“Angel’s Café. Know it?”
She thought she knew Angel’s, and said, “As I recall, a lotta guys wearing shades hang around there. They’re either astronomers waiting for a solar eclipse or drug dealers, right?”
Fin said, “They sell dime bags of smoke. Truckers sprinkle it on their hamburgers.”
“If you hear anything about the truck, call me.”
Fin said, “We don’t handle truck thefts here at Southern. And if the truck’s recovered with the sludge still in it, I wouldn’t go near it anyway. Waste from the navy is probably the kinda stuff that makes an insect turn in circles and die from one whiff. That’s what the military wants people to do.”
Suddenly his voice had a face: chin dimple, nice soft gray eyes. A smallish guy with a smart mouth. Nell said, “I used to work with your ex-wife. She was a police officer, right? A sergeant? Worked Northern?”
“My first ex-wife. The good sergeant. That experience taught me not to marry above my station. She put bruises on my psyche that bled into my hat. I learned what police brutality really means being married to that Nazi. I hope she wasn’t a close friend of yours?”
“No, I just remember how she used to complain to the other women about you. You’re the amateur actor, right?”
The line went dead for a few seconds. “I act, yeah,” Fin said icily. Amateur?
“The hazardous waste could very well turn up somewhere in Southbay,” Nell said. “If you hear anything, gimme a call, huh?”
Then he was able to put a face on “Salter.” She was the one that actually jogged to work, sometimes in shorts and a T-shirt. On cold misty mornings her nipples would pop out, so the male cops called her “Foglights” behind her back. He wondered if her fog lights were on today. He wondered how well she’d aged.
It had been a long wait at U.S. Customs. Pepe Palmera had breezed through Mexican customs, but now the U.S. officers were letting their dog sniff very carefully around all the trucks as though they’d received a tip.
Pepe had confidence in his cold plates. The yellow FRONT BC license, and the PEPE’S POTTERY that Rubén’s workers had stenciled on the doors, made it absolutely plausible that he was hauling his own merchandise to the U.S. market. He was fairly confident that no one would give him any trouble about a missing registration, but then, he’d only taken stolen trucks through on two other occasions. Usually he was driving cold cars or cold trucks when he did business on the U.S. side, criminal business in most cases.
Pepe had a record with the San Diego police. He’d been arrested twice for petty theft and once for a commercial burglary that had got him ninety days in the county jail. He wasn’t very worried that a U.S. Customs officer would give him trouble but he was worried about his health. The sweating had gotten ferocious, and the headache was actually causing his vision to blur. Pepe couldn’t stop swallowing, and while waiting in the line at U.S. Customs he had to get out of the truck to vomit.
Just before it was his turn, he had a bit of luck. The drug dog scored a hit on an eighteen-wheeler in front of him. The dog started barking wildly and clawing at the mud flaps behind the rear wheels. A customs officer crawled under the truck and emerged with a large taped bundle.
While one officer was handcuffing the driver, the other gave Pepe a perfunctory check and he was waved through. Two miles inside the U.S., Pepe felt like renting a motel room and waiting out the fever. But he kept driving north.
Jules Temple was not happy when he gave orders that Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate come immediately to his second-floor office at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. A dispatcher had tried to inform Jules of the truck theft on Friday, but Jules was at a Thai restaurant in Hillcrest, telling an exotic dancer named December Doolan that as soon as his hauling business closed escrow, he planned to open a topless bar and would use her as a star attraction.
Jules had had to spend $200 on the bitch, all for naught. She ate like a Charger defensive lineman and drank more than he did, yet when it came time for his payoff he got a good-night kiss and that was it. He’d been too frustrated and tired to listen to his messages when he’d got home, so he didn’t learn about the truck until he came to work on Monday.
Any theft but this one would’ve irritated Jules, but this one made him furious. Because the manifest from Southbay Agricultural Supply did not match the missing load!
His hazel eyes were glittering when his two employees entered. “Close the door behind you,” he said, letting them both stand in front of his desk while he remained seated.
Jules was the only boss that Shelby Pate had ever seen in a blue-collar business who dressed like this. His boss was wearing a suit the color of curdled cream, and a forest-green shirt buttoned at the throat. Shelby absolutely hated yuppie shirts buttoned at the throat. Jules Temple had even rolled up the cuffs of his jacket to hip-it-up.
All the Mexican workers and most of the others took off their hard hats when they entered the boss’s private office; therefore Shelby Pate left his cap on, turned around backwards. Shelby wore a blue Public Enemy T-shirt.
Jules studied them. Abel Durazo waited patiently, but Shelby Pate stared back at him, like the redneck monster he was. Jules hated them because they’d been careless with his truck, and because he was positive they’d stolen his money.
He surprised them both when he said, “If I’d have heard about this on Friday night, I’d have asked the cops to search you. I don’t believe you left my five hundred dollars in the glove compartment. You wouldn’t do something that stupid.”
“We sorry, Boss,” Abel said contritely. “We thought money was more safe een glove box.”
Shelby Pate said, “If you’re gonna fire us, go ahead, but I don’t appreciate being accused a stealin your money, Mister Temple.”
“I only got twel’ dollar, Boss,” Abel said. “I show eet to you.”
“I just want you to know that I’m not fooled,” Jules Temple said. He was trying so hard to maintain control that his mouth barely moved when he spoke, and it made it hard for Abel to understand him.
“You ain’t gonna believe us,” said Shelby Pate, “so I guess this means we’re fired, huh?”
Jules kept quiet for a moment and stared into his coffee cup. Then he said, “I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Abel, you’ve worked for me for some time and you’ve always been honest.” He looked at Shelby and said, “By the way, where’s the manifest from the navy?”
“Een glove box,” Abel said.
It was all Jules could do to maintain his voice level then. “And Mister Ralston’s manifest. Where … is … that manifest?”
“Gone,” Abel said, and both young men were shocked when Jules Temple smacked his coffee cup across the desk, spilling it on the carpet.
But they weren’t as shocked as Jules Temple was. He’d lost it! Always so cool, his late father had said. Cool when others were not cool, to the extent that the old man had suspected pathology, a personality disorder of some kind. And he’d knocked his cup across the desk. He’d lost it. In front of these cretins.
“I’m sorry, guys,” Jules said. “It’s just that everything’s coming down on me. Selling my business and not wanting anything to go wrong? You can understand, can’t you?”
Abel said, “Okay, Boss,” but Shelby Pate just stared at Jules Temple.
Then Shelby said, “The navy’s manifest was in the glove compartment, the other one wasn’t.”
“Where was it then?” Jules Temple asked, much too quickly.
“On the seat,” Shelby said, unable to understand why it was so vital. “Probably it’ll jist get tossed out by the thief.”