Parts Unknown

by Rex Burns

  To Kirk, Reznick seemed a little too young to have those gray patches at his temples. He wondered if it was a touch of dye to give a bit more weight to the man’s office. “Of course. Speaking of moves, I’d like to search these lockers.” He handed Reznick a slip with 105, 112, and 207 penciled on it. “I’ll need your authorization to make the search legal.”

  “Are they involved with Porter?”

  “It’s possible. We’re not sure.”

  “Well, I don’t see why my own security people can’t make the search. They have the right to do that kind of thing.”

  “They can. If you want everyone in the plant to know about it.”

  It took him a minute. “Oh. You mean leaks. I see.” Then, “Well, all right. When you want to do this?”

  “Soon. Perhaps this evening.”

  “All right.” He made a cryptic note on the paper and pushed it back to Kirk. “Do what you have to. But I want this plant cleaned up and I want it done fast. Understand me?”

  Kirk understood. He understood too that Reznick was reaching the point where he was beginning to worry about the cost of the investigation in relation to what it was accomplishing. And how that ratio would look on his section’s profit and loss sheet. You had to balance the ideal investigation against the willingness of a customer to keep paying. And when Chris called in after work for his daily report, Kirk asked him if they could go through the lockers that night.

  “I guess so—sure. Where should we meet?”

  “I’ll pick you up in front of your apartment in half an hour.”

  Chris waited in the shadows of the deep porch that ran across the entire front of the old-fashioned house, half listening to someone’s music thump through the open window of one of the first-floor apartments. Having expected to feel excitement about going on his first search, he was a bit surprised at its absence. Maybe it was because the locker room was so familiar to him that it would be like searching his own closet. Or maybe he was finally getting used to this business of snooping and saw it as a job. Then again, he thought as Devlin’s Austin-Healey throbbed to the curb, maybe there wasn’t any reason to feel all that excited. Shaking down an empty locker room wasn’t the most thrilling chore in the world.

  After six, the traffic was a bit lighter and they made it across town quickly. The wind around the cockpit and the rap of the twin exhausts blended with the noise of surrounding cars to make it hard to talk, so they rode mostly in silence. There wasn’t, Chris reflected, much to say anyway. And Devlin seemed to have things on his mind that he didn’t want to share. Chris directed Kirk around the company’s perimeter fence to a locked rear entry. Gate 6 was at the end of the wire where it was anchored by rusty bolts to the concrete block of warehouse 3.

  “Any rent-a-cops on this side?” Kirk asked.

  The guards hadn’t been told about the investigation, of course. Sad but true, a lot of private security agents—underpaid, ill- trained, and quickly recruited—are easy targets for the extra cash they can pick up by turning their eyes away from a dealer’s operation or the activities of a theft ring. Besides, not many of them put their responsibility to a company above their responsibility to their skins. They aren’t paid enough to take that kind of risk. That’s where Kirk and Associates came in.

  “Shouldn’t be,” said Chris. He held up a jingling key ring. “I’ve got a key for this gate. The trash hauler comes in this way. So no problem.”

  He pointed them across the almost empty parking lot. Kirk drove toward a scarred concrete loading dock banded by a yellow and black steel lip. Sections of old tires made a series of vertical bumpers on the steel. He parked the Healey on a patch of gravel that held enough delivery trucks and private cars to make it look as if it belonged there. Then Chris unlocked a steel-faced door in the blank wall and relocked it behind them.

  “Down this way.” He led Kirk along a narrow alley between palleted crates stacked almost as high as the unlit bulbs nesting behind metal grilles. Devlin smelled the oily-chemical odor of new electrical components. From somewhere in the echoing gloom came the tinny, distant sound of television voices.

  “Where’s the inside man?”

  “He’s over going through the administration wing. I checked out his routine: Starts over there because people work late sometimes. Then he makes a round of the assembly and warehouse areas after that.” Chris paused to listen. “That’s his office television. Turns it up when he’s gone so a burglar might think somebody’s around.” He laughed quietly. “Sitcoms—the first line of defense.”

  They pushed through a pair of swinging doors. The locker room was lined with narrow gray metal doors and anchored benches like the dressing room of a high school gym. Some had penciled slips of paper in the name slots, as company policy called for. Most were blank.

