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.
I walked towards them. When it was clear that they weren’t going to move, I walked around them. I felt an inexplicable humiliation, like a child who later regrets walking away from a certain ass-kicking at the hands of the schoolyard bully.
I heard them chuckle behind me, and I turned. The dark one with the pushbroom blew me a kiss. Then they both laughed.
I walked out of the warehouse. In the parking lot I noticed that my fists were balled and shoved deeply in my pockets. Climbing behind the wheel of my car, I felt weak and very small.
JOE DANE LIVED IN old Silver Spring, on a street where the houses were built very close to the curb and had large, open porches and deep backyards. I parked my heap in front of his place and was up on his porch in six short steps.
I knocked on the door, behind which I could hear children laughing and playing and falling harmlessly to