Jeffrey waved the sheaf of papers he was holding at her. “Check.” He turned to Ben. “And if you saw the rat hole we are staying in down here, you’d want to spend all your time here as well.”
“Jeffrey, you hush. We are government servants and must use our expense account wisely.” She turned on Ben next. “These shelves are an absolute disaster.”
He crossed his arms defensively. He was starting to understand why Sylvia had made it a point to avoid the warehouse today. “Well, it’s not like I shelved any of it. I’ve been here less than a month.”
Tanya shook her head sorrowfully. “It’s that dratted Sylvia girl, I know it is. No good role models in her youth, bet you ten to one. She’s trouble, she is.”
Ben stood a little straighter. “Hang on, now, she’s been nothing but helpful since I started here. She’s the very spirit of helpfulness.”
“She’s a damned menace is what she is.” Tanya slammed down her list to emphasize her point.
Ben was furious now. “Do you have any proof of that?”
The woman stood on tiptoe to get in his face. “Besides her trashing my auction items, you mean?”
“I asked for proof, not conjecture,” Ben snapped.
“Not yet, I don’t, but don’t you be surprised when I come up with more stuff missing than can’t be accounted for. She’s a sticky-fingered little wretch, and she should be put back in her place. Or fired, better yet. She’s utterly incompetent.” Jeffrey opened his mouth and then thought better of it and returned to peering through his sheets of paper, ostensibly counting the number of items left unaccounted for.
Ben was furious. Here he was confronted with a woman who obviously had no familiarity with logic, and for some unfathomable reason she had determined to hate Sylvia. “Fine then, I’ll keep her out of your way while you’re here. But don’t expect me to boot her entirely from the warehouse as I need her assistance in finishing the preparations of my own auction items as well as logging the daily intake. Who, by the way, is covering your job back in Minnesota in your rather sizeable absence?” He regretted the crack as soon as he made it, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.
Tanya gave him a black look and took a step towards him, raising her hand.
Jeffrey stepped between them finally. “It’s a huge job, no question. We have some trainees and interns who are working on things and sending daily reports. Also the readers know to check in on them from time to time.”
Ben waved his hand dismissively. “Well, good. Wouldn’t want you to get behind while you’re trying to prove we’re all dishonest crooks down here in the South.”
Having calmed a bit, Tanya replied, “No one is implying you are crooks. We are simply looking for inefficiencies, discrepancies, and the occasional incompetence. It has nothing to do with your honor. You’d think it was precious to you southern gentlemen.”
Ben threw his hands in the air in frustration and strode back to his desk. It appeared that Tanya was a woman it was very easy to make an enemy of, though he wasn’t sure how Jeffrey had survived as long as he had. Some miracle of willpower, Ben assumed, or lack of personality. He wasn’t quite sure yet. Regardless, he hurried out of the office, eager to be away from the harridan and back home with the comforting stacks of reports waiting for him on his desk.
The next day Ben didn’t see Sylvia at all. The morning passed uneventfully, his meditative data entry and shelving accompanied by the constant patter of the inventory going on down the way. The duo had finished one bay and were well into their second. Ben was flabbergasted at their speed and determination; the hotel they were staying at must have been truly horrible if Jeffrey had acquiesced to Tanya’s desire to speed through the process.
Around lunch, he poked his head into the break room, the sorting room, and the bullpen but still couldn’t find his wayward partner. Everyone he asked said they remembered her asking if there was anything she could do for them and disappearing again when they said they didn’t. One of the readers, Byron, even admitted telling her he wouldn’t give her a research project even if he did. She wasn’t cleared for it.
Ben hadn’t heard this term yet. “Cleared for it?”
Byron looked around conspiratorially and leaned in. “You actually need a security clearance to be a reader. You know, just in case.”
Ben was amused at Byron’s reaction. “Has that ever mattered?”
“Once, I think. Sometime in the 1940s a letter went astray from one of the scientists on the Manhattan project.” The reader smiled dreamily. “Imagine holding a piece of history in your hands like that.”
“Fascinating. I wonder, had it been censored yet?”
Byron shrugged, and turned back to his pile of waiting letters.
