White Hot

by Sandra Brown

  “Attacking one of your employees was the wrong thing to do. All you accomplished was to prove our opposition’s argument and provide them with more ammunition to use against us.”

  Grumbling, Huff levered himself out of his chair and went to the serving cart. “Everybody’s on my case tonight.”

  “I realize my timing is bad,” Beck said. “Having just gone through the meat grinder with Sayre, the last thing you want to hear from me is how badly you’re handling the situation at the plant. But you are, Huff.

  “I tried to impress upon you the other day that you cannot solve labor problems now like you did in the past. Nielson isn’t as easy as Iverson. He isn’t going to retreat.” He paused strategically, then added, “And you can’t make him disappear.”

  Correctly inferring his meaning, Huff came around slowly, holding an empty glass in one hand and several ice cubes in the other. He seemed unaware that they were dripping through his fingers onto the carpet.

  Beck didn’t flinch from Huff’s quelling stare. “I’m not going to ask you, Huff, because I don’t want to know. But I would be stupid to think that you, and probably Chris, had absolutely nothing to do with Gene Iverson’s disappearance. A subtle suggestion to some of your men, with a word or even a look, would have been all it took to solve that problem.

  “Chris must have played at least a small role in it. Logically, if there was no truth to the charge against him, you wouldn’t have been worried about the outcome of his trial. You wouldn’t have ordered McGraw to bribe those jurors.

  “And despite that little song and dance Chris and I put on for Sayre at McGraw’s place, we all know he did it and that he was well compensated for doing it. Whatever happened to Iverson, you and Chris walked away clean. History repeating itself.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Sonnie Hallser.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “Is it, Huff? I didn’t know until recently that Chris was at the foundry the night Hallser died.”

  Huff cursed beneath his breath as he finally plunked the dripping ice cubes into the glass, then turned back to the cart to finish pouring his drink. “He wasn’t supposed to tell anybody he was there that night. He swore to me he wouldn’t.”

  Beck didn’t correct Huff by informing him that it had been Sayre, not Chris, who had told him. “What did Chris witness that night?”

  “An argument between me and Sonnie.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” he said, raising his voice. “That’s all there was to see. The man and I had an argument.”

  “A heated argument.”

  “That’s the only kind I know how to have. We each blew off steam. I went home with Chris. Later that night Sonnie had a fatal accident.”

  “Terrible coincidence.”

  “That’s right, it was. Why bring it up now?”

  “To illustrate a point.” Beck stood up and circled the ottoman, then turned to face Huff again. “You have a reputation for solving your labor problems with brute force. Short of outright violence, you’ve been known to apply muscle. Those tactics are as obsolete as doctors using leeches to cure patients.”

  Huff took a gulp of whiskey. “All right, maybe I’ve bent rules and crossed lines, but I never hesitated to do what was necessary to protect myself, my family, and my business. You gotta be tough—and I’m talking as nails—if you want to come out on top.

  “Chris understands that. I don’t think Danny ever did, or Sayre ever will. I took a mediocre foundry and turned it into a thriving one,” he said, clenching his fist. “You think that would have happened if I’d been a pushover, pandering to labor unions and granting every demand put to me by my employees? Hell, no!

  “I wore big boots and I kicked ass when I needed to, and I’m going to keep on doing it that way until they’re shoveling dirt over me. Nobody is going to shut me down. Not Charles Nielson, not even the government agencies. And it’ll become a union shop over my dead body.” He finished the speech by shouting the last three words and punctuating them with a jabbing index finger.

  “Let’s avoid dead bodies if we can,” Beck said quietly.

  Huff relaxed his stance. He even laughed. “I’d prefer it. Especially if it’s mine.”

  “Sit down before you blow a gasket.” Once Huff was back in his chair and some of the color had receded from his face, Beck said, “Huff, please, no more rough stuff until I can at least try to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this mess. The Pauliks might reconsider filing suit if we offer them a significant cash settlement.”

  “How significant?”

