On my way up the walk to the entrance I passed a silver Dodge SRT8. I squinted through the tinted windows. It had real gauges, not an iPad screen, satisfactory for a muscle car. Maybe if Frank Guzzo paid my outstanding bill I could afford a set of hubcaps.
I sighed and went on into the nondescript building that housed the offices: a working plant doesn’t waste money on corporate frills. No one staffed the entrance, but a signboard listed offices by their function, from Information Technology to sales offices for private, industrial or commercial ventures. I found Human Resources, second floor, and climbed a flight of bare metal stairs.
At the HR office, a man in a hard hat was arguing with a woman behind a gunmetal desk: he needed two more hours to round out a full workweek, but she wasn’t budging. “Sorry, Arnie, not my call, you know that. You gotta do it through dispatch.”
“Mavis, I wouldn’t be here if Shep had given me the hours, but it’s the difference between coverage and the exchanges, you know that.”
“I do know it, which is why I can’t fudge your hours: Mr. Sturlese audits those time sheets himself, and I cannot go into the computer—” She caught sight of me and broke off to ask what I needed.
The man in the hard hat moved aside so I could approach the desk.
“I’m looking for Sebastian Mesaline,” I said.
“Not on our payroll,” Mavis said.
“He was being considered for a job at Sturlese.”
“I never heard of him. They never asked me to put him in the system.” Mavis crossed her arms, her mouth set in an uncompromising line: she was queen of her fief and questions about her rule were not welcome.
“Could you look him up? Maybe someone else put him in without consulting you.”
I spelled the name. Mavis’s nostrils flared—she didn’t like being challenged, but I leaned over the desk, trying to look authoritative. Maybe I just looked scary, because she typed in Mesaline, grumbling under her breath.
“Told you!” She turned the monitor so I could see it, triumph in her face. No results for M-E-S-A-L-I-N-E. Make sure you are spelling the name correctly or start a new search.
“Who are you?” a voice demanded behind me.
I turned around to see a man about my age with a hard square face, white shirt and tie but no jacket—the uniform of managers or engineers at industrial plants.
“She came in here demanding information about some guy who never worked here,” Mavis said.
“Sebastian Mesaline,” I said. “Someone told me Sturlese might be offering him a job.”
“You his ma, checking up on her boy?” the man said.
“Nope. I’m a private investigator, looking for Mr. Mesaline.” I pulled out a card. “And you are?”
While the man frowned over my card, Arnie slipped past him into the corridor.
“You with the auto parts Warshawskis or the hockey?”
“I’m with the private investigating Warshawskis,” I said. “Looking for Sebastian Mesaline.”
“People must not want to tell you about him, if that’s how you got beat up so bad.”
I smiled. “The guy on the other end is in intensive care today, so it doesn’t hurt as much as you might think. And you are?”
He frowned some more, as if worried that revealing his name might be a sign of weakness. “Brian Sturlese. I manage this facility, and I can promise you that kid doesn’t work here.”
“Who said he was a kid?” I asked.
Sturlese gave a fake laugh. “Figure of speech.”
“What about Boris Nabiyev? He knows Mr. Mesaline because they’ve worked together on the Virejas Tower. Would Nabiyev have offered Sebastian Mesaline a job without consulting you?”
“Nabby isn’t on the payroll,” Sturlese said, flashing a warning look at Mavis. “He does freelance projects for us from time to time. Maybe one of my brothers sent him to Virejas Tower, to oversee our part of the pour.”
Mavis didn’t need any warning glares; at Nabiyev’s name she’d become a whirlwind of efficient administrator, typing so fast her fingers blurred on the keyboard, swiveling to consult documents in a filing cabinet and returning to her keyboard without looking up.
“Going back to your idea that Sebastian Mesaline is a young guy, a kid, I’m wondering if Mr. Nabiyev talked about him, if maybe he said something that stuck in your mind even if you don’t remember exactly what.”
Sturlese debated that point with himself and decided it was okay to answer. “Could be. There was a young civil engineer at the Virejas site who approached him about a job here, but Nabiyev thought he was a lightweight, and now that you mention it, it could have been this boy Sebastian.”
I nodded judicially, as if Sturlese had made a credible argument and I believed him. “Sebastian Mesaline has been missing for over a week. Is Mr. Nabiyev here now? I’d like to know the last time he saw Mr. Mesaline.”
“He isn’t here, but I’ll definitely tell him you were asking.”
I thanked Sturlese, as if he were doing me a favor, instead of helping me paint a bigger target on my head so that Nabiyev wouldn’t have any trouble spotting me when he came after me.