The Day Steam Died

by Brown, Dick

  Candi smiled at Rick. Her robe opened when she stood up and pressed her naked body against his bulging sweat pants. With her arms wrapped around his neck, she kissed him, thrusting her tongue down his throat. Her robe dropped to the floor as she steered him out of the kitchen and toward their rumpled bed.

  “I’ll remember this time,” she whispered in his ear.

  At three in the afternoon, Rick and Candi were back sitting around the kitchen table, sipping black coffee after finishing off a frozen pepperoni and cheese pizza that tasted like cardboard.

  “We’ve been living together for a few months now and I’ve heard most of your life story, but one thing still puzzles me. Where did the nickname Candi come from? I mean, you’re Polish, right? That doesn’t sound very Polish for a girl that went to Catholic schools.”

  “It’s a long story,” she said and reached for cigarettes in her purse.

  “We’ve got the rest of the day,” Rick joked.

  She found her cigarettes and pulled one out to light. She glanced at Rick’s disapproving glare, put the cigarette back into the pack, crumpled it up, and tossed it with the lighter into the trash can.

  “Thanks, I appreciate you not smoking. Wish you would stop completely. They’re really bad for you.”

  “I just might do that. I only started because I was mad about my parents’ deaths. It sort of helped me get through my grief. That was a rough time. Until I met you, I haven’t had any reason to stop.” Candi flashed a wicked grin. “It was kind of fun to push your buttons by smoking in your office at first, but I don’t want to push those buttons anymore. I have more enjoyable ones to push now.

  “Anyway, back to my nickname. My mom couldn’t have any more kids after my birth, so she named me Bogdana, after my grandmother, which means Gift of God in Polish. In high school I wasn’t good at sports, but my best friend, Karen, who was a great softball player, talked me into signing up for the Intramural team during PE. During my first game, the score was tied and it was my turn at bat with two outs. Karen was on third base. I was afraid the ball was going to hit me and ducked back every time a pitch was thrown. I had let two strikes go by and Karen yelled at me, ‘Hey, candy ass, stand in there and hit the damn ball!’

  The name stuck at school, but my parents didn’t like it and forbid Karen to use it when she was at our house. So I modified it to Candi, which I liked better than my real name. My parents hated Candi but accepted it as part of my teenage rebellion. I guess they figured if that was the worst thing I did, they could live with it. So there you have it.”

  “Did you bring her home?”

  “What?”

  “Your friend Karen. Did you bring her in from third to score?”

  “I swung at the next pitch and missed it by a mile. Okay, my turn. Why did they name you Rick instead of it being a nickname for Richard?”

  “My story is much shorter and less interesting. My Momma and Daddy didn’t go to the movies very often. Actually, I don’t ever remember them going to a movie together, but she would make a point to see Ricardo Montalban, the great Latin lover. She would go to the matinee any time he came to our theater and be home before Daddy got home from work.”

  “So Rick is your nickname for Ricardo?”

  “She didn’t think a Mexican name like Ricardo would go over very well in our WASP town. She shortened it to just plain Rick. She never told anyone why. I didn’t even know until after Daddy died. Momma, Wil, and I were sitting around the kitchen table after the funeral and our friends had left. She just started talking to us about all sorts of things she’d kept secret for most of their married life. It was like we weren’t even in the room. She really had a crush on Montalban. She would have been mortified if Daddy had found out. Here she was, the epitome of a good Christian woman, pillar of the church, model wife, and mother harboring feelings for another man, a Mexican movie star at that. I think she was just venting her soul. We’ve never spoken of it since. She would probably deny she ever said it if I brought it again.”

  “That’s romantic. It’s a woman thing you would never understand. Another thing: why do you still call your parents Momma and Daddy? You’re a grown adult.”

  “It’s a Southern thing, you Yankees wouldn’t understand,” Rick said then chuckled.

  “You’re right about that. But she sounds sweet. Am I ever going to get to meet her?”

  “We can swing down to Bankstowne after we’ve delivered Mr. Gaines’ leather jacket and had a chance to poke around the S & T Warehouse. Maybe get a scoop on what’s going on there. I think I can clear it with Dan.”

  “Oh, do we have to talk about work? It’s much more fun to hang out here having sex and eating bad pizza all day.”

  “Look at the bright side, maybe we can get our old room 515 back at the Marriott.”

  Chapter 42

  “Sadly, the day finally came when Bankstowne Shops no longer fulfilled its once indispensable role in the modern Coastline Railway operations.”

  Return to Winston-Salem

  Rick and Candi managed to get their eyes back to their original color before going to work Monday morning after New Year’s. She covered her dark circles with makeup, but there was no way to hide Rick’s droopy eyelids. He was anxious to get back to work and to Winston-Salem to follow up on a possible contact at Sam’s warehouse.

  Rick didn’t waste any time and headed straight for Dan’s office. He hesitated at the door and said, “Good morning, Dan,” before walking in. “Have a good holiday?” Rick didn’t feel as cheerful as he tried to sound.

