“You’re probably right. What about the scrap yard where she works?”
“What about it? She’s their health and safety supervisor. Been there for years. Big whoop.”
“So... the Thursday night issue then?”
“Reckon so.”
“Do that, then report back to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Before you proceed. Before you do anything else.”
I grinned. “Yazz’m,” I drawled, and swung in behind the wheel of my Mustang, the plant badge burning a hole in my pocket.
The church was in Livonia, set well back from one of those nameless mile roads, its stained-glass front dark in the shadows of the setting sun. I circled the parking lot till I found a cluster of cars, where I parked. Directly across was an unmarked door, with several nondescript people standing around chatting and smoking cigarettes. As I watched, others arrived. There was much handshaking and hugging, and a lot of cutting up and laughing. I wondered if I was at the right place. But this was where Faith had sent me, and this was Thursday evening. So I got out of the Mustang.
People glanced at me as I approached the door. They ranged in age from teens to septuagenarians. When I’m at a bit of a loss, which on this job I am quite often, I tend to just bull on ahead. So I stopped by a pair of matronly ladies and asked, “Can you point me to the group chairman?”
“I guess that’s Rose,” one of them said.
“She’s downstairs,” the other added.
“I’m Mary,” the first one added. “Welcome.”
“Thanks,” I said, and went inside.
Downstairs turned out to be some sort of Sunday School room. Classroom tables were arranged in a U, and a dozen or so people — adults — were already seated. At the front, posters stood on easels, headed twelve something and twelve something else. An elderly woman, with upswept gray hair and excellent clothes, was setting books out on the tables and chatting easily with others. I went to her. “Are you Rose?”
“Yes?” she answered, turning, a big welcoming smile wreathing her lived-in face.
“I’m Ben. Word with you?”
“Hi, Ben. Certainly.” We stepped over to a piano near the corner. “What can I do for you?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sure you’ll have issues with this, but I need help. It’s about a former member.”
“Former?” she asked. She arched a brow, gave me the once-over. “Are you a cop?”
“No. Private. Working for the widow of a man who she says was a member here.”
“Oh,” she said guardedly. “What was his first name?”
“Went by J. J.” She did not react. “First name was Jeff.”
She smiled. “We are awash in Jeffs.”
“Listen, Rose. If I show you a picture, could you at least tell me if he was a member?”
She thought it over. “If he is really dead. And if I knew him. I suppose so.”
“And if the answer is yes... maybe some details.”
“Depends on the details,” she said. But the glint in her eye was mischievous.
“Okay. Here comes the picture.”
Like the good boy I occasionally am, I dutifully reported the results to Micki Quick. But by the next day it was time for another trip off the reservation.
The appointment hadn’t been hard to set up. I just called the Stone Automotive plant in Melvindale, asked for the director of maintenance, and said I needed to ask him some informal questions about the death of his predecessor, J. J. Monrho. Which of course was completely untrue. That ground had been tilled to death already. My real purpose was to get inside the plant, shake loose somehow, and snoop around.
Ike Watt met me in the lavish plant foyer. He had me sign a guest registry that included my name, address, date of birth, and citizenship. He had me sign a slip of paper about Stone Automotive’s environmental policy, in which I promised to report hazardous substances, to recycle, and not to drill holes in the polar ice cap. He stuck a VISITOR sticker on my shirt, bright red, like a bull’s-eye. Several cameras, not so carefully hidden in plastic bubbles in the corners of the foyer, took my picture from several different angles. Those shots would go well, I thought, with the videos taken of me earlier in the parking lot by cameras mounted on light poles. “Need a palm print?” I asked Watt, as he used his plant badge — just like the one in my pocket — to activate the door exiting the foyer. “Or a retinal scan?”
Watt chuckled easily and led me down a wide, picture-flanked hallway as the security door clicked shut behind us. “Nuts with guns,” he said vaguely. He was an inch or two taller than me, a light-skinned African American, with dark friendly eyes and salt-and-pepper hair and just the lilting hint of New Orleans in his voice. “To look at you,” he said, “my guess is you’ve done some years on the shop floor.”
“In my youth,” I admitted. “The Rouge. You?”
“Dodge Main, then Dearborn Assembly, then drove hi-lo at Clark Street till it closed.” We shook calloused hands, grinned at each other. “I was shift supervisor here till J. J. passed. Then they moved me over to his job. We’re in here.” He opened an unmarked door and led me in. The long and well-appointed conference room sat twenty easily. But now there were but three, all suits. Two I did not know, and one I did, standing at the head of the table, glowering: Arnold “Ted” Bumpps, attorney at law — or “Esquire,” as they style themselves.
“Oh my,” I said. “The star of stage and scream.”
Bumpps was well fed and swarthy with slick dark hair combed back and coarsely handsome features. His dark pinstriped suit was flawless. His smile was steely. “Caught ya, Perkins. Or are you O’Gannon?”
“Howdy, Arnie. Or are you Ted?”
He scowled. “State your business.”
“Here to chat with Ike, was the plan.”
“Without counsel present? In your dreams. Have a seat.”
As the men pushed business cards across to me, I maintained my bluff brave front, but inside I knew my mission was toast. Given the stakes in this case, I should have figured that Arnie would have the Stone operation on total lockdown. Even so, I went through the motions. In response to my questions Ike Watt explained yet again the circumstances of J. J. Monrho’s death. How early one morning last March, before the start of first shift, he had gone inside the monster machine press to do some sort of maintenance — without locking it out first. The area team leader had come along and, without realizing J. J. was inside, started the press up. Nothing new or different from what Micki had related to me before.
“So there’s no company negligence here,” Bumpps declared. “They long ago implemented appropriate lockout-tagout procedures. Did all the training; we have the records. Monrho clearly should have known better. He either forgot or... just cut a corner that morning.”
I closed my notebook, in which I’d done a doodle or two just for show, and rose. “That’s it then. I’ll get out of your hair.”
“You escort him all the way to his car, Watt,” Arnie said. “Make sure he signs out. Relieve him of his visitor tag. And don’t let him out of your sight.”
Ike gave me a slow, inscrutable glance. I just looked back at him.
“Yazzuh,” Ike drawled, with sarcasm that Arnie, in his terminal self-absorption, had not a prayer in the world of catching. We left the conference room and headed back the way we’d come. In a low voice Watt asked, “Did you get what you needed?”
“You kidding?”
“This wasn’t my doing,” he said, even softer. “The heat on this thing is incredible.” We reached a hallway intersection. “Wait here a minute,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He went up the side hall a ways and ducked into what I assumed was a restroom. I dawdled in the main hallway, keeping myself out of trouble by looking over the commemorative plaques and award certificates and employee group pictures that lined the walls. All pretty boring, till I got to a larger one in the middle. It was headed “Ford Q-1 Certification 1988.” The workers were arranged in two rows, all wearing Stone Automotive uniforms. In the center of the front row was J. J. Monrho, grinning, with goatee and longish hair. That didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was who posed behind him and to his right. Also in plant uniform, making a formal self-conscious smile, with dark brown, tightly permed hair compressed under a yellow hard hat with EHS printed above its bill.