Blind Spot

by Tom Kakonis

  “Matter a fact, there was somethin’ I wanted to run by you.”

  “What’d that be?” Waz said cautiously.

  “You in a place you can talk?”

  Waz was standing in a small room cluttered with boxes of Della’s unsold Amway products, directly off the kitchen. She was in the living room getting teary over a disease-of-the-week flick on the TV, and both the kids were out somewhere. “I can talk,” he said.

  “Remember that business you was tellin’ me about? Out on the tollway there?”

  “Sure, I remember.”

  “I’m thinkin’ maybe you should say something to him.”

  “Jimmie Jack?”

  “Who else we be talkin’ about?”

  Waz hesitated a moment before replying, “Well, I could do that, Buck. Not exactly sure what I’d say, though.”

  “Just tell him what you told me. All of it. Ask him flat-out is there any connection.”

  “You sure you want me to?”

  “I’m sure. Somethin’ shifty goin’ on, I better know now.”

  “Like I said the other night, pro’ly nothin’ to it.”

  “But if there is I need to know. You can see how that is, Waz. Don’t wanta get blindsided.”

  “Yeah,” Waz allowed, “I can see that.”

  “So you talk to him, okay?”

  “Okay. Soon’s I get a chance.”

  “Tomorrow if you can, huh.”

  “Yeah, if I can.”

  “An’ then you let me know what he says, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Find out the truth. Truth better’n this not knowin’. If it’s bad news, I’ll take it from there.”

  “Ain’t gonna be bad news,” Waz said, but not very confidently.

  “We’ll see. Oh, an’, Waz?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wanta thank you, what you’re doin’ for me here. Everything you done.”

  “No prol’um, buddy.”

  But there was a prol’um, big one, and after he put down the phone and joined Della in the other room, that’s all Waz could think about, even as the sad story on the screen wound down, the disease lady there spreadin’ it on about how death ain’t so bad, nothin’ to fear, scheize like that, Della snifflin’ into a hanky and him wonderin’ to himself how you ask a man is he a crook, even when you know he is and he knows you know it. Fuck y’do that, anyhow?

  He was sorry he’d ever said anything to Buck. Sorrier still he’d volunteered to talk to Jimmie. Sorriest of all he’d ever got himself tangled in this, ever agreed to act as go-between, first place. Till he remembered it was Buck bailed him out with a loan ten years ago when he was lookin’ bankruptcy square in the face, his back to the wall, all his good-time friends faded into the woodwork, relatives too. Bailed him out no questions asked, no interest on the money, no pressure to pay it back, even when it took seven long years. That kinda friend don’t come along every day.

  But remembering all this tonight didn’t make it any easier to figure what he was going to do tomorrow, how he’d approach Jimmie, what he’d say. And so when the weep show was over, he told Della there was an exhibition game on the ESPN he wanted to watch awhile, and after she went off to bed he sat there turning it over in his head so many times and still coming up zip, it made him irritable and then drowsy and finally just put him to sleep.

  Which is why he was not your happiest camper when the phone rattled a second time that night. He rolled off the couch and trudged through the kitchen and into the Amway room muttering Yeah yeah yeah under his breath and eventually, louder, into the speaker: “Yeah?”

  “How’s she goin’, Wazzer?”

  Waz wondered who the fuck this she was, everybody askin’ him about. “Who’s this?” he said.

  “Lester. Cock.”

  Waz glanced sleepily at his watch. “You know what time it is, Lester?”

  “Nope.”

  “Half past twelve.”

  “No kiddin’. That late, is it? Forgot to look at the clock. Wake ya up?”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “Sorry, I did.”

  “How come you talkin’ funny?”

  Lester, who along with the time had also momentarily forgotten his speech problem, said, “Whaddya mean, funny?”

  “Sloshy funny. Like you got a mouthful a shit. You ain’t in the bag, are ya, or stoned? I ain’t talkin’ to you if you’re stoned.”

