were moving around them.
I spied a group in conference around a man with a clipboard. The light was too dim to make out faces but I assumed the man was Joiner and headed toward him. Someone darted from behind a vat and seized my arm.
“Hard-hat area,” he bellowed in my ear. “What are you doing here?”
“Gary Joiner!” I bawled back at him. “I need to talk to him.”
He escorted me back to the entrance to wait. I watched him go over to the confabbing group and tap one of the figures on the arm. He jerked his head to where I was standing. Joiner stuck his clipboard on a barrel and trotted over to me.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by instead of phoning. I can tell this is a bad time to talk to you—want me to wait in your office?”
“No, no. I—uh, I couldn’t find anything about those men. I don’t think they ever worked here.”
Even in the dim light I could tell his splotchy skin was flushing.
“I bet that warehouse is a mess,” I said sympathetically. “No one has time to look after records when you’re running a manufacturing plant.”
“Yes,” he agreed eagerly. “Yes, that’s for sure.”
“I’m a trained investigator. If you gave me some kind of authorization, I could have a look through there. You know, see if their records were misplaced or something.”
He flickered his eyes nervously around the room. “No. No. Things aren’t that big a mess. The guys never worked here. I gotta go now.”
He hurried away before I could say anything else. I started after him, but even if I could get past the foreman, I couldn’t think of a way to get Joiner to tell me the truth. I didn’t know him, didn’t know the plant, didn’t have a clue as to why he would lie to me.
I walked slowly back down the long hall to my car, absentmindedly stepping in an oozy patch that plastered sludge firmly to my right shoe. I cursed loudly—I’d paid over a hundred dollars for those pumps. As I sat in the car trying to scrape it clean, I got oily sludge on my skirt. Feeling outraged with the world, I threw the shoe petulantly into the backseat and changed back into my running gear. Even though Caroline hadn’t sent me to the plant, I blamed my problems on her.
As I drove up Torrence, passing rusted-out factories that looked dingier than ever from the rain, I wondered if Louisa had called Joiner, asking him not to help me if I turned up. I didn’t think her mind worked that way, though: she’d told me to mind my own business, and as far as she was concerned, I was doing just that. Maybe the Djiaks had fumed self-righteously to Xerxes, but I thought they were too myopic to analyze how I might conduct an investigation. They could only see how Louisa had hurt them.
On the other hand, if Joiner didn’t want to talk to me about the men because of some problem the company was having with them—say a lawsuit—he would have known when I came in on Friday. But the first time I spoke to him he’d obviously never heard of them.
I couldn’t figure it out, but the thought of lawsuits made me realize another place to look for the men. Neither Pankowski nor Ferraro was in the phone book, but the old ward voter registration records might still be around. I turned right on Ninety-fifth Street and headed into East Side.
The ward offices were still in the tidy brick two-flat on Avenue M. A variety of errands may take you to your committeeman’s office, from help with parking tickets to ways of getting on the city payroll. The local cops are in and out a lot what with one thing and another, and even though my dad’s beat had been North Milwaukee Avenue, I’d come here with him more than once. The sign proclaiming Art Jurshak alderman and Freddy Parma ward committeeman, which covered all of the building’s exposed north wall, hadn’t changed. And the storefront next door still housed the insurance agency that had given Art his
I spied a group in conference around a man with a clipboard. The light was too dim to make out faces but I assumed the man was Joiner and headed toward him. Someone darted from behind a vat and seized my arm.
“Hard-hat area,” he bellowed in my ear. “What are you doing here?”
“Gary Joiner!” I bawled back at him. “I need to talk to him.”
He escorted me back to the entrance to wait. I watched him go over to the confabbing group and tap one of the figures on the arm. He jerked his head to where I was standing. Joiner stuck his clipboard on a barrel and trotted over to me.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by instead of phoning. I can tell this is a bad time to talk to you—want me to wait in your office?”
“No, no. I—uh, I couldn’t find anything about those men. I don’t think they ever worked here.”
Even in the dim light I could tell his splotchy skin was flushing.
“I bet that warehouse is a mess,” I said sympathetically. “No one has time to look after records when you’re running a manufacturing plant.”
“Yes,” he agreed eagerly. “Yes, that’s for sure.”
“I’m a trained investigator. If you gave me some kind of authorization, I could have a look through there. You know, see if their records were misplaced or something.”
He flickered his eyes nervously around the room. “No. No. Things aren’t that big a mess. The guys never worked here. I gotta go now.”
He hurried away before I could say anything else. I started after him, but even if I could get past the foreman, I couldn’t think of a way to get Joiner to tell me the truth. I didn’t know him, didn’t know the plant, didn’t have a clue as to why he would lie to me.
I walked slowly back down the long hall to my car, absentmindedly stepping in an oozy patch that plastered sludge firmly to my right shoe. I cursed loudly—I’d paid over a hundred dollars for those pumps. As I sat in the car trying to scrape it clean, I got oily sludge on my skirt. Feeling outraged with the world, I threw the shoe petulantly into the backseat and changed back into my running gear. Even though Caroline hadn’t sent me to the plant, I blamed my problems on her.
As I drove up Torrence, passing rusted-out factories that looked dingier than ever from the rain, I wondered if Louisa had called Joiner, asking him not to help me if I turned up. I didn’t think her mind worked that way, though: she’d told me to mind my own business, and as far as she was concerned, I was doing just that. Maybe the Djiaks had fumed self-righteously to Xerxes, but I thought they were too myopic to analyze how I might conduct an investigation. They could only see how Louisa had hurt them.
On the other hand, if Joiner didn’t want to talk to me about the men because of some problem the company was having with them—say a lawsuit—he would have known when I came in on Friday. But the first time I spoke to him he’d obviously never heard of them.
I couldn’t figure it out, but the thought of lawsuits made me realize another place to look for the men. Neither Pankowski nor Ferraro was in the phone book, but the old ward voter registration records might still be around. I turned right on Ninety-fifth Street and headed into East Side.
The ward offices were still in the tidy brick two-flat on Avenue M. A variety of errands may take you to your committeeman’s office, from help with parking tickets to ways of getting on the city payroll. The local cops are in and out a lot what with one thing and another, and even though my dad’s beat had been North Milwaukee Avenue, I’d come here with him more than once. The sign proclaiming Art Jurshak alderman and Freddy Parma ward committeeman, which covered all of the building’s exposed north wall, hadn’t changed. And the storefront next door still housed the insurance agency that had given Art his
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