Drawing Blood

by Deirdre Verne

  Odd. I didn’t remember Marissa describing the man as soft, yet the man I drew was slightly doughy. “That’s a good point. Marissa must have said something about his shape.” I thought about our disjointed conversation, which alternated between Spanish and English. Unfortunately, I only spoke one of the two languages. We made do with hand gestures at times when Marissa didn’t know the English words she needed, which is how I figured out the man wore an ID.

  “I remember,” I said. “She showed me his chest heaving. I think I envisioned him running up the stairs to the catwalk. A healthy man wouldn’t be out of breath.”

  “And Marissa saw the finished sketch?”

  “Sure. She seemed fine with it.”

  “I’ll bet this guy sits at a desk all day.” Frank tapped his finger on the man’s tag. “I’ll get Cheski and Lamendola to create a list of mid to large companies in the surrounding area that use employee ID cards, as well as any municipal agencies.”

  “Frank, we’re thirty miles from Manhattan and thousands of companies. This guy could have driven out from the city.”

  “True, but we’ve got to start somewhere. The warehouses and the recycling center are within the vicinity, so for now we’ll confine the list to local organizations.”

  I flipped the pages of my sketchbook back to the woman’s legs. “Let’s talk about the legs.”

  ten

  “Did someone say legs?” Charlie joined us on the porch. “I’m a leg man, myself.”

  We were an odd group, the three of us. I had dated Charlie, and now I dated Frank. Charlie had been so close to Teddy they’d considered themselves brothers, yet Frank was Teddy’s actual brother. It’s a miracle we hadn’t self-combusted into a fiery ball of jealousy. Although this was all new, we seemed to have gravitated toward each other in the past year, and I expected we could work quite well together going forward. And Charlie was right. He knew women’s legs.

  I flipped to the page of the mystery woman.

  “Here’s what caught my ear.” I ran my pencil along the woman’s calf. “Marissa said the pants were snug at the bottom.”

  “Stand up, Ce,” Charlie instructed. I rose, and he pointed to my bootleg Levi’s. “Those are out.”

  I looked down. As if Levi’s could ever be out of style. “Seriously?”

  “When you get your clothes from a Dumpster, there’s a good chance it’s not hot off the rack,” Charlie said.

  Frank laughed.

  “So tight is in?”

  “They’re called skinny jeans,” Charlie said. “All the girls wear them.”

  “Girls?” Frank said.

  Charlie smiled. “You’re good, Frank.” He leaned into the sketch. “Let’s just say, this chick’s not forty.”

  “What do forty-year-old woman wear?” I asked wondering what I’d be wearing at fifty since, according to Charlie, my fashion sense was a decade behind.

  “Yoga pants,” Charlie said. “Why don’t I buy you a pair now, and we’ll put them away for a few years before you can wear them. I’ll even take the tags off and wash them a few times so you don’t feel like you’re cheating by wearing something new.”

  “Very funny,” I said as I sat back down and crossed my dated legs.

  “So are we ready for our road trip?” Charlie asked.

  “Where are we going?”

  Charlie tossed Frank the Gremlin’s keys.

  “I want Charlie to see the warehouses,” Frank said. That made sense. Charlie, an MIT dropout, had two specialties—debugging computers and bugging women. Hopefully, Frank’s interest stopped at Charlie’s computer expertise.

  Katrina’s stomach made an appearance on the front porch three seconds ahead of her body. She was at the point in her pregnancy where the front of her skirt hem was shorter than the back. A temporary condition, I had assured her.

  “I’m coming with,” she said and produced a plate full of jelly sandwiches. “Dr. Grovit just called for you.” She handed me a sandwich. “Go call him back while we’re eating. We’ll wait.”

  Dr. Grovit picked up on the first ring. I heard papers shuffling in the background, the beginnings of an avalanche.

  “It’s CeCe,” I said through a mouthful of strawberry jelly.

