Sue Grafton - V is for Vengeance

Lola put an arm around his waist. “So what’d Talia say?”

“About what?”

“Come on, Dante. You know what.”

“She wasn’t thrilled.”

“Of course not. She thinks I’m neurotic, temperamental, and self-centered. I’m sure she thinks I’d suck as a wife and suck even worse as a mom.”

“She didn’t say that.”

“Would you stop trying to protect me? I’m a big girl so spell it out. I want to know what she said.”

Dante sorted through Talia’s objections and picked one. “She wondered about the weight gain. She thought a pregnancy would be hard on you.”

“And?”

“She might have a point. I worry about you.”

“I know you do and you’re a sweet guy. You can tell her the baby’s a nonissue. I haven’t had a period for a year. She’ll be tickled to death.”

“Let’s not talk about that now. We have time once you get healthy again.”

“Ha.”

“You know there’s help out there if you’re interested.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, matching her step to his. “That’s what I love about you. You never give up hope. You think if you keep at it long enough, everything will turn out all right.”

“You don’t see it that way?”

“Here’s my view: I think this relationship has run its course. I’m releasing you from any sense of obligation because that’s the only thing keeping you here. The rest has been gone for a long time.”

Dante squeezed her shoulder, but he had no reply. There was a time when the remark would have cut him to the core. Now his thoughts reverted to Nora with a flicker of joy.

He drove Cappi to the Allied Distributors warehouse in Colgate to the shipping and receiving department. Pop had acquired the brick-and-frame complex in the days when he was running booze. Dante had adapted the structure for his purposes, expanding the square footage by incorporating a prefab steel addition across the front. The mechanicals were below ground, a largely unfinished area that Pop had always referred to as the catacombs. Dante suspected there were actually more than a few bodies buried there. He’d take a flashlight down and explore the space from time to time, occasionally coming across dusty cases of whiskey and gin tucked away in the odd corner.

As the two walked from the parking lot to the loading dock, Dante filled him in on the basics. “Audrey was a trotter, the middleman between the whips and the baggers. She covered the tricounties, coordinating the central coast operation with San Francisco and points north. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have been on the scene, but one of our pickers was arrested on a bad check charge and she was filling in. You tossed her off the bridge and the entire circuit was thrown into disarray. We’re still scrambling for coverage.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Cut the whining. I’m done hassling you on that score. You fucked up big-time. You should’ve asked, but we’ll leave it at that. I’m trying to get you to understand how the system works. That’s what you’re so hot to hear about, right?”

“Well, yeah. If you want me to be useful.”

“All right. So the trotters pay the pickers for a day’s work, usually runs about three grand in cash. The goods are called ‘the crop’ or ‘the bale,’ sometimes ‘the bag.’ Workers we call ‘crop dusters’ strip tags and remove identifying marks. They meet every couple of weeks.”

“Where?”

“Couple of places we rent. There’s a regular route we call ‘the tour.’ The guys who drive it, we call ‘cabbies.’ Don’t worry about job titles. I know it’s a lot to take in. It’s a tight fit. Take out any one of the players and you got a problem on your hands.”

“How many people are we talking about?”

“Enough. We make sure each crew knows as little as possible about the other crews so if there’s a breakdown, no one’s in a position to expose the rest. Eventually, the crop comes off the circuit and lands here for distribution.”

“To where?”

“That depends. San Pedro. Corpus Christi. Miami. At every point along the way, the crop’s passing through the hands of people I know I can trust. Doesn’t always work that way here. This is the current trouble spot. We’ve been hit twice. Last week, someone walked off with a pallet of pharmaceuticals. Now we’re short cartons of infant formula. I can’t even get a count on that. I thought it was a clerical error, someone puts a decimal in the wrong place and it throws everything off. This’s not a paper loss.”

“Somebody’s stealing from us ? You gotta be kidding.”

“We don’t recruit help from vacation Bible schools. Point is, we have to limit access to the loading docks. This is the area where we’re most vulnerable. Guys come out for a smoke and end up hanging around. It doesn’t look like they’re doing much, but they’ve got no business being here. We’re initiating new oversight procedures, which is where you come in.”

Cappi’s tone of voice took on an edge. “And you want me to do what, stand here with a clipboard, counting widgets and making sure everybody has a hall pass?”

“If you want to look at it like that, yes. Once a shipment’s inside the building, somebody has to reconcile the goods with the manifest-”

“What’s with the lingo? What the fuck is a ‘manifest’?”

“A list of goods. Same as an invoice, an itemized account of what’s been shipped to us and where it goes next. In the meantime, we hold everything here until it’s ready to be moved.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I can’t learn anything with you lecturing me. You yap, yap, yap, and what goes in one ear goes out the other. I can’t retain if I don’t see it written down. Like I learn with my eyes. I need facts and figures so I can understand how all the pieces fit. You know what I’m saying? The pipeline. Accounts payable and stuff like that.”

“I have bookkeepers for that end of the business. I need you here.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t really said where these shipments are coming from or where they go. I know it’s Allied Distributors, but I don’t have a clue what we distribute. Baby food? That don’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t have to make sense to you. It makes sense to me.”

“But where are all the records kept? Has to be written down someplace. You don’t carry this stuff in your head. Something happens to you, then what?”

“Why the sudden curiosity? Years we’ve been doing this and you never gave a shit.”

“Fuck you. Pop said it was time I learned. I’m here doing the best I can and you criticize me for not showing interest before?”

“It’s a legitimate question. Sorry if I seem skeptical, but what do you expect?”

“What kind of shit is that? You either trust me or you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“You accusing me of something?”

“Why so defensive?”

“I’m not defensive. All I’m asking is how you run an operation this size without somebody writes it down.”

Dante dropped his gaze, working to control his temper. If Cappi was pressing for the information, he’d get information. Dante said, “Okay, fuck it. I’ll tell you how. You see that computer terminal over there?”

To the right, just inside the door that led into the warehouse proper, there was an unmanned desk with a computer keyboard and monitor, the CPU tucked into the kneehole space. Dante could see Cappi’s gaze shift to the darkened computer screen.

“What, that thing?”

“That ‘thing’ as you refer to it is a remote terminal with access from the house and the office downtown. In the wall behind, there are dedicated lines laid in. It may not look like much but that’s the brains of the business. It’s how we keep track. We got backup on backup. Password changes from week to week, and the hard drive is purged every Thursday at noon. Clean slate. The only dollar figures left look legitimate.”