My God! Closer than you think.
Johnny closed his eyes and tried to dispassionately review the facts: There were four sets of keys to the Bold City Ice Plant. The only people who had access to those keys were himself, Pauline, Roy, and Claire. He pictured Claire’s fringed leather purse, the one always hanging sloppily over her chair back with half the contents ready to spill out. Claire had often complained, when she opened her wallet and found herself possessed of five or ten dollars less than she thought she’d had, that her kids seemed to consider it open season on the contents of her purse once she went to bed. Bits of money, chewing gum, Germ-X, pens: Everything was at risk. Even, presumably, keys.
Johnny slid carefully out of the bed and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. He went down to the lobby. At the reception desk, the witch was still fully in character, but Red Tide had given up the laundry detergent hat and now just looked like a woman in a red T-shirt and stretch pants. Johnny asked her if the Days Inn had a business center. “I need a computer,” he said, “with Internet.”
“Ah, honey,” she said. “I keep telling them we need a little business center. You know, to compete? People want that. One less waffle station, I say. How many waffle stations do you need? We could put a little area over there with a computer and a phone and such, you know what I’m saying? I tell the manager and the owner all the time. Do they listen to me? Of course not. But here.” She got out of her seat and motioned to Johnny to come around the counter. “Come sit and use my computer, honey. I’ma take a break anyway.” He thanked her. Red Tide left the reception desk and Johnny sat down at her computer. The witch waved at him, friendly. She was busy taking a phone reservation.
Johnny opened a browser. The ice factory’s surveillance videos were managed with cloud-based software that enabled “Anywhere, anytime access!” as the salesman had proclaimed. When they’d first subscribed to the program Johnny was annoyed by the expense, but now he was glad they’d done it. He remembered the password. It was the same password he used for everything: Boniface15. As he waited for the log-in to verify, he mentally catalogued a disturbing set of details: The blown security bulbs. The constantly resetting router. The flashing microwave clock. The bottle caps on the ops floor.
He accessed the directory of surveillance films and scanned his options. There were eight surveillance cameras posted around the exterior perimeter of the factory. Four of them were trained on the tank yard. Two were trained on the loading dock, one on the fleet parking area, and one on the factory front door. Johnny clicked back through the storage files and found the folder containing films from all eight cameras from the night before the accident. He pulled up the films from the four cameras that were focused on the ammonia tank yard. They’d all looked at these films a dozen times. He, Roy, and the lawyers had watched them again and again, hoping to catch a glimpse of an intruder in the tank yard that would bolster their OSHA appeal. And the OSHA investigators themselves had looked at the films, muttering as they did about “path of failure” and lapsed maintenance. But nobody had seen anything notable in the films.
Johnny put the films on a quick-scan setting. He kept his eye trained on the lower left corner of the screen, where the time and date stamps were rapid-cycling like a stopwatch. He watched the clock move through hours and minutes in a smooth, even progression, the numbers spinning higher and higher as the clock moved through the night. And then he saw it. He stopped the film, backed up a bit, played it again. There it was: a jump in the time stamp. The clock flicked from 9:37 p.m. to 10:19 p.m. Which meant what? Which meant this: On the night before the accident, the surveillance video covering the tank yard was interrupted. For forty-two minutes, there was no record of what might have occurred on or near the doomed ammonia tank.
Johnny thought for a moment, and then went to the files containing films captured from the camera trained on the factory’s front door. Nobody had accessed these films during the accident investigation. Why would anyone? All focus had been on the tank yard, on finding the physical cause for the tank’s rupture. Obviously, the factory itself had not been broken into. There was no reason to examine footage covering the main employee entry. Johnny clicked on the film now. He sat back in his chair and let the footage run, and as it did, he went down a very unpleasant but increasingly convincing chain of events that could have occurred to account for the gap in the surveillance video: Someone had entered the factory and accessed the main breaker panel on the wall just outside Roy’s office. That same someone had thrown the switch to cut off electrical power to the tank yard, which was on the same circuit as the admin wing. The surveillance system had been disabled for forty-two minutes. When the breaker was thrown back on, not only were clocks and routers resetting, but the rush of resumed electricity was overwhelming the circuit and wreaking havoc with some of the more sensitive receptors throughout the building. Security lightbulbs were blowing. Dumbo was shorting.
