Steve Martini - Undue Influence

He has a better idea. We’re down the elevator and out the door, and Harry’s not headed for the car. Instead I’m tracking him down the street, along the side of the building, which covers half the block. In the rear is an alley that cuts the block in two. From Seventh Street this runs downhill and back up to Eighth Street on the other side. At the lowest point in the alley is a loading dock, several small postal vans backed up to this.

‘No law against talking,’ says Harry.

We’re down the alley and up on the dock before I can say a word. A couple of carriers are loading mail. They ignore us, maybe hope we will go away, pain-in-the-ass citizens looking for mail.

Harry walks up to one of them.

‘We’re here to pick up a package,’ he says.

‘You go to the window out front,’ says the guy. He’s not even looking at Harry, still loading his crates of letters, his back to us. He flings the little flats of letters into the back of the truck like some Bedouin flipping camel dung into a fire.

‘They told us to come here. It’s a big package,’ says Harry. ‘We got a call some time ago from Kathy Merlow,’ he says. ‘I think one of her friends here, I can’t remember the name, is supposed to be holding it for us. Could you check?’ he says.

The guy finally straightens up, gives Harry a look and the government-service sigh. You can tell what’s going through his mind. ‘Like world crisis, national calamity, a package lost at the post office.’

‘Gimme a minute,’ he says. He loads two more crates in the back of the van, empties the little hand dolly, and turns for the building and another load.

Harry’s on his heels.

The guy turns.

‘Stay here.’ He freezes Harry with a look. Then he disappears through a swinging door into the building.

Harry gives me a devilish grin. Even in the short time that she worked here, Kathy Merlow must have made at least one friend, somebody this guy will run to who would come outside to see who is using her name.

It’s a couple of minutes, Harry and I killing time on the dock, dodging other carriers with crates full of mail, happy to ignore us so long as we reciprocate.

Finally the carrier comes out. I think he’s alone. Then I see her, a woman, more properly a young girl, lost in his shadow. She could be anything from sixteen to twenty-two, not so much slender as gaunt. Dressed in the blue uniform shirt of the Postal Service a size too big, the shirttail hanging outside of her dark trousers nearly to the white tennis shoes on her feet. Her mousy brown locks are braided into two pigtails that jet from either side of her head and explode in a frizz of hair just beyond the rubber bands holding them together. In a rational world someone might be pressing the Postal Service under the child labor laws. She has a pale complexion dotted with a few freckles, and all the hope she can muster resides in oval brown eyes that seem to belong to somebody else. She has the look of an urchin from a Dickens fable that ends badly. But one glance and I know, that whether locked in hell or the bowels of the federal post office, from what I remember of Kathy Merlow, this woman and she are likely soulmates.

‘You lookin’ for Kathy?’ she says.

Harry nods.

‘She don’t work here anymore.’

‘You knew Kathy Merlow?’ says Harry.

The woman has wary eyes. ‘Whadda ya want?’ she says.

‘We’d like to find Mrs. Merlow,’ says Harry.

‘He says you was lookin’ for a package?’ She’s looking at the carrier, who’s wandered back to his chores.

‘We need to talk to Mrs. Merlow.’ Harry softens like he’s talking to a young child, coaxing information.

‘Seems everybody wants to find Kathy,’ she says.

‘Who else has been asking?’ says Harry.

She looks at him but doesn’t respond.

I step forward and hand the girl my business card. She studies it for several seconds.

‘We’re lawyers,’ I tell her. ‘We’d like to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Merlow in connection with a case we’re handling. We think it’s possible that they could be witnesses in the case.’

‘They do something wrong?’

‘No. No. We just want to talk to them.’

‘I can’t help you. I don’t know where she is.’ She starts to walk away.

‘Ma’am.’

She turns.

‘It’s very important. A woman’s life may depend on it.’

She locks her oval eyes on me for a moment.

‘A mother with two children.’ I turn the screws a little deeper.

She looks at the carrier, who’s paying no attention at this moment. She moves a step closer to us.

‘How could Kathy save a life?’ she says.

‘It’s a murder trial. We represent — ’

‘Marcie!’ A booming voice from the doorway behind her. The woman shrinks to half her already minimal size. There, outside the swinging door, is a man, maybe thirty-five, a tie, white shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, close-cropped hair, the look of management in his eyes. ‘Are you on a break?’ he says.

She turns. ‘No, sir.’

‘Then you’re supposed to be sorting,’ he says. ‘This is what we talked about in your last performance evaluation,’ he tells her. ‘Do we have to go through it again? Put it in your file,’ he says. ‘I don’t have to remind you that you’re on probation,’ he says. ‘One more unsatisfactory report and you’re on the street. I told you. I warned you.’

This woman, Marcie, is now shaking, though I cannot tell if it is from fear or anger.

‘I just stepped out,’ she says. Her voice is of sterner stuff.

‘Do you want to talk about it or do you want to have a job? If you want to talk about it, you can do that from out there, on the street,’ he says. He points to the sidewalk.

She stands there frozen in silence, with her back to him, and mouths the word for us to read, ‘asshole.’

‘Well, which is it gonna be?’ he says.

Marcie looks like she could squeeze between the door and its frame when it was closed. But in passing this guy she has difficulty. And he won’t move an inch to let her by, but makes her walk around him.

Shaking his head as she skulks past, hands on his hips. He could be the Master of Tara after some worthless pickaninny fieldhand. All that is missing is the broad-brimmed hat and the whip.

Before I can say another word she disappears through the swinging doors. The hot breath of opportunity, gone.

The guy in shirtsleeves is standing there looking at me now, but a different posture, a lighter tone, dealing with the public, somebody not so easily cowed.

‘What are you gentlemen doing here? This area’s off limits to the public,’ he says.

Harry’s moving as if he’d like a piece of this guy. In his face, solidarity with the workers, a budding assault on the ramparts of management.

I grab him by the arm. ‘Another time,’ I tell him.

Harry growls deep down in the throat, like some mad mongrel about to rip the ass end out of somebody’s pants. I would swear that there’s a little foam at the corner of his lip.

Before we hit the steps down to the alley, the guy’s chewing on the carrier.

‘What are you doing letting them back here?’ he says. ‘Why do you think we have rules? You can’t deal with it, you call security. How many times we have to talk about it? We go over, and over, and over, this stuff and you people, you never listen.’

Five-nine to six feet, he’s looking across at the carrier’s chin, shouting into his throat, a dressing-down in front of others you would not give a schoolchild caught shoplifting.

The mailman looks at him like he could deck the son of a bitch. The only thing holding him back is the need to feed his family in what the politicians euphemistically call a downsized economy.