Sendoff for a Snitch (6 page)

Bucky gestured toward the pallet I’d come to pick up. “What the hell is all this crap? He’s just been piling up the pallets from the packing line instead of taking them back to the warehouse.”

John raised his bushy white eyebrows at me. “Aren’t you taking the finished pallets to the warehouse?” he asked me.

I was puzzled by the question. “Yes, sir.”

Bucky snorted. “Don’t lie, you lazy bum. It won’t save your ass.”

Even more confused, I leaned back on my seat, but I kept my mouth shut.

“What makes you think he’s been doing that?” John asked.

He shook his head. “I saw him. He picked up a pallet from the end of the packing line and, instead of taking it back to the warehouse, he just dumped it there.” He pointed at the pallet I’d come to pick up. “And look at all the other crap he’s left lying around.” He waved at the lines waiting for trucks.

“Why did you put the pallet there instead of putting it away, Jesse?” John asked.

“I was getting some more pallets to stack over here, by the line,” I said. “And since they’re working a man short, I got down and put one in place for them.”

“And then what?” John asked.

“Then I was gonna take the finished one back to the warehouse.”

“Yeah, right,” Bucky said. “What about all this other stuff you were too lazy to move?”

John turned to look at the lines of pallets and crates. “Those are assembled shipments. The trucks didn’t come in.”

“What?” Bucky’s face turned red, and his nose wrinkled up.

“The trucks didn’t come in,” John repeated. “I hear the bridge over the river’s closed. Might not be any more trucks until the storm’s past. Maybe not even for a while after that, if the river’s too high.”

Not particularly anxious to be around to see the dayshift foreman’s reaction to being corrected, I eased the forks under the pallet in front of us and lifted it, raising the front of my forks so the load settled back snuggly. “Should I put these away?” I shouted over the packing room noise.

John glanced at me. “Yeah, go ahead. Then make sure the platers are supplied for the next shift.”

“Yes, sir.” I was glad to be away from the dispute.

Only a few workers had shown up. Usually, the day shift was the biggest by far, but there were barely enough people there to keep the continuous operation lines going. Of course, if the bridge was really closed, anyone who lived on the far side of the river wasn’t going to be able to make it in to work. I wondered how many of those on my shift lived over there, too, and wouldn’t be able to make it home.

If the homes weren’t flooded out.

I picked up a pallet of finished parts from the plating room.

Now Bucky had Hank backed into the wall outside the office. He was stabbing his pencil at the clipboard he had clutched in his hand. Hank, who towered over him, was frowning and shaking his head mulishly. I’d be willing to bet that the plating room group leader hadn’t shown, and he was trying to convince Hank to stay for another shift. Or at least until they could tear the platers down for the shortened weekend.

Even if he didn’t want to, I knew Hank would do it rather than leave them in a lurch. And as soon as the new shift started, it would pay him double time.

I headed back to the shipping docks for one last check, but everything seemed to be more or less caught up. Kelly was off her lift, attaching big blue tags to a row of crates. I glanced around to make sure Bucky hadn’t magically shown up, then eased to a stop next to her.

“You coming over?” She smiled at me, her snapping dark eyes bright in her dusky face. Her long dark hair, tied back in a ponytail, tumbled from under her hard hat and brushed her plump behind. I had to fight down an urge to reach over and stroke her hair.

I grinned back. I could think of no better way to spend a rainy Saturday than at her place, fixing dinner for her kids, playing games with them, and reading stories to them. Then, after they were asleep, joining Kelly in her big warm bed, nestled up against her expansive bosom.

“I’d love to. But I got to check on my apartment first.”

She made a face. “Then come on over when you can,” she said. “But make it late afternoon. I got an appointment with my lawyer about the divorce settlement. The kids are with their dad. He’s supposed to drop them off at nine tonight.” She raised one eyebrow and grinned.

“Don’t give my spot in the bed away,” I said, a wave of giddy warmth washing over me. “I’ll be over if I can make it.”

She nodded and swung back up on her lift.

I parked outside the men’s room so I could go in and get my wet clothes.