On the computer monitor, the front door surveillance video flickered with movement. Johnny backed it up and replayed it in slow motion. At 9:32 on the night before the accident, Rosa Kaplan and Owen Vickers walked up to the front door of the Bold City Ice Plant. Vickers was carrying a six-pack of beer. Rosa was laughing. She stumbled a bit, and Vickers grabbed her arm to right her. She unlocked the door, and they walked inside. Johnny held his breath and waited. At 9:37, the time stamp jumped forward to 10:19. Johnny stopped the film and closed the file. He tried to think of another possible alternative to what the evidence was suggesting, but there simply was none.
Owen Vickers was tapping Bold City Ice ammonia. And Rosa Kaplan—dumb, gullible Rosa—was letting him in to do it.
Shit. Just shit.
Red Tide was back. “You got what you need, honey?” she said. “You good?”
“Yes, thank you,” Johnny said. He stood up and had to grab the back of the chair to steady himself. Red Tide looked at him, concerned. “You all right, baby?” she said.
“Head congestion,” he said. “I get a little dizzy. Sorry. Thanks for the computer.” He made his way back up to the hotel room and lay on the bed. He wanted to call Pauline, wanted to call Roy, wanted to think about this new information—what was it going to mean?—but he was finding it was taking most of his energy simply to focus on breathing. Eventually, the music in the club downstairs stopped. Chemal tiptoed into the room and fell onto the other bed in the dark. Johnny could sense himself being observed. Finally, he opened his eyes, and though the room was nearly dark he could tell Chemal was staring at him. “You okay, dude?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Is your brain thing getting worse?”
“I think so,” Johnny said. “But you needn’t worry. I just need to get home.” The air conditioner chugged. A kid ran down the hallway just outside their door, yelling.
“Iceman,” Chemal said. He propped himself up on one elbow, his silhouette barely visible, his voice unusually hushed. “I wish you felt better. And I want you to know: This is the best Halloween I’ve ever had.”
Johnny was glad that someone, at least, was enjoying it.
Twenty-One
It was just that he didn’t want to answer any questions. That’s what Roy was thinking as he staged the pretense of preparing to exit the factory when the whistle blew to end the shift on Halloween evening. He turned off the ringer on his phone, powered down his computer, and closed the blinds in his office. He waved goodbye to the packing crew, who would be hustling their own way out within minutes, damn straight. He put his parka back on one of the hooks just inside the door to the admin wing and walked toward Pauline’s office to tell her good night, just like he always did. He’d gone out of his way today to stay out of the admin wing. Not that it was Pauline he was avoiding. Good night, Pauline, you heading out? Yep, right behind you, good night, Roy. See you tomorrow. Uh-huh.
He wasn’t actually going home. He just needed to kill a couple of hours, let the factory clear out, and then he’d be back. To avoid t
he termite tenting at his house, he’d decided to crash for the night on the plaid sofa in his office, a course of action which was his own business, thank you very much, and not something he wanted to have to explain to every nosy Bold City Ice employee who would want to know why he wasn’t hitting the road with everyone else come quitting time. (What do you mean, you’re sleeping here, Roy? That’s crazy, Roy! Get a hotel, Roy! Don’t you have someone you can stay with?) And by every nosy Bold City Ice employee, of course, he meant Claire.
So he left. And now it was headed toward dusk on a sweltering weekday evening in Jacksonville and—surprise!—he’d hit eastbound rush hour right on the button. Traffic was a snarl. Normally, his homeward route led him due west from the factory, which was an easier nut to crack, trafficwise, and easily navigable for a Westsider like Roy who’d grown up sharking his way through the gridded network of cut-through streets in maneuvers that, over the course of his driving life, had probably saved him hours—shit, days—of sitting-in-traffic time.
