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.
TWELVE
THE 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