Finnegan's week

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “No, there’re quite a few hauling contractors around town. What’d the waste consist of?”

  “All I know is the trucker picked up some stuff from the navy at North Island and from a place called Southbay Agricultural Supply down here in San Ysidro. I’ve notified our office of emergency management and HazMat and the county health department and now you. I’m all tuckered out.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Nope. May’ve been a try at a cargo theft if they couldn’t read ‘hauling and disposal’ on the door of the cab. Just thought I’d let you know. In case the drums get found you’ll know where they belong.”

  “Can you send me a copy of the report?” she asked. Then she added, “Where was the truck stolen from exactly?”

  “Angel’s Café. Know it?”

  She thought she knew Angel’s, and said, “As I recall, a lotta guys wearing shades hang around there. They’re either astronomers waiting for a solar eclipse or drug dealers, right?”

  Fin said, “They sell dime bags of smoke. Truckers sprinkle it on their hamburgers.”

  “If you hear anything about the truck, call me.”

  Fin said, “We don’t handle truck thefts here at Southern. And if the truck’s recovered with the sludge still in it, I wouldn’t go near it anyway. Waste from the navy is probably the kinda stuff that makes an insect turn in circles and die from one whiff. That’s what the military wants people to do.”

  Suddenly his voice had a face: chin dimple, nice soft gray eyes. A smallish guy with a smart mouth. Nell said, “I used to work with your ex-wife. She was a police officer, right? A sergeant? Worked Northern?”

  “My first ex-wife. The good sergeant. That experience taught me not to marry above my station. She put bruises on my psyche that bled into my hat. I learned what police brutality really means being married to that Nazi. I hope she wasn’t a close friend of yours?”

  “No, I just remember how she used to complain to the other women about you. You’re the amateur actor, right?”

  The line went dead for a few seconds. “I act, yeah,” Fin said icily. Amateur?

  “The hazardous waste could very well turn up somewhere in Southbay,” Nell said. “If you hear anything, gimme a call, huh?”

  Then he was able to put a face on “Salter.” She was the one that actually jogged to work, sometimes in shorts and a T-shirt. On cold misty mornings her nipples would pop out, so the male cops called her “Foglights” behind her back. He wondered if her fog lights were on today. He wondered how well she’d aged.

  It had been a long wait at U.S. Customs. Pepe Palmera had breezed through Mexican customs, but now the U.S. officers were letting their dog sniff very carefully around all the trucks as though they’d received a tip.

  Pepe had confidence in his cold plates. The yellow FRONT BC license, and the PEPE’S POTTERY that Rubén’s workers had stenciled on the doors, made it absolutely plausible that he was hauling his own merchandise to the U.S. market. He was fairly confident that no one would give him any trouble about a missing registration, but then, he’d only taken stolen trucks through on two other occasions. Usually he was driving cold cars or cold trucks when he did business on the U.S. side, criminal business in most cases.

  Pepe had a record with the San Diego police. He’d been arrested twice for petty theft and once for a commercial burglary that had got him ninety days in the county jail. He wasn’t very worried that a U.S. Customs officer would give him trouble but he was worried about his health. The sweating had gotten ferocious, and the headache was actually causing his vision to blur. Pepe couldn’t stop swallowing, and while waiting in the line at U.S. Customs he had to get out of the truck to vomit.

  Just before it was his turn, he had a bit of luck. The drug dog scored a hit on an eighteen-wheeler in front of him. The dog started barking wildly and clawing at the mud flaps behind the rear wheels. A customs officer crawled under the truck and emerged with a large taped bundle.

  While one officer was handcuffing the driver, the other gave Pepe a perfunctory check and he was waved through. Two miles inside the U.S., Pepe felt like renting a motel room and waiting out the fever. But he kept driving north.

  Jules Temple was not happy when he gave orders that Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate come immediately to his second-floor office at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. A dispatcher had tried to inform Jules of the truck theft on Friday, but Jules was at a Thai restaurant in Hillcrest, telling an exotic dancer named December Doolan that as soon as his hauling business closed escrow, he planned to open a topless bar and would use her as a star attraction.

