sabotage disguised as dusting
Michael Pemulis, his jaunty cap pushed back and his lips pursed as if whistling, but not whistling, is very casually brushing his hand over the drive and console’s power unit, as if killing time by casually dusting.
Context
Pemulis, impatient to end the call, masks the operative gesture in performed boredom: an idle-looking hand drifts "very casually" over the phone console's power unit — its toggle beside "a little red jewel of a power-light" — his other hand jingling pocket-change, his lips pursed as if whistling but not whistling, fingers tapping "a little anapestic gallop over the unit's top." (That his reach toward the kill-toggle is the point of the "dusting" is inference from the juxtaposition, but the raw stages the gesture entirely as cover.) It is the book's whole hiding-in-plain-sight principle scaled to a fidget: an intended act concealed inside a display of doing nothing.