Fire Sale

To my surprise, Fly the Flag didn’t share the general decay along the avenue. Rose Dorrado’s story had half persuaded me that Frank Zamar was engineering his company’s demise himself, but, if he was, I’d have expected him to let the plant itself run down: a lot of arson is caused by malign neglect-letting buildings carry more power than their wiring can stand, not repairing frayed wires, letting garbage accumulate in strategic corners-rather than outright torching. At least from the outside, Fly the Flag looked in good shape.

Flashlight in hand, I made my way around the exterior. The yard was small, big enough for an eighteen-wheeler to maneuver in if necessary, but not for much more than that. A drive led down to a basement-level loading dock; there were two ground-level entrances.

I walked all the way around the building, looking for holes in the foundation, looking for cuts in the electric cable and gas line leading into the plant, or for footprints in the damp ground, but didn’t see anything unusual. All of the entrances were locked; when I probed with my picklocks, I didn’t feel any obstructions.

I looked at my watch: six-oh-seven. Flashlight trained on the lock, I used my picks to open the rear door. Someone from the Skyway might see me, but I doubted anyone up there cared enough about life down here to call the cops.

Inside the plant, the layout was pretty simple: a large open floor where the giant cutting and pressing machines stood, long tables where people sewed, all dominated by the biggest American flag I’d ever seen. When I shone my flashlight up on it, the stripes looked so soft and rich I wanted to touch them. By climbing up on a tabletop and stretching up a hand, I could just reach the bottom stripe. It felt like a silken velvet, so voluptuous that I wanted to hug it to myself. The careful stitching along the stripes showed the workers believed in the slogan they’d posted above it: “We Fly the Flag Proudly.”

I jumped down and wiped my footprints from the table before continuing to explore. In one corner, space had grudgingly been given over to a tiny canteen, a dirty toilet, and a minute office where Frank Zamar did his paperwork. In an alcove next to the canteen stood a row of beat-up metal lockers, enough that I guessed they must be for employees to store their personal things in during the day.

On the other side of the room, an open-sided service elevator went down to the basement. I used its hand crank to lower myself. The front opened onto the dock; the rear to the storeroom where bolts of fabric were kept. There were hundreds of bolts of all different colors and long spools of braid, even a wire cage holding flagpoles of different lengths. Everything the compleat flag producer required.

It was after six-thirty now, not enough time to check Zamar’s office before Rose Dorrado showed up to prove her zeal as an employee. I wondered idly if she had glued the locks herself: she could be trying to prove she was indispensable by protecting the plant from saboteurs. Collecting enough dead rats to stink up the heating vents seemed like a horrible job, but I supposed it all depended on how determined you were.

I saw a set of iron stairs leading to the main floor and was starting up them when I heard a noise above me, a thud of the kind a door makes when it closes. If it was Rose Dorrado, I was okay, but if not-I turned off the flashlight, sticking it in my pack, and crept upward by feel. I could hear footsteps; when my eyes were level with the floor, my view was blocked by a giant sewing machine, but I could see a cone of light wobbling around the worktables-someone picking their way. If it was someone with a legitimate reason to be there, they would have switched on the fluorescent overheads.

A pair of high-tops appeared around the edge of the sewing machine, laces slapping against the floor. An amateur: a pro would have tied his shoes. I ducked down. My picklocks jangled against the iron banister. The feet above me froze, turned, and started ru

I jumped up the stairs and reached the intruder just as he was opening the door. He flung his flashlight at me. I ducked a second too late and reeled as it hit the top of my head. By the time I regained my balance and got out the fire exit after him, he had cleared the fence and was scrambling up the embankment toward the Skyway. I followed him, but I was too far behind to bother trying to climb the fence; he was already hoisting himself over the concrete barricade next to the road.

I heard horns blaring, and the raw screech of skidding tires, and then the roar of engines as the traffic came back to life.

If he hadn’t cleared all six lanes, I’d hear sirens soon. When a couple of minutes passed without them, I turned and went back down the hill. It was close to seven now; the morning shift should be arriving. I trudged across the muddy ground, reflexively rubbing the sore spot where the flashlight had hit my head.

As I turned around the corner of the building, heading toward the front, I could see Rose Dorrado crossing the yard, her red hair standing out like a flare in the dull day. By the time I got to the main entrance, Rose had the front unlocked and was already inside. A few other people were coming through the gate into the yard, talking quietly to each other. They looked at me without much curiosity as they passed.

I found Rose at the metal lockers, pulling out a blue smock and hanging up her coat. The inside of her locker was pasted with Bible verses. Her lips were moving, perhaps in prayer, and I waited for her to finish before tapping her shoulder.

She looked at me, surprised and pleased. “You got here early! You can talk to people before Mr. Zamar shows up.”

“Someone else was here early, a youngish man. I didn’t get a good look, but maybe in his early twenties. Tall, but his cap was pulled down too low for me to see his face. He had a thin mustache.”

Rose frowned in worry. “Some man was here trying to do something? It’s what I said, it’s what I tried to warn Mr. Zamar about. Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I tried, but he was too fast for me. We could call the police, see if he left fingerprints-”

“Only if Mr. Zamar says it’s all right. What was he trying to do, this man?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that, either. He heard me and ran off, but I think he was heading for the stairs down to the basement. What’s there, besides all the fabric?”

She was too upset to wonder how I knew about the fabric in the basement, or to question where I had been when the intruder heard me. “Everything. You know, the boiler, the drying room, the dry-cleaning room, everything for ru

9 The Fog of…What?

“Business is full of risks. I can handle this fine without you butting in.” Frank Zamar’s stubby hands moved restlessly over his desk, like birds uneasy about landing on a branch.

“According to Rose, you’ve had quite a history of sabotage in the last few weeks: rats in the heating ducts, Krazy Glue in the door locks, and now someone breaking in at six this morning. Aren’t you worried about what’s going on?”

“Rose means well, I know she does, but she had no right to call you in.”

I looked at him in exasperation. “So you’d rather let your plant go up in smoke than figure out who is doing this, or why?”

“No one’s going to burn up my plant.” His square face sagged around the corners; the bravado of his words wasn’t matched by the worry in his eyes.

“Do you have the local gangbangers so pissed off at you that you’re scared to report them? Is this about ‘protection’ payoffs, Zamar?”

“No, it damn well isn’t about paying protection.” He slapped the desk for emphasis, but I wasn’t convinced.