A Firing Offense (13 page)

“It’s Nick, Marsha.”

“I’ve been trying to get you for over an hour,” she scolded.

“What have you got?”

“I found a Joseph Shultz on Briarwood Terrace in Oxen Hill,” she said. “And there’s a Thomas and Maureen Shultz on Inglewood in Riverdale.”

“Give me both phone numbers and the addresses.” She read me the information. “I owe you lunch, Marsha. Thanks a million.”

WHEN I DIALED THE
second number and asked for Eddie, Maureen Shultz told me he wasn’t in. I identified myself as DeGarcey from the
Washington Times
and explained the sympathetic portrait of Eddie and his friends that I was struggling to finish on deadline. Could I come over to the Shultz residence to get those last few details? Sure, she said.

I drove north over the district line into Maryland, then made a right on 410, which wound, primarily as East–West Highway, through Takoma Park, Chillum, Hyattsville, and
Riverdale. Inglewood was on my detail map. It was a street of Cape Cods with large, treeless front lawns. A row of oaks ran down the government strip the length of the street.

Judging by the number of nonrecreational pickups parked in the driveways, this part of the neighborhood was largely blue-collar and middle-income at best. But the properties and houses had been functionally kept with that quiet pride peculiar to the working class.

I knocked on the door of the address Marsha had given me and a heavy-hipped woman answered. Her worn housedress and graying, closely cropped hair made her appear older than I would have guessed from her phone voice. She let me into a house that was visibly free of dirt but smelled of dogs. One of them, an old setter, moved his eyes and nothing else as I passed with his mistress into the kitchen.

I sat at a table that had a marbleized formica top. She made instant coffee while I looked around the room. The appliances were avocado green and the refrigerator had no kickplate.

Maureen Shultz was an outwardly pleasant woman with whom it was fairly comfortable to sit and share coffee and conversation. But she seemed to get more anxious as we talked. Soon it became clear that she was interviewing
me,
and had apparently agreed to my visit for that purpose. She was worried about her son.

“When was the last time
you
saw him?” she asked.

“About two weeks ago,” I lied. “He was with an attractive woman and a younger boy.”

“An attractive woman,” she sniffed. “I suppose she was, on the outside.” She took a sip of coffee, visibly embarrassed by her display of judgement or jealousy. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know much about her. It was just a feeling I had.”

“I got the feeling they didn’t belong together, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“He brought her over here once. Eddie’s friends were always welcome here. But you’re right. She might not have come
from money, but she had done some high living. Eddie hadn’t, not yet.”

“What gave you that impression?”

“Small things,” she said, sipping her coffee. “She was older, for one, and the etiquette she used at dinner. She commented on my china, which isn’t actually very good at all. But the point is, Eddie wouldn’t know china from paper plates.”

“What about her background?”

“She never said, exactly. Neither did Eddie. She had a slight Southern accent that became more pronounced as her guard began to drop, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“She mentioned that she had a little college and worked in stores and restaurants before she moved up here. She said that she liked to go to the seashore back home.”

All of that information was meaningless. Kim Lazarus could have been from any coastal state south of the Mason-Dixon line.

“I talked to John Heidel today,” I said, dropping a name that perked her up a bit. “I got the impression he might know more about the girl, but he wasn’t eager to talk.”

“He knew the girl too,” she said vaguely, straightening her posture and wringing her hands.

“What do you think about the crowd Eddie and John were in, the group they call the skinheads?”

“Eddie and John went to high school together. Grades wise, they weren’t the brightest boys. I know they drank beer, raced their cars a little too fast. But that’s all a part of growing up. What they do now, that’s a phase too.”

“Mrs. Shultz, you must be aware of the allegations against their group. The violence against minorities.”

“Yes,” she said bitterly. “I’ve read the articles. And I’m not blind to the ways of my son. His father put that hatred into him. He’s an insecure man, and it passes from the father to the son. But Eddie wouldn’t beat up anybody if there wasn’t a reason.”

“I’d like to explore his side of things. But I need to talk to him again to do it.”

“How can I help you?”

“You’ve known John Heidel for quite a long time. Give him a call and see if he has any idea where they were headed. I’ll be at this number.” I handed her the number to my answering machine that I had written on my pad.

She began walking me to the front door but stopped in the living room to take a framed photograph off the fireplace mantel. She faced it towards me.

“That’s Eddie’s high school picture. He looks an awful lot better with all that hair. It’s funny,” she chuckled. “At the time, I gave him hell about it being too long.”

I could see why they called the boy Redman. His hair, long in the picture in some sort of shag, was bright orange, as were his eyebrows and the hopelessly weak mustache above his thin lips. Eddie’s eyes were narrow and rather cruel, a trait I found completely absent in his mother.

“Talk to John and give me a call later,” I said.

She nodded. I hurried to the door and turned to say good-bye. I watched her replace Eddie’s picture on the mantel, feeling vaguely intrusive as I saw her lightly run her finger around the edge of the frame.

Sitting in my car in front of the Shultz residence, I found myself watching a young mother a few houses down who was watching her child crawl upon a white blanket that had been spread upon the lawn.

I studied them until the mother noticed me and appeared to become uncomfortable at my presence. I cranked the ignition, and the engine turned over with some reluctance. Then I pulled off Inglewood and headed west on the highway, towards the office headquarters of Nutty Nathan’s.

T
HE NUTTY NATHAN’S
warehouse was adjacent to the offices and occupied about eighteen thousand square feet of the entire building. Since the bruise below my eye was still healing, I avoided the office altogether and went in through the service entrance.

It was late Friday afternoon, and the women in service dispatch sat in a semicircle discussing the weekend. I walked by them quickly and with my head down, but not quickly enough to escape a whistle and then some laughter.