  Jules had had to spend $200 on the bitch, all for naught. She ate like a Charger defensive lineman and drank more than he did, yet when it came time for his payoff he got a good-night kiss and that was it. He’d been too frustrated and tired to listen to his messages when he’d got home, so he didn’t learn about the truck until he came to work on Monday.

  Any theft but this one would’ve irritated Jules, but this one made him furious. Because the manifest from Southbay Agricultural Supply did not match the missing load!

  His hazel eyes were glittering when his two employees entered. “Close the door behind you,” he said, letting them both stand in front of his desk while he remained seated.

  Jules was the only boss that Shelby Pate had ever seen in a blue-collar business who dressed like this. His boss was wearing a suit the color of curdled cream, and a forest-green shirt buttoned at the throat. Shelby absolutely hated yuppie shirts buttoned at the throat. Jules Temple had even rolled up the cuffs of his jacket to hip-it-up.

  All the Mexican workers and most of the others took off their hard hats when they entered the boss’s private office; therefore Shelby Pate left his cap on, turned around backwards. Shelby wore a blue Public Enemy T-shirt.

  Jules studied them. Abel Durazo waited patiently, but Shelby Pate stared back at him, like the redneck monster he was. Jules hated them because they’d been careless with his truck, and because he was positive they’d stolen his money.

  He surprised them both when he said, “If I’d have heard about this on Friday night, I’d have asked the cops to search you. I don’t believe you left my five hundred dollars in the glove compartment. You wouldn’t do something that stupid.”

  “We sorry, Boss,” Abel said contritely. “We thought money was more safe een glove box.”

  Shelby Pate said, “If you’re gonna fire us, go ahead, but I don’t appreciate being accused a stealin your money, Mister Temple.”

  “I only got twel’ dollar, Boss,” Abel said. “I show eet to you.”

  “I just want you to know that I’m not fooled,” Jules Temple said. He was trying so hard to maintain control that his mouth barely moved when he spoke, and it made it hard for Abel to understand him.

  “You ain’t gonna believe us,” said Shelby Pate, “so I guess this means we’re fired, huh?”

  Jules kept quiet for a moment and stared into his coffee cup. Then he said, “I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Abel, you’ve worked for me for some time and you’ve always been honest.” He looked at Shelby and said, “By the way, where’s the manifest from the navy?”

  “Een glove box,” Abel said.

  It was all Jules could do to maintain his voice level then. “And Mister Ralston’s manifest. Where … is … that manifest?”

  “Gone,” Abel said, and both young men were shocked when Jules Temple smacked his coffee cup across the desk, spilling it on the carpet.

  But they weren’t as shocked as Jules Temple was. He’d lost it! Always so cool, his late father had said. Cool when others were not cool, to the extent that the old man had suspected pathology, a personality disorder of some kind. And he’d knocked his cup across the desk. He’d lost it. In front of these cretins.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” Jules said. “It’s just that everything’s coming down on me. Selling my business and not wanting anything to go wrong? You can understand, can’t you?”
r />   Abel said, “Okay, Boss,” but Shelby Pate just stared at Jules Temple.

  Then Shelby said, “The navy’s manifest was in the glove compartment, the other one wasn’t.”

  “Where was it then?” Jules Temple asked, much too quickly.

  “On the seat,” Shelby said, unable to understand why it was so vital. “Probably it’ll jist get tossed out by the thief.”

  Jules Temple nodded and said, “You’re right. The thief probably threw them away and dumped the drums somewhere. But I hate to lose those manifests. They have EPA numbers on them. Strict controls, you understand.”

  “Was eet real bad poison, Boss?” Abel asked.

  “It’s all bad,” Jules Temple said. “Our job is to protect the public from it. You can go back to work now.”

  Abel smiled and said, “Thanks, Boss.”

  Shelby just nodded, and Jules Temple didn’t like the insolent smile on that big bastard. Not a bit. After his haulers were gone, Jules immediately called Burl Ralston at Southbay Agricultural Supply.

