Read 09 To the Nines for Free Online Page B

we're testing new product.”
    Jane carefully measured each part of the gear and examined it under a microscope for flaws. When she was done, she reached into the barrel and selected another gear. I had to bite back a groan. Two gears down. Three thousand gears to go.
    “I heard Singh didn't show up for work one day,” I said, going for casual curious. “Was he unhappy with the job?”
    “Not sure,” Jane said, concentrating on the new gear. “He wasn't very talkative.” After extensive measuring, she decided the gear was okay and went on to a third.
    “Would you like to try one?” she asked.
    “Sure.”
    She handed the gear over and showed me how to measure.
    “Looks good to me,” I said after doing the measuring thing.
    “No,” she said, “it's off on one side. See the little burr on the edge of the one cog?” Jane took the gear from me, filed the side, and measured again. “Maybe you should just watch a while longer,” she said.
    I watched Jane do four more gears and my eyes glazed over and some drool oozed from between my lips. I quietly slid from my stool and moved to the next cubicle.
    Dolly Freedman was also testing new gears. Dolly would drink some coffee and measure. Then she'd drink more coffee and perform another test. She was as thin and as pale as Jane, but not as lifeless. She was cranked on coffee. “This is such a bullshit job,” Dolly said to me. She looked around. “Anyone watching?” she asked. Then she took a handful of gears and dumped them into the perfect gear bucket. “They looked good to me,” she said. Then she drank more coffee.
    “I'm going to be doing Samuel Singh's job,” I told her. “Do you know what happened to him? I heard he just didn't show up for work one day.”
    “Yeah, that's what I heard, too. No one's said much about him. He was real quiet. Carried his computer around and spent all his breaks on the computer.”
    “Playing computer games?”
    “No. He was always plugged into a phone line. Surfing. Doing email. Real secretive about it, too. If someone came over to him he'd close up the computer. Probably was on some porno site. He looked like the type.”
    “Slimy?”
    “Male. I keep protection in my desk for those types.” She opened her top desk drawer to show me her canister of pepper spray.
    I continued to move around the room, saving Edgar, the Asian guy, for last. Several of the women thought Singh looked unhappy. Alice Louise thought he might be secretly gay. No one could fault his work habits. He arrived on time and he did his barrel. No one knew he was engaged. No one had any idea where he lived or what he did in his spare time, other than surf the Net. Everyone had seen the newspaper article and thought Vinnie looked like a weasel.
    I called Ranger at noon.
    “Yo,” Ranger said.
    “Just checking in.”
    “How are the folks at TriBro?”
    “Not giving me a lot, but it's still early.”
    “Go get 'em, babe.” And he disconnected.
    I drifted over to Edgar's table mid-afternoon. Edgar was dropping acid on a small metal bar with threads at either end. One drop at a time. Drip, wait, and measure. Drip, wait, and measure. Drip, wait, and measure. There had to be a thousand bars waiting to be tortured. Nothing was happening. This job made watching grass grow look exciting.
    “We're testing a new alloy,” Edgar said.
    “This seems more interesting than the gear measuring.”
    “Only for the first two million bars. After that, it's pretty routine.”
    “Why do you keep this job?”
    “Benefits.”
    “Health insurance?”
    “Gambling. If the product fails, one of us goes to Vegas as a tech rep. And the products fail all the time.”
    “What's a tech rep?”
    “A technical representative. You know, a repairman.”
    “Did Singh ever go to Vegas?”
    “Once.”
    “And you?”
    “On an average, once a month. Failure is usually stress related. And that's my area of expertise.”
    “Did Singh like Vegas?”
    “Why are you so interested in