Except for an iron works, whose locked yard protected a modern sprawling plant, most of the buildings I passed looked as though only some defiant opposition to gravity kept them upright. Windows were missing or were boarded over; strips of aluminum waved in the wind. It’s a sign of the neighborhood’s desperate job shortage that people will work in these collapsing structures.
To my surprise, Fly the Flag didn’t share the general decay along the avenue. Rose Dorrado’s story had half persuaded me that Frank Zamar was engineering his company’s demise himself, but, if he was, I’d have expected him to let the plant itself run down: a lot of arson is caused by malign neglect—letting buildings carry more power than their wiring can stand, not repairing frayed wires, letting garbage accumulate in strategic corners—rather than outright torching. At least from the outside, Fly the Flag looked in good shape.
Flashlight in hand, I made my way around the exterior. The yard was small, big enough for an eighteen-wheeler to maneuver in if necessary, but not for much more than that. A drive led down to a basement-level loading dock; there were two ground-level entrances.
I walked all the way around the building, looking for holes in the foundation, looking for cuts in the electric cable and gas line leading into the plant, or for footprints in the damp ground, but didn’t see anything unusual. All of the entrances were locked; when I probed with my picklocks, I didn’t feel any obstructions.
I looked at my watch: six-oh-seven. Flashlight trained on the lock, I used my picks to open the rear door. Someone from the Skyway might see me, but I doubted anyone up there cared enough about life down here to call the cops.
Inside the plant, the layout was pretty simple: a large open floor where the giant cutting and pressing machines stood, long tables where people sewed, all dominated by the biggest American flag I’d ever seen. When I shone my flashlight up on it, the stripes looked so soft and rich I wanted to touch them. By climbing up on a tabletop and stretching up a hand, I could just reach the bottom stripe. It felt like a silken velvet, so voluptuous that I wanted to hug it to myself. The careful stitching along the stripes showed the workers believed in the slogan they’d posted above it: “We Fly the Flag Proudly.”
I jumped down and wiped my footprints from the table before continuing to explore. In one corner, space had grudgingly been given over to a tiny canteen, a dirty toilet, and a minute office where Frank Zamar did his paperwork. In an alcove next to the canteen stood a row of beat-up metal lockers, enough that I guessed they must be for employees to store their personal things in during the day.
On the other side of the room, an open-sided service elevator went down to the basement. I used its hand crank to lower myself. The front opened onto the dock; the rear to the storeroom where bolts of fabric were kept. There were hundreds of bolts of all different colors and long spools of braid, even a wire cage holding flagpoles of different lengths. Everything the compleat flag producer required.
It was after six-thirty now, not enough time to check Zamar’s office before Rose Dorrado showed up to prove her zeal as an employee. I wondered idly if she had glued the locks herself: she could be trying to prove she was indispensable by protecting the plant from saboteurs. Collecting enough dead rats to stink up the heating vents seemed like a horrible job, but I supposed it all depended on how determined you were.
I saw a set of iron stairs leading to the main floor and was starting up them when I heard a noise above me, a thud of the kind a door makes when it closes. If it was Rose Dorrado, I was okay, but if not—I turned off the flashlight, sticking it in my pack, and crept upward by feel. I could hear footsteps; when my eyes were level with the floor, my view was blocked by a giant sewing machine, but I could see a cone of light wobbling around the worktables—someone picking their way. If it was someone with a legitimate reason to be there, they would have switched on the fluorescent overheads.
A pair of high-tops appeared around the edge of the sewing machine, laces slapping against the floor. An amateur: a pro would have tied his shoes. I ducked down. My picklocks jangled against the iron banister. The feet above me froze, turned, and started running.
I jumped up the stairs and reached the intruder just as he was opening the door. He flung his flashlight at me. I ducked a second too late and reeled as it hit the top of my head. By the time I regained my balance and got out the fire exit after him, he had cleared the fence and was scrambling up the embankment toward the Skyway. I followed him, but I was too far behind to bother trying to climb the fence; he was already hoisting himself over the concrete barricade next to the road.
I heard horns blaring, and the raw screech of skidding tires, and then the roar of engines as the traffic came back to life.