  Kirk started with 105, closest to the door. Chris stood guard. He breathed shallowly and lightly, listening for the sound of footsteps echoing across the concrete floors. A ripple of excitement started along the back of his neck. There shouldn’t be any footsteps, he knew. The guard’s routine should be the same. But there was always that chance, and in the silence and vastness of the warehouse with its alleys between towering stacks of canisters, he could imagine someone’s shape. If not the security guard, maybe another of the janitorial crew. Or a worker who’d forgotten something and talked his way past the gate to return to the locker room. Suddenly the locker room wasn’t as familiar anymore, and the silence that should have been comforting held a vague threat.

  Devlin eased a pick into the tumbler of the cheap lock. Using a filed-down Allen wrench for torsion, he nudged the lock’s pistons up into their seats with the rippled blade. Then he swung the handle down to open the door. A flash of something tiny dropped to the floor. It was the stub of a paper match knocked loose when the door moved. “This guy’s worried about something.”

  Newman stared at him. “Why?”

  Devlin held up the stem. “The old paper-match-on-the-door trick.”

  “So he’s got something to hide?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Exactly what the match stem was guarding was unclear. A pair of grimy overalls hung on a hook to breathe the odor of stale sweat and grease. The embroidered red thread over the pocket spelled Eddie. Heavy work shoes worn at the heels filled the bottom shelf. On the top shelf was a construction hat apparently issued by the company but never worn. The stenciled name Visser was still shiny across the back. There were several pairs of worn cotton work gloves, a couple of tightly rolled black plastic garbage bags, unused, and a well-thumbed copy of Hustler magazine that showed a blonde smiling with as many orifices as the camera could find. Both shelves were coated with a film of dust that had scrape tracks from a lunch pail and the boots. Kirk ran his finger across it and felt its smooth, talc-like glide. Using a cotton swab, he picked up a sample and corked it into a plastic container. Then he relocked the door and placed the match stem back on guard, hoping it was near the place it fell from.

  Chris had been watching closely. “You find anything?”

  “I’m not sure.” He moved to the next two lockers, discovering just about the same things, including the balanced match stem and the dust. Number 112 belonged to a Johnny Atencio, number 207 to Scott Martin. Labeling the containers by locker number, he stowed the dust samples in his jacket pocket and worked on Porter’s locker, number 223. There was no dust in this one and it didn’t have any tricks outside. But it did have one inside. “Look at this, Chris.”

  He gazed over Devlin’s shoulder. “Look at what?”

  Kirk nudged the locker’s back panel with a knuckle; the thin metal sheet bent easily. “Hidden passages and secret compartments. A veritable Otranto of lockerdom.”

  “A what?”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  In a one-inch space behind the false back rested a tier of baggies carefully sealed and stacked. Lifting one out, Devlin untied it and sniffed a pinch of the dark tangle. “Quarter-ounce packag
e. Pretty good stuff.” He held it for Newman to get a whiff.

  “Whew—makes me want to sneeze. We going to take them?”

  Kirk was already retying the baggie. He set it back in place and half closed the door so the number was visible. Then he took a couple of flash photographs with a small camera. “Not yet.” He replaced the panel and closed the locker. “I’d like to find out if he’s working alone or not.”

  Chris thought about that. “Yeah. If Porter’s busted, Eddie Visser and those other two will climb the walls.”

  “If they have a reason, they will.” Devlin was pleased to see that Newman was thinking like a detective.

  “Well, we know they’re already nervous about something.”

  “And we want to find out what. Can you get close to them at all?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. I’ve tried a little. But like I say, they don’t want anything to do with me or anybody else.” He reminded Kirk, “And you told me not to push.”

  “That’s right. Just keep an eye on them, and I’ll have the lab check out these powder traces. Then we’ll see what Reznick wants us to do.”

  He hadn’t changed his mind. “I don’t care how much pot you found. I don’t want the police called in.” He tossed the photographs back to Kirk. “Keep Porter under surveillance, and when you find out if he’s working with anybody, we’ll can the lot of them.”

  “The trouble is, we ran a check on the lockers of some other people my agent has suspicions about. The lab tests on the dust samples came back positive. It’s cocaine dust.” Kirk handed him the slips from ProLabs, the private laboratories they used.

