them with in nightmarish waves quarterly.’

‘This is not broken down in a way that tells me anything, Claudie.’

‘It’s when you get here you’re going to see why. It’s Dickensian. There’s one UNIVAC terminal in the room. The kicks from Martinsburg come round on big carts pushed by cart boys like they had, then the results get slid down slides two levels down where the keypunch girls prepare the kicks back for Region and Collections. And/or Collections. And the examiners are operating with pencils and NCR adding machines some of which still have I Like Ike and the ilk stickers on them. They’ve got those angled trays or drawer things coming in at their desks from all angles like those pictures of Philly Mel had in the nightmare days. Here they get standard kicks from Martinsburg, plus ESTs, plus exam requests from CID. They do Fats that St. Louis doesn’t even bother to open they’re so fat. They do contract work for Corporate Audits when a CA goes multiyear. The whole thing’s almost Philly-grade, tell him. But this—’