  “Significant enough to pacify them, not so significant that you’ll have to start drinking cheaper bourbon. And I strongly urge you to shut down the conveyor that injured Billy.”

  “It’s been repaired and is running fine now.”

  “Repaired, not overhauled like it needs to be,” Beck argued. “It’s another disaster waiting to happen. Do you think we can afford another accident right now?”

  “George has given it a green tag. So has Chris. Those are their departments, Beck. You stick to keeping us out of a lawsuit.”

  Beck conceded, albeit grudgingly. “I’d better leave before Selma comes up here and throws me out for keeping you up so late.”

  “Are you on your way home?”

  “Actually, I’m spending the night on the sofa in my office. One of us should be there in case of real trouble.”

  “Where’s Chris?”

  “He no longer has to confide in me. I’m not his attorney anymore.”

  “You talked Red out of keeping him in lockup over the weekend.”

  “That was my last official duty for him.”

  “So I was told. Can’t say as I’m happy about this new lawyer.”

  “With all that’s going on at the plant, it’s best, Huff. I’ve got my hands full.”

  “The guy Chris has retained, is he any good?”

  “I made a few calls today, asked around. He’s reputed to be usurious, ambitious, egomaniacal, and obnoxious. Everything you’d want in a criminal lawyer.”

  Huff smiled wryly. “Let’s hope Chris won’t need him. That detective, that Scott, is drilling a dry well. Bible stories.” He snorted. “As told by Slap Watkins, no less.”

  “He frightened her.” Beck didn’t even realize he’d spoken his thought aloud until he noticed Huff looking at him strangely. “Sayre.”

  “Oh, right. Watkins breaking into her motel room. Serves her right for staying in that rathole.”

  “She was more disturbed by it than she let on. I don’t think she told us everything that he said or did to her.”

  But Huff’s mind was moving down another track, and it didn’t include concern for Sayre’s safety. “In light of her barrenness, you’re off the hook, Beck, my boy,” he said with a light chuckle. “The pressure is back on Chris to father me a grandchild. He’s my one and only shot at immortality now.”

  • • •

  “Knock knock.”

  Beck pried open one eye and saw Chris grinning down at him. With every muscle protesting, he sat up. “What time is it?”

  “Going on seven. Have you been here all night?”

  Beck swung his feet to the floor and painfully stood up. “Most of it.”

  “You look like hammered shit,” Chris remarked. “Something the matter with your back?”

  “I slept on a sofa two thirds my height. My back feels like a herd of buffalo has stampeded across it. While you . . .” He looked askance at Chris. “Fresh as a daisy.”

  “Huff ordered me here early this morning. I reminded him that today is Saturday and how I feel about working on weekends, but he was adamant. He wanted us to be here by the shift change. So here I am. Hungover, but showered and shaved, which is more than I can say for you.”

  “Give me five minutes.” Beck took a Dopp kit from a drawer in his credenza and a change of clothes from the closet. “I brought these from home a few days ago in case I had to pull overni
ght duty.”

  Together they left his office and walked toward the men’s restroom, where they’d had the foresight to install a shower. “Where were you last night?” Beck asked.

  “Back at the club in Breaux Bridge. It’s a happening place. You should go with me next time.”

  “If you can go nightclubbing you must not be worried.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, for starters, about a pending labor strike. And if that isn’t enough, how about being a prime suspect in a homicide investigation?”

  “Huff says you’re going to negotiate us out of the threatened strike. As for the other, I talked to my new lawyer yesterday afternoon. We were on the phone for over an hour. I told him everything, starting with the day Danny’s body was discovered.

  “He said I didn’t have anything to worry about. They’ve got nothing linking me to the scene except a lousy matchbook, which for all they know could have been carried there by a raccoon.”

  “That would’ve been my first guess.”

  Chris shot him a look. “Pessimistic and droll. You’re becoming no fun at all. Anyhow, this lawyer is going to make hash of Wayne Scott. Any news of Slap?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “The attorney said that Cain and Abel nonsense was a desperate move by a desperate fugitive.”

