by Bill Bernico
Stuck to the corkboard wall with a push pin I found a list of all the employees on the third floor along with their start date. It was listed by seniority and was dated three days ago. Warren Stromberg’s name came second on the list while Joey Getz’s name fell somewhere in the middle. At the bottom of the printed list was one handwritten name—Frank Parker. I decided I’d better go out and introduce myself to Mr. Parker, since we were the two newest employees.
I walked back out onto the floor and found Warren and Joey taking a break, waiting for their second batch of slurry to set up. When they saw me coming, I thought for sure they’d try to look like they were busy, but both of them just stood there. Warren was drinking from a soda can while Joey was stuffing some sort of cheese snack in his mouth.
“Warren,” I said. “I see we have a new guy here on the third floor, a Mr. Parker. Could you point him out to me? I want to talk to him.”
“Sure,” Warren said, pointing to a guy who was scraping the floor with what looked like a large, long hoe. He scraped under the benches, pulling spilled and semi-hardened clay pieces out from under all the nooks and crannies out into the middle of the aisle. Further down the aisle, I could see a man riding what looked like a smaller version of a street sweeper. He got to Parker’s area just as Frank Parker pushed the last of his floor scrapings out into the aisle. The yellow machine rolled right over the clay bits, leaving a relatively clean path in its wake. When the machine had passed Parker’s area, I stepped up to the man still holding the scraping tool.
“Frank Parker?” I said.
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” he said casually. “Who are you?”
“My name is Carl Abernathy,” I said, extending my hand to him. “I’m the new foreman here. I just started today and thought I should come over and introduce myself. I see you’re kind of new here yourself.”
Frank straightened up and lost his casual tone. “Sorry, Mr. Abernathy,” he said. “I had no idea…”
“Don’t worry about it, Frank,” I said. “And while we’re at it, call me Carl, would you?”
“Sure thing, Carl,” Frank said. “So you just started today, huh? What made you pick the Wentworth Company?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seemed like the right job at the right time. What about you?”
“Me?” Frank said. “I’d been out of work for nearly six months when this job came along. My unemployment was just about to run out. I’m damned grateful to have it.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you from your work,” I said. “I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know if you have any problems or questions that you can come to me any time.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ab…, I mean, Carl,” Frank said before hanging his scraping tool on the two pegs that protruded from the wall.
I continued with my introductions for the rest of that first morning, getting to know all of the employees working under me. Most of them seemed like decent guys. One or two struck me as a bit standoffish and a couple others just left me wondering about them. It was nothing I could put my finger on, but rather a gut feeling that they were up to something.
When I got home that night, Gloria wanted to know all about my first day at Wentworth’s factory. “All I can say is I’m glad my father passed his business on to me. Those guy really work hard for their pay. I don’t think I could do what they do day in and day out. I’d be in traction before the first week was out.”
“What about the men?” Gloria said. “Did you get any sense of their character? I mean did any of them stand out as someone Mr. Wentworth might be worried about?”
“It’s a little hard to judge a man after just one day,” I said. “Although there were a couple of guys that made me want to take a closer look at them. And they have this new guy who just started there two days before I did. I hit it off pretty well with him.”
“That’s great, Elliott,” Gloria said. “Just twenty-nine more days like today and you’ll have your eight thousand dollars. Where else can you make that kind of money? Certainly not by tailing married cheaters for their spouses.”
“But that’s the exception,” I said. “If I was really working there I’d be making twelve-fifty an hour to start. That comes out to exactly half of what I get for a good day of detecting. No thanks.”
“Well, just try to make the best of it, Elliott,” Gloria said.
“I can make it the full month if I have to,” I said. “Hopefully I won’t have to. I plan on doing all I can to get the information Wentworth is after a lot sooner than that.”
“I guess when this is over you’ll probably have a little more appreciation for your regular job,” Gloria said.
“I already do,” I told her, and finished my dinner before retiring in front of the television for the evening. I fell asleep in the middle of my favorite TV show.
I repeated this ritual for the next nine days. On the tenth day at work I happened to be sitting in one of the stalls in the men’s room when I heard someone come in. There was more than one guy and I could hear them talking as they walked the length of the room, checking under the stalls. I pulled my feet up, out of sight and sat very still. The two men walked back to the other end of the room and I heard the door open again and then I heard one of them say, “It’s clear. No one’s coming in.”
The other voice said, “We’re going to have to keep a low profile for the next few days. I think we’re being watched.”
“Oh?” the first voice said. “By who?”
“I think it’s that new guy,” the second voice said.
“Abernathy?” the first guy said. “The new foreman?”
“No, the other new guy—Parker.” This from the second guy.
“What makes you think it’s Parker?” the first guy said.
“I don’t know,” the second guy said. “It’s nothing I can put my finger on, but I just get this gut feeling that maybe Wentworth planted him in here to infiltrate our crew.”
“Sounds like someone’s getting paranoid,” the first guy said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the second guy answered. “I’ve been keeping my eye on him and he just seems sneaky. Maybe I can feel him out and see what he knows.”
