by Robert Maxxe
"Right near where I live."
"Which is?"
"In Bethpage."
Lon traded a quick glance with Carrie. "Fill me in a little, Pat—what you did, what the place was like, what they made. . . ."
"Is there something wrong—?"
"No, nothing. I'd just like to know."
"Well, it was sort of a rinky-dink outfit, really, a lotta little rooms in what looked like an old warehouse or something. I put chips into circuit boards, though I couldn't tell you beans about what they were for. I just did my job, and that was it. They paid well, I'll say that. . . "
Lon looked between the girl and Wallach, who had taken up a stance against a wall to one side of the desk. "Sounds like both of you worked at the same place. Did you ever see each other there?"
The two employees stared at each other a moment, then both shook their heads.
"Did either one of you," Lon asked with emphasis, "ever see anything to indicate that the company was making games—computer games?"
"Y'mean like Pac-Man?" the girl said.
"More or less. Only this would be called Spacescape."
"Spacescape," Wallach muttered thoughtfully. "Nope, never heard that."
"Me neither," the girl said. "But the boards I was puttin' together were pretty complicated stuff. I'd say they hadda be for something more'n a game."
Lon paused, then looked to Carrie. "Anything you'd like to ask?"
She appreciated being included. "Thanks. Maybe a question or two." As she stood and crossed the room, Lon introduced her to the others, though he didn't bother to explain her presence.
"I just want to be sure we're talking about the right place," Carrie said to the two workers. "I'm trying to locate a company called Pace's, but each one of you called the place you used to work something slightly different on your job application."
The girl shrugged. "I just figured it was Incorporated or something. But around there, yeah, I guess we just called it Pace's."
Wallach concurred. "I wasn't sure of the exact name. Come to think of it, I never actually saw it written out. There was no name on the factory. . . ."
Lon looked surprised. "But what about on your paychecks? They must have printed the name of the company account."
"We never got checks," Wallach said.
Lon grew even more amazed. "Everybody was paid in cash?"
"Not exactly. We got pay vouchers which we could cash at the company office. Or else they'd transfer money direct to our bank."
Lon glanced to the girl, who seconded the details with a nod.
"Who worked in the company office?" Carrie asked. "Who ran the company?"
"I can only remember seeing one guy," Wallach said. "He did all the hiring and paying. Kind of a one-man band—"
"His name?" Carrie said impatiently.
"I think it was Peale."
"That's right," the girl chimed in. "Sort of a sour type. The crew in my room used to call him Lemon Peale."
There was a silence. Lon and Carrie stared at each other, mulling the implications of what they'd heard, while the two workers stared at each other confounded by the stunning effect of their information.
Finally Lon smiled at the girl, then at the man, and said: "That's all, I think. Thanks again for coming in."
The two employees started out of the office. But Carrie, remembering that there had been no phone listed in the Long Island directories, stopped them. "Can you give me an address or phone number for this company?"
The girl answered first. "I can't remember exactly, but it was somewhere on Parkfield Road—that's out near the old Grumman plant."
"You might not find it there now, though," Wallach offered. "The place closed. That's why I was laid off."
"Yeah. Me, too."
Lon thanked them again and they walked out. But Carrie had one more last thought, and chased into the corridor to ask a question. She got the same answer from both employees, and came back to Lon's office.
"What was that about?" he asked.
"I asked how they got their jobs at Pace's."
"Why?"
"Because Peale has obviously done everything possible to cover his tracks, and we're going to need every bit of information we can get. I figured if they found the jobs through a classified ad, the most likely way, then we could check back and find out where the answers went, or the bill for the ad."
Lon gave her an admiring smile. "You know," he said, "you've got a mind like a—"
"Don't say computer!" she broke in, her warning tone only half in jest.
"Would you settle for steel trap?"
"Let's just say it's a nicely working ordinary human brain."
"So when you asked, what did you find out?" Lon said.
"They did get their jobs through a help-wanted ad in a newspaper."
"Which paper?"
"The Long Island paper," she said. "Newsday."
24
Lon drove his Mercedes and Carrie rode with him for the fifteen-mile trip to Bethpage. They had to stop at several local gas stations before they found an attendant who could supply even tentative directions to Parkfield Road:
"I think it's over in that section near the old rail yard. . . ."
They were steered to a neighborhood of hangarlike red brick buildings spread out over a large flat area intersected by a web of rusted railway spurs. Though the buildings were sturdily constructed, the grid of roads around them consisted entirely of wide cinder tracks, never paved. Lon guessed that the whole complex had been hastily erected in the early days of World War II.
It was the war, he knew, that had spurred the development of Bethpage, Long Island, to a major manufacturing center. The Grumman Aircraft Company, designer and maker of the "Hellcat" and "Bearcat" and other planes built in vast numbers to combat the Germans and Japanese, was located there. In the years since, Grumman had grown into a tremendous aerospace concern, producing components for spacecraft and missiles as well as planes. Still headquartered in Bethpage, the huge enterprise had inevitably spawned satellite businesses. There were clusters of old buildings, like the one into which Lon and Carrie had wandered, which had once housed companies born during the war. Those businesses had grown and moved on, or had stagnated and closed. Some of the structures left behind were taken over for storage, auto-body repair shops, and light manufacturing. Others were simply left empty.
