It was early morning, but already the day was heating up. I could hear the drone of traffic, not far off on Hamilton. The sky was murky above me and I felt the rasp of ozone in the back of my throat. As the day wore on cars, chemical plants, and backyard barbecues would make their contribution to the stew that cooked over Jersey. Fancy-?pants wimps in L.A. rated their pollution and curtailed activity. In Jersey we just call it air and get on with life. If you're born in Jersey, you know how to rise to a challenge. Bring on the Mob. Bring on bad air. Bring on taxes and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and macaroni at every meal. Nothing defeats us in Jersey.
First thing on my activities list was a drive around the Apusenja neighborhood, keeping my eyes peeled for Boo and Singh. Sometimes missing persons turned up surprisingly close to home. They moved in with neighbors, hid out in garages, and sometimes turned up dead in a Dumpster.
Neither Boo nor Singh showed up after fifteen minutes of searching, so I headed across town to Route 1 and TriBro.
I still didn't have a clear idea of TriBro's product. Parts for slot machines. What did that mean? Gears? Handles? Bells and whistles? Not that it mattered. What mattered was squeezing a lead out of someone.
Black Bart hadn't been impressed with my charm or cleavage. I didn't think I'd get a lot of help from him. Clyde was eager, but not real bright. Andrew seemed like my best shot. I took the turnoff to TriBro and called Andrew on my cell phone.
“Guess what?” I said. “I'm in the neighborhood. Can I take a couple more minutes of your time?”
“Absolutely.”
Absolutely was a good answer. Very positive. No sign of annoyance. No lecherous side remark. Professional. Andrew was definitely the brother of choice.
I parked in the lot, entered the lobby, and was immediately directed to Andrew's office. More good luck. No Bart or Clyde to slow me down. I took a chair across from Andrew and thanked him for seeing me.
“TriBro has an interest in finding Singh,” he said. “We signed for the visa bond. If Singh skips, TriBro pays the bill.”
“Do you have other employees on work visas?”
“Not now, but we have in the past. And I have to tell you, Singh isn't the first to disappear.”
I felt my eyebrows raise.
“It's nothing suspicious,” Andrew said. “In fact, I find it understandable. If I was in a similar position I might disappear, too. These men come to work for three months and are seduced by the potential for success. Everything is within their reach . . . rental movies, burgers, designer jeans, a new car, microwave popcorn, and frozen waffles. I have some sympathy for their flight, but at the same time TriBro can't keep absorbing bond losses. If this sort of thing continues we'll have to stop using visa workers. And that would be a shame, because they make very good temporary employees.”
“Singh must have had some friends on the job. I'd like to talk to them.”
Andrew Cone sat through a couple beats of silence, his eyes holding mine, his thoughts private, his expression guarded. “Why don't we put you undercover,” he finally said. “I can give you Singh's job for a day. We haven't filled it yet.”
“I'm not even sure what you make here.”
“We make little things. Machine-?tooled gears and locks. Singh's job primarily consisted of measuring minutia. Each part we supply must be perfect. The first day onboard you wouldn't be expected to know much.” He reached for his phone and his mouth tipped into a small smile. “Let's see how good you are at bluffing.”
Ten minutes later I was a genuine bogus TriBro employee, following after Andrew, learning about TriBro Tech. The gears and locks that composed the bulk of TriBro's product were made at workstations housed in a large warehouse-?type facility adjoining the reception area and offices. The far end of the warehouse was divided off into a long room where the quality control work was done. Windows looked into the interior. In the entire facility there were no windows looking out. The quality control area consisted of a series of cubbies with built-?in tables, shelves, and cabinets. The tables held an odd assortment of weights, measures, machine torture devices, and chemicals. A single worker occupied each of the tables. There were seven people in the quality control area. And there was one unoccupied table. Singh's table.
Andrew introduced me to the area supervisor, Ann Klimmer, and returned to his office. Ann took me table by table and introduced me to the rest of the team. The women were in their thirties and forties. There were two men. One of the men was Asian. Singh would have gravitated to the Asian, I thought. But the women would warm to me faster.
After the introductions and an overview lecture on the operation, I was partnered with Jane Locarelli. Jane looked like she'd just rolled off an embalming table. She was late forties, rail thin, and drained of color. Even her hair was faded. She spoke in a monotone, never making eye contact, her words slightly slurred as if the effort of speech was too much to manage.
“I've worked here for thirty-?one years,” she said. “I started working for the senior Cones. Right out of high school.”
No wonder she looked like a walking cadaver. Thirty-?one years under fluorescent lights, measuring and torturing little metal doohickeys. Jeez.
Jane hitched herself up onto a stool and selected a small gear from a huge barrel of small gears. “We do two kinds of testing here. We do random testing of new product.” She sent me an apologetic grimace. “I'm afraid that's a little tedious.” She displayed the gear she held in her hand. “And we test parts which have failed and been returned. That sort of testing is much more interesting. Unfortunately, today we're testing new product.”
Jane carefully measured each part of the gear and examined it under a microscope for flaws. When she was done, she reached into the barrel and selected another gear. I had to bite back a groan. Two gears down. Three thousand gears to go.
“I heard Singh didn't show up for work one day,” I said, going for casual curious. “Was he unhappy with the job?”
“Not sure,” Jane said, concentrating on the new gear. “He wasn't very talkative.” After extensive measuring, she decided the gear was okay and went on to a third.
“Would you like to try one?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She handed the gear over and showed me how to measure.