  “Burl,” he said, when the old man answered, “It’s Jules. Did you mail the EPA manifest copy from Friday?”

  “No, I got it right here,” Burl Ralston said.

  “And your file copy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t do anything with them,” Jules said. “Put them in your desk. I’ll be right there.”

  Pepe Palmera could hardly focus when they unloaded the pottery at Huerta’s Pottery Shed in Old Town. This wasn’t the tourist season, but there were plenty of people roaming through the shops and buying souvenirs.

  Pepe entered and stumbled right into a hanging clay pot shaped like a pig, but he didn’t even feel it. His face was numb. After they off-loaded, Pepe was told by Alberto Huerta that payment would be by mail per agreement, so Pepe got back into the truck to leave. He scraped against the fender of a parked car as he pulled away from the curb.

  When Pepe reached the freeway on-ramp he was utterly confused, and turned north instead of south. He began to drive fast, and it was very hard to steer because the lane lines had begun to undulate. Then he saw someone standing beside a car that had pulled off the freeway. The someone was his sister, Blanca!

  Pepe Palmera jerked the wheel, and crossed three lanes of traffic. Brakes screamed. Tires smoked. Two cars hit the center divider and screeched to a stop.

  Pepe stopped the van in the traffic lane, leaped out, and waved wildly to his sister. Then he began to weep and ran to embrace the beautiful girl who had been dead for seven years.

  He was calling to her: “Blanca! Blanca!” when a 1989 BMW struck, rocketing Pepe through space, where he was hit in flight by a Toyota and then run over by a Greyhound bus.

  Pepe Palmera had jetted out of his shoe, the left one, loosely laced because of his swollen toes. But the right shoe stayed securely attached to his foot, which was severed and catapulted into the still-flowering ice plant growing up the bank of the 1–5 freeway.

  CHAPTER 10

  When Jules Temple arrived at the office of Burl Ralston he thought he was in command of his emotions, yet Jules was unaccountably warm on an October day when the cool offshore air signaled the end of a long summer. His forest-green shirt was open at the throat now, and one of his neatly rolled coat sleeves had come unrolled.

  “Something wrong with Friday’s pickup?” Burl Ralston asked, the moment Jules entered his office.

  The old man had just come in from the warehouse and was still wearing a blue hard hat. He was a big man, a bit stooped, but still a hard worker. He removed his trifocal glasses and wiped them when he sat down, noting that Jules’s smile was less smarmy than usual.

  “Can I see the EPA copy of the manifest?” Jules asked. “And your copy?”

  Burl Ralston opened his desk drawer and removed an envelope, using a scissor blade to cut it open. “I was going to mail this today. What’s wrong, Jules?”

  “My truck got stolen a few hours after my haulers picked up your drum. There was some North Island waste in it as well as yours.”

  “Too bad about the truck,” Burl Ralston said. “But I don’t see what …”

  “You did read the manifest on Friday, didn’t you, Burl?” Jules asked, pressing his fingertips together in that annoying way of his.

  “I glanced at it, sure,” Burl Ralston said, pretending he didn’t know what Jules was driving at.

  Jules’s smile darkened then, and the light through the office window made Burl Ralston realize how much he disliked Jules Temple’s affectations. Jules wasn’t as young as he dressed, not as young as his haircut. Fortyish, he seemed too old for the little yellow sports car he drove, and Burl Ralston didn’t even like Jules’s rich-boy teeth.

  Then Jules said, “Of course you read it. You signed it in the presence of my two haulers.”

  “You prepared it,” Burl said, taking off his hard hat, baring a bald splotchy scalp.

  “I don’t deny that I prepared it,” Jules said. “You asked me to. You said you were too busy with your own paperwork.”

  “I asked you to? No, you offered. You asked for my EPA identification number and I gave it to you over the phone. Remember?”