“Careful,” the first guy said. “We don’t want to tip our hand, just in case he is a plant.”
“Don’t worry,” the second guy said. “I’ll handle him.”
I leaned to the left slightly, trying to see through the crack between the stall wall and the door. The two men were too far away for me to see who they were. I figured I’d better have a good listen to their voices and maybe later in the day, when I made my rounds talking to the men, I might be able to match the voices with the faces. My legs were getting tired from holding my feet up off the floor. I wrapped my arms around my legs and held them in that position.
Just then the door opened again and a third person entered the room. The conversation stopped and two sets of footsteps exited the men’s room. I looked through the crack again and could see Warren Stromberg walking past my stall. At least he wasn’t one of the guys who’d been talking earlier. But that didn’t exclude him from my investigation, either.
I waited until Warren finished his business and washed his hands. When he left the room, I released my legs and let them settle on the floor again. I finished my business, buckled my pants again, washed my hands and returned to my office. I went through the list of names on the roster, trying to imagine who the two guys were whom I heard talking. Something was definitely wrong here and I planned to find out what it was, collect my eight grand and get the hell out of this place. It gave me the willies.
I spent the rest of that afternoon making the rounds to all the casting floors, asking questions and waiting to hear those familiar voices. I still had two more floors to visit, but also had my regular inspection rounds to complete. The last two floors would have to wait while I checked the progress of the third castings of the day.
The two-man teams were pouring slurry
for the third time today as the second set of fixtures were being pushed into the kiln. I heard the thunderous clang of the kiln doors closing and knew it would be at least another hour before I could inspect the newly fired toilets as they came out the other end of the kiln.
I finished my inspection rounds and then returned to checking on the last four men on those last two casting floors. I expected to see Frank Parker scraping up dried clay bits from under the benches when I got to the next to last casting floor. He was nowhere in the immediate vicinity.
Each casting floor was surrounded by shelves that held the semi-finished fixtures in their green state. There was a three-foot opening at the corner of each floor to allow the workers to enter and exit their floors. I stepped inside the perimeter of that next-to-last floor and saw that the floor had not been scraped clean yet. The two men working this floor, Howard Berg and Larry Conrad were busy turning their molds over and pulling the drain plugs. They didn’t even look up when I entered their area.
“Have either of you seen Frank Parker?” I said. “He’s supposed to be cleaning up this area right about now.”
Neither men spoke, but shook their heads in response.
I kept walking toward the other end of the room. As I got closer to the last casting floor I could hear faint pounding sounds but couldn’t determine where they were coming from. I kept walking and then stopped. There were the sounds again and they seemed like they weren’t too far away now. Then the sounds stopped. I checked with the crew on the last casting floor but neither of them knew anything about Frank’s whereabouts, either.
I put Frank Parker out of my mind while I finished my rounds. It was time for the final inspection of the fired fixtures. The opposite end of the kiln opened and rack after rack of fired toilet bowls rolled out of the kiln. I made my inspections, looking for cracks and imperfections in the pieces. When I found one bowl with a crack, I slipped on my oversized oven mitts and shoved the piece off the rack and onto the floor. The pieces would be scraped up, ground into a fine powder and sent back to the slurry room to be mixed into the next new batch of liquid clay.
The kiln doors closed again on this end and opened again on the other end, ready for the next batch of green ware to be fired. I could hear the creaking sounds of the large kiln doors swinging open and several seconds later I heard the sound of more racks being rolled into the kiln. The sound I heard after that had nothing to do with making toilet bowls. It was a man screaming.
I rushed over to the open kiln doors and found the man who had been pushing the racks into the kiln. He was bent over, hands on his knees, puking his guts out all over the waste clay on the floor. I rushed to his side and laid a hand on his back.
“What’s wrong, Haskell,” I said. “Are you sick?”
Bart Haskell didn’t answer. He just took one hand off his knee long enough to point to the interior of the kiln. I turned and stepped toward the interior. I saw it immediately. It was the form of what had been a man lying on the kiln floor, curled up in womb position. He was burned almost to ash. There was no way of identifying him by sight. This would take a medical expert to sort out his teeth, if there were any left. Next to the body I saw a faint trail of ashes that laid out in a straight line, ending at the long, metal end of what used to be a floor scraping tool. This had to be Frank Parker’s body lying there in the kiln. Someone was after Wentworth’s snitch but they got the wrong guy. A shiver ran up my spine and made my teeth chatter. If whoever did this finds out that I was the real plant, my life wouldn’t be worth spit.
I hurried over to the wall and slapped my palm on a big red button that protruded from a wall-mounted box. An alarm sounded and everything that moved, stopped in mid-operation. The alarm continued to sound as men from all over the third floor rushed over to see what all the noise and commotion was about. I held the curiosity seekers back, away from the grisly scene. I turned to see Warren Stromberg trying to see into the kiln.
