Robert Bennett - The Company Man

They went far south, past Infield and the Brookshire plant, until Colomb finally stumbled off the trolley just a few blocks northeast of the train depot. Hayes followed and gave him a good lead. He watched as Colomb rushed down the street with a hitch in his step, then pulled a note out of his pocket and scanned it. He turned abruptly down a small lane and walked up to a squat little halfway house. He walked in without knocking and Hayes stayed behind, hidden in the brush of a dying park.

After ten minutes Colomb came back out, now dragging a companion behind, a pale, drunken vagrant who walked with his head bowed, his beard piled up and hiding most of his face. If Colomb minded dragging such a filthy specimen he did not show it. They went farther south to where a shipping cradle loomed over the train depot, a rickety structure composed of rusted metal and creaking wood, the long chains for the loading lift rattling in the breeze. Hayes looked up and saw two airships circling in the sky like mammoth sharks, one near to the ground and the other far up. Their shadows traced across the train yard like small eclipses, the hum of their engines so faint the ear could hardly sense it.

Colomb dragged his friend to the security officer at the cradle and they began speaking quickly. Colomb handed the officer something and the officer nodded as though he had expected it and all three of them climbed into the lift. The officer cranked a lever and the doors shrieked shut and they began to ascend out of sight, the chains clattering all the way.

Hayes scouted around and found a nearby storage building. It was a short, fat cement structure next to a chain-link fence looped with barbed wire. He walked to the fence and crouched in the shadows, waiting and peering through the links at the graveyard of trains beyond.

The pitch in the air changed. Hayes looked up. One airship began descending, its engines twisting to propel it down. Whatever the exchange was, it would happen in moments.

He grasped the chain-link fence and began pulling himself up, delicately avoiding the barbed wire. As he pushed past the last ten feet it snagged his pants leg but did not catch flesh. He clambered up onto the tin roof, wincing as the metal flexed below him. Then when he was steady he lay on his belly and pulled a small spyglass out and looked.

Colomb and his companion were still there, waiting on the cradle flats. The security officer stood nearby, watching the airship float down to them. Other workers shifted cargo and looked at them curiously. There were no other personnel, as this was specifically a cargo cradle and had no business with passengers. But still Colomb and the vagrant remained and watched.

The airship dropped until it was two hundred feet off the ground, then banked to the left, its engines twirling in their sockets. Spotlights flashed on, and Hayes squinted as the cradle suddenly glowed magnesium-white. The crew ran its loops and extended the anchor arm and pulled the airship in. A blank metal sheet slid out from the cargo cell in place of the cauterized rubber tunnel used with the passenger airships. Then the bay door opened and men began wheeling off cargo and Colomb and his companion stepped forward to board.

It was then that some errant gust of air from the engines seemed to catch them. They both threw up their arms and held their hats on their heads, but something flew up, caught on the wind, something small and hairy. Hayes followed it with his spyglass but could not see what it was. He focused again on Colomb and his friend, and as he did he noticed something was different about them.

The vagrant. He was beardless now. He kept his head low to hide it but it was clear as day.

Colomb hustled the vagrant aboard as the rest of the crew began loading pallets of whatever cargo. Piping, it looked like. Hayes strained to focus but the two men had their backs to them and he could make nothing out. Then as the vagrant entered the bay door he looked back to give Colomb a solemn wave.

Hayes’s mouth opened when he saw him. He heard himself say, “What in hell?”

The bay door closed. Klaxons sounded as the ship broke cradle and the anchor arm released. The loops slid off, now lax and slack. Then the tone of the engines changed once more. The airship slid smoothly out over the train yards, then went straight up like a balloon, moonlight spackling its worn hide. Colomb stayed on the cradle, lonely and little, watching the floating island disappear into the heavens. Then he went to the lift and slid down the skeleton of the cradle supports again.

Hayes stayed for a moment longer, then vaulted back down through the barbed wire to the ground. He hobbled away and stood beneath a nearby tree and coughed for a good five minutes. His body hadn’t tried such activity in years.

When he was done he waited for the security officer’s shift to change. As the new guard took up station Hayes sidled up and after a few minutes’ conversation he managed to bribe the man for the shipment’s destination. Stopping over in San Francisco, the man said. Then heading on down to Mexico, making its delivery in Tijuana. Hayes asked if he was sure, and he said he was. Hayes nodded and then walked back to the trolley station, disturbed and confused.

He had been prepared to believe a lot of things about what was going on, about McNaughton and the unions. But this was something he had not expected. There was no mistaking that broad, honest face. Once the beard was gone, at least.

Mickey Tazz, the hope of the downtrodden, the voice of the poor of Evesden. Leaving the city and heading to sunnier passages. In the middle of the night, at that.

He took a trolley back to the Shanties. Then he got out and had a beer at a pub and thought.

“I wouldn’t say I’m angry,” Brightly said coldly. “Would you agree to that?”

“I’m sure I can’t say, sir,” Samantha said.

“No,” said Brightly. “I would say I’m disappointed. You understand my position, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I hope so.” He leaned back in the chair at Evans’s desk. “Rarely have I seen someone with so much promise, and rarely have I ever seen it squandered so quickly. I mean, what were you thinking? What could have possibly possessed you to put yourself and the company in such danger?”

Samantha considered how to respond. She was not prepared, nor had she expected or wanted to come here at all. She had returned briefly to her apartments to fetch some things, thinking it would be safe, but had found Brightly’s security team waiting for her, large men with passive faces and their hands calmly clasped behind their back like servants. They had brought her there to Evans’s office, where Brightly fumed and paced, waiting to turn his fury on her.

“Mr. Hayes was there,” she said, “he surprised me, sir, I couldn’t-”

“Mr. Hayes?” he echoed. “He surprised you, did he?”

“Yes.”

“Hayes was the one you were sent here to control. It was your job to say no to him when he needed it. And I already knew he had been present during the whole debacle, thank you very much, I’m no idiot. If you and that damn detective are in some union hole at two in the morning then I can figure out what the magic link is.” He took a breath. “No, Miss Fairbanks, my problem is why. Why you allowed this. Why you were willing to let things get so far out of control.” He held a fist to his lips and thought. Then he dropped it and said, “You approached the union. Directly.”

“Sir, I thought I could-”

“I don’t care about what you think. I don’t care what you think or what you did. I care about what I said. I said in-house,” he said. “In-house. In-house. What was it I said?”

Samantha hesitated, then said, “In-house.”