Backward-Facing Man (17 page)

According to Fat Eddie and every bit of legal advice Chuck had ever received, it was best to avoid talking to your adversaries without a lawyer. This particular day, however, Chuck felt it would be helpful to smoke out the government's position as early as he could. Provided he was cagey enough, it could save him legal fees. Besides, OSHA inspectors were bureaucrats, not prosecutors. He told them he'd think about it and shut the door.

“Take your time,” Deacon said from outside.

From his jacket pocket, Chuck took two Valium and washed them down with his drink. Ten minutes later, he made his way slowly downstairs.

The factory floor was cluttered with the remnants of jobs in process: cut angle iron and sheets of Plexiglas. The men in the moon suits had again made a huge mess, clearing a two-foot-wide strip from the tanks to the back of the plant. Overhead, lights and gas-fired heaters were full on, something neither Charlie nor Artie would have tolerated. It was a strange feeling for Chuck to walk through the shop and feel warmth in the winter. The EPA man stood in the doorway of the office watching him approach. “Last I heard,” Chuck said as he entered, “there was this thing called private property.”

“You want to see the search warrant?” Keaton said evenly.

“I just want to run my business….”

The bathroom door opened, and the older man stepped into the office area. He wiped his hands on a paper towel and extended a box of doughnuts to Chuck, who declined. Cyril Deacon lifted the coffeepot and began pouring. “The floor here is rather sticky,” he said to no one in particular. Chuck was glad they weren't upstairs, sitting knee to knee in his living room. Tropical fish had subtle sensory capabilities—they could detect changes in a room—temperature, nervous energy, a vibe. They knew when something was awry. An angelfish had died one night when a woman Chuck brought home flipped out. Besides, he didn't need these guys poking around his prescription pill bottles and his ashtrays with little reefer stubs.

Cyril Deacon pulled a couple of chairs from behind the desks and arranged them so that he was sitting with his back to the shop. He smiled as he did this, an old man observing some kind of etiquette that nobody practiced anymore. Then he laid a paper towel across his lap. Keaton pulled his chair a little bit back and away. The older man smiled sheepishly again and looked admiringly at his doughnut. “I'd like to start things off by saying that this is just a friendly talk, a couple of professionals trying to get to the bottom of things.” He took a bite and chewed slowly. “We look at this as an opportunity for you to help us, although you're under no obligation to do so. All we're asking you to do is answer our questions truthfully. The sooner you do, well, the sooner you can get back to your business.” He opened the folder in his lap and smacked his lips, as if the two men had shown up at a parent-teacher conference. “This stuff, 1,1,1 trichloroethylene. What can you tell us about it?”

Chuck shrugged. “Nothing.”

“1,1,1 TCE,” Deacon repeated, as if Chuck hadn't heard him the first time.

“I've never heard of it. Sorry,” Chuck said, shrugging.

Keaton shifted in his chair. “Tell me about cleaning metal, Mr. Puckman,” Deacon said cheerfully.

“Tell you what?”

“Why is it necessary, how do you go about doing it, that kind of thing.” Deacon folded his arms, as if he was really pleased to be having this conversation.

“You have to clean it before you paint it,” Chuck said, pretty sure Deacon knew exactly what was involved. “Otherwise, you get bubbles under the surface, and it looks like shit.”

“How do you do it?”

Chuck leaned back in his chair. Keaton had obviously briefed the OSHA inspector on the tanks and Puckman's methods.

“You could sandblast, etch, or dip it. Shit, you probably know better than I do, Mr., uh…”

“Deacon,” the inspector said. “Cyril Deacon.” He pulled a business card from his front pocket.

“Look, I'm just the sales guy,” Chuck told them. Cyril Deacon smiled again. Keaton stood up and poured himself a cup of coffee. He opened the refrigerator next to the safe, looking for milk.

“I understand you're primarily involved in sales,” Deacon continued. “But perhaps you know more than you realize.”

“We used to hang the sub-assemblies from hooks on a track that lined up over the tanks. You'd press a button and the pieces dipped….” Chuck made a gesture with his hands.

“Into the tanks,” Deacon said.

“But we don't do that anymore.”

“No?”

“No.”