By the time it came to close up the office for the day, Ben was a little worried; it wasn’t like Sylvia to so completely disappear. She seemed to thrive on constant attention and putting herself where she didn’t belong. Even deliberately making people uncomfortable. And, oddly, it was this intrusiveness that he missed. He checked on Tanya and Jeffrey one more time, but they just waved him off, Jeffrey with a polite shrug and Tanya with a gruff, “Go on, get home.”
So Ben left them to their work and headed back to his apartment. He stopped on the way home to pick up more Peachtree Ale since he had finished his stock the night before, and as soon as he got home, he cracked one open and sat down at his desk. He turned on his radio to the only station he still listened to, 95.5 WSB, news and talk. It wasn’t like he even really listened to Sean Hannity and, later, Herman Cain. He just liked having the noise on in the background. In fact, if he ever did truly listen, he’d probably just end up pissed off at something the political commentators said.
He sipped his beer and tried to decide how his evening would be best put to use. He would prefer sitting at work and running through the list of possible searches he had put together from the tip line or making copies, but he didn’t particularly want to be doing that with the harpy from Minnesota hanging over his shoulder. With out that option, he was at a loss. He shuffled his papers a few times, logged onto the tip sites and started scanning them, but between his irritation over Tanya and his worry for Sylvia, he was just too distracted.
Food might help his concentration, he decided, but he really wasn’t at all hungry despite the fact that he’d eaten lunch early that day as an excuse to try and hunt down Sylvia at work. And then he started wondering about Sylvia again. He didn’t have her personal email, so he decided to call her just to make sure everything was okay.
He scrabbled around his desk for the phone number that she had written down the day he was sick and finally found it under a stack of whiskey-stained notes. Sitting down with the phone in one hand and the number in the other, he dialed the first three numbers and then hung up. Should I call her? She had obviously been at work as other people had seen her. Ben just had not seen her. Did that warrant a call to her house during the dinner hour?
Maybe she wouldn’t be home and he could just leave a message or hang up. But best to call her anyway, in case something was wrong. Most days you couldn’t pry her out of the warehouse. So he dialed again and finished his beer as he waited for the dial tone to resolve itself into the simulacrum of a human voice informing him that the number he had just dialed was not answering.
After the third ring, however, there was a click on the other end of the line, a pause, and a cocky, “Sup?”
“Sylvia?”
“Oh, hey, Ben. Something up?”
“Not really, just didn’t see you at all today, and since I’m ostensibly your boss, I just thought I’d check in, make sure you were still alive.” He got up to go get another beer while flipping through a stack of takeout menus.
“Aw, Ben, that’s sweet of you. But I’m fine, just avoiding the plague in the warehouse. I’ll come back to you as soon as the har
py and her puppy leave. I love Jeffers, don’t get me wrong, but that woman…oh, I could just, just choke a tree!”
“Choke a tree?” He tried to picture the little pixie with the badly dyed ponytails and newsboy cap wrapping her arms around a hundred-year-old oak and trying to choke the life out of it.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. But it’s not that bad; they ignore me all day unless I butt in. You could come back to the warehouse tomorrow. Please? There is just too much to do without you.”
“So this is all just because you’ve learned you can’t live without me?”
But Ben had stopped listening to her. A news bulletin had broken through the usual inane chatter on the station.
“The police have just arrested a man on the charges of abduction and murder for several counts. Sources are saying he kidnapped and held several young boys. Updates in an hour. But now, back to your host.”
“Sylvia, I’ll call you back. I have to check on something.” Ben hung up without waiting for her answer. He immediately dialed Detective O’Connor’s number, still memorized.
“O’Connor.”
“It’s Ben.”
“Jesus, I knew you’d call as soon as you heard a news report.” He sighed. “We don’t know anything right now. Hold tight.”
“Just tell me, is it true that he kidnapped young boys?” Ben clutched the phone, mouthing please god over and over while he waited for an answer.
The detective paused a moment and Ben could just imagine the man slouched in his desk chair, hand over his eyes. It was the same posture that had greeted him the last couple times Ben had dropped by the precinct unannounced to check on progress before he moved to Atlanta.
“Can you just leave this alone till we know more?”
Ben seriously considered it before replying, “Could you?”