I took some concrete steps up to a locked door that opened onto the warehouse loft. Upon my promotion to upper-level management I had been given a skeleton key that fit all the locks in the building, necessitated by my frequent trips to the warehouse to check inventory while writing the copy (“Only 10 to Sell!”) of the ads. I used the key in this lock as I turned the knob and stepped into the loft.

The warehousemen called this area “the zoo” because of the cages along its wall that contained the heistable goods: small appliances, boom boxes, tapes, accessories, and anything else that could be stashed underneath an employee’s jacket. A large sign in read lettering hung on the wall near the first cage, and read, “Lock all cages. Don’t tempt an honest man.”

One could look down from the loft and survey the entire warehouse. It was arranged in five long parallel rows that ran the length of the building. Between each row was twelve feet of space, an allowance for the swing of forklifts that would then have a straight shot to the truck bays located directly beneath the loft.

There was a twenty-five foot drop to the warehouse floor. A three-tiered railing ran along the edge of the loft, broken only at one point to allow entrance to a caged lift that was used to move stock from one level to the next.

This time of year, as Fisher had overemphasized, the “barn” was full to capacity because of the annual fourth quarter load-in. Boxes rose from the floor and approached the legal limit, which was gauged by their proximity to the ceiling sprinklers. In several spots one could step off the loft directly onto the top of a row of stock.

I pulled open the metal gate, entered the lift, and hit the lower button on an electrical box hung over the railing. The crate lowered me in spasms.

I stepped out and walked past the bays where returning drivers were checking their manifests with the assistant warehouse managers. It was payday. Several of the drivers looked as if they had cashed their checks earlier at the liquor store. I could hear the deliberate farting of young warehousemen, and, after that, commentary and laughter as to the degree of looseness of their respective sphincters. By the time I reached Dane’s office this had degenerated into a discussion of an activity called “jamming,” which involved gerbils and then other progressively larger mammals.

The glass-enclosed office of Joe Dane, the warehouse manager, bordered the last bay. I looked in and saw the delivery manager talking on the phone. I rapped on the glass. She looked up, smiled, gave me a shrug and an exasperated look, and waved me in.

Their office smelled like cigarettes and fast food. Dane was an unashamed slob, but his female coworkers had tried to humanize the place with remnant carpeting, Redskins pennants, and stick-up Garfield cats, one of the strangest fads to come to D.C. since the Carl Lewis haircut.

Jerry Chase hung up the phone, mouthed the word
asshole,
slumped back in her chair, and dragged on her cigarette. The cherry from the last one was still smoking in the ashtray. I perched on the edge of her desk and butted it out.

“A good one?” I asked, looking at the phone.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, the smoke breaking around her mouth as she talked. “We miss a delivery, and the customer starts about how he makes two hundred dollars an hour, he can’t afford to sit another afternoon off and wait for a delivery. I wonder if he knows how many important people like him I talk to every day. I’m so tired of hearing that. If a guy really makes that kind of dough, then he wouldn’t get hurt missing a couple hours of work. To top it off, these problems always come up Friday afternoon payday.” She chin-nodded through the glass towards the drivers. “You think I can get any of these guys to go back out on a delivery now? They’ve been half in the bag since this morning.”

“Well, the day’s almost over,” I said, hoping to slow her down, though admittedly she had the worst job in the company.

“And people want to know why I drink,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “So what brings you down to the underworld?”

“I’m looking for Dane.”

“He got wise and split early. The ‘my baby’s sick’ routine.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe his kid really is sick.”

“Maybe,” she said, tossing her cigarette in the ashtray. I crushed it for her.

“Why don’t you ever put those things out?”

“That’s the man’s job,” she said, and shook her hair in what she thought was a sexy manner. She had a P.G. County haircut that had gone out of style at about the time that
Charlie’s Angels
was entering its third season.

“Take care, Jerry.” I walked out and closed the door behind me.

The warehouse had the same musty odor as the stockroom, though its rows were perfectly aligned, the floors relatively dirt-free. Except for the true summer months, it always seemed cold here, and the combination of naked steel girders, unfinished concrete, and bleak lighting heightened that chill. The young men in here worked a hard day every day, beneath insulated flannel shirts and gloves. Their occasional laughter almost always came at the expense of each other, and the turnover was tremendous.

I walked down the center aisle, dwarfed by the cardboard walls at my sides. A kid I knew gave me a short horn-blast of recognition as he motored by on his forklift.

The barn
was
loaded. I took note of what we were heavy on as I walked. I would have to start dumping some of these goods, or, more likely, advertise the bait that would lead into the overstocks.

At the end of the aisle I turned left to the far corner of the warehouse, the section entirely occupied by videocassette recorders. I noticed the Kotekna VCRs that Rosen had purchased at the electronics show. Virtually none of them had moved. I made a mental note to remind Fisher that these “dogs” would have to be shipped out to the floors.

Aware of someone behind me, I turned to face two warehousemen I had never met. They were standing four feet apart and looking at me with solid stares. I nodded but got no response.

The man on the left was leaning on a pushbroom. He was of average height, with a dark, bony face and a careless goatee. His nose was narrow and flat, his eyes almost Oriental in shape.
A red knit cap was cocked on his head, filled high with dreadlocks. He wore a vest over a thermal shirt, and had the loose-limbed stance of a fighter.

His partner was a black albino with mustard skin and eyes the color of a bad scrape. There was one small braid coming from the back of his shaved head. He wore striped baggies, a faded denim shirt, and leather gloves. He was so tall that his posture and bone structure suggested deformity. There was a dead, soulless look in their eyes that I had seen increasingly on the faces of men in Washington’s streets as the eighties dragged murderously on.