magazines, as well as articles about computer systems administration.
He is bald, middle-aged and of average height.
Devices
by Steven Mathes
Karl and Maxine
bought a small commercial property: six office units,
something they could count on as a source of retirement
income. The new building code required separate mechanical,
plumbing, and electric for every tenant. Karl planned to
save money by doing some of the work himself. He ached
every night, but thanked his luck he could still do the
heavy lifting.
He found the device while taking the walls down to bare
framing. It was a black box the size of a dictionary with
red printed warnings that said not to disturb the device
and gave a toll-free number to call. He took it in his
hands, and pulled. It had been bonded permanently between
the studs, right where he needed to run wiring. He thought
about removing the two studs, replacing them with clean
ones. Then he thought better of it.
He called the number. The phone rang and rang while he took
in the smell of dust and heat.
“Security Services,” a woman’s voice said. The noise in the
background made Security Services sound like a hectic
place.
“Yes,” Karl said. “There’s a box inside the wall of my
building. It’s in the way. It said to call this number. I
need it removed.”
“Thank you for calling,” said the voice. “Please don’t
touch it.”
“So you’ll send someone out to take it?”
“Just don’t touch it, please. And thank you for calling.”
The line went dead.
Karl hated phones anyway. Calling anyone made him anxious.
He found he did better when he got his calls over with
right away.
He went out of the unit, out of the dust. He wiped himself
off, washed his hands. His face itched. His hands hurt. He
was ready for a shower and a glass of wine.
He called again.
“Security services,” said the voice.
“Yes. I just called. A box. Inside my wall. I asked for it
to be removed.”
“Thank you for calling,” said the voice. “Please don’t
touch it.”
She sounded more impatient this time. He needed to be firm.
“Either you have it out of my building by tomorrow, or it
goes in the dumpster.”
There was a long pause, some clicks. The noise in the
background disappeared.
“Please don’t touch it,” a new, male voice said.
“What is this? Who are you people?”
“Do not touch it, whatever you do. For your own good. The
device is government property, and disturbing it will
result in mandatory prosecution. The device is for your
protection. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing
to worry about. Thank you for calling.”
“What does it do?”
Again the line went dead. He redialed.
“Security services,” said the woman.
He felt his heart slamming, the way it did whenever he lost
his temper. The government had nothing to do with this.
This had to be one of those scams. He had reached the age
where he would be targeted by scams.
“I just called,” he shouted.
“Yes, we know,” she said calmly.
“Get that damned thing out by tomorrow, or it goes in the
dumpster!” he shouted.
He hung up fast and trembled, shaken by the phone, the
disagreement.
He readied himself. He thought his phone would vibrate at
any moment. It remained still. He drank a cup of coffee.
Nobody called.
At least the coffee perked him up, worked at his appetite.
His aches made him feel alive. Sweat ran over his hot,
flushed skin. This kind of feeling was usually reserved for
the young.
He had given them until tomorrow. He had given them a whole
day, when he owed them nothing. This part of his remodeling
would have to wait a day. Time was money, although there
was plenty to do anyway, plenty more to demolish on the
other walls. Still!
He went back into the dust and debris, set to work tearing
up a different wall.
A little later he found a second box. Exactly the same:
same warnings, same number.
He called again.
“Security services,” said the voice.
“I called earlier, and I just found a second box. You know
who I am, I can tell. No matter how many more there are, I
want them all out by tomorrow. All of them.”
He snapped the phone closed, hard.
Discouraged, he went home to his wife without putting the
debris in the dumpster, without cleaning up. He left tools
scattered in the dust.
“Did you run into problems?” she asked. “You’re early.”
Anxiety took him. He swallowed it back and put on a strong
face. She did not need to hear this.
“I ran into problems. I thought I might make more progress
if I take a break and think about the best approach.”
“Don’t you have someone coming to look at a unit today?”
He’d forgotten. In the frustration, he’d forgotten about
the prospective tenant.
“I’ll go back in as soon as I clean up.”
He went up to shower before she could ask any further
questions. Clean, dressed, and appetite still on hold, he
returned to their new property. The prospective tenant
arrived at the same time.
He was a short man with a bad toupee and tinted glasses. He
wore plaid golfing pants, white shoes. Not what Karl
expected.
“Good location,” the prospect said. “Can I see what’s
inside?”
They went in and looked at the offices, one by one.
“How about this one?” said the man.
“I’m in the middle of demolition in there, so it’s messy.”
They went in anyway. The man stood at the window.
“Nice location, nice layout,” he said. “I really like this
one.”
Then he turned, and his eye caught one of the devices.
“Oh,” he said.
“You know about those?” Karl asked.
The man headed for the door, saying, “This spot has a lot
going for it. Still, I think I need to keep looking,
compare a few places.”
“You know about those?”
They went out to the parking lot, to the prospect’s car.
“Maybe I’ll be in touch,” the man said.
