Rising Sun: A Novel by Michael Crichton Read Free Book Online Page B

too. They do Toyota subassemblies. Then, when this building opened, they brought me here, to work nights.”
    “I see. Six years altogether.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You must like it.”
    “Well, I tell you, it’s a secure job. That’s something in America. I know they don’t think much of black folks, but they always treated me okay. And hell, before this I worked for GM in Van Nuys, and that’s … you know, that’s
gone.
”
    “Yes,” Connor said sympathetically.
    “That place,” Phillips said, shaking his head at the memory. “Christ. The management assholes they used to send down to the floor. You couldn’t believe it. M.B. fucking A., out of Detroit, little weenies didn’t know
shit.
They didn’t know how the line worked. They didn’t know a tool from a die. But they’d still order the foremen around. They’re all pulling in two hundred fucking thousand a year and they didn’t know shit. And nothing ever worked right. The cars were all a piece of shit. But here,” he said, tapping the counter. “Here, I got a problem, or something doesn’t work,I tell somebody. And they come right down, and they know the system—how it works—and we go over the problem together, and it gets
fixed.
Right away. Problems get fixed here. That’s the difference. I tell you: these people
pay attention.
”
    “So you like it here.”
    “They always treated me okay,” Phillips said, nodding.
    That didn’t exactly strike me as a glowing endorsement. I had the feeling this guy wasn’t committed to his employers and a few questions could drive the wedge. All we had to do was encourage the break.
    “Loyalty is important,” Connor said, nodding sympathetically.
    “It is to them,” he said. “They expect you to show all this enthusiasm for the company. So you know, I always come in fifteen or twenty minutes early, and stay fifteen or twenty minutes after the shift is over. They like you to put in the extra time. I did the same at Van Nuys, but nobody ever noticed.”
    “And when is your shift?”
    “I work nine to seven.”
    “And tonight? What time did you come on duty?”
    “Quarter to nine. Like I said, I come in fifteen minutes early.”
    The original call had been recorded about eight-thirty. So if this man came at a quarter to nine, he would have arrived almost fifteen minutes too late to see the murder. “Who was on duty before you?”
    “Well, usually it’s Ted Cole. But I don’t know if he worked tonight.”
    “Why is that?”
    The guard wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and looked away.
    “Why is that, Mr. Phillips?” I said, with a little more force.
    The guard blinked and frowned, saying nothing.
    Connor said quietly, “Because Ted Cole wasn’t here when Mr. Phillips arrived tonight, was he, Mr. Phillips?”
    The guard shook his head. “No, he wasn’t.”
    I started to ask another question, but Connor raised his hand. “I imagine, Mr. Phillips, you must have been pretty surprised when you came in this room, at a quarter to nine.”
    “You damn right I was,” Phillips said.
    “What did you do when you saw the situation?”
    “Well. Right away, I said to the guy, ‘Can I help you?’ Very polite but still firm. I mean, this
is
the security room. And I don’t know who this guy is, I’ve never seen him before. And the guy is tense.
Very
tense. He says to me, ‘Get out of my way.’ Real pushy, like he owns the world. And he shoves past me, taking his briefcase with him.
    “I say, ‘Excuse me, sir, I’ll have to see some identification.’ He don’t answer me, he just keeps going. Out the lobby and down the stairs.”
    “You didn’t try and stop him?”
    “No, sir. I didn’t.”
    “Because he was Japanese?”
    “You got that right. But I called up to central security—it’s up on the ninth floor—to say I found a man in the room. And they say, ‘Don’t worry, everything is fine.’ But I can hear they’re tense, too. Everybody is tense. And then I see on the