Free Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters Page B

plumbing, it means grounds keeping and whatever else it takes to keep the foundation running as seamlessly as possible."
    He stopped at a door, withdrew a ring of keys and keycards
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    from his belt, and plugged one of the cards into a slot beside the door, which clicked open. Davidson pushed the door open and flicked on the light, revealing a walk-in supply closet, rows of cleaning supplies, lightbulbs, and packs of C-fold towels on gunmetal gray racks.
    "It also means janitorial work," he said, wheeling out a yellow mop bucket and wringer. "Especially in your case."
    "Pretty high security for some cleaning supplies."
    Davidson reached for some of those cleaning supplies. Pete, standing behind him in the frame of the door, looked at the heavy weapon on the man's hip, a single leather strap securing it in place.
    "You ever want to cause some damage to a place," Davidson said without turning around, "start a fire in the janitor's closet." "I'll keep it in mind," Pete said.
    "Good," Davidson, pouring some liquid into the bucket. "Use this stuff whenever I tell you to mop out the bathrooms. If you reach for my sidearm I will break your wrist. For starters."
    "I ... I wasn't going to," Pete said.
    Davidson looked up at him. "Just so we're clear." There was a sink at the back of the closet with a spray hose that Davidson used to spray hot water in the bucket, sending a lemon-scented steam up from the bucket and into Pete's nostrils.
    "A few glugs of the stuff will do it. I don't care how exact you are; we aren't the scientists here."
    "Right," Pete said.
    "There are cameras all over the facility. Most of them you
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    will never see, and some of the ones you do see don't really work. I watch the monitors. My staff watches the monitors. Some of your school chums get paid to watch the monitors while they're earning college prep credits. They'll be watching you mop the floors to pay off your debt to society. I'm sure some of them would like nothing better than to catch you doing something that you're not supposed to be doing. I'm sure some of them would like nothing better than to catch you doing something that would actually get you sent to prison, instead of working out your sentence by mopping the floors and cleaning the toilets that the living ones use."
    Pete thought that Davidson must hang around dead people a lot: there was sarcasm in his words, but you'd never know it from his inflection.
    Pete thought that there was something else in Davidson's words as well, some message hidden beneath his flat stare and deadpan delivery, something waiting for Pete to decode.
    "I'll be careful," Pete said.
    Davidson tossed a pair of green latex gloves against Pete's chest.
    "Careful," he said. "Yes. You be careful. Get that mop over by the wall and wheel the bucket out into the hall. We're going to take a walk to the monitor room so I can get you a jacket."
    Pete obeyed without comment. Davidson followed him out and popped his card back into the slot. The lock clicked.
    The corridors at the foundation reminded Pete of the corridors at his grade school: long windowless tunnels of gray, the illumination from the fluorescent lighting above dim and
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    shadowy. Every other panel was out, Pete noticed, and he wondered if the foundation was trying to save on its utility bill or that maybe the dead didn't need all that light. The dead, he thought.
    They only passed one office on their long walk. Pete glanced into the open doorway and saw Angela talking to his old pal Pinky McKnockers, the chubby and chesty friend of Phoebe Scarypants. There was another girl in the office, but all Pete could see of her was a billowing cloud of flaming red hair as she sat in front of a computer screen on the wall opposite the door. Pinky's own hair, a thick nest of rigid pink spikes, made it look like a huge sea urchin was sitting on her head.
    She looked up as they passed, and he caught the look of sudden recognition under the shellac-thick makeup around her