by Rachel Renee
“Bienvenidos,” she repeats, standing up, and reaching her hands out to grasp mine in welcome.
“Gracias,” I reply, allowing her to grab ahold of my hand and shake it in between both of hers.
After the niceties, she supplies me with a badge and ushers me through another set of doors, into the general office area. People are working behind desks, heads bent over computers or pressed up against a phone. We walk past a huge room surrounded with glass where people are hurriedly moving about, none in seats, computers on high tables where other people were discovered standing and typing. “Research and Development,” the secretary responds when she sees I’ve stopped to observe. One of the groups I’ll be working with. She grasps my suit jacket above my elbow and pulls me faintly to get me moving again. Directly past the R&D office is a set of rooms with closed doors, five on either side of me. We stop at the last door on the left, and the woman points to the metal sign attached to the door. My name is engraved already, my title directly underneath.
“Please let me know if there’s anything you need.” She swiftly moves back in the direction we just came.
I open the large wooden door, finding my office fully furnished, just like I found the apartment. There are files and papers stacked up on the metal desk as if someone left on a Friday and never returned. Dom did say they lost their last engineer. I thought maybe he simply left, but as I search through the office, the disarray of everything tells me something else happened. He planned to come back, but something has kept him from that.
Before I venture too far in, I open up the application on my phone once more, checking for possible cameras, and am happy to find that none have been discovered within the confines of the office.
The laptop on the desk is open, but it seems as if the battery is dead. I search for the cord and find it in a desk drawer that looks as if it were once ransacked and then someone tried to clean up quickly so they threw everything haphazardly back inside. It was a miracle I found what I was looking for. I spot an outlet on the floor under the seating area, plug the computer in immediately, and pause a moment before trying to start it up.
While waiting, I rummage around the desk, glancing at the papers stacked on either side and even toward the back. Until I take the time to look, it all appears illegible to me. My eyes roam everything in front of me—it’s going to take a while to get this place in order.
I’m thankful there are two filing cabinets shoved in the corner of the office. It’ll be good to have a place to store this mess after I’ve sorted it out. That’s assuming there is space left within the cabinets to put anything. Both locks are popped, so I open the top drawer of the first cabinet and find it empty. The second and third, the same. The bottom drawer is so jampacked I can hardly pull it open. A large piece of fabric was holding it in place and after I remove the lab coat, I realize there is nothing in this drawer either. The cabinet on the right is the same—not a thing has been stored in the safety of the file drawers.
I hear the telltale sound of the Mac firing up. It opens on the homepage without even prompting me for a password. Sitting in the well-worn, pleather office chair, I set to work on searching through files located on the computer. I’m surprised by all the secure documents that weren’t, in fact, secure. If the wrong people got ahold of this information, it could mean bad news for the company. While I’m not here to keep the facility safe, per se, I don’t want to be the source of confidential files being leaked. I get into the settings immediately and set up a password to protect the device and myself.
There’s a slight rap on the door and instinctively, I shout out, “Come in!” I hear shuffling in the hallway but the knob does not move. “Entrar,” I say in the native language. This time, the knob moves and the door swings open.
The man who enters is old, well past retirement age and most likely knocking on death’s door. His hair, what is left on his head, is stark white. His skin sags and wrinkles just like the button-up shirt he wears that is partially tucked into the black pants covering his short legs. I stand from the chair, moving quickly in his direction.
“Posso aiutarti?” I ask if I can help him since he’s standing in the open door, unmoving.
He turns at my words and grabs something off of a cart I didn’t see from where I was sitting. When his body slowly comes upright again, there’s a manila envelope and a couple of white ones in his outstretched hand. “Posta.”
I reach for the objects, barely grasping them when he lets go. “Gracias,” I say to the man. His legs carry him sluggishly back through the threshold, his back hunched as if it’s permanently fixed in the position from his work pushing the cart and delivering the mail all day.
I shut the door behind him once he’s fully through it. The mail has my name on it, which catches me off guard. It’s posted from the United States and I only arrived last night, so who is already sending me things?
The manila envelope is opened first. It’s a file for George Diaz. Apparently, the engineer I’m replacing. Says he disappeared two weeks ago and no one has heard from him since. A letter from Thompson is behind the file.
We’re thinking he may have come across something he shouldn’t have. Let us know if you see any signs of foul play while you’re there.
My eyes roam the office again. I’d say from how I found this place, there could have been something off the radar happening here. I choose to keep the info to myself for now. This office needs further investigation. The man could have been a total slob, so I don’t want to jump to any conclusions just yet.
Envelope number two holds a single sheet with a name and phone number on it. In the third envelope, I find the same but a different name and number typed. I’m not exactly sure what to do with the information, if I’m supposed to call the numbers or wait for them to contact me, so I snap a shot of both contacts and shred the paper in the machine located next to the desk. I put the file of the previous engineer back in the manila envelope, prepared to bring it with me upon leaving today.
