Nightwork by Joseph Hansen

Author:Joseph Hansen [Hansen, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1683-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-03-14T17:02:00+00:00

12

IT WAS A LAZY rain, the warm, tropical sort that now and then drifts up from Mexico. It fell all night on the shingles above the loft and made sleeping good. It was still coming down from ragged, gray-black clouds when they went their separate ways next morning. Cecil took his van. Dave took the sideswiped car. Rain had leaked into it, probably because the rubber around the doors was rotten. The floor was puddled. The rubber of the wiper blades was also shot. He stopped at a filling station for new ones, then wheeled onto the first of three freeways that would take him out east of Pasadena to a plant called Tech-Rite. That name, and the names Chemiseal and Agroplex on the new batch of waybills taken from Paul Myers’s closet drawer, had interested Dave.

Tech-Rite occupied long buildings far off across empty land backed by rain-shrouded mountains. The buildings were flat-roofed, windowless, featureless. Big white storage tanks loomed behind them. To a security guard in a black rubber hat and poncho, Dave showed his license and explained his business. The guard made a phone call from inside his white stucco booth. Light flickered off his rain-slick poncho from a small black-and-white television set in the booth. He hung up the phone and came down out of the booth and leaned to the car window. A gnarled hand pushed something shiny at Dave, a card enfolded in clear plastic, printed with the name TECH-RITE, the word VISITOR, and some blank lines.

“Write your name on there, will you?” the guard said. “Truth is, I’m supposed to, but I can’t hold a pen too good anymore.” He appeared past retirement age. The raindrops on his drooping, hound-dog face looked like tears. “When your name is on it, pin it to your jacket and I’ll open the gates and you can drive on in.”

Dave did as he was told. The guard continued to lean at the window, watching but probably not seeing. Dave pricked a finger pushing the pin through his lapel. He sucked the finger. “That do it?”

“Fine, thanks.” The guard stepped creakily up into the booth again and shut the door. The wide, high, chainlink gates swung open. Dave drove the rattly car through, and headed it up a two-lane strip of blacktop that glistened in the rain. He passed parking lots filled with cars parked on the bias in neat, shiny rows. He drove on. A sign read EXECUTIVE PARKING LOT. He slowed and almost swung in at the arrow painted on the paving, then saw ahead through the rain another sign—VISITORS. He left the battered Valiant there, among new Audis, Cutlasses, BMWs, and hurried, head down, toward double glass doors that glowed with light in the bleak, unbroken plane of the building front.

He waited an hour for Lorin Shields, in the reception room of offices marked PUBLIC RELATIONS. He was not neglected. He was served tea from a Worcester pot in a Worcester cup and saucer. At a guess, English breakfast tea.

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