  “Ain’t stoned, Waz. Just I bit my tongue, other day.”

  “So what you want?”

  “Ask a favor.”

  Jesus, everybody hittin’ on him tonight. Place gettin’ to be like your basic parish, him the priest. Father Waz. “What kinda favor?” he said.

  “Was wonderin’ could you gimme a lift into work, next couple days.”

  “What’s the matter, your vehicle?”

  “Had to unload it.”

  “Sold it? Why’d y’do that?”

  “Some money I owed,” Lester said vaguely.

  That was as much as Waz wanted to know. He could fill in the blanks, the rest. He said, “Yeah, I can do that, Lester.”

  “Hey, that’d be great. Knew I could count on you in a pinch, Wazzer.”

  “You’re still at that place on Chicago and Cass, right?”

  “That’s the one. Next to a White Hen.”

  “Be outside, seven bells.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “You know my car?” Waz remembered to ask him. With Lester you had to cover every base.

  “Sure, I know it. Bronze Merc, barely holdin’ together.”

  “Don’t knock it. It’s what’s gonna get you into work tomorrow.”

  “Ain’t knockin’ it, Waz. Just remember how it give ya all that grief. Speakin’ a which, cars, I ever tell ya ’bout that time I was at the license plate office, what happen to me, that lady there? Ever tell ya that one?”

  Fucker was for sure sauced, got another his brainfart stories to tell, middle a the goddam night. “No,” Waz said grouchily, “an’ I ain’t about to listen to it now either.”

  “Okay,” Lester said meekly.

  “So I’ll see ya in the morning.”

  “Yeah, morning. Oh, Waz, thanks for helpin’ me out. Saved my ass.”

  “Ain’t nothin’.”

  “I could put in on the gas, you want.”

  “Forget the fuckin’ gas,” Waz said, feeling a little guilty in spite of himself, which is how the poor dumb fuck always made you feel, like you got a duty to look out for him. “Glad to help.”

  Like his father before him, Marshall Quinn was a professor (he recognized now, having gravitated jittery and insomniac to his study late that Sunday night) quite simply because it was a convenient and socially sanctioned way of holding at arm’s length a coarse world brash in its arrogance and boorish in its ignorance. In a curious, pensive way Marshall wished he could have known him, this phantom figure. Not so much as a father—a conception outside his grasp—but as a child, the two of them, through some magic warp of time, growing into youth and manhood together. In this fantasy they were fast friends, inseparable companions, the way he’d intended it to be with Jeff, perhaps as compensation for his own loss. Or atonement for some indefinable transgression clung to him like a weighted shadow over the steady advance of years.

  But though Marshall had never known the man, he was all too well acquainted with the myth. Fashioned and nurtured and perpetuated over the years by his grieving mother and an assortment of worshipful uncles and aunts, it elevated a bookish, timorous, and very likely rather ordinary J.—for Jeffrey—Warren Quinn, Ph.D., to towering figure of vast learning and quiet wisdom. His field had been (up until the day his hand clutched at a spasmed heart during a classroom exegesis of an Elizabethan sonnet) Renaissance literature, professed at an academic Siberia in the sleepy outpost of Moorhead, Minnesota. Perhaps as small reaction to that fuzzy discipline, Marshall had elected for himself the slightly more pragmatic and measurable study of soci
ology, though like him he had collected his degrees sedulously, married a hometown girl, and settled comfortably into the genteel life of the mind, slipping easily from one side of the podium to the other without so much as an excursion outside the shelter of the lecture hall. Exactly as his father had done. Two timid men unequal to the rigors of an insolent redneck world.

  These fantasies and reflections and conclusions came drifting up out of the mists of a past at once remote as the vanished years of his boyhood and near as the last two days. And seated at his lamplit desk surrounded by the books of the wise, the corners and ceiling of the room engulfed in shadows, he was persuaded of the hard, incriminating truth of his self and, by extension, paternal assessment. How else explain away the bumbling—clownish, even—efforts of those galling, frustrating forty-eight hours. Had to lay the blame somewhere, and the pair of them, ghost and man, were handiest.