My mind wanders to Diaz. What had he discovered? Or maybe he got fed up. I plan to search for that answer today. Among all of this paperwork, there has got to be something which will lead me in one direction or another. Unless someone took whatever valuable information George discovered, and in that case, no information could mean we’ve got a bigger problem than we thought.
I spend the next four hours sifting through the mess that was left for me. Most of it is were documents filled with numbers, inventory counts, checklists. All of those I collect into a single pile, placing them in a folder and storing them in the once-empty filing cabinet. It’s boring work, but by the time there’s another knock on the door, I’ve gotten the majority of the desk cleared. Unfortunately finding nothing of consequence.
“Entrar,” I shout out, not knowing the language of the person on the other side of the door.
A Hispanic man saunters through the door without speaking. I stand as he gets close to the desk. He glances to my injury, but his eyes quickly avert back down to mine.
“Te puedo ayudar?” I ask as he’s said nothing thus far. The people here are quite awkward. No one announces themselves when they come into the office. There’s a look of determination on the man’s face as he reaches in his waistband for something I hadn’t noticed until now.
“There’s a call for you,” he finally replies in perfect English. He hands me the device he pulled from its holder at his side.
“Me?”
“You’re the new engineer, right?”
“Yes, sir.” I pull the cordless phone up to my ear. “This is Sanchez. What can I do for you?”
“You’re needed in development immediately.”
“I’ll be right there. Where…” I don’t get the opportunity to ask how to find the person on the other line as he’s already hung up the phone.
“I can take you,” the man in my office offers.
“I appreciate it. Liam Sanchez.” I put my hand out to shake the outstretched one of
the individual on the other side of the desk before handing his device back to him.
“Olmos.” We shake and he immediately turns, heading back to the door. “We better get going.”
Unsure of what I’ll find, I grab a notepad and pen from the desk and hurry out of the office in the direction of Olmos, the only name he gave, who is leading me to my destination. We don’t head toward the R&D on this floor. “I hope they realize I’m not acquainted with this place yet.”
He turns his head but doesn’t stop walking.
“First day.” I smile slightly.
He shrugs his shoulders and turns back around. Okay then. Once we reach the end of the hall, Olmos opens the door to the staircase and we ascend them at a quick pace, me following his lead of only touching every other stair. The door at the top of the two flights is wide open, the fluorescent light even brighter than what we just traversed through.
I’ve never been in a place where people work so quietly. I hear machines and typing on keyboards, a fan running overhead, and even a couple of coughs, but no voices. Why aren’t people talking to each other? I follow the man but glance around the room as we zigzag through the hard-working citizens to get to our destination. There are many people, and only occasionally does one pull his or her eyes away from their work to see who has entered the space. It’s so eerie I myself am afraid to talk.
As we approach where the situation is, I finally hear the sounds of hushed voices. Four men are gathered around a rather large table, pointing and arguing. When Olmos and I reach the table, he turns and bids me goodbye before hurrying off. There was a man bent down close to where I landed and he stands, a screwdriver pointed at me as he talks.
“We’ve been over this one thousand times, if we don’t connect this to the main server, it’s not going to work properly.”
“Then connect it to the server.” My initial reaction to his comment causes a grimace to form on the man’s already distraught face.
“The table was built too far from it.”
I want to say, let’s move the table, but I’m afraid my snide remark will upset the man further, as I’m sure they’ve already discussed this. “What is it you are wanting to happen?”
“Rebuild it. I’m tired of coming up here every day to fix a problem that would be null and void had this been installed properly and had the ability to make a permanent connection to our servers. Wi-Fi is not strong enough to keep the connection and when it loses it mid-transaction, the components jam and I have to come up and get it in working order once more.”
“What if we get a signal extender?”
He pulls his lower lip in, boring a hole into my head as he ponders my apparently idiotic question. “Sorry. My guess is you’ve already tried this.” If his look didn’t say so, his silence did the trick.
The other men have gathered around me now. Other than moving the thing, I’m at a loss for what we should do. So I ask the men surrounding me to make suggestions. “Since I’m unfamiliar with what has been happening, please tell me what’s been suggested and what we’ve already tried.” One of the men translates exactly what I said to another man who must not understand English well. “Lo siento, señor.” I apologize because I didn’t even think twice. The other man says not to worry, he doesn’t mind translating for his colleague. We continue, the men filling me in on the predicament.
Being unaware of what this production table actually does, I finally ask, “What kind of strain does that put on the facility to have this out of commission?” I didn’t realize I’d need it, but the Kaizen approach, the business philosophy of continuous improvement I’d read about, is going to come into play.
The six of us converse for a good forty-five minutes. This has been an issue since before its initial installation six months ago. I ask why multiple times, to help them see the real solution to the problem without being obvious I’m trying to get them to figure this out on their own. The conversation between the two groups gets heated at times, but by the end, I realize this is my first act as their new boss and I’m the one who needs to make the tough decision—the one the group can’t get to on their own, even though both sides have noted it to be the best course of action multiple times. They just couldn’t agree simultaneously. “Starting next week, this machine will be out of order until it can be disassembled and reassembled in its new location.”
