Page 35 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Thrown for a Loss

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Some things you really don’t want to hear on this job. Fire alarms,
gunshots, screams that didn’t come from a cranky child—well,
anybody wandering through the mall would know those noises meant
bad news. Of course, the general public wouldn’t recognize the coded
messages that come over the loudspeakers, the ones telling the
personnel who need to know that there is a certain kind of trouble in
a specific location and to get over there fast. Being a full-time security
guard, I hear a few of those every month, usually rowdy kids or a
heart attack or a shoplifter nobody wants to tangle with. But the
sound I really dread, because there’s no way to predict what might be
on the scene when you get to it, is the loud buzzer triggered by
somebody pushing the emergency stop button on an escalator.
So when one of those things suddenly went off last Sunday
afternoon, I knew where to run, straight for the central escalator
landing. I was on the second floor at the time, keeping an eye on
some teenagers hanging around the ticket line at the Cineplex. It was
just after four o’clock, and the second matinee for a lot of movies
was about to start. That meant the ticket-takers were in a rush to
admit the ticket-holders so the concession stand could sell junk food
to a bunch of eager people who been waiting in line long enough to
build up an appetite for candy and sodas. Some kids had tried on
Saturday to sneak in during that shuffle of people in and out of the
lobby, and I had been walking around the entrance just to put an idea
in their minds if any of them were thinking about trying it again.
Anyway, from where I was patrolling I only had about fifty yards to
cover, one hand keeping my flashlight from flapping against my leg
and the other pulling out my phone. The management of Cumbaya
Mall is too cheap to buy us the new hands-free phones that clip on
your collar or hook around your ear.
People in front of me half-understood something was wrong, but
they didn’t have a clue which way to turn, so I got through them
without having to race against a lot of folks younger and faster than
me. When I got to the landing I immediately saw that it was the
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