“Can I help you?” An Asian-accented voice said behind me. It belonged to a stooped old woman carrying a fishnet bag full of vegetables. Her eyes, surrounded by deep wrinkles, were kind.
“I’m looking for Mae Jones.” The woman had been taking out a keyring. Now she jammed it into the pocket of her loose-fitting trousers and backed up against the porch railing. Fear made her nostrils flare.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You are from them!”
“Them? Who?”
“I know nothing.”
“Please don’t be scared. I’m trying to help Mrs. Jones’s son.”
“Tommy? Where is Tommy?”
I explained about Jason Hill finding him and Darrin Boydston taking him in.
When I finished the woman had relaxed a little. “I am so happy one of them is safe.”
“Please, tell me about the Joneses.”
She hesitated, looking me over. Then she nodded as if I’d passed some kind of test and took me inside to a small apartment furnished with things that made the thrift-shop junk in my nest at All Souls look like Chippendale. Although I would’ve rather she tell her story quickly, she insisted on making tea. When we were finally settled with little cups like the ones I’d bought years ago at Bargain Bazaar in Chinatown, she began.
“Mae went away eight weeks ago today. I thought Tommy was with her. When she did not pay her rent, the landlord went inside the apartment. He said they left everything.”
“Has the apartment been rented to someone else?”
She nodded. “Mae and Tommy’s things are stored in the garage. Did you say it was seven weeks ago that Tommy was found?”
“Give or take a few days.”
“Poor boy. He must have stayed in the apartment waiting for his mother. He is so quiet and can take care of himself.”
“What’d you suppose he was doing on Mission Street near Geneva, then?”
“Maybe looking for her.” The woman’s face was frightened again.
“Why there?” I asked.
She stared down into her teacup. After a bit she said, “You know Mae lost her job at the sewing factory?”
I nodded.
“It was a good job, and she is a good seamstress, but times are bad and she could not find another job.”
“And then?”
“…There is a place on Geneva Avenue. It looks like an apartment house, but it is really a sewing factory. The owners advertise by word of mouth among the Asian immigrants. They say they pay high wages, give employees meals and a place to live, and do not ask questions. They hire many who are here illegally.”
“Is Mae an illegal?”
“No. she was married to an American serviceman and has her permanent green card. Tommy was born in San Francisco. But a few years ago her husband divorced her and she lost her medical benefits. She is in poor health, she has tuberculosis. Her money was running out, and she was desperate. I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Warned her against what?’
“There is talk about that factory. The building is fenced and the fences are topped with razor wire. The windows are boarded and barred. They say that once a worker enters she is not allowed to leave. They say workers are forced to sew eighteen hours a day for very low wages. They say that the cost of food is taken out of their pay, and ten people sleep in a room large enough for two.”
“That’s slavery! Why doesn’t the city do something?”
The old woman shrugged. “The city has no proof and does not care. The workers are only immigrants. They are not important.”
I felt a real rant coming on and fought to control it. I’ve lived in San Francisco for seven years, since I graduated from Berkeley, a few miles and light years across the Bay, and I’m getting sick and tired of the so-called important people. The city is beautiful and lively and tolerant, but there’s a core of citizens who think nobody and nothing counts but them and their concerns. Someday when I’m in charge of the world (an event I fully expect to happen, especially when I’ve had a few beers) they’ll have to answer to me for their high-handed behavior.
“Okay,” I said, “tell me exactly where this place is, and we’ll see what we can do about it.”
“Slavery, plain and simple,” Shar said.
“Right.”
“Something’s got to be done about it.”
“Right.”
We were sitting in a booth at the Remedy Lounge, our favorite tavern down the hill from All Souls on Mission Street. She was drinking white wine, I was drinking beer, and it wasn’t but three in the afternoon. But McCone and I have found that some of our best ideas come to us when we tilt a couple. I’d spent the last four hours casing—oops, I’m not supposed to call it that—conducting a surveillance on the building on Geneva Avenue. Sure looked suspicious—trucks coming and going, but no workers leaving at lunchtime.
“But what can be done?” I asked. “Who do we contact?”
She considered. “Illegals? U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. False imprisonment? City police and district attorney’s office. Substandard working conditions? OSHA, Department of Labor, State Employment Development Division. Take your pick.”
“Which is best to start with?’
“None—yet. You’ve got no proof of what’s going on there.”
“Then we’ll just have to get proof, won’t we?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You and I both used to work in security. Ought to be a snap to get into that building.”
“Maybe.”
“All we need is access. Take some pictures. Tape a statement from one of the workers. Are you with me?”
She nodded. “I’m with you. And as backup, why don’t we take Willie?”
“My Willie? The diamond king of northern California? Shar, this is an investigation, not a date!”
“Before he opened those discount jewelry stores Willie was a professional fence, as you may recall. And although he won’t admit it, I happen to know he personally stole a lot of the items he moved. Willie has talents we can use.”
“My tennis elbow hurts! Why’re you making me do this?”
I glared at Willie. “Shh! You’ve never played tennis in your life.”
“The doc told me most people who’ve got it have never played.”
“Just be quiet and cut the wire.”