No one had messed with them this time. I folded them more neatly and tucked them back in the plastic bag. I went out to get the lift. I had to return it to the charging bay to run the end of shift checklist and plug it back in.

It was gone.

I stood there, clutching my bag and staring stupidly at the place where I’d left the lift. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but it still wasn’t there.

Finally, I roused myself and looked around. I could see the packing line, where the next shift workers were pulling on their gloves and adjusting their hard hats, waiting to take over when the whistle blew. A truck driver checked the row of crates that would be loaded as soon as the lift driver for this shift showed up. He should already have been there.

Down at the end of the dock near me, a truck bay stood open with no truck pulled in. Rain and wind howled in.

I stepped over to it and looked down. There was the lift. It had run off the dock and was sitting upright a few feet away from the wall, water pooling over its wheels.

John came around the corner. “Close that damn door, Jesse,” he called. “We don’t need more rain in here.”

Turning to face him, I said, “I got a problem here, sir.”

After one glance at my face, he hurried over to the bay and looked down. “How the hell did you manage to do that, Jesse?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t, really. I left the lift parked for a few minutes while I went in the john.”

Immediately, I winced. Couldn’t I have used another term for the restroom?

John shook his head. “You left it running?”

“Yeah. We always leave them running if it’s just going to be a few minutes.”

He nodded. He knew that was true. “So what do you think happened?”

“I dunno. I didn’t leave it facing the dock, so it couldn’t have just started itself and rolled out. Besides, when I went into the men’s room, the door must have been shut. I would have noticed if it was open like that.” I gestured toward the open bay.

“So you think somebody did this on purpose?”

“Maybe. Or maybe somebody was trying to play a trick on me and hide it and didn’t know how to drive it.”

“They’re not all that hard to drive,” John said. “The tricky part is handling the forks. And somebody had to open the door.”

I sighed. “True, that.” I looked out at the rain pounding down. “I guess I ought to go down there and see if I can get it going and bring it in.”

“No. It’s sitting in water. It’s electric. Even if you could get it started, it would be dangerous. We’ll have to get a tug mule or something to haul it out. And let it dry out completely before we try to start it. Or report it so a mechanic can check it out.”

That made sense to me. “Should I go get a mule?”

Waving the clipboard in his hand, Bucky stomped up to us. He gestured toward me. “This fool drive the lift off the dock?”

He hadn’t looked. How did he know it was down there?

John didn’t answer directly. “We’re figuring out how to get it out of the water and back in here.”

Bucky snorted. “What, and have him on the clock for another few hours? I don’t think so. He shouldn’t make money because of his stupid accident. Unless it wasn’t an accident.”

“What do you mean?” John asked.

Bucky glowered at me. “Maybe he did it on purpose.”

“I’ll punch out,” I offered, “and come back to get it out. Off the clock.”

“What, and not be covered by workman’s comp? So you can sue the company? I don’t think so. You get the hell out of here.” He took a menacing step toward me.

John moved closer to me. “Jesse, you punch out and go. We’ll take care of this.”

The whole thing didn’t make sense to me. Although I had no idea how this could be my fault, I felt responsible for trying to fix it. I started to say something, but the look on John’s face stopped me. I nodded and turned away, heading down the long hallway toward the time clock.

A forklift came rushing toward me, swerving in my direction even as I backed up against the wall.

Diffy was driving. Although the rest of his clothes were dry, his pants were soaking wet to the knees.

Chapter 6

T
he rain was coming down harder than it had been when I’d gone into work. Sheets of water swept across the pavement, and the street itself was a broadening river.

If I was going to have any chance to get the rest of my stuff up out of harm’s way, I had to do it now. That was assuming, of course, that the water in my apartment wasn’t going to rise above street level.

I stopped at the Best Deals for Your Dollar store on the way home. It was crowded with people buying flashlights and batteries, bottles of water, and plastic tablecloths. Plastic tablecloths. That puzzled me for a minute until I realized the shelves that had held tarps were empty.

After I picked up a couple of packages of bungee cords, I looked for rope. I had to settle for a few plastic clotheslines, but they looked pretty strong and wouldn’t stretch. I got in the long checkout line.