  “I have an idea,” he replied, bypassing chitchat. “Why don’t we look up your father’s lab assistants from the late 1990s? That’s when your procedure took place. Your father was very particular about his assistants. I have to assume a few were familiar with the comings and goings in the lab.”

  “By goings, you mean where my eggs ended up?”

  “I do.”

  I filled Dr. Grovit in on Lifely. There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “I remember the Lifely scandal,” Dr. Grovit admitted. “I didn’t realize your father was involved with the fertility center. On the bright side,” he rationalized, “the lab assistants might be able to debunk your suspicion. I’ll do some digging on my end and see who I can locate. At least now we’ve got a name, Lifely, to float to the assistants.”

  A scab had formed on my finger. I picked at it until I felt a pinch.

  “Okay, see what you can find.”

  eleven

  “We should drive through town,” Katrina said. “I’m getting that nesting feeling. This might be my last outing.”

  Frank honored Katrina’s request and hooked a left on Main Street. Traffic, a thin line of tourists enjoying Cold Spring Harbor’s Colonial setting, was minimal. The town’s shopping strip was short but packed with candle shops, gift shops, antique stores, and expensive women’s boutiques. Even off-season, store owners crammed their windows with useless dust collectors like angel statues and fairy chimes. I loved the overall feel but considered the retail fare worthless garbage.

  I liked garbage that serves a purpose. The town’s gourmet food shop, for example, discarded day-old baguettes every day at four p.m. I typically dropped off a case of Kat’s Kans jellies once a week, right about that time. I looked instinctively at my watch as we drove by. It was only one.

  We headed north on 25A past the Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatcheries. Charlie nodded to me as if to say, Remember? When we were kids, we pinched some fish from the growing pools. The fire department caught us in the woods later that day trying to grill our catch on an out-of-control camp fire. I smiled. I had considered leaving Cold Spring Harbor after Teddy died, but there were just too many memories worth being close to, like getting nabbed by the police for a baby trout barbeque.

  Frank pulled into the first of the two industrial parks. This one was located near the train station. One hundred yards to the left and we’d be in the next town—literally, the other side of the tracks. Cold Spring Harbor officials were masters of architectural obscurity, burying their working class necessities as close to the neighbors as possible.

  We cruised a maze of interconnected streets lined with low slung, nondescript buildings with odd names like Semhauzer Industries or MediLaw Inc.

  “I don’t get these places,” I said. “They’re always empty, like no one actually goes to work.”

  “You don’t actually go to work,” Charlie said, commenting on our Freeganism. He was right—we rarely left Harbor House for traditional work. Katrina and I had estimated a windfall of $10,000 from our canning business this year, and I had a spotty income painting portraits. Charlie, on the other hand, got by just fine selling a myriad of tech apps he had designed. We pooled our money to run the farm and the house—an incredibly efficient and low-cost venture. I wasn’t sure how well our system would work when Katrina’s baby arrived. Jonathan, our absent housemate and Katrina’s baby daddy, would also be returning from medical school in a few weeks. And then there was Frank. I wondered if our relationship would ever mature to the point where he might consider moving into our friendly commune.

  Frank steered the car into a choic
e spot right under a sign that read, HG Space Savers, $99 a month. The entire lot was empty save for one car.

  We piled out, and I extended a helping hand to Katrina, who struggled to extricate herself from the back seat.

  “The owner is meeting us here,” Frank said, as a sturdy man of about fifty in a well-tailored suit opened the office door.

  “Harry Goldberg,” the man greeted us with a firm handshake.

  Frank introduced Charlie as a computer consultant and me as a sketch artist. Harry raised an eyebrow when he got to Katrina. She handed him a jelly sandwich and mumbled something about catering.

  Our covers seemed to suffice, and we were invited into the front office.

  “About the threatening phone calls to the Groundsweep coordinator, Ms. Bates,” Harry Goldberg said, referring to the local organizer who initially identified the toxic seepage. “I believe the night manager at the other storage facility was afraid to lose his job.” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t involved, but I’ve asked my lawyer to call Ms. Bates and smooth things over.”

