Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,21
specific issues,” he said calmly. He deliberately kept his voice mild as he waited to hear what the other man would say.
The foreman took a step back, his hands on his hips. He wore one of those yellow safety vests, with his employee card dangling from a lanyard on top. Grabbing the front edges of the vest, he glared. “Well, your investigation doesn’t have anything to do with anything down here.”
“How do you know?” Johan asked in a mild tone. He studied the other men, who were all collecting around the first man. Nobody but the foreman wore a name tag, so Johan carefully took a moment to study their faces so he’d remember them later.
“We haven’t been told about anything,” said one of the men in the back.
“Do the higher-ups talk to you about things going on in the company all the time?” Johan asked with genuine curiosity.
Finding out how a company worked was just as important as how it wasn’t working. For all Johan knew, everybody was involved in this scam from top to bottom. And yet he still hadn’t found any proof of any internal scam, so maybe it was his mind-set that automatically determined everybody was guilty until proven innocent.
“If it’s major, yes,” the foreman said, “so you need to get the hell out of here.”
“And why is that?” Johan asked, not moving.
“Well, for one thing,” one of the guys said, “you don’t have safety boots on.” A couple guys around him grinned because that was generally a safe bet.
“Quite right, I don’t,” he said. “But no machinery’s operating at the moment.” Turning to look at the truck, he asked, “What are you unloading?”
“Boxes,” the foreman in front sneered. “And, if you don’t get out of here, we’ll call our manager down here.”
Johan spun around and said, “Please do.”
That stopped the foreman flat-footed. He looked at the others and frowned.
“Are you really doing an investigation?” asked one of the men in the back. It was the same one who had mocked Johan over the lack of safety boots.
Johan nodded slowly. “Yes, I really am,” he said.
“About what?”
“Something that affects every level of the company,” he said. “Obviously I’m not at liberty to give you too many details.”
“Well, you can give us one,” the foreman snapped.
“Theft and smuggling. There’s two.” He said it more to see their reaction, hoping they would react in a way that would help him somehow.
At that, several of the men’s faces turned bleach-white, which Johan noted with interest, but the foreman in the front just turned bubbly red. “Well, you sure as hell don’t need to be rooting around accusing us,” he roared.
“Did I say I was?”
“You’re down here,” he snapped. “That’s all the evidence I need.”
“Interesting,” he said. “So the fact that I’m down here checking things out bothers you? So far, I haven’t seen anything, but, at the moment, it looks like you guys are trying to interfere with my job.”
That set the men back a little as well.
Johan waved a hand at them. “Carry on with your jobs,” he said. “I’m just here to observe.”
They frowned and shuffled their feet, but the man in charge nodded at them and motioned at the truck. “Get moving,” he said. “We haven’t got all day. We’ve got two more trucks coming in.”
“How do you move the material from here to the research center?”
“We don’t.” The guy looked at Johan in surprise. “Why would we? That would defeat the purpose. If they’re on a truck already, you might as well just truck them over there.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Johan said in a mild tone.
The guy stared at him in confusion.
Johan just smiled and stepped out of the way when the men returned to the truck to unload the rest of the boxes. Because he was watching, of course, they went about it in a fast and efficient manner, trying to look good. And he could appreciate that.
While they did their thing, Johan wandered around and studied the view, the access, the cameras, and security. The guy who was obviously in charge walked over and said, “If you’ve got any questions, ask me please, and don’t disturb the guys.”
“I’ll ask whoever I want to ask,” Johan said, without even turning around. He knew that would insult almost everybody and wanted to see what would set off these guys. Were they company men, or would they be upset at their employer and be ready to haul ass out of here?