“So what do you do?”

“We use chemicals.”

“Can you tell us what kind of chemical was in tank number four?”

“Some kind of caustic etch. Water. Alkaline. Honestly, I don't know.”

“What exactly is your role here at Puckman Security?”

“Like I said, sales, pretty much.” Chuck looked around the room as Cyril Deacon shuffled his papers.

“Who's in charge of production?”

“We don't have fancy titles, if that's what you're asking.”

“Who tells your workers what to make when?” It was Keaton again, aggressive.

“Our guys have been with us a long time. They kind of figure things out,” Chuck said, smiling. The questions were easy. Even though he was tired, with the vodka and the Valium in him, Chuck was able to relax. He was confident he would be able to see trouble coming one or two questions ahead. “How long is this going to take, anyway? I've got a meeting with my lawyer.” Keaton looked up from his coffee.

“Just a few more questions, Mr. Puckman,” Deacon said. “Can you tell us who built the tanks?” He sounded like a guy admiring his neighbor's shed.

Chuck laughed. “Sorry. Way before my time.”

“Whose design are they?”

Chuck laughed again. “They look designed to you?”

“I mean, who decided how big to make them,” Deacon asked, “where to place them, what kinds of chemicals to put in, where to put the heating elements?”

“You'd have to ask my dad that,” Chuck said, thinking how much fun that would be—these two guys sitting on the old man's bed watching him drool. Deacon smiled, too, now. It was a regular smile fest. Chuck's face was beginning to hurt.

“Yes, yes,” Deacon said, clearing his throat. “At a certain point,” he tried again, “you stopped using the tanks.”

Chuck stared at him, waiting for the question, but none came. “Like I said, you'd have to ask my father.” Then, thinking about what motivated Charlie Puckman Sr., he said, “It probably had to do with cost.”

“To save money?”

“I guess.”

“Did it work?”

Chuck shrugged his shoulders. “Business continued. Nobody complained.”

“So,” Keaton said, “how come in, uh…mid-November, you guys refilled tank four and started using it again?”

“I told you, I don't know anything about it,” Chuck said, folding his arms.

Deacon wrote something down again. “Whose idea was it?” he asked.

“Whaddya mean, whose idea?”

“To begin cleaning…”

“The power goes out in your house. Who decides to light candles? You just do it.”

For the first time, Cyril Deacon frowned, as if Chuck, by losing his patience, was being unsporting. Keaton spoke next in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “Somebody had to pick a chemical, Mr. Puckman. Somebody had to place an order. Somebody had to fill the tank.” They were both staring at him now. “Was that somebody you?” Any semblance of casualness that Cyril Deacon had tried to invoke was gone.

“No,” he said, looking away.

“Are you saying no to making the decision, or no to picking the chemical, or no to placing the order?” Keaton asked. Chuck had the impression that Cyril Deacon liked pretending he was a slightly senile paper pusher with no clout, and that Keaton, despite his officious manner, endless inspections, reports, and citations, was determined to trap him.

“Anything you could tell us would be extremely helpful,” Deacon reminded him, his voice slightly higher now.

Chuck folded his arms. “I don't remember.”

“If you didn't order it, who did?”

“I'm not going there, guys.” The old man was out of reach, but he wasn't about to betray his own brother, especially not this early in the inquiry.

Cyril Deacon put his hands out in front of him and leaned back. “In most businesses, purchases have to be accepted. Somebody signs a packing slip. Sometimes there's an invoice. In your company, who was in charge of receiving?”

“My dad.”

“And who decided where to put supplies?”

“What's to decide? You put them where there's room.”

“So how did this particular degreaser wind up in tank four?” Cyril Deacon was smiling again.

“I don't know.”

Keaton riffled through a stack of papers until he found the one he wanted. “Is this your handwriting, Mr. Puckman?” Chuck squinted at the letters on the page. The word
received
was written—misspelled—in cursive; the date 11/18/98, underneath.

“Nope.”

Keaton thrust another piece of paper at Chuck, obscuring the top and presenting only a scrawl at the bottom. “How about this?” he asked Chuck.