  Reznick stared at the pink report forms. “Jesus.” The question was in his eyes before he asked it. “Do we have a legal obligation to tell the police?”

  “A trace isn’t enough evidence for a charge. And we haven’t seen them actually dealing. But if the case develops, we’ll have to tell them.” Kirk added, “And if we stop the investigation now, you’ll have no idea how extensive their infiltration is or who else may be involved.”

  “How many goddamn suspects do you have?”

  “Three, plus Porter.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The best way we can convict—the way the police will want it handed to them—is with a possession charge.”

  “Jesus. Jesus.” Reznick shoved back from the expanse of gleaming desk and wandered over to the window to look down at the roof of a slowly moving semi. Now this. Just what the fuck he needed. What a can of worms he’d opened up, and he knew what Stewart would ask: Why did Reznick let it get out of hand? Well, by God, he had an answer for that. The answer was that he acted as soon as he had suspicions. And he acted decisively and with circumspection. Stewart couldn’t fault him on that, by God. Nobody could. He acted with the best interests of the company in mind. Besides, despite what this know-it-all son of a bitch was telling him, Reznick himself would be the one to decide whether the cops were brought in. “You say if the case develops.”

  Kirk knew that Reznick’s picture of himself was as a decisive, take-charge kind of guy. Paid to make the tough choices, he wanted people to know he was willing to stand behind those choices. And once they were made, it was on to the next problem without looking back. That attitude had, apparently, brought him a long way in a short time, and he wasn’t about to slow down now. Still, Kirk wanted Reznick to know the ramifications of this decision before he jumped. “If we do turn up a substantial cocaine ring, and if you do not go to the police at least eventually, Kirk and Associates will have to withdraw from the case.”

  Reznick turned from the window. “You’ll what?”

  “It’s a felony substance.”

  He eyed the man lounging in the padded chair. His long legs stretched out to cross at the ankles like the bastard was in his own living room. “And you have a responsibility to report felonies, that it?”

  Not only a responsibility, a legal obligation. All citizens did. But Kirk didn’t bother with his reasons. Reznick wasn’t interested in reasons. “That’s right.”

  “I hired you, by God! I hired you for a job!”

  “You hired my skills and I’m using them.” He didn’t add that Reznick hadn’t hired his conscience. Despite any truth in it, that sounded pompous and self-righteous—two of the major headings in Kirk’s book of venialities. He gazed back levelly into Reznick’s brown eyes and waited for the man to make up his mind to govern his temper or surrender to it.

  “You said ‘eventually.’ “

  “All we have right now is a suspicion and a trace. Neither is admissible in court. The police would be interested. They’d take a report, but there’s nothing they could do with that little.”

  “I see.” What Reznick saw was Kirk willing to shrug off the case and go his merry way. Leave him dangling with only bits of information to act on, and to act on without guidance. Unless he brought in some other snoop, who would probably tell him the same thing. “All right. Let’s leave your man in there and let him come up with something.” He couldn’t help adding, “I suppose it is all right with you if we don’t report the marijuana right away?”

  “Even Supreme Court nominees use a little pot now and then. Besides, if Porter is turned in, the other three will suspect an agent in place. I suggest we continue to keep an eye on him while we develop the others. When the time comes, we can get them all.”

  “You think they’re working together?”

  “I’m not sure of that. Porter apparently doesn’t hang around with Visser and the others, at least not at the plant. We can find out what he does after work.”

  “That scissor lift operator, the one who was so stoned— what’s his name, Montoya. He almost lost his goddamn arm. We can’t afford another round of accidents.”

  Reznick meant that literally, Kirk knew. The investigation had been started because the increasing medical claims were nearing the red line. If Advantage Corp. went over it, the premiums would jump dramatically. The union contract required the company to provide full accident coverage for every employee, and insurance companies never took losses. On top of that were the company disability payments to victims who hadn’t been tested for drugs following their accidents. “We’ll work as fast as practicable.”

  “Well, I hope so, Kirk.” Reznick smiled. “Otherwise you won’t have to worry about Kirk and Associates withdrawing from the case.”

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  copyright © 1990 by Rex Raoul Stephen Sehler Burns

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