The day was chilly, and driving through the area, Lon and Carrie saw no one from whom to ask the way to Parkfield Road. A truck or a few cars were parked here and there, but the whole neighborhood had a forlorn and forbidding air that discouraged leaving the security of the Mercedes to ask directions. Searching on their own, however, they had difficulty identifying the street names. Some of the markers had been knocked down, replaced—if at all—with names of intersecting ways spray-painted on the walls of corner buildings.
At last, Carrie spotted one of these graffiti reading "Park 'n feel Row." She called Lon's attention to the marking, and they agreed it must be what they were seeking—modified by kids who used the deserted place for a lovers' lane.
The street was quite long, perhaps a third of a mile, bordered on one side by one of the disused railway spurs and on the other by a row of twenty-five or thirty identical buildings, separated by wide driveways. Two-story brick structures, from the front they appeared small, each with a plain facade wide enough for an entrance flanked by two windows on each side at both levels. But they were very long, sixty or seventy yards from front to back. Running straight along both sides of each building were continuous factory windows, oversize panels of wire-laced glass.
Lon drove the length of the street once, then back again. Carrie counted only four buildings with cars parked outside. A few of the others displayed faded signs, ELBEE RIBBON CO. or BELKER—INDUSTRIAL WAXES. Evidently they boasted of tenants who had moved out long ago. The majority of the buildings were obviously closed and abandoned. The unused driveways were thick with weeds and dumped trash, an ugly col
lage of old truck tires, rusted oil drums, and broken plumbing fixtures.
There was nothing to indicate which of the factories might have been occupied by "Pace's."
"I guess we'll have to ask someone," Carrie said at last.
They had tried, before setting out from Intellitronics, to pin down an exact address. Lon had called Newsday, expecting the information would appear in the ad, or an invoice. But the classified department had told him nothing was on file under Pace's or Pace Incorporated or the Pace Company or Peale. Checking back with Milotti and Wallach, the date the ad appeared was narrowed down to the last two weeks in April. Then Lon persuaded the newspaper's advertising manager to search every listing for those weeks and to read aloud over the phone any that called for workers with experience of electronic assembly. Finally one was found that sounded right, but it gave only a phone number for responses. Upon checking the invoice, it was discovered that the ad had been placed in person at the newspaper's main office and paid for in cash; no name or mailing address had been furnished at the time.
Lon tried the number given in the ad. It had been disconnected.
Carrie called the telephone company to ask for the name and address of the former subscriber. After half an hour, she managed to cajole a supervisor into confirming that the defunct number—which had been unlisted—was billed to T. Peale, Pace's, Parkfield Road, Bethpage.
A small victory. The time spent calling had eaten up a good part of the afternoon, and Carrie had planned to pick up Emily today after school. Before leaving Lon's, she put out a few emergency calls to other mothers, seeking one who would perform the task and leave her free. But it was one of those days when no one was available. Finally, she called Patrick and asked him to meet Em, bring her to the shop and keep her there.
"And what should I do with her?" Patrick asked.
"You'll think of something."
"Don't be so sure. I may not be quite ready to be a mother."
For some reason Patrick's joke had sparked a poignant, fearful thought that, if anything happened to her, there would be no one else who could take her place. And for a moment, she reconsidered pursuing her investigation. But then she said simply to Patrick: "Take good care of her."
He must have detected an unusual weight to the remark, because he had tried to find out then where Carrie was, but she had evaded his questions and hung up.
Now she was here with Lon on this deserted street of mostly abandoned buildings. The journey had used up most of another hour, and the light was already starting to fade. Carrie stared out at the cold gray scene.
"Why do I get the feeling," she remarked, "that wherever we walk in, we're going to interrupt the shooting of a porn flick, or find a bunch of dangerous characters putting white powder into little envelopes and counting stacks of money?"
"You could wait in the car," Lon said. "Or we can call this off—"
"No way, José." It perked up her spirits to use the flip phrase copied from Nick. She pointed to a building where a few cars were parked. "Let's ask in there."
The tenants turned out to be six very friendly Cuban brothers, veterans of the "freedom flotilla," who had gone into business making plastic laminated table mats. They had set up their operation here only five weeks ago, choosing it because the rent was negligible. The youngest of the brothers, the only one whose English was good enough to converse with Lon, reported that they had no idea of what other companies occupied the area, much less the names of people who ran them.
Carrie and Lon got back in the Mercedes and drove along to the next building that had a couple of cars parked outside.
This was a factory for ceramic kitchen and bathroom tiles. The manager, a scowling paunchy Italian who spoke with a heavy accent, took Carrie and Lon into his messy office and insisted serving them cups of espresso made in an elaborate machine. Carrie pronounced the coffee excellent, which seemed to make the manager more patient and receptive to their questions.
No, he was sorry, but he knew of no one named Peale who'd had a business in the vicinity. Though, yes, he did recall that until a couple of months ago a place on the street had been making some kind of electrical equipment. It had been very active, too, with morning and afternoon shifts of fifty or sixty employees. It was amazing, the tile man said, that such a successful operation had settled in this area at all.
