Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

“That reminds me,” McGee said, and her voice was supposed to sound offhand, casual, as if she’d just managed to retrieve something before it slipped away from her memory. She stretched out her legs and reached deep into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out a piece of paper, a crumpled printout, which she unfolded on the steamer trunk. Holmes leaned forward to look. The words were upside down, but even so they were immediately clear: HELP WANTED. The address, he couldn’t help noticing, was the HSI Building. What, exactly, had reminded her of this?

“Custodians?” Holmes said.

McGee’s enormous eyes were wide, and a smile was forming in the corners of her mouth. And Holmes knew, without having to ask, that this, whatever this was, had nothing at all to do with what they’d been talking about a moment before.

“No,” Holmes said.

McGee frowned. “You don’t even know what it is.”

Holmes leaned back against the sofa, arms folded across his chest. “I don’t need to.”

“What is it?” April said.

McGee handed her the page. “It’s perfect.”

Holmes realized then that the occasion for the party had been hiding in her pocket all along.

There was a long silence as the inevitable question, the question Holmes had decided he himself wouldn’t ask, went unspoken among the others. And Holmes found himself hoping the silence might go on forever, or at least as long as it took for them all to gather their coats and belongings and head for the door.

But then April, sweet April, handed the page back. “Perfect for what?”

McGee lifted the ad weightlessly between her fingertips. “This is how we’ll bring them down.”

“Oh, God,” Holmes said.

Over in the love seat Fitch broke out in more drunken laughter.

“Just listen.”

And McGee explained her plan. She was going to get a job there. She was going undercover.

“As a cleaning lady?” Holmes said, no longer able to remain quiet.

“Let her finish,” April said.

Once inside, McGee would get into their files. “I’ll grab everything I can find,” she said.

“About what?” Fitch shouted from his reclining position. “What do you think they’re hiding?”

“Everything,” McGee said, “going all the way back to the beginning. Every toxic spill they’ve hushed, every environmental report they’ve squelched, every pension they’ve cheated, every corner they’ve cut, every compromise, every casualty they’ve written off.”

For months and years, she’d buried them in information about the company’s crimes: exposés uncovered by shoestring nonprofits; hunches chased by alt weekly reporters; arcane pie charts issued by obscure agencies; blog posts by unaffiliated Ph.D.s.

“But why them ?” Fitch’s drunkenness seemed to have miraculously vanished. “There’s a million other companies doing this stuff. If not worse. Why are you so obsessed with them ?”

“Because they’re here,” Myles said. “And they’re all that’s left. The others are gone.”

McGee rewarded him with a partial smile. “And everyone’s afraid they’ll leave, too. So they don’t say anything, don’t hold them accountable. Why do you think the city keeps giving them tax breaks? They move another plant down south to get away from unions, and the city gives them more handouts. The company threatens bankruptcy so they can slash wages, and then they give their executives a two-hundred-percent raise. No one says a word. The city council wouldn’t give them a jaywalking ticket, they’re so afraid they’ll pack up HQ.”

“City councils don’t give out tickets,” Holmes said.

“It’s a parasite,” McGee said, ignoring him, “destroying this place.”

“You actually think this is stuff they’ve just got lying around?” Holmes said. “All these revealing documents?”

“Filed under D,” Fitch said with a deep, throaty air of mystery, “for diabolical plans.”

“That,” McGee said, turning to Holmes, “is where you come in.”

“No,” Holmes said, “no, it isn’t.”

It was all a simple matter of locks, she said. And locks had simple answers: picks. “You,” she said, coming up to Holmes’s side, “just have to teach me how.”

“Have you forgotten where I woke up this morning? Me and Myles?” Holmes looked over to find Myles had returned to his staring game.

“Since when are you afraid of getting in a little trouble?”

“There’s trouble for a purpose,” Holmes said, “and there’s trouble that’s just stupid. His interview—” Holmes pointed to Fitch, who promptly rose from the sofa, eager to sneak away. “What did it accomplish?”

“If it’d worked,” McGee said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“What makes you think they have this stuff at all? These reports? These memos? Why on earth would they keep them?” And why, Holmes wondered, looking around the room, had everyone else fallen so silent? Fitch diving back into his cup. Myles off in a daydream. April at the sink, bent over her sweatshirt. Why was no one taking his side?

“Because they’re arrogant,” McGee said. “Because they think they’ll never get caught. Especially your new friend.” McGee nodded toward Fitch, and he swallowed deeply. “If Ruth Freeman really doesn’t fear the truth, like she says, then she’s got no need for a shredder.”

“What if you get caught?” April said.

“I’ll make sure I don’t.”

“What’s there to say?” Myles finally lowered his eyes from the painting. “It’s not like we can talk you out of it.”

And of course, Myles was right. McGee wasn’t asking their permission. She was informing them of what she’d already decided.

“This isn’t us,” Holmes said. “This isn’t what we do.”

“Like you said,”—McGee turned back to Holmes—“what we do isn’t working.”

April had drifted over from the sink. “I should get going.” The ball of pink cotton cupped in her hands looked like a dead rabbit.

“It’s early.” McGee’s smile reappeared. As if she were trying to remind them this was just a party, an innocent party.

Was it early? To Holmes, the hour suddenly felt ancient, as if they’d been frozen in these positions not just for the evening but for eternity, like a dark parlor scene painted by an old master in a world before industrial ruins — before trash could be glued to a canvas and passed off as art. It was time for some new kind of scene. A landscape, a seascape. A nude. It didn’t matter. He’d gladly settle for even less than that, for a vase of cut flowers, a still life with fruit.

She called herself Zolska Zhronakhovska. For her hair, she found a dye to turn the brown hay-colored blond. She had April cut her bangs straight across and iron out the waves. From the front, it looked as though she were wearing half an iceberg lettuce on her head.

She practiced speaking so it sounded as if her mouth were full of ice cubes. Only ever the simplest of words. Yes. No. Okey-dokey .

According to the placard, the woman in the basement was the “Head of Facilities Maintenance,” a fancy title for someone whose office was a cage. The woman’s name was Dorothy, and Dorothy shared the cage with mops and buckets and jugs of pastel cleaning fluid. Dorothy was slim as a cigarette. Her red plaid shirt fit her like a cape.

Beneath the low-hanging fluorescent strips, Dorothy asked McGee questions about her experience and about her immigration status, and McGee smiled and scratched her head and blinked. At the thrift store, April had dug up a pair of toothpaste-white orthopedic shoes. McGee’s pleated, acid-washed jeans closed at the ankle with zippers and bows.