  Dan sat at his desk, his tie not quite straight. He pressed his palm against his forehead and sighed. “Yeah, we had a quiet night at home. We watched the ball drop on Times Square with Gretchen home from Virginia for the holidays. Okay, what’s up? You didn’t come in here to talk about my holiday.”

  Rick took a deep breath. “I need to go back to Winston-Salem. I’ve stumbled onto a possible lead on Sam Johnson’s operation. At the Dixie Classics basketball tournament, a drunk spilled beer down the back of my jacket. When I confronted him about it, he gave me his leather jacket and took my parka to have it cleaned.”

  “Nice gesture, but what does that have to do with Sam Johnson?”

  “Are you ready for this? This guy won the jacket as employee of the year at S & T Distribution Company. Can you believe the luck? He’s the warehouse foreman! What better excuse could I have for getting inside the building than pretending to check and make sure he got his jacket back? If I can work him a little, maybe I can turn him into a source and find out what’s going on in there. Candi can stay out of sight and shoot the action on the loading dock.”

  “It’s pretty thin, but it’s all we have. Be careful, the word is that Johnson’s tied in with the Mafia and one of their goons is on site.”

  “Uh, one more thing. I need to make a trip to Bankstowne soon and check on my mother. She’s been down with arthritis and can’t do her crocheting anymore and calls me up in tears.”

  “Why don’t you pay her a visit after you finish up at Winston? It would be a good opportunity to introduce her to Candi.” Dan raised his left eyebrow and took a sip of that nasty imported coffee he loved.

  “Thanks, boss, why didn’t I think of that?” he said with a huge grin. “See you Thursday.”

  Rick left Dan’s office before he had time to change his mind. He needn’t have worried.

  Dan made no secret of his confidence in Rick at staff meetings. It was obvious to everyone in the newsroom that Rick was Dan’s favorite. Most accepted it because Rick was a good reporter.

  The sun reflected off mounds of snow from the Christmas storm piled up on both sides of the highway, forcing Rick to don his sun glasses. All six lanes of I-40 coming in and going out of Raleigh were clear, but many side roads and back streets along the way were still
reduced to one lane.

  Candi curled up in the passenger’s seat and slept most of the way to Winston-Salem. Rick glanced at her occasionally with an approving smile. She’d succumbed to the cat effect, as Rick called it. The warmth of the sun streaming through the windshield and the comfort of her life right now had the effect of a narcotic.

  Coming through Greensboro where I-85 intersects I-40, an eighteen-wheeler changed lanes and forced Rick to hit his brakes and swerve to miss the trailer. Candi was jolted from her nap and thrown into the dash from her seat.

  “Jesus, Rick, what was that? You damn near broke my neck.”

  “I’m sorry. That big rig almost slammed into me. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but my neck will be stiff tomorrow. How close are we?”

  Before Rick could answer, a green and white highway sign whizzed by: Winston-Salem 10 miles. Candi rotated her shoulders and rubbed her neck.

  After a long silence, they finally approached the Welcome to Winston-Salem, sign. Candi turned toward Rick with the most serious expression he had seen on her face since they became a couple.

  “What exactly am I supposed to do when we get to this warehouse? Are we going to tell them we are reporters or what? And ask, ‘Oh, by the way, what kind of illegal business are you running here?’ I’m a photographer, not a reporter playing detective. Other than for a fun night at the Marriott at the paper’s expense, why am I here?”

  “I told Dan you would stay out of sight and shoot pictures of what they’re doing on the loading dock. Is there a problem?”

  “No. I just wanted to know if you were really working on the Johnson story or just using this as an excuse for me to meet your mother. How did you square that with Dan?”

  “Actually, he suggested it. He really is trying to get us down the aisle, you know.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Candi’s voice reverberated in Rick’s ear. “I know he’s been playing cupid, but marriage? Where did that come from? If you put that idea in his head, then you had better straighten him out. You’re the most honest man I’ve ever met but don’t screw up a good relationship by talking about marriage. That’s the last thing on my mind right now.” She turned away from Rick, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared straight ahead. Her jaw twitched from her tightly clinched teeth.

  “I’ve never said anything to Dan about us getting married. No way am I giving him any signals like that. He just thinks of me like I’m his son, and I guess he wants us to get married to fulfill some fantasy he’s having. Maybe going to meet my mother gave him the wrong idea. We can just go back to Raleigh when we finish up at the warehouse if that’s what you want.”

  “I was serious when I said I wanted to meet your mom, but Jesus, that doesn’t mean I want to be her daughter-in-law. From your description she sounds a lot like my mom. That’s all there was to it.”

  “So what’s it going to be? Visit my mom or go back to Raleigh?”

  “There you go again. You leave all the decisions to me,” Candi said.

  “What’s gotten into you, are you having PMS or something?”

  Candi shot him a venomous look. “I’m allowed to be irritable without you chalking it up to my period. I’m just getting restless. I like our relationship just the way it is, but I don’t want it to suffocate my creativity as a photographer. I want to do something more important that shooting car crash scenes, basketball games, and spelling bee contest winners.”

