Fire Sale

Grobian’s nameplate was on the door in front of them. I stopped and raised an eyebrow. “The great man at home?”

The Harley jacket laughed. “Great man? That’s about right, sis. Too great to sign our slips and get us on our way.”

“Because he thinks he’s on his way to Rolling Meadows.” One of the smokers coughed and spat into his cup.

New Mary’s Wake-Up Lounge gri

“It’s okay, I’m not the gabby type, and I don’t work for the company, anyway,” I said. “I have an appointment with the big guy, and ordinarily I would just butt in on him, but since I’m here to ask a favor I’ll wait in line like a good kindergartner.”

That made them laugh again. They shifted to make room for me against the hall wall. I listened as they talked about their upcoming routes. The guy in the Harley jacket was getting ready to leave for El Paso, but the others were on local runs. They talked about the Bears, who had no offense, reminded them of the team twenty-five years back, right before Ditka and McMahon gave us our one whiff of glory, but was Lovey Smith the man to bring back the McMahon-Payton era. They didn’t say anything further about the bedsheet queen or Grobian’s ambitions for the home office. Not that I needed to know, but I suppose the main reason I’m a detective is a voyeur’s interest in other people’s lives.

After a longish wait, Grobian’s door opened and a youth emerged. His reddish-brown hair, cut short in a futile effort to control his thick curls, was slicked down hard. His square face was dotted with freckles, and his cheeks still showed the soft down of adolescence, but he surveyed us with an adult seriousness. When he caught sight of the man in the Harley jacket, he smiled with such genuine pleasure that I couldn’t help smiling, too.

“Billy the Kid,” the Harley said, smacking him on the shoulder. “How’s it hanging, kid?”

“Hi, Nolan, I’m good. You heading for Texas tonight?”

“That’s right. If the great man ever gets off his duff and signs me out.”

“Great man? You mean Pat? Really, he’s just been going over the logs and he’ll be right out. I’m real sorry you had to wait so long, but, honest, he’ll be with you in a second.” The youth stepped over to me. “Are you Ms. War-sha-sky?”

He pronounced my name carefully, although not quite successfully. “I’m Billy-I said you could come in today, only Pat, Mr. Grobian, he’s not quite a hundred percent, well-he’s ru

“Billy?” a man shouted from inside the office. “Send Nolan in-we’re ready to roll. And go collect the faxes for me.”

My heart sank: a nineteen-year-old gofer with enthusiasm but no authority had organized my meeting with the guy who had authority but no enthusiasm. “Whenever I feel dismayed, I hold my head erect,” I sang to myself.

While Billy went up the hall to the print room, the smokers pinched off the ends of their cigarettes and carefully put them in their pockets. Nolan went into Grobian’s office and shut the door. When he came out a few minutes later, the other men trooped in in a group. Since they left the door open, I followed them.

5 Imperial Relations

Offices in industrial spaces aren’t designed for the comfort or prestige of the inhabitant. Grobian got a bigger space than the tiny rooms I’d poked into earlier-it even included a closet in the far corner-but it was painted the same dirty yellow, held the same metal desk and chairs as the others, and, like them, even had a video cam in the ceiling. Buffalo Bill didn’t trust anyone, apparently.

Grobian himself was an energetic young man, thirty-something, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms, with a big marine anchor tattooed on the left bicep. He looked like the kind of guy truckers would respect, with a square quarterback jaw jutting beneath a buzz haircut.

He frowned when he saw me behind the men. “You new on the job? You don’t belong in here-check in with Edgar Díaz in-”

“I’m V. I. Warshawski. We had an appointment at five-fifteen.” I tried to sound upbeat, professional, not a

“Oh, yeah. Billy set that up. You’ll have to wait. These men are already late getting on the road.”

“Of course.” Women are supposed to wait on men; it’s our appointed role. But I kept the thought to myself: beggars have to have a su

When I looked around for a place to sit, I saw a woman behind me. She was definitely not a typical By-Smart employee, not with a face whose makeup had been as carefully applied as if her skin were a Vermeer canvas. Her clothes, too-a body-hugging jersey top over a lavender kilt artfully arranged to show black lace inserts-hadn’t been bought on a By-Smart paycheck, let alone off a By-Smart rack, and none of the exhausted workers I’d seen in the canteen could have the energy to create that toned, supple body.

The woman smiled when she saw me staring: she liked attention, or perhaps envy. She was in the only chair, so I went to lean against a metal filing cabinet next to her. She held a binder in her lap, open to an array of numbers that meant nothing to me, but when she realized I was staring down at them she shut the book and crossed her legs. She was wearing knee-high lavender boots with three-inch heels. I wondered if she had a pair of flip-flops to put on before going to her car.

Two more men joined the four lined up at Grobian’s desk. When he’d finished with them, another three came in. They were all truckers, getting their loads approved, either for what they’d delivered or what they were getting ready to drive off with.

I was growing bored and even a bit angry, but I’d be even more upset if I blew a chance to get out from under the girls’ basketball team. I sucked in a deep breath: keep it perky, Warshawski, and turned to ask the woman if she was part of the warehouse’s management team.

She shook her head and smiled a little condescendingly. I would have to play twenty questions to get anything out of her. I didn’t care that much, but I needed to do something to pass the time. I remembered the trucker’s remark about the bedsheet queen. She either bought them or lay in them-maybe both.

“You the linen expert?” I asked.

She preened slightly: she had a reputation, people talked about her. She ordered all the towels and sheets for By-Smart nationwide, she said.

Before I could continue the game, Billy came back into the room with a thick sheaf of papers. “Oh, Aunt Jacqui, there are faxes for you in this bunch. I don’t know why they’ve sent them here instead of up to Rolling Meadows.”

Aunt Jacqui stood up, but dropped her binder in the process. Some of the papers fell out and fluttered to the floor, three landing under Grobian’s desk. Billy picked up the binder and put it on her chair.

“Oh, dear,” she murmured, her voice languid, almost liquid. “I don’t think I can crawl under the desk in these clothes, Billy.”

Billy set the faxes on top of her binder and got down on his hands and knees to fetch the scattered pages. Aunt Jacqui picked up the faxes, riffled through them, and extracted a dozen or so pages.

Billy scrambled back to his feet and handed her the sheets from her binder. “Pat, you ought to make sure that floor gets washed more often. It’s filthy under there.”

Grobian rolled his eyes. “Billy, this ain’t your mother’s kitchen, it’s a working warehouse. As long as the floor doesn’t catch on fire I can’t be bothered about how dirty it is or isn’t.”

One of the truckers laughed and cuffed Billy on the shoulder on his way out the door. “Time you went on the road, son. Let you see real dirt and you’ll come back and eat off Grobian’s linoleum.”