“Wang Xin, it’s not a big problem because I want to buy two orders of product.”
Wang Xin’s eyes became so large they lost their Asian features. “Mr. Jimmy, you not joke with old Wang Xin are you?”
“Not joking. You get together an invoice and email it to me. I will give you a new email address. You send it to this new address, not the old one. Once I get the invoice, you will receive a wire transfer for the total amount. After you receive the money start production and don’t wait. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Wang Xin said. He was grinning again. Smiling so big Jimmy believed he was seeing a new part of Wang Xin’s dentistry, exposing teeth to the light for the first time. “Mr. Jimmy, you Wang Xin’s friend, old friend. When you come back China again?”
“I’m not sure, maybe three months.”
“Little brother, you hurry and come back. Old Wang take you to eat banquet, get drunk and find woman for you.” Wang Xin laughed so hard Jimmy was afraid it would break their Internet connection.
“I need rush production on this, how fast can you complete two orders?”
“Thirty days but we will try for twenty, we work two shifts, okay?”
“Okay. When you finish, hold the goods, do not ship. I will tell you later when and where to ship them.”
Wang Xin nodded and said in Mandarin, “Ming bai.” (I understand).
Jimmy waved, smiled and disconnected the call.
* * *
Seiffert was having another good night’s rest. The phone rang at three A.M. It was the noise of the real world, not of his dreams. He sat up in bed and grabbed the phone from the nightstand.
“Hello,” Seiffert said.
“Hi Unc, it’s Dwain. Let me give you a rundown on today. I got to the factory at nine this morning. They met me with open arms, happy to see me, pleased to meet me, well, you know the drill. We did a factory tour, I met the boss and got the same VIP treatment from him. They are running the locks through production now. I met with the plant’s production manager and the engineer and showed them the part we want to have removed. They said no problem to remove the pin and to plug and grind the small hole shut.”
“Good work Dwain. When will the order ship?”
“They will finish this week and load into the container at the end of next week. From there the order will go overland to Hai Phong and leave the port on Monday outbound to America.”
“Excellent,” said Seiffert. “Stay in Vietnam for a while. I will send you an email in a few days with further instructions. Please get your affairs in order over there, you may be coming home soon. Good night Dwain, or rather, good afternoon.”
“Good night Unc.”
Seiffert returned the phone to its cradle and closed his eyes.
* * *
Myrtle Ridley was sleeping well too. She had followed the doctor’s instructions to perfection. Her one mistake, she ended up walking a mile instead of a half-mile. She calculated the distance from her driveway to the half-mile mark on her street, but Myrtle didn't realize, until later, that walking back home was another half-mile. She laughed when she discovered the error but Myrtle felt great.
Walking around the neighborhood was great too. She ran into a few of the old neighbors and gave them a smile and a wave as she passed. Myrtle wanted to stop and chat, but she was on a mission. She walked by several houses for sale in the neighborhood. She paid no attention to the white service van parked a few houses down from her own.
Myrtle returned home and entered by the back door in the garage. The two men in the white van saw Myrtle leave the street, and they packed up their cameras and left. As they left Myrtle’s neighborhood, the van’s passenger attached the photos to an email and emailed the pictures to Patrick Seiffert.
Myrtle ate a frozen, lasagna dinner, watched television, crocheted some on a sweater and then got ready for bed. She settled into bed at five minutes before nine. She watched the clock on the nightstand and waited as the second hand made its five revolutions around the clock face. At nine o’clock Myrtle closed her eyes and within seconds she was deep asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Marie Seiffert was at her desk at eight, Allen never came in until eight-thirty and this morning was no exception. Allen marched right past Marie with a grunt and a begrudged greeting of "Good Morning, Marie" and headed straight for his office. Marie's desk sat next to the big glass in front of Allen's office. Unless Allen closed the blinds, which was rare, she could see everything happening in his office.