“How d’you know there isn’t an alarm?”
“Shar and I have checked. Trust us.”
“I trust you two, I’ll probably end up in San Quentin.”
“Cut!”
Willie snipped a fair segment out of the razor wire topping the chain-link fence. I climbed over first, nearly doing myself grievous personal injury as I swung over the top. Shar followed, and then the diamond king—making unseemly grunting noises. His tall frame was encased in dark sweats tonight, and they accentuated the beginnings of a beer belly.
As we each dropped to the ground, we quickly moved into the shadow of the three-story frame building and flattened against its wall. Willie wheezed and pushed his longish hair out of his eyes. I gave Shar a look that said, Some asset you invited along. She shrugged apologetically.
According to plan we began inching around the building, searching for a point of entry. We didn’t see any guards. If the factory employed them, it would be for keeping people in; it had probably never occurred to the owners that someone might actually want in.
After about three minutes Shar came to a stop and I bumped into her. She steadied me and pointed down. A foot off the ground was an opening that had been boarded up; the plywood was splintered and coming loose. I squatted and took a look at it. Some kind of duct—maybe people-size. Together we pulled the board off.
Yep. A duct. But not very big. Willie wouldn’t fit through it—which was fine by me, because I didn’t want him alerting everybody in the place with his groaning. I’d fit, but Shar would fit better still.
I motioned for her to go first.
> She made an after-you gesture.
I shook my head.
It’s you case, she mouthed.
I sighed, handed her the camera loaded with infrared film that I carried, and started squeezing through.
I’ve got to admit that I have all sorts of mild phobias, I get twitchy in crowds, and I’m not fond of heights, and I hate to fly, and small places make my skin crawl. This duct was a very small space. I pushed onward, trying to keep my mind on other things—such as Tommy and Mae Jones.
When my hands reached the end of the duct I pulled hard, then moved them around till I felt a concrete floor about two feet below. I wriggled forward, felt my foot kick something and heard Shar grunt. Sorry. The room I slid down into was pitch black. I waited till Shar was crouched beside me, then whispered, “D’you have your flashlight?”
She handed me the camera, fumbled in her pocket, and then I saw streaks of light bleeding around the fingers she placed around its bulb. We waited, listening. No one stirred, no one spoke. After a moment, Shar took her hand away from the flash and began shining its beam around. A storage room full of sealed cardboard boxes, with a door at the far side. We exchanged glances and began moving through the stacked cartons.
When we got to the door I put my ear to it and listened. No sound. I turned the knob slowly. Unlocked. I eased the door open. A dimly lighted hallway. There was another door with a lighted window set into it at the far end. Shar and I moved along opposite walls and stopped on either side of the door. I went up on tiptoe and peeked through the corner of the glass.
Inside was a factory: row after row of sewing machines, all making jittery up-and-down motions and clacking away. Each was operated by an Asian woman. Each woman slumped wearily as she fed the fabric through.
It was twelve-thirty in the morning, and they still had them sewing!
I drew back and motioned for Shar to have a look. She did, then turned to me, lips tight, eyes ablaze.
Pictures? She mouthed.
I shook my head. Can’t risk being seen.
Now what?
I shrugged.
She frowned and started back the other way, slipping from door to door and trying each knob. Finally she stopped and pointed to one with a placard that said STAIRWAY. I followed her through it and we started up. The next floor was offices—locked up and dark. We went back to the stairwell, climbed another flight. On the landing I almost tripped over a small, huddled figure.
It was a tiny gray-haired woman, crouching there with a dirty thermal blanket wrapped around her. She shivered repeatedly. Sick and hiding from the foreman. I squatted beside her.
The woman started and her eyes got big with terror. She scrambled backwards toward the steps, almost falling over. I grabbed her arm and steadied her; her flesh felt as if it was burning up. “Don’t be scared,” I said.
Her eyes moved from me to Shar. Little cornered bunny-rabbit eyes, red and full of the awful knowledge that there’s no place left to hide. She babbled something in a tongue that I couldn’t understand. I put my arms around her and patted her back—universal language. After a bit she stopped trying to pull away.
I whispered, “Do you know Mae Jones?”
She drew back and blinked.
“Mae Jones?” I repeated.
Slowly she nodded and pointed to the door off the next landing.
So Tommy’s mother was here. If we could get her out, we’d have an English-speaking witness who, because she had her permanent green card, wouldn’t be afraid to go to the authorities and file charges against the owners of this place. But there was no telling who or what was beyond that door. I glanced at Shar. She shook her head.
The sick woman was watching me. I thought back to yesterday morning and the way Darrin Boydston had communicated with the boy he called Daniel. It was worth a try.
I pointed to the woman. Pointed to the door. “Mae Jones.” I pointed to the door again, then pointed to the floor.
The woman was straining to understand. I went through the routine twice more. She nodded and struggled to her feet. Trailing the ratty blanket behind her, she climbed the stairs and went through the door.
Shar and I released sighs at the same time. Then we sat down on the steps and waited.