Tugging an end of one of the clotheslines free from the packaging, I tested its flexibility and strength. It felt strong enough, but the flexibility wasn’t good. It would have to do. I knew how to tie knots.

Back when I was first locked up, I had a cell buddy called Skipper who was not entirely sane—the first in a long series of randomly assigned people who shared that unfortunate characteristic. He looked like a stereotype of a sailor, skinny and permanently burnt by the sun and salt water, and he had a long history of convictions for stealing sailboats. But it never seemed to slow him down. As soon as Skipper was released, he’d sneak into a marina, choose a likely boat, and sail it away all by himself, which was not an easy feat. He’d sail it around for a few days, then eventually he’d try to sell it, which was usually when he got caught.

When we were sharing a cell, he was obsessed with collecting dental floss, most of it used, and braiding it into ever-thickening ropes. I had nothing better to do, so I worked on it with him. He taught me how to tie all kind of different knots.

Eventually, he used the dental floss ropes to rappel down the outside of the cellblock and then made a try for the outer perimeter. He got caught on the razor wire.

I ended up being drilled for hours about what I knew, which wasn’t much, but I had to concede that I knew about the dental floss. I told them I knew he was making rope—contraband in and of itself—but that I thought he was planning to sell it to other inmates to use as clotheslines in their cells. And maybe fishing lines to pass notes and commissary items from one cell to another.

Likely story, but they couldn’t disprove it. And I was still there. I picked up ninety days in disciplinary segregation. I have never spent a longer ninety days. That daunting experience convinced me the best way to handle doing time was to be as cooperative as I could be with the institution staff and procedure. Basically avoid trouble whenever I could.

I liked to think of Skipper out there, beyond the bay and well into the ocean, sailing on a probably stolen boat into the sunset.

A boat, stolen or otherwise, might come in handy now if the flooding got much worse.

If a single clothesline wasn’t strong enough to hold my stuff up, I could braid three of them together. I had six of them.

As the line of customers inched forward, I ended up standing next to the grocery section of the store. I looked hungrily at the packages of food. The bread and milk were all gone, and as I watched a lady snatched up the last few boxes of cold cereal. What little food I had was in the laundry basket hung from the pipes, but most of it needed to be heated, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to tempt the electrical gods again by using any appliances or lights in my apartment until things dried out considerably. Which might be quite a while. I added a bag of generic trail mix to my purchases and promised myself I wouldn’t open it until I was really hungry.

The lights flickered and went out. The electronic cash register died. The checkout line ceased its glacial forward movement. At least it was dry in here.

We all looked out the big front window. The buildings across the street still had lights.

The manager came rushing out of the tiny office, a calculator in his hand. “You’ll have to add up the purchases with this.” He gave it to the cashier.

“The display won’t work,” she said. “It needs more light than we’ve got.”

Nodding, the manager went back into his office and came back with a flashlight. He shined it onto the calculator. “This work?”

“Yeah,” the cashier said. “But I can’t hold it and use the calculator at the same time.”

With a sigh, the manager took a box of candy on the counter and dumped the contents into a bin. Then he tried to set the flashlight on the box, but it kept rolling over.

He reached below the counter and came up with a stack of plastic bags, placed them on top of the box and nestled the flashlight on top. “How’s that?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess,” the cashier said, “but I got no change.”

“What’d you mean, you got no change?”

“The cash register won’t open. All the change is in there.”

The manager looked at the darkened cash register. He tried pushing a few buttons, but of course, it wouldn’t open. “I got some cash in the office,” he said and hurried away.

He brought out a cash drawer and placed it the
on the counter. “You know how to add everything up on the calculator?” he asked.

“If it’s got a price on it,” she said. “If it don’t, I can’t scan it, can I?”

“Of course not.” The manager picked up the first item on the counter—a box of crackers. “This has a sticker. It’s two twenty-nine. Punch it in.”

“Okay.”

He picked up the next item, a jar of peanut butter. “Three twenty-nine. Punch that in.”

The cashier stared at the calculator. “Now it’s this big long number.”

