When he was satisfied with the results he put them on and turned his sad blue eyes on me. "You must know the caliber of men we get," he said. "Guard work pays just one or two dollars an hour over the minimum wage. It's a job that requires no experience and minimal training. Our best men are retired police officers looking to supplement a city pension, but men like that can usually find something better for themselves. "We get fellows who are out of work and looking for stopgap employment until something opens up for them. They're often good workers, but they don't stay with us long. And then we get men who work for us because they can't do any better." "What kind of checks do you run on them?" "We do the minimum. I try not to hire convicted felons. After all, this is security work. You don't hire the fox to guard the henhouse, do you? But it's hard to avoid. I can run computer checks, but what good is that when the name's a common one? 'Query: Has William Johnson been an inmate in the New York State prison system?' Well, there are probably half a dozen William Johnsons in prison in this state on any given day, so how am I to know?