  The morning after that inspiriting revelation of the bumper sticker’s symbol (that would be only yesterday—seemed an eon ago) he had taken pains to formulate a careful strategy. He’d never been near an industrial plant in his life, much less inside one, but he suspected you didn’t just stroll in off the street and start making pointed inquiries. Doubtless the proper procedure would be first to contact some ranking official, secure an audience, produce one of the missing-child leaflets, and explain his request calmly and rationally. In that way would he, in this thoughtful plan, surely be granted authorization to conduct a thorough and management-endorsed investigation: that is to say, search the plant, find the man from the happenstance tollway encounter, confront him and wring the truth from him by whatever means necessary. As strategy, it seemed eminently practical, eminently workable.

  Accordingly, he waited till nine a.m. and then placed a call to the general—the only—listing for Norse Aluminum. After a seemingly interminable number of rings a female voice announced in the staccato intonation of an electronically ejaculated message, “Norse Aluminum can you hold please,” no upward inflection whatsoever, and followed instantly by syrupy elevator music, an acquiescent Yes left hanging unuttered on his tongue. Another lengthy wait. At last the voice severed the strains of a melancholy tune (“Feelings,” it was) with “Thank you for holding, how may I direct your call?”

  This one at least was put as a question, to which Marshall replied quickly, “I wonder if I could speak with someone in public relations.” Seemed to him the logical place to start.

  “Management offices closed on weekends.”

  “All of them?”

  “That’s correct.”

  This wasn’t the way his plan was scripted. “You mean there’s, uh, no one in a position to…well, in charge?” he said, a mounting anxiety manifest in the stammery speech and ill-chosen words.

  “There’s the supervisors, plant floor.”

  “Foremen, you mean?”

  “Supervisors.”

  “Maybe I could try one of them.”

  “Which one? Dozen of ’em on a shift, at least.”

  “I don’t know,” he was obliged to admit.

  “Got to have a name, sir.”

  “But I don’t have…You’re sure there’s no one else?”

  “Like I said, management offices closed till Monday. You could try then.”

  “I see.”

  There must have been enough sinking desolation in his voice for her to offer the sighed suggestion, “S’pose you could try security.”

  “There’s someone I could speak with there?”

  “Mr. Petrella might be in today. Can’t guarantee it.”

  “Petrella’s the name?”

  “That’s correct. Joe Petrella. You want me to try him?”

  “If you would.”

  “Hold a moment, please.”

  The moment translated into several bars of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and then fourteen, by close count, rings, and Marshall was about to give it up when another voice, bass, brusque, declared, “Security.”

  “Mr. Petrella, please.”

  “Speaking.”

  But not at all patiently and not very civilly either. Marshall said, “Mr. Petrella, I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes of your time if I were to stop by your, uh, facility this morning.”

  “In regards to what matter?”

  “Well, I’d really rather discuss it with you in person.”

  “Better you tell me now. Save yourself the trip.”

  Tell him now? Tell him what? Where do you begin? How do you explain in twenty-five words or less the disorder and aching sorrow of your life? “I was hoping maybe you could get me a pass to your plant,” Marshall said weakly.

  “Into the plant?”

  “Yes.”

  “To what end?”

  “I’m trying to locate one of your employees.”

  “Who?”

  “Actually, I don’t know his name. I’d recognize him, though.”

  “This an emergency?”

  “To me it is.”

  “How about to this person whose name you don’t know?”

  “Probably not to him.”

  “Your name is?”

  “Marshall Quinn.”

  “You’re affiliated with?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “What firm you represent?”

  “None. Myself.”

  “Okay. Twenty-six hundred employees in here, Mr. Quinn. And even if you knew the name of the one you’re looking for, which you say you don’t, there’s no unauthorized personnel ever allowed inside our plant.”