“Did you hit the plus sign?”

“No. You didn’t say to hit the plus sign.”

The manager’s thin lips got thinner. “Hit the plus sign. Do that every time you add a new item.”

“So how do I get this big long number off?”

“Hit the ‘clear’ button.”

“Okay.”

“Now punch in two twenty-nine. Got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Now the plus sign. Now the three twenty-nine.”

“Okay.”

“What do you have now?”

“Five fifty-eight.”

The manager picked up the next item, a can of chili. “This says one seventy-nine. Punch that it.”

“It’s on sale two for three dollars,” the customer grumbled.

The manager closed his eyes. “Punch in a dollar fifty instead.”

The cashier stared at the calculator. “I already put in the one seventy-nine. How do I get that out?”

“Hit the ‘clear’ button.”

“That took everything off.”

The man in front of me shifted his shopping basket from one hand to the other. “This is gonna take forever.”

I nodded in agreement.

“And they haven’t even gotten to the sales tax. Or making change.”

Again, I nodded.

“I don’t think I need this stuff that badly,” the guy said. He put his basket on an empty shelf beside us and left.

I glanced in his basket. Toothpaste, a package of socks, and some plastic flowers. Nothing I really wanted to buy.

If there’s one thing being locked up for years teaches a person, it’s how to wait patiently. And I wanted the stuff I’d picked out badly enough to wait.

My turn finally came. The manager announced the prices, the cashier punched them into the calculator, and they came up with a total. They seemed to have abandoned the idea of sales tax.

I fished the money out of my pocket, counting out exact change. The bills were wet and limp. The cashier, a bemused expression on her face, smoothed them out and put them under the counter. “Maybe they’ll dry,” she said.

I tucked my purchases in the same bag as my wet clothes and went back out in the cold and wet, heading for home.

Once I was past the back of the courthouse complex going in the direction of my apartment, the neighborhood deteriorated block by block. Every day when I walked by, more and more of the storefronts were vacant, a few with windows cracked or boarded up. Broken fences surrounded weedy patches of yard in front of ill-kept row houses. Even the water cascading next to the curbs looked dirtier and carried more trash.

And the water was definitely getting deeper in the streets. It no longer paused to make large, lazy circles over the storm drains, but just continued rushing on its way, as if there was no room in the storm sewers for any more. There probably wasn’t.

The streetlights overhead flickered a few times and went out. It couldn’t be an automatic turn off because it was daytime; it had been daytime for a few hours now. If they were on light sensors, not timers, they had stayed on because the day was so dark. But why would they have gone out now?

I glanced at the buildings. None of them showed lights. The power must have gone out there, too.

Turning a corner a few blocks from my place, I was confronted by a line of sawhorses mounted with blinking, battery-operated caution lights. Several utility trucks and fire trucks stood in the flooded streets, their lights flashing. I felt like I had stepped onto the garish stage of some surrealistic underwater show.

As I hesitated, a firefighter in bright yellow turnout gear stepped up. “Can’t go any further, Mac,” he said. “Lines are down all over the place. The electric company’s trying to get the power all shut down.”

“How long’s it gonna be?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. But a while.”

Standing there looking stupidly through the gloom toward my apartment, I realized I couldn’t go home. I’d have to find someplace else.

The firefighter glanced in the same direction. “You live down there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s a mandatory evacuation. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be. But everything past here down to the river is flooding anyhow. You got things you need to get?”

“Kind of. I was hoping to get some of my stuff out so it might not get ruined.”

He shook his head. “Tough. You live on the ground floor?”

“Basement.”

He winced. “Don’t know there’s much you could do, anyhow. But I can’t let you past until the electric company says it’s safe. You got someplace to go?”

I shrugged.

“They’re setting up an emergency shelter at the high school,” he said. “At least it’d be a place to get in out of the rain. And they’d feed you. Probably have a cot, too. Maybe dry clothes.”

Great. I could just imagine how welcome I’d be at an emergency shelter. It’d be okay if no one recognized me, but I couldn’t see them not having a couple of cops stationed there. One of them was bound to know who I was.