"Aroun' here it's all penny-ante stuff, but thatta place was go like gangbusters. Two shifts! They musta made money fast, 'cause they move outta here real quick. Three months, then one day I don't see nobody there no more."
"You never found out exactly what they were making?" Lon asked.
"We mind our own business here, mister."
"But you knew it was electrical," Carrie observed.
"My boys go sometime for lunch to a diner near here. They bump into people workin' over at that place, hear a thing or two."
"Could it be," Carrie said, "that whatever they were making wasn't electrical—but electronic?"
"Electric, electronic. It's alla the same, eh?"
They got the man to come outside and point out for them the building where there had been so much activity, the fourth from the far end of the road. Before parting, Carrie asked the Italian about the blend of coffee beans he used, which led to an exchange about differences in espresso made on expensive machines with high-pressure steam as opposed to the stove-top pot.
Lon broke in finally. "We're not here to do market research for your store. . . ."
Carrie said a quick but polite good-bye to the tile man, and apologized to Lon as soon as they were in the car. "I'm sorry. I'm putting it off, I guess. Now that we've found the place . . . I am a little afraid." She turned from gazing along the cinder road to face Lon. "Do you think . . . we could be in any real danger?"
"You heard: the place is empty now."
"But if we find clues . . . keep going. Peale has taken so much trouble to lay low. If we get too close . . . well, maybe we shouldn't be doing this alone, maybe we should bring in the authorities—"
"Sweetheart, you had a hard-enough time convincing me to come this far. You'll never get help or protection without first finding proof that something's wrong or illegal."
There was a silence. The lengthening shadows of the factories lining the road reminded Carrie that the winter day was getting older, school would be letting out around now. She had freed herself from having to be there by calling Patrick from Lon's office and asking him to meet Emily, bring her to the store. But the reminder of her children, her role as their sole protector, made her wonder whether she should be taking risks.
"Of course," Lon said, "if you want to give it up, that's fine with me. I still believe there's an innocent explanation for all of it."
Giving up now wouldn't mean living with less fear. "No," she said. "Let's have a look."
It stood between two utterly derelict buildings, among the worst on the road, but this one—fourth from the end—was relatively intact. The windows were nearly opaque with the grime of years, but none were broken. The driveway and some ground in front were rutted with muddy holes, but the weeds had been cleared.
Walking up a path of cracked pavement brought Lon and Carrie to the front door, a large slab of heavy-gauge metal. Lon grasped the handle and tugged. The door was firmly bolted. They moved along to look through the window at the right. The dirt caked on the glass combined with the gathering winter darkness to obscure the view Only faintly Carrie could make out a room within, the dark shape of a doorway opposite the window, and something in a corner, a piece of furniture left behind when the factory was vacated. They moved along to the next window and looked in on another room, this one distinctly bare.
They turned a corner and edged along the wall to the long factory window. Suddenly Carrie cried out.
"What's the matter?" Lon said, grabbing her protectively.
Nothing serious. Her right foot had gone into a dip in the ground and she had been startled by the clammy mud suddenly sucking at her ank
le. The ankle was fine, however. Carrie merely felt stupid for coming so unprepared to prowl, still wearing the same high-heeled shoes she'd put on for the store this morning.
But the mishap made them aware of how quickly the day was fading. Lon told Carrie to wait while he ran back to the trunk of his car, and returned in a minute carrying a powerful flashlight he kept handy for road emergencies. He swept the beam over the ground as they continued forward.
Coming to the long factory window, Carrie found that its lower sill was just above her eyes. To see in, she had to hang on with her fingertips and pull herself up like a toddler peering over a candy counter. With his height advantage, Lon had no difficulty. Lifting the flashlight to shine it through the window, he saw another big empty room and started to move on.
Carrie snatched at his sleeve. "Lon, look—up there. . . ." She pointed to a round shape high on a wall at the fringe of the light beam. "It's a clock."
Lon couldn't fathom her excitement. "Not unheard of in a factory."
"But it's got a wire running down to that outlet near the floor."
"So it's an electric clock."
"Right. Now shine the light up there again, on the face."
Lon swiveled the beam upward. He saw it then: the second hand of the clock was rotating steadily across the numerals. The electricity was on. Even if Peale's workers had been dismissed many weeks ago, the operation hadn't ceased entirely.
They hurried farther along, saw a room filled with tables upended on each other for storage, then another bare room. By now they had come two-thirds of the distance from front to back. Shining the light into the next stretch of windows, they saw that the whole rear third of the factory had been left open for warehousing. The space was taken up by towers of wooden shipping crates, stacked almost to the ceiling. A thousand of them, maybe more.
"They look about the right size," Carrie said.
"You think there's a Spacescape machine in every one . . .?"
"One way to make sure."
The window consisted of panels hinged to pivot open laterally. Carrie put her hand on the hinged frame and pushed, then pulled. No movement in either direction. She moved back along the window, testing other panels. All were locked. At the rear corner, Carrie came to a louvered metal door, probably the entrance to a truck-loading bay. It was also secured. She went back to the window where Lon had been waiting.