If he hadn’t cleared all six lanes, I’d hear sirens soon. When a couple of minutes passed without them, I turned and went back down the hill. It was close to seven now; the morning shift should be arriving. I trudged across the muddy ground, reflexively rubbing the sore spot where the flashlight had hit my head.
As I turned around the corner of the building, heading toward the front, I could see Rose Dorrado crossing the yard, her red hair standing out like a flare in the dull day. By the time I got to the main entrance, Rose had the front unlocked and was already inside. A few other people were coming through the gate into the yard, talking quietly to each other. They looked at me without much curiosity as they passed.
I found Rose at the metal lockers, pulling out a blue smock and hanging up her coat. The inside of her locker was pasted with Bible verses. Her lips were moving, perhaps in prayer, and I waited for her to finish before tapping her shoulder.
She looked at me, surprised and pleased. “You got here early! You can talk to people before Mr. Zamar shows up.”
“Someone else was here early, a youngish man. I didn’t get a good look, but maybe in his early twenties. Tall, but his cap was pulled down too low for me to see his face. He had a thin mustache.”
Rose frowned in worry. “Some man was here trying to do something? It’s what I said, it’s what I tried to warn Mr. Zamar about. Why didn’t you stop him?”
“I tried, but he was too fast for me. We could call the police, see if he left fingerprints—”
“Only if Mr. Zamar says it’s all right. What was he trying to do, this man?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know that, either. He heard me and ran off, but I think he was heading for the stairs down to the basement. What’s there, besides all the fabric?”
She was too upset to wonder how I knew about the fabric in the basement, or to question where I had been when the intruder heard me. “Everything. You know, the boiler, the drying room, the dry-cleaning room, everything for running the factory, it’s all down there. Dios, we can’t be safe now? We have to keep worrying is someone in here planting a bomb in the morning?”
9
The Fog of…What?
“Business is full of risks. I can handle this fine without you butting in.” Frank Zamar’s stubby hands moved restlessly over his desk, like birds uneasy about landing on a branch.
“According to Rose, you’ve had quite a history of sabotage in the last few weeks: rats in the heating ducts, Krazy Glue in the door locks, and now someone breaking in at six this morning. Aren’t you worried about what’s going on?”
“Rose means well, I know she does, but she had no right to call you in.”
I looked at him in exasperation. “So you’d rather let your plant go up in smoke than figure out who is doing this, or why?”
“No one’s going to burn up my plant.” His square face sagged around the corners; the bravado of his words wasn’t matched by the worry in his eyes.
“Do you have the local gangbangers so pissed off at you that you’re scared to report them? Is this about ‘protection’ payoffs, Zamar?”
“No, it damn well isn’t about paying protection.” He slapped the desk for emphasis, but I wasn’t convinced.
“I’d like to talk to your crew, to see if anyone seems to be hiding something. Or maybe they have an idea about the guy who broke into the plant this morning.”
“No way do you talk to any of my workers! Who told you to mind my business, anyway? You think I’m going to pay you for lurking around my factory?”
He was muttering his complaints, not shouting, which seemed ominous to me: a man afraid of what I would learn. I nodded, though, at his words: no one was going to pay me for spending my time at Fly the Flag.
As I stood to leave, I said casually, “You wouldn’t be doing this yourself, would you?”
“Doing what—you mean, putting dead rats in my own heating system? You are crazy, you, you—nosy bitch! Why would I do such an insane thing?”
“You laid off eleven people this fall. Your business is in trouble. You wouldn’t be the first person to try to sell your plant to the insurance company—solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it, if sabotage forced you out of business.”
“I laid people off because of the economy. As soon as the economy improves, I’ll hire them back. Now get out of here.”
I took a card out of my bag and laid it on his desk. “Call me when you decide you can tell me who has you so scared you won’t even protect your own business.”
I left the office and walked across the floor to where Rose was stitching an intricate gold logo onto an outsize navy banner. She looked up at me but didn’t stop moving the heavy fabric through the machine. The racket on the floor was intense, what with the sewing machines, the giant electric shears, and the industrial steam pressers; I squatted so I could yell directly into her ear.
“He claims nothing’s going on, despite the evidence. He’s scared of someone or something, too scared to talk about it, in my opinion. Do you have any idea what that could be?”
She shook her head, her eyes on the work in front of her.