“Those things will be in the dumpster by this time
tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll be in jail,” the man said. “Landlords change,
but the devices stay put. Besides, that wouldn’t be
patriotic. Please don’t touch them, right?”
The prospect got into his car and started to drive away.
“Wait!”
Karl ran in front of the car, forcing the man to stop. The
prospect opened his window just a crack.
“You know about them,” Karl said. “I need to know
something. Are there other buildings that have them? I need
to talk to someone. Are there other landlords stuck with
them?”
The prospect sighed. He opened his window wide in pity.
“There’s a woman on Elm,” he said. “She’s a lot like you,
doing her own work. You could talk to her.”
He handed Karl a business card. “Her place has the devices,
too. Tenants want no part of that.”
Karl looked at the card. It had nothing to do with the
prospective tenant. It identified the woman on Elm. April
“Bud” George. Freedom Properties. So who was this
prospective tenant?
“Who are you really?” Karl asked. “Who are you with?”
The man frowned. His window slid shut as he drove off.
Back home, Maxine had a glass of wine and a nice pink prime
rib waiting, with ice cream and pie. Bad for cholesterol
but good for the stress. Karl told her about the black
boxes, about his failed telephone calls, about the
suspicious behavior of the prospective tenant. He kept his
head up but his shoulders sagged a little.
Maxine sagged also.
“What if we wasted all our money on a bad building?”
“It’s everything,” he admitted. “Maybe I can close up the
walls and sell it cheap.”
On the best of nights he slept poorly. This could have been
the best of nights, with the aching muscles, the second
glass of wine, the wholesome feel of the roast lingering in
his stomach. But it was the worst.
Karl enjoyed solving problems, but this felt like the
incompetence of old age. He vowed something right then. He
would keep up, stay aware. The kids called old folks
“clueless.” He refused to be clueless.
So far, he felt clueless. He lay on lumps of bedding,
feeling his thoughts spin.
Maxine got up with him, served him breakfast, went back to
bed.
He drove to his building in the dark. He got there as the
first, weak light of dawn shone over the site of his
troubles.
The dumpster had disappeared. He sat paralyzed trying to
think, to accept this.
He called the waste company from behind the wheel of his
pickup. No answer. Of course. They could haul away the
dumpster in the middle of the night, but they couldn’t keep
someone on duty to explain why.
He went inside, into the mess he could have cleaned up the
night before. He straightened up his tools. He went back
out, backed his truck to the door. He loaded debris. After
only a few trips the truck was full, the tires bulging from
overload. The inside of the demolished unit looked as messy
as ever.
Cleaning it would require many, many trips.
He drove to the transfer station, paid a huge fee,
unloaded.
He wondered how many trips his cleanup would require,
whether he could afford the time, the dumping fees. The
debris from one unit was one thing, from the whole building
quite another.
On the way back, he swung by the building on Elm Street. He
found it easily enough. There was a small truck backed up
to the door, filled with debris.
He stopped. He approached a woman tossing some shredded
slabs of drywall into her truck. “Hi, I’m Karl. I own a
place a lot like this on Union.”
The woman wiped her hands with a rag and came over. “I’m
Bud,” she said.
She was a little taller than Karl, heavily muscled, with a
shaved head. Her handshake was gentle, her smile genuine.
“This guy came to look at my units,” Karl said. “He said
you have the same boxes in the wall that I have. I see they
took your dumpster, too.”
“Little bald guy?” she said.
“Yeah,” Karl said. “I don’t trust him.”
She motioned him into her building. She gave him coffee
without asking, black, the way he would have asked for it.
She used cream. She appeared younger, maybe thirty.
“Today I threw those devices into the truck with the rest
of the debris,” she said. “I’m through playing games.
Everything’s going to the transfer station.”
“I haven’t worked up the courage.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I can’t say anything more
than that. I can’t talk about it.”
They sat and drank coffee. She went to the counter and
brought back muffins. The view from her building was nicer.
He could see up and down the street. Her street had bigger
trees, more green.
“Help yourself to anything,” she said.
He took a muffin.
“Do you think it’s real?” he asked. “Do you think it’s
really the government?”
“Could be. On the news, these stories always get denied.
The torture, wiretaps. You know what I mean?”
“But they deny it. Nothing’s proved. It’s just politics.
Besides, those stories have died out.”
“Died out? But you found black boxes in your walls.”
“It could be anyone—pranksters, the mob, terrorists, scam
artists.”
She ate her muffin.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
“I tore them out. I can’t tell you anything more. No matter
who works for whom, I get to be the example.”
She glanced through the window. Karl noticed her tears for
the first time. She stood up.
“No matter who works for whom. Fear all the way down, from
the man in charge to the victims, everyone’s afraid. Excuse
me.”
She stepped out. Karl looked out at the street. Men in
suits waited by a big black limo. One of them was the
prospective tenant, but dressed well, and openly bald. Bud
appeared out there, approached them, calmly, with dignity.
