Джо Горес - Cases

A blocky man with lank reddish hair and a jaw like a sledgehammer walked over to Dunc and Gus. He had quick eyes set too close together. His thick neck bulged over his collar.

“Where were you boys born?”

“Rochester, Minnesota, but what business is it—”

“You?”

“Springfield, Illinois,” said Gus. “What’s this about?”

“Routine.” He went back to the sedan, got in beside the driver. The van was pulling out. Donovan raised his voice.

“Okay. Back to work. We’re gonna be shorthanded ’til Monday, everybody’s gotta pick up some slack.”

Back up on the forms, Dunc asked Samuel, “What’s going on?”

But it was lanky slow-moving Joshua who answered.

“Immigration and Naturalization. Those guys was illegals, they got busted. They’s on their way back to Mexico right now.”

Dunc felt outrage. “Why didn’t Osvaldo get grabbed?”

“He’s got his green card. Happen every two weeks, steady as clockwork.”

At the lunch break Dunc tried again at the chapel. Friday. The Sorrowful Mysteries. The Agony in the Garden while the Disciples slept — the bewildered faces of the Mexicans being taken before they got their pay, while he and Gus just watched. It put the day’s events under a spotlight. That priest had known what he was doing. You may not recognize the opportunity, but you’ll say, “This is it!” and you’ll do it.

Was this the chance he had meant? And if it was, what could Dunc do about it?

Half an hour before quitting time Donovan gave them their first week’s paychecks: $100 less withholds! A lot of money.

“Remember, you gotta cash ’em with the hod carriers’ union.”

The union’s office was a California-style bungalow in a tract so new half the houses weren’t finished yet, some of them not even framed. No landscaping, no lawns, no plantings. A two-by-four sheet of half-inch plywood leaned against the wall beside the open front door with big black letters painted on it: HOD CARRIERS LOCAL #2784.

In the middle of the living room was a battered hardwood table. On the table was a dark green money box, a stamp pad and rubber date stamp, a stack of gray-covered booklets about the size of bankbooks, and a pair of meaty elbows.

The elbows belonged to a swag-gutted man with the sleeves of a white dress shirt rolled up over thick forearms. His face, unsoftened by the cigar that graced it, looked as if it had been used for batting practice a long time ago.

The room’s only other furnishings were a couch and another straight-back chair, each holding a carbon copy of the deskman, equally blue of chin and flat of eye. The deskman snapped impatient fingers.

“Paychecks.” He threw them back, disgusted. “Endorsed.” As they endorsed, he wrote each man’s name in a booklet off the stack. “Your membership books. We keep ’em here for youse guys so’s they won’t get lost.” He used the rubber stamp on the first page of each booklet. “Fifteen bucks a week dues.”

He carefully counted out greenbacks into two equal piles, then extracted two twenties and a ten from each pile.

“We gotta take out your onetime initiation fee for bein’ let into the local.”

“Fifty bucks?” demanded Dunc, outraged.

“Local’s gotta lotta expenses.”

“Yeah, a table, a couch, and two chairs.”

“Union rules. You don’t like ’em, there’s plenty of guys want your jobs. You’re gettin’ top dollar here.”

“Your goddamn union’s getting all the dollars underneath.”

The chair-man gave a grunt of laughter. “All the dollars underneath. That’s a good one. All the dollars underneath.”

“Under the table, too,” insisted Dunc.

“Shut up, wise guy,” rumbled the couch-man, half rising.

Gus grabbed Dunc’s arm. “C’mon, let’s get outta here”

Osvaldo pulled his truck up outside in a cloud of red-brown dust, and Dunc got mad all over again; he could do nothing, the other Mexicans were on their way back to the border, but dammit, they’d been screwed out of their wages.

Gus drove Grey Ghost back down the dirt subdivision street.

“It’s better than digging graves,” he said, thinking Dunc’s anger was still about the hefty union initiation fee.

“At least digging graves nobody got fucked.”

“Here we get a hell of a lot more money”

“The Mexicans didn’t.”

“But I did — enough for the weekend with Birdie.”

Since the radio predicted an unseasonably cool evening with fog at the beaches, Penny put on her favorite dress, a warm red wool knit that displayed her full bosom and narrow waist to perfection. She fastened her lustrous wavy hair back behind her ears with silver combs, and examined herself critically in the mirror. Light glinted from her matching silver earrings.

“Penny.” Gerald, outside the bathroom. “Are you ready?”

“In just a minute, hon.”

The week had not gone well. He had to report to his father in Cedar Rapids on California business conditions, so it had been aircraft factories instead of studio tours, tracts instead of romantic dinners. “Penelope!”

“Coming.”

They’d get married next June after he got his master’s in biz ad and she got her bachelor’s in history. Her mom liked him, and her sister, with two little kids, adored him. And she’d done an admirable job of keeping Pierce Duncan out of her thoughts.

She added subdued red lipstick, blotted it by pressing her full lips together with a tissue between them. On the tissue the O of her mouth looked huge. No time for anything else.

The cozy two-story house was one of many in Highland Park snatched up by returning vets. Uncle Carl was in his easy chair in the living room, watching the Saturday baseball game. Aunt Goodie appeared with iced tea and chocolate-chip cookies. Gerald was by the archway to the front door, impeccably groomed, sandy-haired, compact, his blue eyes impatient.

On impulse Penny twirled around in the middle of the room, her arms out and raised as if she were dancing.

“Hey! Hubba-hubba!” exclaimed Uncle Carl.

Penny was suddenly blushing. Goodie set the tray down on the coffee table to slap her husband’s arm.

“Carl, you stop that now, you’re embarrassing her.”

“Hey, am I blind? Am I dumb? She’s a great-looking girl.”

“Penny, you know what I think of that dress.” Gerald’s mouth was prim. “It’s too tight, too revealing.”

“Not in Tinsel Town,” said Carl with a quick grin.

Goodie poured, Carl grabbed cookies. Penny crossed her legs, Gerald reached over and pulled down her hem.

“Let’s go watch the sun set over the Pacific,” she said.

“The Seaside Hotel has a nice little restaurant called the Anchor Room that looks over the ocean and does good seafood. You kids take the car, and don’t worry about getting home late.” Aunt Goodie tipped Penny a bawdy wink that Gerald could not see. “And if that fog gets too thick, get rooms at the hotel.”

Her aunt had married Carl mainly for sex, and claimed to only occasionally regret it. Sure, save yourself for your wedding night, she told Penny, but there was something wrong with a man who didn’t at least try to sleep with his fiancée.

“Just south of the Santa Monica sport-fishing pier,” said Carl. “At a place they call Muscle Beach.”

Muscle Beach! A jolt of electricity ran through Penny’s body; she hadn’t driven Dunc out of her subconscious, after all.

“You have to wear a coat over that dress,” said Gerald.

Muscle Beach was a narrow strip of sand between the Santa Monica pier and a big old shabby hotel a quarter mile to the south. Dunc drifted down the boardwalk in the gray, chilly afternoon, past fried shrimp, ice cream, hamburger, beer, and Pronto Pup stalls decorated with photos of the bodybuilders and lifters who had trained there over the years.