Allen removed the laptop from his briefcase and placed it in the middle of his desk. He fumbled around his office and found the network cable and plugged it into the side of his laptop. Then he opened the top and logged onto the office network and the Internet. This was his daily ritual. She started a countdown from five and when she reached "one" Allen shouted his predictable, "Coffee Marie!"
Marie fished around in her purse and located her uncle's vial. She stood and went into the break room and was pleased to discover she was alone. Marie used the eyedropper from the bottle’s top and counted out five drops into Allen's favorite coffee cup. On the cup's side were the words, "The Boss May Not Always Be Right—But He Is Still the BOSS!"
Marie added two extra drops to the coffee. She reasoned that if five drops were good for five minutes then seven drops should buy her an extra minute or two—she wanted as much time as possible. After she added the drops, she poured in the coffee, added a touch of creamer, a packet of sugar and stirred well. Marie then poured herself a cup and returned to her desk with both cups, dropping her cup off at her desk.
Marie entered Allen's office and placed the cup on a coaster on the desk’s corner. He was on the phone. Allen turned, put his hand on her's and whispered, "Sorry if I came in grouchy this morning. You are looking lovely as always." Marie frowned and slid her hand from beneath his, he returned to his phone conversation.
Marie returned to her office and fished a USB flash drive from her purse. She knew how long it took to transfer the program from the USB drive into Allen's computer—three minutes. Her uncle had told her that the coffee would incapacitate Allen for five minutes. Her uncle didn't tell her how much time she needed for the mixture to take effect.
Marie typed, pretending to work on a spreadsheet, as she watched Allen from the corner of her eye. Allen was talking and she could tell it was a heated conversation—Allen was shouting and flailing his arms and hands.
Suddenly Allen exclaimed, "I have to call you back, got an emergency here."
He slammed down the phone and went running to the private toilet in his office.
Marie started to laugh, but she needed to work fast. Her hands were shaking as she tried to pick up the flash drive from her desk. Marie fumbled it and it fell to the floor. At first, she couldn't locate it because it had taken a small bounce on the carpet and landed near her wastebasket.
She dropped to her knees and felt around on the floor, found it and then went running into Allen's office. Marie could hear him grunting and groaning through the door and she covered her mouth to stifle a laugh again.
Marie was lucky. He had not closed his laptop when he went running to the restroom. Thanks to her uncle's keyloggers, she knew Allen's password, but the opened laptop gave her a few more seconds of precious time. Marie tried to insert the flash drive into the USB port on Allen's computer and then realized the plug was upside-down. Marie turned it over, tried again and inserted it into the laptop. She waited for the computer to find and recognize the new drive.
Marie opened the flash drive and copied the files to a new folder on Allen's computer. The progress bar filled as the data transferred from the drive to the laptop. With one minute to go, she panicked. The toilet flushed in Allen's restroom. She was almost ready to pull the drive out of the computer and abort everything. Then she heard Allen exclaim, "Oh no!" and the sound of grunting, groaning and water splashing.
The transfer completed, she found the executable program file. Ma
rie double-clicked the file, it opened and then disappeared. This file opened a program which served as a keylogger like the ones she had been plugging into Allen's desktop computer. The information on his desktop computer contained company data while the laptop contained Allen's personal information and Marie's uncle was eager to receive it.
Marie paused and listened, there was still noise coming from the restroom. She removed the flash drive from the laptop. Marie rushed back to her seat. She was out of breath, but she squeaked out a spastic sigh of relief. Five minutes later Allen came out of the bathroom, his white dress shirt drenched in sweat. Allen sat at his desk and then jumped up and ran to the restroom again.
Allen's bathroom antics kept him busy most of the morning. Marie tried to keep busy to keep from staring. At mid-morning, in a weak voice, he asked Marie to please bring him water. She came back with three bottles of water and a Coke.
Allen thanked her as she added ice and poured a bottle of water into a glass. He did not touch Marie's hand this time, he was too weak to flirt. She asked him if he needed anything else. He shook his head and said, "Please cancel my appointments. I am going home. I think I have a touch of the stomach flu or food poisoning."