  “I agree.”

  They went into the restroom together. Chris moved to a urinal, Beck stood at a sink and inspected his reflection in the mirror above it. His eyes were red from lack of sleep. He had a heavy scruff, and his hair was standing on end, but at least all his features were intact and in place, which was more than could be said about Clark Daly. He asked Chris if he’d heard about that incident.

  “Huff was still up when I got in last night. He told me about it.”

  Reaching into the shower stall, Beck turned on the faucets, then began to undress. “Daly was worked over pretty good.”

  Chris flushed the urinal. “In my opinion he got exactly what he deserved. How many times has he had his pay docked for being late, or not showing up, or reporting to work drunk? Dozens that I can remember. But we always gave him another chance.

  “And how does he thank us for not firing him all those times? By sowing seeds of discontent. Anybody who sides with those pickets out there doesn’t get any sympathy from me, and that includes my own sister.”

  Beck pulled his face from beneath the spray and poked his head around the corner of the shower stall, looking toward Chris, who was washing his hands at a sink. “Oh yes, she’s out there,” Chris said, reading the question in Beck’s bloodshot eyes. “Passing out coffee and beignets. Huff and I saw her when we drove in.”

  “Shit.”

  “I’m going to get some coffee,” Chris called back to him as he went out.

  Beck finished showering. He had to shave with bar soap but luckily had remembered to bring toothpaste and a toothbrush in his Dopp kit. He dressed quickly and had just reached his office when the seven o’clock whistle blew.

  Beck, watching from the windows in his office, waited expectantly. The shop floor cleared quickly of those whose shift had ended. But after five minutes, only a handful of men had replaced them. “Damn,” he muttered, knowing this boded ill.

  He turned and was crossing his office when Chris appeared in the open doorway. He was carrying a two-way radio, which was making an awful racket. “We’ve got a problem outside,” he said.

  “I guessed.”

  “Fred Decluette says some of the men on his shift joined the picket line as soon as their shift ended,” Chris told him as they jogged down the hallway toward Huff’s office. “They’re recruiting men as they report to work. Clark Daly’s become their poster child.”

  Beck wanted to ask about Sayre, but by then they had reached Huff’s office. Hearing them rush in, he turned away from the wall of glass overlooking the shop floor, his expression fierce. “Where the fuck is everybody?”

  Chris summarized the situation for him in a couple of terse sentences.

  “You two get out there,” Huff said. “I want this thing capped. Now! I’m going to call Red, then I’ll come down myself.”

  “No, you stay here,” Chris said. “You had a heart attack last week. You don’t need this stress.”

  “Screw that. It’s my foundry and my property,” he yelled. “I won’t cower up here like a goddamn invalid while they’re being overrun!”

  “I can handle it, Huff.”

  “I agree with Chris,” Beck said. “Not because I think you’re infirm, but because if you enter the fray, you appear worried about it. Stay away from it and its importance is automatically reduced.”

  Huff’s expression remained truculent, but he relented. “Dammit, you make a good point, Beck. Okay, I’ll stay and run the show from here. You two go. But keep me informed.”

  They left in a hurry, preferring to take the staircase rather than wait on the elevator. “Good thing he listens to you,” Chris said, breathing hard as they rounded the last landing at a run.

  Beck glanced over his shoulder. “I had to say something to keep him inside.”

  The metal exit door was already as hot as a griddle. Beck put his entire weight against it and pushed it open. The rising sun hit him like a spotlight. His eyes adjusted to the glare barely in time to see the beer bottle hurtling toward him.

  chapter 31

  Sayre was standing on the hood of her rental car. From that vantage point, the exit door was in her sights when Beck barreled through it with Chris close on his heels.

  Apparently others had been anticipating their appearance, because no sooner had they cleared the door than a beer bottle was thrown at them. Beck saw it coming and deflected it. He and Chris ducked behind a large Dumpster where Fred Decluette was speaking into a bullhorn.