It wasn’t five minutes before the door opened. We both ducked down, just in case. An overly thin woman of about thirty-five rushed through so quickly that she stumbled on the top step and caught herself on the railing. She would have been beautiful, but lines of worry and pain cut deep into her face; her hair had been lopped off short and stood up in dirty spike. Her eyes were jumpy, alternately glancing behind her. She hurried down the stairs.
“You want me?”
“If you are Mae Jones.” Already I was guiding her down the steps.
“I am. Who are—”
“We’re going to get you out of here, take you to Tommy.”
“Tommy! Is he—”
“He’s all right, yes.”
Her face brightened, but then was taken over by fear. “We must hurry. Lan faked a faint, but they will notice I’m gone very soon.”
We rushed down the stairs, along the hall toward the storage room. We were at its door when a man called out behind us. He was coming from the sewing room at the far end.
Mae froze. I shoved her, and then we were weaving through the stacked cartons. Shar got down on her knees, helped Mae into the duct, and dove in behind her. The door banged open.
The man was yelling in a strange language. I slid into the duct, pulling myself along on its riveted sides. Hands grabbed for my ankles and got the left one. I kicked out with my right foot. He grabbed for it and missed. I kicked upward, hard and heard a satisfying yelp of pain. His hand let go of my ankle and I wriggled forward and fell to the ground outside. Shar and Mae were already running for the fence.
But where the hell was Willie?
Then I saw him: a shadowy figure, motioning with both arms as if he were guiding an airplane up to the jetway. There was an enormous hole in the chain-link fence. Shar and Mae ducked through it.
I started running. Lights went on at the corners of the building. Men came outside, shouting. I heard a whine, then a crack.
Rifle, firing at us!
Willie and I hurled ourselves to the ground. We moved on elbows and knees through the hole in the fence and across the sidewalk to the shelter of a van parked there. Shar and Mae huddled behind it. Willie and I collapsed beside them just as sirens began to go off.
“Like ‘Nam all over again,” he said.
I stared at him in astonishment. Willie had spent most of the war hanging out in a bar in Cam Ranh Bay.
Shar said, “Thank God you cut the hole in the fence!”
Modestly he replied, “Yeah, well, you gotta do something when you’re bored out of your skull.”
Because a shot had been fired, the SFPD had probable cause to search the building. Inside they found some sixty Asian women—most of them illegals—who had been imprisoned there, some as long as five years, as well as evidence of other sweatshops the owners were running, both here and in Southern California. The INS was called in, statements were taken, and finally at around five that morning Mae Jones was permitted to go with us to be reunited with her son.
Darrin Boydston greeted us at the Cash Cow, wearing electric-blue pants and a western-style shirt with the bucking-bull emblem embroidered over its pockets. A polyester cowboy. He stood watching as Tommy and Mae hugged and kissed, wiped a sentimental tear from his eye, and offered Mae a job. She accepted, and then he drove them to the house of a friend who would put them up until they found a place of their own. I waited around the pawnshop till he returned.
When Boydston came through the door he looked down in the mouth. He pulled up a stool next to the one I sat on and said, “Sure am gonna miss that boy.”
“Well, you’ll probably be seeing a lot of him, with Mae working here.”
“Yeah.” He brightened some. “And I’m gonna help her get him into cl
asses. Stuff like that. After she lost her Navy benefits when the skunk of a husband walked out on her, she didn’t know about all the other stuff that’s available.” He paused, then added, “So what’s the damage?”
“You mean, what do you owe us? We’ll bill you.”
“Better be an honest accounting, little lady,” he said. ‘Ma’am, I mean,” he added in his twangiest Texas accent. And smiled.
I smiled, too.
ONE FINAL ARRANGEMENT
(Mick Savage)
Devil’s Slide, south of San Francisco, is a stretch of highway where you don’t want to push your luck, but I was pushing mine on the Yamaha, even though I had Lottie—my lady, Charlotte Keim—snuggled up behind me. It was a killer day, clear and crisp, and there wasn’t a shred of cloud in the sky. We hugged the curves above the sea, really leaned into them, and left the city and work far behind us.
At least Lottie—who’s one of my fellow operative at McCone Investigations—had left work behind. I was still steamed after having spent last night hunkered down in the rhododendrons at some guy’s Hillsborough estate, watching him go through the same damn motions that he had been going through for over a week. Watching him on a damp October night whose every chill breeze whispered the word pneumonia. And I was even more steamed about the conversation I’d had this morning with my aunt and boss, Sharon McCone.
Just thinking about it made me come up too fast at the start of a hairpin curve. I corrected in time, but Lottie’s arms tightened around me, and she said, “For God’s sake, Mick!” after that I took it slower until we got the state beach at San Gregorio. While I was securing the bike in the parking area, Lottie ran off toward the sand.
By the time I followed her, Lottie was dancing along the water’s edge, her long dark-brown curls flaring and bouncing. She saw me and called, “Last one in’s a lovesick armadillo!” Lottie’s got seven years on me, but sometimes she’s as much a kid as my little sister, and when she gets excited, the Texas accent she tried to leave behind in Archer City comes out—along with what Shar calls Lottie’s “Texasisms.” Today Lottie was as Texas as Lone Star beer.
McCone and Friends Page 4