The technician seems satisfied, but the group of men look as if they’re going to argue. The one that seems to be the leader speaks up, “We will make do. Thank you.” I was surprised by the response but happy to have the problem solved.
It feels good to have done something here, made a small impact on the first day doing my cover job. There’s a little pep in my step as I meander through the expansive room. A small group of individuals is huddled over a desk near the door to go downstairs. The way they’re conversing, heads close and voices muffled, seems suspicious so I slow and walk a different way, hoping to get to a position in which I can hear what they’re saying without being noticed.
They are speaking Spanish and I can’t get as close as I’d like but I do catch a couple of words I learned recently. Arpon…heroin, and coca…cocaine. There’s obviously some drug talk going on, but could they be users or is there more to the conversation? I get a little closer, pretending like I’m checking out a bulletin board a couple of feet from them. The term narcos is thrown around and suddenly I hear shushing. I think they’ve noticed me standing close because the conversation gets quieter. One of the deep voices growls, “No hacer bomba.” Keep your mouth shut.
I go right on about my business with the bulletin board, pulling a couple of out-of-date items off the wall and crumpling them, hoping the group thinks I didn’t actually hear anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice them point once more in my direction and disband. That’s my cue to move on as well. I take a good look at the three of them before they’re entirely out of sight. My job is causing suspicion in everyone. The tallest one has the wackiest looking mustache I’ve ever seen. It’s as thick as Tom Selleck’s but the ends stick out and up as if he’s trying for a Poirot, and his facial hair is too coarse to get it to cooperate. It should make him easy to find in the future and describe to Dom if I need more info. The other two are nondescript. Nothing about them stands out, including their plain tan slacks and black collared polo shirts. I try to memorize their faces but I don’t want them to know I’m looking in their direction at all, so I move completely out of the doorway and simply peer around the frame.
The “Mustache” heads in my direction, either because he sees me spying or needs to make an exit. Either way, I need to move. Taking the stairs two at a time like I did on the way up, I make quick work of getting to the lower landing.
“Hola, señor. Encontraste lo que buscabas?”
Did I find what I was looking for? Shit! I turn back to him, the look on his face questioning and when his hand reaches toward the back of his waistband, my hand goes mechanically to the weapon I’ve got in my own.
6
I KEEP my hand on my gun but am slow to draw. “Si,” I answer. I quickly explain to the man the problem I was handling and about the fact it is my first day. I watch intently any movement, even slight, he makes. My Spanish is broken, and I’m not even sure I spoke the correct words, but he eventually pulls his hand from behind his back, empty. I keep mine tucked into the front of my jacket, my coat hiding the weapon from view.
“I see, señor. It looked like you were lost.” His left brow rises, but there is no other movement on his face.
I laugh nervously. “I was. And curious. I mean”—curious wasn’t the correct word—"I wanted to walk through the office among the people.”
“These are not your people,” he sneers. “You may work here, but you are not one of us.”
I feel the grimace come over my face. I get it. Doesn’t mean I like it. I need them to see me as one of them, to unearth the man I’m in search of. “I understand. But, as long as I’m here, I will treat
the workers with respect and do my best to make sure what I’m undertaking is beneficial for the team.”
His head tilts back, chin raised. “Next time you’re lost, maybe just ask someone for help?”
“I’ll do that. Thanks.” I remove my hand from my weapon, the flap of my coat keeping it contained, and reach out to offer the man a greeting. He smacks my hand away as he slides past me, moving quickly down the stairs.
“Friendly group around here,” I mumble as I turn and follow in his footsteps. I see I’m going to have to be more cautious about how long I linger in an open area. I didn’t expect to be well-loved my first day, but I didn’t believe I’d almost get a gun drawn on me either.
There’s a buzz in my pocket the moment I step foot back in my office. Dom says he’s ready to go home and wondering how much longer I will be. I’ll have to talk this through with him. My nights may be longer than he’s used to and since he has a family, he shouldn’t have to rely on me to get him home. Because I’m partly responsible for the destruction of his truck, I’m going to contact someone about making sure he is compensated and he may purchase a new vehicle.
I send a message back to Dom, telling him I can leave now. It’s been one hell of a first day. Honestly, it’s been one hell of a first two. If this is any indication of how the mission is going to go, I’m going to have my work cut out for me. I shouldn’t be shocked. I didn’t get into this line of work for the ease at which the cases come together. I enjoy the challenge as much as anyone. It’s just the fact that I’m on several people’s shit list in such a short amount of time doesn’t bode well.
I collect the items I plan to take home with me, close the office door, and head in the direction of the parking lot. Dom is standing on the far side of the truck when I approach, leaning on the car parked next to mine, pretending not to notice me until I get in the driver’s side. Once I’ve started the truck, he looks around the half-filled lot before getting in the vehicle himself. He didn’t take such care getting out this morning, so I’m speculative about his behavior now.