  “I’ll follow up with her,” Frank said, scrolling through his iPad notes. “When I spoke to the owner of the other facility, DG Self Storage—” Frank paused and looked at Harry. “Are you two related?”

  “David Goldberg is my cousin.” Harry rolled his eyes as if we could relate. Nice try, Harry, but there was no way the Goldbergs could top the insanity of my family, I thought.

  “My grandfather owned two storage facilities,” Harry explained. “I got the one in Queens and David got the other, the one he currently owns.” Harry pointed to a series of ribbon-cutting photos behind the front desk. “Unlike my cousin, I decided to make a real go of it.” He adjusted his tie as if he was about to pose for another publicity shot. “I now have five facilities on Long Island and the original place in Queens.” He paused before adding, “David wasn’t happy when I bought this place a few miles from his.”

  “Are you direct competitors?” Frank asked.

  “David likes to think so, but he’s not in my league. Neither of us has the cash to compete with the major storage chains, but my goal is to get big enough to get bought out by a chain.”

  I threw Harry some rope. “Maybe you could buy out your cousin?”

  Harry smirked, and I wondered who really made the threatening phone calls. It seemed a little too convenient that Harry had offered up his lawyer when it wasn’t his employee that threatened Ms. Bates. I studied Harry Goldberg’s features. I noticed when he responded to a question, he looked over your shoulder, as if a more believable answer might materialize out of thin air. I made a quick decision: I didn’t like Harry Goldberg. Frank must have had the same feeling, because he jotted down something on his iPad. I hoped it read, Don’t trust the guy in the suit.

  “So, can we see the warehouse?” Charlie asked.

  “Sure thing,” Harry Goldberg replied.

  We convinced Katrina to stay in the car on the outside chance the computer waste was as toxic as GroundSweep’s meters had indicated. Then we headed through the office to the back door. A jumble of mismatched furniture, including a fully made bed, screamed storage unit leftovers. The handful of rooms I saw were unkempt and cramped, but nothing I hadn’t expected. Harry led us out the back. Rows of metal storage units, about half the size of a single car garage, covered about an acre of the property.

  “We rent these units to individuals with too much junk.” Harry seemed amused. “It’s a crazy business. There’s probably nothing worth saving in any of these units, yet people fork over a hundred bucks a month for stuff they haven’t seen in years.” The man was probably multiplying the number of units by the monthly fee, by his six facilities, as we spoke.

  I drew in a frustrated breath as Harry’s disdain for junk got under my skin. Frank glared at me. He knew what I was thinking. Useless junk? Sure, these units probably had their fair share of dust covered angels and hanging fairies, but the potential for reusable garbage titillated me. Harry swung a ring of keys by his side, and it took all my strength not to snag it. Who knows what treasures I’d find in these units?

  “What’s the profile of the individual renter?” Frank asked.

  Harry counted down on his fingers. “The sentimental types can’t part with grandma’s smoke-stained doilies. People in transition,

  like divorce, think they’ll eventually need their old stuff in their new life. I’ve got a half mil in rentals says they’re wrong. Then you’ve got the obsessives, who collect everything from old magazines to …”

  “Dolls?” I said, thinking of Bob.

  “That too.” Harry had barely taken a breath. “And, finally you got your day trippers.”

  Day trippers? Now there was a reference to junk I hadn’t heard before.

  “Day trippers come a few times a week and actually use the space. I’ve got a lady here who plays the tuba in her unit.” We all laughed at the image of a woman playing a tuba in a storage unit.

  At the end of the last row of storage units stood a large warehouse with enormous garage doors. Charlie walked up, peered through a crack, and then poked around the side of the warehouse.

  “Any thoughts, Charlie?” Frank asked.

  “It’s bigger than I expected. You could store truckloads of equipment in here.”