  “But don’t you see, that’s what I’m asking for. Authorization. If you’d just—”

  “Can’t be done. We got proprietary interests here to protect.”

  It was hopeless, all this circular conversation with rude, disembodied voices. Worse than futile. Nevertheless, Marshall tried one last time, desperately now, all that remained of composure and pride departed in a snivelly plea, “Look, why don’t I just come over there and talk with you? I could explain why it’s vital I get a pass. What all’s at stake. It wouldn’t take long.”

  “Can’t today. Tied up.”

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday. Won’t be in.”

  “Monday?”

  “Can if you want. Answer be the same.”

  “Thanks for all your generous help,” Marshall said, heavy with irony.

  Lost, it appeared, on this Petrella person, who merely replied, “Welcome,” and rang off.

  So much for his good plan.

  What he should have done was skip the call altogether, gone there directly, and presented his case. Any reasonable man, anyone with a speck of empathy, would have listened, bent the iron rules, granted his simple request. Hindsight’s perfect clarity of vision.

  So now he was looking down forty-eight long hours. The first half of them were spent stewing, roaming the house, watching a clock that seemed to freeze-frame time. Lori’s suggestion that he take the matter to the police was met with a curt response that fell just short of a sneer: “Police! Police don’t give a damn.”

  “You could try that sergeant. He seemed kind.”

  “You’re wrong,” he snapped. “He’s no more kind or caring than the rest of them. He thinks it’s all a joke too.”

  “What if it is, Marsh.”

  “A joke? You’re saying it’s a joke?”

  “I’m not saying that. I don’t know.”

  “Look,” he said, the muscles in his face tightening, “I’d rather not talk about this anymore, all right? I’m going to handle it in my own way.” Psychiatric nursemaiding was one thing, action another.

  But of course there was nothing in the way of action to be taken. His misguided phone call had effectively seen to that. Nothing, that is, till it occurred to him this morning he’d never actually been to Cicero, had only the vaguest notion where it was. Somewhere in the collection of faceless suburbs ringing the city. He got out a map, checked the Norse address, pinpointed it. But given hi
s acknowledged genius for getting lost, an X on a map was no guarantee of a speedy and trouble-free arrival at a destination. Any destination, for him. The thing to do was hop in the car and go over there today. Made good sense. A Sunday, the traffic thin, he could take his time, plot a route, look for landmarks. A reconnaissance, of sorts. Trial run against tomorrow morning. Also a productive means of chewing up a few of these glacially moving hours.

  Lori wanted to come along, and he didn’t argue. Could use some help with the map. She laid it out on her lap, and he steered the trusty wagon north on Washington, then east on Ogden. Looked to him to be the most direct route. Glued-together towns, their boundaries sometimes established by small roadside markers, sometimes not, stretched out ahead of them, baking in the heat. The Volvo chugged along, passed over the Tri-State into neighborhoods growing increasingly shabbier, the artery that was Ogden Avenue flanked now by factories, foundries, warehouses, auto graveyards. The Sears Tower, backlit by the sun, shimmered like a mystic vision materializing on the horizon.

  They pushed on. Drove by an enormous railyard, a mile or more of twining tracks, and into a looping tangle of bridges and over- and underpasses. The traffic, nowhere near as light as he’d anticipated, forced him into a sudden decision that brought them out onto a street lined with taverns, greasy spoons, pawnshops, dingy markets, crumbling, graffiti-scarred buildings, and peopled with swaggery-looking toughs, either gender, who eyed them sullenly and whose complexions seemed to darken with each passing block.

  “Where are we?” Marshall asked peevishly.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, this sure as hell isn’t Ogden.”

  “I know. But I can’t seem to find where we are.”

  “Are we in Cicero?”

  She glanced up from the map and squinted at a street sign barely visible at the intersection ahead. “Does that say Pulaski?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Then we’ve passed it.”

  “How the—” He throttled the obscenity risen to his lips, started over. “How did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. But I think you’d better turn left.”

  “On this Pulaski?”