But tonight, something had come over him, and he’d headed out toward the beach with a thought to order up a plate of coconut shrimp at Ragtime, maybe treat himself to a Red Brick Ale. He was beginning to see now, with a clear view of the nearly immobilized eastbound lanes of Atlantic Boulevard, that this was a terrible plan. Plus, the longer he sat in traffic, the longer he had to gnaw on the fact that the shrimp and beer would run him a cool $20 that he simply didn’t have, especially in light of his good friends Nathan and AT&T. He rode along the current for a little while, aimless, and then he bagged the whole shebang and pulled in to the parking lot at the Regency Mall. Food court. Something simple. Then back to the factory, maybe get some shipping reports caught up, and then bed down. Call this day a draw.
He parked outside Penney’s and walked through the store into the mall, where the atmosphere was claustrophobically cavernous, if there could be such a thing. Big as it was, the place was crowded, surprisingly for a weekday, and Roy had the feeling of walking in a small retail city. He walked past surf stores and dress boutiques, shoe outlets and one entire store that sold nothing but candles, another that sold nothing but tea. Nothing but tea! He didn’t know how such a business could exist. He passed the Dial-N-Style cell phone kiosk. The Piercing Pagoda. Hair Cuttery. Puppy Avenue. He tried to think of the last time he’d been in a shopping mall. It had been quite a while. Years, probably.
He realized he was walking much faster than the average shopper, and he had to keep adjusting his stride after finding himself tailgating one slow-moving band after another: first a broad-bottomed trio of women in stretch pants and platform sandals, then a pair of seniors in Velcro shoes, next a sprawling family pushing a rented mall stroller shaped like a small car.
From somewhere, faintly, he could hear piped-in music. Who was that—Elvis? Cher? Had those two always sounded so similar? A pair of women walked past, clear plastic handbags dangling on their arms. Roy had heard once that department store workers were told to use clear handbags to protect against internal theft—the jewelry girl walking off with the wares and such. How demeaning, he thought, to be assumed a wrongdoer when all you’re trying to do is pay the bills. Malls. Why do they make these places? Like giant human Habitrails, everyone running, aimless, exhausted.
He bought a sandwich at Miami Subs in the food court and sat down at a table next to a young woman feeding french fries to a baby in a high chair. The baby wore striped leggings, green socks, and a red T-shirt. Roy couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. It looked like an elf. He checked his phone for a text from Ally, and finding none, he opened his email app to see if Nathan had responded about the AT&T charges. Negative. When he looked up, the young woman was gone. The baby was sitting there alone.
Roy stood up and turned in a slow circle, looking at the people waiting in the various lines at restaurants around the food court: Sbarro and Mandarin Express, Reggae Island Grille and French Fry Heaven. Nowhere did he see the young woman, or anyone, for that matter, looking back attentively toward the baby. What was wrong with the world? Sometimes he honestly did not know if he could keep up. He sat down at his table again, and he and the baby regarded each other. The baby had brown curls and bright dark eyes. Roy decided it was a boy. There was just something about the little guy’s face.
“Well, damn,” Roy said. “Where’s your mama?” The baby stared at him solemnly, still chewing potato. Roy hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those child abandonment stories. He looked at his watch. One more minute, maybe two, tops. Then he was calling the police. The overhead music had clarified now. “Who Let the Dogs Out?” My God. The noise and chaos of the mall were starting to feel overwhelming. He worked his way through his sandwich, which was terrible, truly. He told the little elf about it.
The young woman finally returned to take ownership of the elf baby, who raised his arms to her absently, almost wearily.
“Well, well,” Roy said. The woman looked at him defensively. “You shouldn’t leave your baby,” he said.
“Well, you shouldn’t be up in my business,” she said. “I didn’t leave him with you.”
She gathered the baby and walked away. Roy finished his sandwich. He stopped at a kiosk and bought a cardboard cone filled with chocolate chip cookies. He made his way out to the parking lot and drove toward the city. The traffic going toward the Bold City’s center, he noted, was nearly naught. Everyone, it seemed, was bound for the perimeter.