"Okay," she said, trying to keep from laughing. "Will you be okay to drive home or should I get someone from the warehouse to drive you?" Marie was careful not to suggest herself as a potential chauffeur.
"No, thanks, I will be okay to drive. Can you put this water in a bag for me? I will carry it with me."
Marie found a plastic grocery bag from the breakroom. He grabbed the bag and thanked her as he left. She watched from the window in her office as he attempted to step up into his SUV. He was holding the plastic bag in one hand and clutching his stomach with the other. A worker from the warehouse noticed Allen having trouble and ran over to help him. Allen got in and drove away. Allen's car moved away from the parking lot like a crippled turtle.
Marie called her uncle. "Well it's done," she said. "I don't know what was in that bottle you gave me last night, but it did the trick. Boy did it ever do the trick."
"No problems?" asked Seiffert.
"No problems."
"Excellent."
Marie spent the rest of the morning canceling Allen's appointments. Allen's mother called just a few minutes before noon and asked if he was in the office. Marie told her that Allen was ill and had left for home. Allen's mom sounded concerned. Marie knew Allen would soon get a visit from his dear mother. Marie tidied her desk and left the office to spend the afternoon having a few drinks with Patrick, her favorite bartender.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jimmy Miller called Lewis Seiffert at nine the next morning and gave him a report on his video conference with Wang Xin. He told Seiffert he was leaving town for a few days and to call him if he needed him. Jimmy filled his rental car with gas and drove to Atlanta.
At noon, Patrick Seiffert went to Seiffert’s residence and dropped off the pictures his friends in the white van had emailed. There were twenty pictures, but most of them were the same, a short, white-haired woman in a pastel blue sweat suit. Seiffert culled through them and selected five. The rest he ran through the shredder on the side of his desk.
“Thanks, Dwain,” he said. “These will do. No need to go back for more.”
Seiffert called downstairs to Martha and asked her to call the smoker patient, Wayne McKenzie, and confirm his appointment for Sunday afternoon. He told Martha he was taking the rest of the weekend off. Seiffert wished her a good weekend, closed the computer on his desk and went to his residence.
Seiffert spent the rest of Friday and Saturday listening to opera, watching old movies, sipping wine and reminiscing. He didn’t bother to take a shower, Seiffert liked to call these times “states of vegetative introspection.” Seiffert relaxed and soaked in the richness of his surroundings, the furnishings, the lavishness, the wine. Seiffert was fortunate, very fortunate. He never dreamed, when he was a young man, he could ever acquire so much, he only wished Lorna and Allison were still here to enjoy it with him.
Seiffert slept little that weekend. He napped but never slept a full night. He dozed off on Sunday morning while he was watching Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. His body clock alarmed at eight. He showered and ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast.
He checked his email, and it was empty except for a forwarded email from Jimmy Miller. It contained the invoice from the Chinese factory for the lock orders. He located the part of the movie he missed on the DVD and finished it.
Seiffert’s growling stomach reminded him breakfast was not enough—he needed more to eat. He debated on whether to make another sandwich, go downstairs or venture outside for lunch at Beulah’s. It had been weeks since he had left the apartment and longer since he had visited Beulah’s. A Sunday buffet at Beulah’s sounded like what his grumbling stomach needed.
An alley separated The Ashley from Beulah’s and other buildings in the same city block. Seiffert walked out The Ashley’s doors on Hill Avenue and turned left. He turned left again on Patterson Street. The first storefront, on the corner of Hill and Patterson streets, was a pawnshop painted a bright, garish, school-bus yellow. Bright red letters advertising “Cash for Gold”, “Pawn Your Car Title” and “Pawn Loans With the LOWEST Interest and Best Terms in Valdosta—GUARANTEED” highlighted the front of the building.
Next door to the pawn shop was Beulah’s Home Spun Restaurant, a simple storefront, with two large plate glass windows on either side of the glass door in the center. Blue and white checkered curtains adorned the windows. On the outside, two planters full of flowers that ran the length of the plate-glass windows.