  “We want this area cleared immediately. Any employee of Hoyle Enterprises who doesn’t report to work by seven-thirty will be docked a full shift’s wages.”

  This was met with jeers from the picketers sent by Nielson and those townsfolk and workers who had joined them outside the chain-link fence. The majority of Hoyle employees, who were either quitting their shift or reporting for work, loitered between the two camps, clearly weighing their decision of which to join.

  One of Nielson’s paid agitators was also speaking into a bullhorn, urging the Hoyle employees not to return to work until demands were met and their workplace was brought up to OSHA’s standards.

  “Is safety equipment too much to ask?”

  A roared “No!” went up from those backing him.

  “Hoyle Enterprises has made repairs—”

  Whatever else Fred said was drowned out by boos and protests. One man grabbed a portable microphone and shouted into it, “Ask Billy Paulik about your lousy repairs.”

  That generated more shouting and name-calling. When it subsided, Chris took the bullhorn from Fred. “Listen, you men, we’re compensating the Paulik family.”

  “Blood money!”

  Despite hoots of laughter, Chris continued. “We’re willing to work things out, to listen—”

  “Like you worked things out with Clark Daly?” one of the pickets shouted. “No thank you!”

  “What happened to Daly last night had nothing to do with us,” Chris shouted into the bullhorn.

  “You’re a damn liar, Hoyle. Just like your old man.”

  Sayre watched as the agitator with the microphone turned and opened a car door, extending his hand down to the passenger inside. Luce Daly stepped out.

  “Oh, Lord,” Sayre murmured.

  So far a violent outbreak had only been threatened, limited to the bottle thrown at Chris and Beck. But Luce Daly’s presence and anything she said could spark violence and bloodshed. Sayre scrambled off the hood of her car and began elbowing her way through the press, hoping to reach Clark’s wife and dissuade her from participating.

  Unfortunately, she saw Luce take the microphone extended to her. It was an inexpensive sound system
, probably part of a child’s toy or a karaoke machine, but she made herself heard through the scratchy speakers.

  “I’m here speaking for my husband. He can’t talk this morning because his mouth is full of sutures. But he wrote down a list of names he wanted me to read to you.”

  She started reading from the list, and after the second name, the crowd began to react angrily. The man nearest Sayre cupped his hands around his mouth and booed loudly.

  “Who are they?” Sayre asked, shouting to make herself heard above the din.

  “Huff Hoyle’s attack dogs,” he shouted back.

  Clark had named the men who’d beaten him. They were probably the men taking cover behind the Dumpster with Beck, Chris, and Fred. One of them snatched the bullhorn from Chris and yelled into it, “That bitch is lying!”

  Sayre continued to fight her way through the mob toward Luce Daly, who was rereading the list, but workers who had previously been indecisive were now joining the throng of picketers.

  It was growing into a moving mass with a will of its own, making it a struggle for Sayre to keep her footing. Surges of outraged people were pressing on her from all sides.

  And then she heard someone near her shout, “You’ll get yours, too, Merchant.”

  Coming up on tiptoe, she saw Beck moving through the chain-link gate that was the demarcation line between the hostile groups. He walked purposefully toward Luce, who continued to repeat the list of names in a deliberate monotone.

  When Beck reached the fringe of the picketers, he stopped, looking straight into the eyes of the men forming a human barricade. The shouting was suddenly replaced by a dense silence that pressed upon the eardrums as solidly as the heat.

  Beck held his ground. Gradually men began to shuffle aside. Some were more reluctant than others to yield ground, but eventually they opened up a path for him. The crowd closed behind him once he’d passed. In that eddying fashion, he made his way through the throng.

  When he reached Luce Daly, she lowered her microphone and looked at him with patent animosity.

  “I understand your outrage.” He spoke quietly, but the mob had remained silent and his voice carried on the heavy, humid air. “If Clark has identified these men as the ones who attacked him last night, they’ll be held accountable and dealt with legally.”