The factory was quiet. There were no cars left in the lot. Roy parked and fetched the sleeping bag he’d stashed in the trunk of his car. He unlocked the front door, entered, and locked the door again behind him, and then he made his way through the dark admin wing, out to the ice floor, and back to his office. He turned on his space heater and waited for the room to warm. He pulled out his phone and turned it back on. There was a missed call and a voicemail from a number he didn’t recognize, but he ignored it. Bill collector. Nooooooo thank you. He texted Ally.
Boo, he typed. Happy Halloween.
Boo, you, she wrote back.
What are you doing tonight?
Pizza thing at the student union, she wrote. And then Megan’s having a party. I made a costume. Hang on.
He waited. He knew she was taking a selfie. Sure enough, after a few seconds a headshot came through: Ally with her face painted up like a cat’s, cheeks sucked in and her head tilted to the side—a little flirtatiously, if you asked Roy. He was glad he couldn’t see the rest of the costume, which he suspected involved something stretchy and black. They called them catsuits for a reason, didn’t they? He sighed. Last he checked, Ally was nine years old, making pom-poms and singing Disney songs on summer days in the factory with Rosa. And now here she was mugging sexy-kitty in a college dorm and headed for a party.
Very cute, he wrote back.
Thanks, Daddy. Miss you. Mwah.
Miss you too, Ally. Be safe tonight. Mwah.
He spread the sleeping bag on the sofa. Well, cat-suit or not, at least she was possessed of a focus, he thought. She had a real future ahead of her, that kid. UF was a tough school to get into, but Ally had done it. He was so proud of her sometimes it hurt. It made him feel a little sad, though, for Rosa. He wondered if the two girls still kept in touch. He really had no idea, though it was certainly likely that they were connected on Facebook and probably clicked around in cyberspace from time to time, each to see what the other was up to: Ally taking college life by the horns and Rosa letting her artistic dreams slowly fade and letting herself grow doughy and wan as she sat out her days holding down the receptionist’s chair in an ice factory.
Rosa’s one of us, he thought. Me and Claire and all the other working-class cogs in the Bold City Ice machine. But Ally was different. Ally was on her way out. Go Gators! She was headed into Johnny’s world, Pauline’s world, even Ed from Sales’s world, which was a place where people didn’t put groceries on a credit card or ride around in a car with no air-conditioning or sleep in their offices because they co
uldn’t afford a hotel room. You go, girl, he thought. Catch a star, sweet baby, and ride it up and out. Ride it to Florence and back, and all the way into a great job and a nice house and a good marriage and sweet little kids, all of it. We’ll make it happen, somehow. But just don’t forget me, Ally. Just don’t forget I’m still here.
Someone had left a pair of sunglasses on the small table next to the sofa. He picked them up to move them to the desk. One of the ops guys, he thought. Someone will come looking tomorrow. But wait. He looked at them again. They were women’s sunglasses, enormous Jackie-O circles. He squinted at them; his eyesight was getting worse, by God. A line of type was etched along one arm. Prada, it said. Well, that was odd. He tossed the glasses onto his desk. He fell back onto the couch and listened to the buzzing rush of the space heater in the corner. It wasn’t bad company. After a while, the heat in the room built, and the unit’s thermostat tripped a sensor and shut it down. Then the silence was unbearable. Roy pulled out his phone and watched a few Jimmy Fallon clips on YouTube, waiting for sleep to come. No dice. He watched a few more. There was one where Jimmy was being visited by the animal expert guy who brings critters to the show and talks about them. By coincidence this clip was featuring animals from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.
What do you know? Just down the road. Roy had taken Ally lots of times when she was little. Quite a lovely place it was, too: alligators and crocodiles to look at, sure, but also a bird rookery that attracted roseate spoonbills to nest in the spring. That was Ally’s favorite part, all those pink birds sitting in the trees. She said it looked like Dr. Seuss. Roy hadn’t been to the Alligator Farm in a long while. He’d had no idea it was now on the national radar. People knew about the Alligator Farm? People knew about St. Augustine? The Tonight Show! Roy was impressed.
The Ice House Page 33