Curtis Sirmans and his mother Beulah owned the restaurant. Beulah had worked for years in the home of one of Valdosta’s prominent, blue-blood families as the cook. Her husband Gus was the gardener. Their employer and matriarch of the family died and remembered Beulah and Gus in her will. Her children decided that it was just not “politically correct” any longer to have a black cook and gardener and ended Beulah and Gus’s employment.
They used their savings plus their deceased employer’s gift and opened “Beulah’s Home Spun Restaurant”. Beulah rented a space in the center of town across the street from Valdosta’s largest bank.
Gus had a stroke five years after they opened so he quit coming to the restaurant to help Beulah. After his stroke, Beulah got up at three every morning to meet and unload the produce and food delivery trucks. She was in the kitchen at five A.M. starting breakfast for customers who flooded into her tiny restaurant when the doors opened at six.
Ten years after his stroke, Gus died. Beulah ran the restaurant alone and waited for Curtis to graduate high school and then college. After graduating Valdosta State University, Curtis came back to help his mother at the restaurant. He convinced his mom to do away with the menu and offer a daily buffet of good Southern food. Curtis also persuaded her to hire four local ladies to help her in the kitchen. The buffet was a hit and soon folks from everywhere in Valdosta were fighting over parking places just so they could eat at Beulah’s.
Lewis Seiffert felt he was lucky when he walked in the door at Beulah’s. The restaurant was empty and Seiffert knew why, it was eleven-thirty and everyone was still in church. Within the hour, the restaurant would fill beyond capacity. Seiffert started down the line and dipped himself generous portions of country-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. His plate was almost full, but he squeezed in spoonfuls of fried okra and black-eyed peas. The bread and desserts were in separate, lime-green, melamine bowls after the main courses.
Beulah Sirmans stood at the end of the serving line operating the cash register. Seiffert paid and found a table near the right front window. Seiffert liked looking outside when he ate. He enjoyed the sun streaming through the windows, he enjoyed watching the people.
More people arrived as the city’s churches dismissed. Seiffert mused that preachers should stagger the time when they finished their sermons. The congest
ion at the local restaurants at Sunday lunch would be smaller and the mad rushes at the city’s restaurants would stop.
Beulah’s crowd continued to swell. By noon, people lined up down the street. Since he was not a native Valdostan, Seiffert did not recognize many people in the crowd. He saw an occasional face that triggered a memory, two patients he greeted with a nod and people he knew from the local television news or newspaper. Beulah’s was the place to eat on Sunday in Valdosta so there was no surprise when he saw Allen Ridley waiting in the line.
Seiffert finished the last bit of steak and potatoes on his plate and washed it down with a large gulp of sweet tea. He turned his attention to the pecan pie sitting on the small plate. Seiffert chipped away at the pie and watched Allen in the line. He was careful not to stare too long, but he could not help but notice that Allen appeared pale and weak. Seiffert wondered if it was from Ridley’s abdominal discomfort two days before or if Ridley was taking drugs.
Allen wore jeans and a pullover sweatshirt. It was the first time that Seiffert had ever seen Allen without a business suit.
Seiffert continued to nibble at his pecan pie. The waitress came and filled Seiffert’s tea glass without prompting. Seiffert smiled, he enjoyed excellent service and to him, a Southerner, keeping a tea glass filled was the hallmark of good service.
Allen had moved inside and was near the start of the serving line. Seiffert prepared to leave his tip and leave, but he was not yet ready to give up his observation of Allen. He stood. Allen reached for two, white, Styrofoam carryout boxes instead of a dinner plate and Lewis Seiffert settled back in his seat.
He took another sip of tea and cut a piece of the pie crust with his fork. He did not like pie crust, he enjoyed the filling. Allen Ridley went down the line and filled the two boxes with identical food items. After he had finished filling the boxes with meat and vegetables, Ridley stuffed a piece of cornbread in one box and a biscuit in the other. He nodded to Beulah and paid. Beulah reached under her counter, handed him a plastic bag and thanked him for his business.
Carnies and Wildcats: Ulciscor Page 11