“Warren,” I said. “Go call the medical department and have them send over the company doctor.”
“Ain’t no doctor gonna help that guy,” Warren said. “What you need is a janitor with a broom and a dustpan.”
“I know he’s beyond help,” I said, “But it’s procedure. They have to be called for something like this.”
“Will do,” Warren said, turning and hurrying toward my office to use the phone.
“Anybody see what happened here?” I yelled over the crowd. No one responded. I looked up to see the crew from the next-to-last casting floor. The two men were leaning into each other, talking out of the sides of their mouths. They just seemed out of step with the rest of the men here. Most of the other men seemed horrified, but these two had no expressions on their faces. If anything they seemed too calm under these circumstances. As I looked in their direction, one of the men caught my eye and elbowed his partner. They exchanged words that I couldn’t hear and then split up, each man going in a different direction. My shiver came back and I just knew that they were up to something that involved me. I didn’t want to stick around to find out what that something was. I turned and headed back toward the elevator. I pushed the down button and when the doors opened I stepped inside and rode it to the ground floor. On the way down, I shed my apron and name tag. I exited on the ground floor and made a beeline for the parking lot. It took me several minutes to find my car but once I did, I slid beneath the wheel and sped out of the parking lot and back toward Hollywood.
I surprised even myself. I was usually calmer than this under stress but seeing Frank Palmer’s ashes on the kiln floor did something to me. It left me with a feeling I’d never experienced before—shear terror and I didn’t like the feeling at all. I slipped into my parking space behind my building and killed the engine. I sat there for several seconds, shaking, before I got out of my car and walked into the back door to my building. I took the elevator to the third floor and wearily walked to the end of the hall, to my office.
As I opened the office door and stepped inside, Bud looked up from behind my desk. Sitting across from him was a woman in a floral print dress. She looked up at me and seemed startled at my unusual entrance. I stepped up beside her and looked down into her eyes.
“Would you excuse us for a moment?” I said, and almost pulled her out of the client’s chair, guiding here toward the office door.
“But I…” she tried to say.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” I said, closing the door behind her and flipping the lock.
Bud was standing now, his eyes furrowed. “What was that all about?” he said. “She came to us for help. I don’t think she’ll be back after that little display.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’ve got bigger problems.” I turned and flopped down onto the leather sofa that sat against the wall. I put my feet up on the coffee table and closed my eyes.
“Elliott,” Bud said. “What’s going on here? I thought you were spending a month at Wentworth’s factory. You done already?”
“I am now,” I said. “I don’t care what Wentworth’s problems are or how much money he dangles in my face. That’s it. I’m not going back.”
“Well, there’s eight grand down the toilet, so to speak,” Bud said. “What are you going to tell Gloria?”
“Once I do tell her,” I said, “She’ll be so glad to have me back in one piece that the eight grand paycheck won’t matter much anymore.”
“You want to tell me what happened?” Bud said.
I ignored Wentworth’s instructions and gave Bud the abbreviated version of the events of the past ten days, ending with Frank Parker’s charred remains in the kiln.
“Gees,” Bud said. “What a way to go. It would have been one thing to knock the guy out or kill him before you shut him inside the kiln, but alive? That sounds like something right out of the Roman days where they stuck a victim inside a hollowed out brass bull and lit a fire under it, cooking him alive inside.”
I described the two casting workers I’d seen ri
ght before I left and told Bud to keep an eye out for anyone like that in case they discovered my real identity and started coming around the office. He assured me he would. I told him I needed to get home and see Gloria right away.
“Go,” Bud said. “I’ll handle things here. Hey, Elliott, if you see that lady out there on your way out, you might want to apologize and send her back in here.”
Gloria was surprised to see me home earlier than usual. When I told her what had happened at the factory, she threw her arms around me, held on tight for a moment and then released me. She looked me up and down. “Are you all right, Elliott?” she said.
“Not a scratch on me,” I said. “And I’d like to keep it that way. I doubt Mr. Wentworth will pay the eight grand now.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Gloria said. “As long as you’re safe and out of that awful place. What exactly are you going to tell Mr. Wentworth, Elliott?”
“I don’t have any concrete evidence that would hold up in any court,” I said. “I heard a couple of voices, but I’m not sure I could even match the voices to anyone in particular.”
“Just forget about it,” Gloria said. “I’d be happy just to get our lives back to normal.”
“You and me, both,” I said. “And I’ll bet Bud will be just as happy not to have to spend a month at the office. I think he’ll finally start to appreciate his retired status.” I rubbed my stomach, realizing I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. “I’m starved. What have you got to eat?”
I returned to my office the following morning before Bud got in. It was nice to be able to sit at a desk that wasn’t coated in clay dust. I had just settled in with my morning paper when a knock came on the office door. I slid my desk drawer open, gripped the handle of my .38 and said, “We’re not open yet,” to the unseen person on the other side of the door.
“Mr. Cooper?” the voice said. “It’s J. Taylor Wentworth. I’d like to talk to you if I may.”