The Running Man - Stephen King [17]
…Minus 088 and COUNTING…
The waiting room on the eighth floor was very small, very plush, very intimate, very private. Richards had it all to himself.
At the end of the elevator ride, three of them had been promptly whisked away down a plushly carpeted corridor by three cops. Richards, the man with the sour voice, and the kid who blinked a lot had been taken here.
A receptionist who vaguely reminded Richards of one of the old tee-vee sex stars (Liz Kelly? Grace Taylor?) he had watched as a kid smiled at the three of them when they came in. She was sitting at a desk in an alcove, surrounded by so many potted plants that she might have been in an Ecuadorian foxhole. “Mr. Jansky,” she said with a blinding smile. “Go right in.”
The kid who blinked a lot went into the inner sanctum. Richards and the man with the sour voice, whose name was Jimmy Laughlin, made wary conversation. Richards discovered that Laughlin lived only three blocks away from him, on Dock Street. He had held a part-time job until the year before as an engine wiper for General Atomics, and had then been fired for taking part in a sit-down strike protesting leaky radiation shields.
“Well, I’m alive, anyway,” he said. “According to those maggots, that’s all that counts. I’m sterile, of course. That don’t matter. That’s one of the little risks you run for the princely sum of seven New Bucks a day.”
When G-A had shown him the door, the withered arm had made it even tougher to get a job. His wife had come down with bad asthma two years before, was now bed-ridden. “Finally I decided to go for the big brass ring,” Laughlin said with a bitter smile. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to push a few creeps out a high window before McCone’s boys get me.”
“Do you think it really is—”
“The Running Man? Bet your sweet ass. Give me one of those cruddy cigarettes, pal.”
Richards gave him one.
The door opened and the kid who blinked a lot came out on the arm of a beautiful dolly wearing two handkerchiefs and a prayer. The kid gave them a small, nervous smile as they went by.
“Mr. Laughlin? Would you go in, please?”
So Richards was alone, unless you counted the receptionist, who had disappeared into her foxhole again.
He got up and went over to the free cigarette machine in the corner. Laughlin must be right, he reflected. The cigarette machine dispensed Dokes. They must have hit the big leagues. He got a package of Blams, sat down, and lit one up.
About twenty minutes later Laughlin came out with an ash-blonde on his arm. “A friend of mine from the car pool,” he said to Richards, and pointed at the blonde. She dimpled dutifully. Laughlin looked pained. “At least the bastard talks straight,” he said to Richards. “See you.”
He went out. The receptionist poked her head out of her foxhole. “Mr. Richards? Would you step in, please?”
He went in.
…Minus 087 and COUNTING…
The inner office looked big enough to play killball in. It was dominated by a huge, one-wall picture window that looked west over the homes of the middle class, the dockside warehouses and oil tanks, and Harding Lake itself. Both sky and water were pearl-gray; it was still raining. A large tanker far out was chugging from right to left.
The man behind the desk was of middle height and very black. So black, in fact, that for a moment Richards was struck with unreality. He might have stepped out of a minstrel show.
“Mr. Richards.” He rose and extended his hand over the desk. When Richards did not shake it, he did not seem particularly flustered. He merely took his hand back to himself and sat down.
A sling chair was next to the desk. Richards sat down and butted his smoke in an ashtray with the Games emblem embossed on it.
“I’m Dan Killian, Mr. Richards. By now you’ve probably guessed why you’ve been brought here. Our records and your test scores both say you’re a bright boy.”
Richards folded his hands and waited.
“You’ve been slated as a contestant