It was one of Artie's to-do lists with the words
prep tank
highlighted. Chuck shook his head no. It could have been that the word
prep
was the first part of a compound word, a noun, or a verb.

“It's not my writing.”

“Well, whoever's it is, we'd like to talk to them,” Deacon said calmly.

Deacon leaned forward in his chair, hovering over the paper. Keaton's breath was sour and the veins in his neck were pulsing. Chuck could tell that the agents were pissed, but by then, the businessman had clammed up.

Since they'd been little boys, Chuck had come to an accommodation with his older brother. As often as he sat on the sidelines, watching Artie self-destruct, Chuck assiduously avoided actually causing or facilitating it. This was, for the early part of his life anyway, his experience of love; no matter how irritated or disdainful of someone you were, family members never practiced anything worse than benign indifference. Even now, with his own ass in a sling, Chuck was unable to be the agent of his brother's demise.

“I gotta go,” Chuck said, standing.

Cyril Deacon raised the index finger on his right hand. “You're the president of Puckman Security, right?” the older man said.

A regular Lieutenant Columbo, Chuck thought. “This is a family business,” Chuck said. “You don't apply. You don't get elected. You wind up here when you're the only member of the lucky sperm club who can think straight.” Chuck felt a tingle and then a wave of heat rise up the back of his neck. For a moment, his face regained its color. For the first time since the accident, he felt like his old self. He intended to find Artie and tell him that he'd better keep his mouth shut, that he was going to have to stand up to some pretty intense questioning.

 

At Broad and Sansom, there is a magisterial stone building whose hallways are lined with bronze plaques and portraits of Philadelphians who fought in the Civil War. The Union League is a meeting and dining club—oddly anachronistic, with a barber in the men's room and austere bedrooms upstairs for guests and inebriated members—a home away from home for the stiff and corpulent, the haves and the enfranchised, the status seekers and the protectors of the status quo. There are a few blacks and women and a mix of upwardly mobile Asians, Italians, and Jews, but overall, it is not a place people go to admit their mistakes.

Just before five o'clock Tuesday night, Chuck Puckman appeared at the front desk in his soiled trench coat, sneakers, and four-day-old beard, identifying himself as a guest of Edward Palmieri. In the locker room, he wet and combed his hair, shaved, and then spent a few minutes with the
Wall Street Journal
before going up to the bar, where an attendant lent him a black suit jacket and a red tie with little roosters on it. He ordered a scotch and soda, which he drank quickly. At a quarter to six, Fat Eddie put his hand on Chuck's shoulder. Eddie looked shorter and rounder than Chuck remembered. They took a small table off to one side. “It was empty, Eddie,” Chuck said, as soon as the maître d' disappeared.

“What?”

“The safe. There was nothing in it but some old envelopes.” Chuck put his napkin up to his face. He watched his father's friend closely. “No money. No nothing.”

“Impossible. Your father had his stock certificates in there, all his cash, some gold coins.”

“You sure he didn't give it to somebody for safekeeping?” Chuck said, narrowing his gaze.

“Jesus Christ, Chuckie, you can put that out of your head right now, all right?” Eddie took a big gulp of his drink and wiped his brow. “I talked to him before his stroke. There's no way he would have taken anything out.” They were quiet for a moment. “Where's your brother, anyway?”

“Missing,” Chuck said flatly.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie said nervously. Around them, glasses clinked and people's mouths moved. A buzzing sound started up in Chuck's head. The rooster tie was tight around his neck. Chuck's eyes focused on Eddie's bouncing eyebrows. Entertaining the possibility that Artie had access to Charlie's fortune, Chuck retreated into himself, sinking lower and lower until that very thing began to make sense. Chuck touched his forehead. He was nauseous and hungry at the same time.

Fat Eddie balled up his napkin and laid it on the table. “You all right?” he said.

Chuck nodded. The more he thought about it, the worse things looked. The business was finished, which meant the work Chuck had done his entire adult life—all the clunky knowledge he'd accumulated, all the time he'd spent and the random ass-kissing he'd done—was useless. He had no way to support himself, finish paying off Eileen, or keep his father at Elysian Fields. On top of this, it looked as if he was going to have to fund his own defense against government bureaucrats like Keaton and Cyril Deacon.