  “Oh, the urge to go to Africa is back,” Rick said in a condescending tone.

  “Don’t make fun. It’s terrible what’s going on over there and we aren’t getting the story. The paper is full of the daily body count of our boys in Vietnam, but where’s the attention to people suffering in other places of the world?”

  “I’m sorry we don’t have any starving babies in Raleigh to photograph, but that’s what I like about living in this country.”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Candi snapped.

  Before Candi could say anything more, Rick turned off I-40 on to Mountain Street.

  “Can we finish this conversation later?” he said. “We’re almost there. Just have to follow the tracks for a couple of miles.”

  Chapter 43

  “The new facility in Atlanta offered opportunities for some, but modern automation reduced the number of jobs needed there, bringing many back home to the comfort of the town they had built.”

  Undercover visit

  Rick pulled his Corvair into an unmarked driveway. Melted snow had turned the graveled parking lot into a quagmire. The only cleared area was full of twenty or so employee cars. Rick thought it strange that there was no sign for visitor or vendor parking. His suspicion that they were hiding something reinforced his earlier theory. There was no sign on the building to identify the company and its plain metal structure with no windows felt unwelcoming.

  “See if you can work your way around back to the loading dock by the tracks,” Rick instructed Candi, who had walked around the car with her 750 zoom lens Hassalblad draped over her shoulder. “And if anybody sees you, just tell them you’re doing cover photos for a feature piece I’m writing on the resurgence of railroad shipping, or something like that. If that happens, see if you can talk to them and find out what they know about the operation. Okay?”

  “Sure, I love tramping around in mud and snow deeper than my boots,” Candi replied. She headed toward the end of the building to sneak across to the other side of the tracks to get a good view of the loading dock.

  Rick continued scanning the building for security cameras, but if they were there, he couldn’t spot them.

  The front door was gray and metal with only a short viewing slot at eye level. A floral wreath hung from the door. Its purple sash bore golden letters: In Loving Memory of Jerry Blackmon, Beloved Husband and Father.

  Finding no door handle, only a deadbolt key hole, Jerry punched the button on the call box. He waited impatiently. No response. He punched the button again and held it for a few seconds. After the second ring, the viewing slot slid open, revealing a pair of wrinkled eyes behind wire-mesh glass.

  The speaker hissed before it delivered a high-pitched message barely audible over the background static. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Rick Barnes and would like to speak to Ronnie Gains.”

  “What about?” she shot back.

  “I want to make sure he got his leather jacket back okay.” He felt uncomfortable being grilled by some stranger behind a metal door. He was the reporter and was supposed to ask the questions.

  The woman opened the door and invited Rick inside in a softer tone than came through the outside speaker. She was a short, graying woman. She showed him to a seat in the corner of the small office.

  His eyes started burning as soon as he stepped inside the door. The air was heavy with a blue haze of cigarette smoke. Rick already didn’t like this person or place. He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief then looked around, visually recording the room and its contents. There was a coffee table with a few tattered magazines scattered on it in front of a well-worn couch. They obviously weren’t accustomed to visitors other than the vending machine man.

  “Wait here. I’ll go get him,” the woman said and left through a door that displayed an Employees Only sign.

  Rick noted the sparse furnishings of the office, no visible communication system with the warehouse area, and a couple of filing cabinets he would love to be able to get into.

  Rick got up and wandered toward two desks that faced each other on the other side of the office to see anything that was lying open. Each desk had Snowpak splattered IBM Selectric typewriters and a wide bed IBM spreadsheet machine. One desk had a nameplate: Mrs. Marie Short. But there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. The employees-only door swung open, catching Rick by surprise. The woman le
d two men into the office.

  “Mr. Barnes, this is Ronnie Gaines.” The woman motioned her head toward the lanky young man in a watch cap and coveralls pulling his gloves off. She went back to work at the desk with the nameplate.

  “Hi, Ronnie, remember me?” Rick extended his hand.

  “Yeah, I know who you are. I thank you for mailing my jacket back, but you could’ve called and saved yourself a trip.” Without another word, Ronnie turned to go back through the door.

  “Hey, Ronnie, could I speak with you for a moment?” Rick asked and motioned toward the couch in the corner.

  “What for? I got work to do. I ain’t got time to talk to no reporter,” he said and opened the door.

  Joey who, had been standing unnoticed in the background, blocked Rick’s path when he tried to follow Ronnie into the warehouse. “Mr. Gaines is busy, Mr. Barnes. I’ll walk you to the door.” Joey said sternly.

  Rick was in no position to argue with the tall, muscular man in the dark suit. Olive-colored skin and dark, slicked–back hair in a ducktail further convinced him this must be the Mafia goon Dan was talking about.

  Rick raised his hands in surrender, stepped back and turned his attention to Marie.

  “Mrs. Short, I noticed a wreath on the front door. Do you mind if I ask who that’s for?” Rick asked, working his way over to her desk.