They seized her, cuffed her and stuffed her into the car.
Just like in the movies, except that nobody said anything,
not even Bud. Almost like it was rehearsed, except they
handled her pretty roughly. Really roughly.
Why did she just surrender like that? Why didn’t she just
run? Who worked for whom?
He went down. When he got there, the limousine was gone, no
sign of anyone.
He sat on the front steps of Bud’s building for a long
time. Then he went back in and cleaned her kitchenette. He
put away her muffins, washed the coffee cups, wiped up the
crumbs. He left the place the way he would have wanted it,
and locked the doors behind him.
He returned to his own building, and stared at the devices
in his wall. Then he went home to Maxine and told her.
“What can I do?” he asked her.
“You have to do something. It’s our retirement. It’s too
much of what we have.”
“What can I do?”
He could tell that she’d been crying, just like Bud. Almost
as if she already sensed everything he’d told her.
“Do anything. You have to do something,” she told him. “You
have us to take care of. You might even help that woman.
You have to be responsible.”
He went back. Half a work-day remained. He took trips to
the transfer station until it closed. He cleared the
existing debris, but demolished nothing more. The red
lettering on the devices tended to catch the corner of his
eye. He felt it staring at him.
The solution came to him as he worked, without conscious
thought. He installed several sheets of drywall before he
noticed that he had put them on backwards, with the brown,
rough side showing and the white, finished side hidden. He
had just covered over one of the devices, replacing the
wall he’d so recently torn down.
He closed in every bit of the exposed framing with the
drywall. Then he framed, putting two-by-fours over the
brown, backwards drywall. With this sleight-of-hand, he hid
the devices while making it look like the original
disaster, like everything was exposed, wide open for
inspection. He’d do the same in every unit.
When he got to the other units, he did no demolition. He
simply screwed the backwards drywall directly over the
painted walls, then framed over that. It saved time and
money. He created so little debris, he could easily cart it
away in his truck.
Without uttering a single word, he had turned himself into
a liar. He imagined the hidden devices now safe and humming
and building their network.
He finished the adding the phony, extra framing. It was a
sturdy building, more than capable of holding all those
heavy, triple partitions. The hidden center of the walls
contained the devices and all the original wiring, ducts
and pipes. Windows and doors required lots of jogs and
extensions. He brought the walls down to a single layer
wherever he could, wherever there were no devices. Through
careful probing, he found ten more.
Each unit became smaller. But it gave more character, made
the building quirky.
Finally he was ready to bring in the electrician and the
plumber, hire out the jobs he couldn’t do himself. The
plumber just did his job and took his money. It was the
electrician who called him on the deception.
The electrician was a heavy man, so heavy it was a wonder
he could do the work. Tall, too. There were holes and
stains in his t-shirt. His stubble attracted lint and
looked three days from a shave. But he was capable and
smart. “You’ve got something hidden in those walls.”
Karl felt his pulse go up. Was this another one, like the
short bald man?
“I’ve run into those devices,” the electrician continued.
“Comes with the territory. But this is the best answer I’ve
seen.”
“The best answer?”
“A creative solution. And a good solution.”
“Really?”
“I’d recommend you leave the walls open like this while you
show these units.”
“People will know I’m hiding something.”
“You give people too much credit. They don’t like to think.
They just want to get by, live their lives.”
Karl nodded, feeling slightly sick.
“It’s something they can check off the list,” the
electrician said.
* * *
The building inspector didn’t notice, or at least chose not
to, and neither did prospective tenants. Many liked the
character of the place, all the alcoves and corners. Soon
all six units were rented and the money was coming in.
Karl returned to Maxine each night, and they went back to
being happy. He limited himself to a single glass of wine,
more modest dinners, and he slept better. His sore back and
hands healed.
Still, uneasiness lingered.
The little man, the prospective tenant, came back, but not
as the prospective tenant, nor as the man outside the limo.
This time he dressed like a telephone repairman. He had the
uniform, the cap, the safety goggles, a belt with dangling
tools. Karl challenged him on the disguise. The bald man
said he was crazy, but with the bored eyes and voice of a
man going through the motions. He knew he fooled no one.
He held a meter over the walls. The dial flickered over all
the known but hidden devices, and over two that Karl must
have overlooked. “Remarkable,” the man said. “Your solution
is elegant and creative. You’ve made triple walls the wave
of the future.”
“I live in fear,” Karl said.
“That’s silly,” said the man. “There are creative people,
and then there are steady people. Not many are both. You’ve
proved to be both, and that makes you an uncommon asset.
Valuable. Not like that lesbian.”
Karl needed to show courage. He needed to ask. “What
happened to her? To Bud? Did she work for you?”
The man gave him a look of warning. The walls creaked in
the silence. It felt like being caged.
“Time for me to go,” the man finally said.
He went to the door. He turned back just before he went
around a triple wall. “Keep up the good work!”
He disappeared.
Copyright 2007 by Steven Mathes