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.
At one point, he found something solid. The apron of marble lobby floor that projected beyond the entrance doors. His fingers slipped and slid along the edge. Hope leaped into his eyes. Then, inexorably, the weight of his sinking body was more than his strength could overcome, and he lost his grip.
The unforgiving line of the pavement crept up to their noses, past their wide eyes, and closed over their heads. Their hands were the last to go, clutching like those of drowning men.
Then they were gone. The sidewalk was empty. Everyone was gone.
Randal Rumpp stared at the bare sidewalk where three human beings had disappeared, in defiance of all natural law. He blinked. He looked to his desk calendar. It read: "October 31." Halloween. Then he blurted out the personal mantra that had exalted him to the heights of business success and dashed him back onto the rocks of near-bankruptcy.
"There's gotta be a way I can hype this disaster as a positive!"
Chapter 2
His name was Remo, and he was attending the twentieth reunion of the Francis Wayland Thurston High School, Class of '72.
The reunion was being held in the Pickman Neighborhood Club, outside Buffalo, New York, a white mansion of a place built by a turn-of-the-century industrialist that had been reduced to a function rental.
At the door, Remo gave the name he had been told to give.
"Edgar Perry."
The woman looked up from the list, blinked, and said, "Eddie! It's been ages!"
"Forever," Remo agreed. He looked at her name tag. "Pamela."