  “Easily,” Frank said, and then added, “I don’t understand who would have that much equipment.”

  “Maybe the question is, who was trying to get rid of that much equipment?” Charlie amended Frank’s statement. “I think we’ve got our first case of green washing in Cold Spring Harbor.”

  Green washing, or the act of not being green but misleading others to think you are, was a common complaint among true conservationists. In the past few years, giant corporations had recognized the sales potential in “going green.” In most cases, this effort amounted to nothing more than green-colored packaging or labeling. I wasn’t an expert on the topic, but I assumed Charlie knew the ins and outs of green washing in the tech world.

  “Explain,” Frank said.

  Charlie shoved his hands into his pockets and rolled back on his checkered Van sneakers. “A few years back there was a strong market for recycled tube glass. That’s the glass in a television or computer monitor. It can easily be recycled and reused for the same purpose. The problem is the newer flat screens no longer use tube glass. The market for recycled tech glass fell apart about three years ago. From what I’ve read, recyclers have been telling officials they’ve disposed of the equipment properly but, in fact, they’ve just moved it to a new location.”

  “A shell game,” Frank said.

  “Yup, until the recycler finally gives up and abandons it,” Charlie said. “Worse, when the prices were high, municipalities ran ‘take-back programs’ to encourage residents to get rid of their old equipment. The market was flooded. Recyclers must have collected tons of this stuff in a short time frame, and now they can’t unload it.”

  Frank took some notes. “So our local recycling center incentivized residents to bring in equipment?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “We unloaded a bunch of crap from Harbor House about two years ago.”

  I nodded. Charlie was right.

  “When did the lease start on this warehouse?” Frank turned to Harry.

  “A year ago,” Harry replied. “I think David cut his deal at the same time.” I could see beads of sweat surfacing along Harry’s hairline. “Man, I can’t get stuck with this e-waste,” he moaned. “The warehouse sat empty for years, and I was happy to sign this lease. The last rental I had turned out to be a front for those rave parties, about ten years ago. I didn’t find out until we had a couple of hundred kids crawling all over the place.”

  Charlie did a double take. “Hey,” he started to say as he recognized the surroundings.

  I quickly redirected the conversation and asked, “What informati
on do we have about the recycling company who rented the unit?”

  “Bogus,” Frank replied. “Cheski checked into it. There’s no record of incorporation for United Eco-Systems.”

  I watched as Harry lost a few more ounces of fluid along his hair line. Clearly, he had not vetted his tenant.

  Frank motioned to Harry’s keys.

  The metal doors, coated in rust, had seen better days. When you lived a half mile from a body of seawater, you got used to salt decay. Unfortunately, the salt had probably accelerated the tech equipment’s rate of decomposition. Charlie and Harry each took a handle and forced the doors open. Sunshine flooded the floor.

  The warehouse was completely empty.

  Harry ran inside. “Fabulous,” he said, his voice booming across the vacant space. He took a victory lap around the warehouse and exclaimed, “The equipment, it’s all gone!”

  Frank looked at Charlie. Charlie shrugged. Frank gave Harry Goldberg a few minutes to bask in the warehouse’s emptiness.

  “Do me a favor, Harry,” Frank asked when Harry slowed to a walking pace. “Call your cousin and have him check on his warehouse. We’re going to look around.”

  Charlie, Frank, and I entered HG Space Savers’s now empty warehouse. Despite Harry Goldberg’s burst of excitement, the setting was eerie. Except for the front doors, there was only a small shaft of light from an interior office at the far end of the unit. The warehouse was damp, with pieces of broken computers scattered across the floor. I tiptoed over oozing blobs of corrosive liquid and then skidded my feet along the cement floor just in case the goop ate through the soles of my shoes. An acidic aroma lingered, leaving a metallic taste in my mouth. Charlie picked up a stray piece of wire and chucked it across the room as we made our way to the back office.

  The office was wedged into the farthest corner of the warehouse. It had no windows and covered about one hundred square feet.