Kelly had invited me over, but she wouldn’t be home for a while yet. I could stop at the library. If they still had power and the computers were working, I could maybe even find out how much longer they expected it to rain.

I retraced my steps back toward the center of town.

Some lights were on at the library, but it had a big sign on the door that just said, “Closed.” No sanctuary there.

Sanctuary. I thought about churches. Surely a church would let people in who had nowhere else to go in out of the rain.

Two big churches were across from one another a block down from where I was. I turned in that direction.

The first of them had a big hand-lettered sign on it that said, “Closed due to power outage.” How could a church close? But it had. Maybe churches weren’t open all the time like they used to be. Or maybe I was wrong and they never had been.

I went up the steps to the other one and pulled on the huge bronze handle. It didn’t budge. Peering around, I saw a sign that said, “Please use side entrance,” and an arrow pointing down the alley to the side of the building.

The church offices were around there. Through the glass doors, I could see the waiting area was crowded with dripping people, most of them wearing fashionable raincoats and other protection against the weather.

The church must have had an emergency generator. The whole interior was lit, but dimly.

I opened the door and stepped in.

A man with a clipboard approached me. His lip curled back as his eyes traveled over me, from wet boots to soaked watch cap, still lined with the corner of plastic trash bag that Mandy had given me. He drew himself up straighter and sighed. “Are you a member of our congregation?”

When I was a kid, I’d lived mostly in foster homes. In the best one, Mrs. Coleman, the foster mother, had insisted that all the children in her home dress up and attend church with her every Sunday morning for as long as they lived there. I figured I was more in the category of sinner than church-goer now, and since I had no intention of reforming and being saved, at least right now, I hadn’t gone into any churches in the couple of months since my release. But I remembered how peaceful those Sunday mornings had felt, sitting with Mrs. Coleman and listening to the choir. Since I’d gotten off of home detention, I liked to walk downtown when church services were held, listening to the choirs.

I gave the only answer I could. “No.”

“I’m afraid,” the man said, shaking his head, “that we will probably not have enough space or supplies to give shelter to all members of our own congregation who may need it. The church board made a decision that we need to reserve our resources for our own members.”

Take care of their own. Hard to argue with that. It did seem like a surprisingly unchristian attitude. Practical, though.

I turned to go.

“The Red Cross is setting up an emergency shelter at the high school,” the man said. “You could go there.”

He was the second person to suggest that. The high school was all the way across town. The accommodations would be dormitory style, with row after row of cots. I had a pretty good idea of how uncomfortable I would be in that setting, probably never be able to sleep, but it might be a good place to go get something to eat. Maybe even some dry clothes. I could go check it out, at least.

The flooding in the streets was getting worse. The town was hilly, with some fairly high places and some really low. The low ones would probably be underwater. If I picked my route carefully and got to the other side of the railroad tracks on a bridge instead of an underpass, I should be able to make it there.

The aptly named High Street was a good place to start. It did have an underpass for the railroad, but a block or two farther on was a bridge.

I pulled the jacket closer around me and my things and turned into the driving rain.

An occasional car passed, throwing up a wake behind it.

The direction I was heading was away from the river, on higher ground. In my neighborhood, steep streets led down to the water. Downtown, with the county complex and the churches, was fairly flat, and then the town rose gently through neighborhoods with nice houses and a view of the river. The new high school was beyond that.

As I approached one of the railroad underpasses, a couple of cars were stopped at the edge of a big body of water. Someone driving a big 4WD SUV had driven into the flooded area and stalled. People think because they’re 4WD, they can go anywhere. But they’re just machines, with limitations like any machine. Big, expensive machines.

I stopped next to a bus shelter, where another gawker had tried to get out of the rain. The bench inside it looked just as wet as the bench outside.

Water continued to surge into the flooded underpass, swirled lazily around, and continued into a dark tunnel under the embankment beyond. Trash can lids, a lawn chair, tree limbs, and other debris bobbed on the surface.

In the little bit of time I stood staring, the water rose to the window level of the SUV. I hoped the occupants had gotten out and waded to safety.