  “Why quibble?” Jules said, delicately tugging at his trouser creases before crossing his legs. Jules had a prissiness that always made Burl Ralston uncomfortable. Jules had once hinted that he’d been a Green Beret in Vietnam, but Burl Ralston didn’t believe that he’d even been in the military.

  “What difference does it make if you typed the manifest or if I typed it?” Burl asked. “I admit I signed it.”

  “Admit that you read it then,” Jules said. “Particularly item eleven.”

  Burl picked up the EPA’s copy of the uniform hazardous waste manifest and read aloud: “Waste flammable liquid.” Then he said, “Okay, that’s maybe a technically correct description for Guthion that’s been accidentally mixed with a little weed oil.”

  “Technically correct?” Jules said.

  “But it’s not morally correct because I told you it was Guthion. You should’ve described it as Guthion. I think I see where you’re going with this conversation, Jules.”

  “I described it exactly like you described it to me.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Burl, you signed off on the manifest. Look at your signature. Is Sacramento going to accept that you didn’t go along with a morally incorrect description of the hazardous waste?”

  “I think you better leave, Jules.”

  “Even if the EPA believed that you told me it was Guthion, you obviously went along with the morally incorrect description because you got a very good bid from me to haul and dispose of the stuff. For which you paid cash to my haulers. Didn’t you read item nine? Look at the designated facility: a refinery in Los Angeles. Since when can Guthion be disposed of at a refinery in L.A.? Someone’d say you went along because you got a good deal from me and even paid cash under the table.”

  “What happened, did the drum turn up somewhere? Did someone get hurt? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” Jules said. “And I don’t think the drum will ever turn up. But if it does, and if somebody from HazMat or the EPA should test the contents and find out that the waste flammable liquid headed for Los Angeles was really Guthion, I’d say you’re in a lot more trouble than I am. In fact, as I see it, I’m not in trouble at all. I don’t work for the I.R.S. so I don’t question my customers if they’re trying to cheat Uncle Sam by doing cash transactions.”

  “You little son of a bitch,” Burl Ralston said, twisting the manifest copy like a chicken neck. “You been doing cash business with me for two years.”

  “That’s it, Burl,” Jules said, “destroy those copies. Both of them. I’m here to protect you.”

  “You’re here to protect me?”

  “Sure. After my truck got stolen it suddenly occurred to me: What if there was something besides oil or solvent or something like that in Burl’s drum? What if there was something like, oh
, malathion, or paraquat, or even Guthion? If it gets dumped, found and tested, old Burl could get in trouble. So I just thought I’d come by and tell you about the theft of the truck. And that you probably have nothing to worry about. The drums might never turn up. Maybe the truck went to Mexico. Down there, they’ll empty the drums and use them to barbecue baby goats in. So you probably have nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m going to call the EPA right now and tell them the truth. That I told you it was Guthion in that drum.”

  “That’s exactly why I came by here!” Jules said. “I thought you might panic and do that if you heard my truck got stolen. I thought you might try to put it off on old Jules. I just want you to think about it, Burl. Who signed the manifest? The contents’re listed right there as flammable waste bound for L.A. Who signed it? Who paid cash to my driver?”

  “We could both go to prison if somebody’s hurt. Do you understand that, you shit-sucking little prick?” Burl Ralston clenched his big fists on the desktop.

  “Put a customer’s order form, or a credit-card receipt, or a note to your sister Mabel, or any goddamn piece of paper you have into an envelope and send it certified to the EPA. When they finally contact you about it, just say, ‘What? You mean I didn’t send you the manifest copy of the Guthion that Green Earth was going to take to Texas for disposal with some other hazardous waste? Well, land o’ goshen!’”

  “And my generator’s copy. Does that get misplaced?”

  “Of course. Your files’re a mess. How old’re you, seventy-something? Tell them you’re lucky if you can file your nails. And that you know it’s time to retire but you just can’t let go. And that you’ll look everywhere for the manifest copy. But you’ll never find it, will you? And don’t worry about my two haulers. I doubt that either of them can read anything more complex than the label on a beer can. They just knew to pick up the two loads and bring them to our yard. Period.”