“I’m not going to tell you everything,” the detective warned.
“Just something. Please.” Ben tried not to sound like he was begging and failed.
“Fine then. And don’t go running off to everyone telling tales. We stopped a guy with a broken taillight, and there was a boy sitting on the bench seat crying. Turns out the boy was snatched. We arrested the guy, but he’s retarded. Literally. IQ lower than sixty the shrinks say. We searched his property and have found one other…boy so far.”
Ben heard the hesitation and realized what the detective didn’t want to say. “Dead.”
“Yes.” It was delivered crisply, as though in a report to a senior officer. No emotion.
“And?”
“We’re going to keep searching. If there’s two…”
Ben struggled for breath, glad he was sitting down. After a moment, he straightened a little in his chair. “You said a bench seat; what was he driving?”
Again, the detective hesitated. He was weighing his words carefully tonight. “I’ll never hear the end of it if I tell you.”
At his words, Ben knew with certainty what it was. “A green truck.”
“More rust than green, but yes,” the detective admitted. Both men waited for the other to make the next conversational gambit.
“Detective?”
The sigh was audible over the line. “Yeah, Ben?”
“Thanks.” At least Detective O’Connor was honest. He never lied to Ben about what had happened before, nor did he try and avoid the truth now.
“If or when we know any more, I’ll call you. But don’t wait by the phone; it’ll be a while.”
Ben hung up without saying anything else. The phone rang almost as soon as he’d hung up. He stared at the receiver in his hand for three rings before he hit the talk button.
“Ben? Ben are you there?”
He didn’t answer. His mind was still turning over the reality of the green truck and missing boys.
“Ben? Goddamn it. Answer me.” Sylvia’s voice was tight and worried.
Wrenching his attention to the voice on the line, he answered, “I’m here.”
“Shit, I thought you’d had a heart attack. Your voice had gone all funny before you hung up.” She sounded relieved now that he was talking. Would she still be relieved when he told her what had happened? Would she understand?
“Close enough.”
“What happened?”
“Are you listening to the news?” Still, he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her.
She snorted. “Do I ever?”
“They just arrested a guy for kidnapping young boys. In a green pickup truck. In Atlanta.” He wanted to stop thinking. He considered his beer bottle for a moment, then set it down and pulled down a fresh bottle of whiskey. He poured a couple fingers into the only clean water glass.
“Do you think…?” She sounded worried again.
“Yeah, I do.” Of course he did. They finally found the green truck, and it leads to a murderer of small boys. Why did it lead to a murderer? Was that better than a molester? Or an insane woman who thought Benny was her son?
There was silence on the line.
“I’m coming over.” Sylvia’s voice was a little shaky.
“No, Sylvia. It’s okay; I’d rather you didn’t.” That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be alone, to think.
“Fuck you, I want a hug.” And she hung up.
He dashed another measure into the glass and tossed it back, dinner forgotten. He wished Sylvia wasn’t coming over. Then he could get drunk. He didn’t want to be drunk in front of her. He poured another shot.
But he still hadn’t tasted it by the time his doorbell rang. And though he didn’t call out, the door opened to reveal Sylvia carrying two medium Little Caesars pizzas. She walked in without saying anything, dropped the pizzas on the counter, and walked over to where he was still standing in front of the shopping bags from the liquor store. In one glance, she took in the open bottle of whiskey, the glass in his hand, and his stupefied expression.
“That’s no way to treat good whiskey.” She put the cap back on the bottle before taking the glass out of his hand and putting it on the counter. “No way to treat your liver, either.” A slice of pepperoni pizza was put into his hand, and when he didn’t take a bite, she proceeded to lift his hand towards his face before he broke away from her.
“It’s not good whiskey, it’s cheap whiskey.” He considered the slice of pizza she had handed him. “Why did you pick up pizza?”
“I was hungry. There’s a Caesars on the way, so I got their premade five dollar special.”
The scent of fresh, hot grease finally brought him to ground, and he slumped to sit against the floor cabinets and took a bite of the slice she had forced on him. Sylvia grabbed the box and sat beside him and they didn’t say anything else until they had each had two pieces.
“My son loved Little Caesars, cheese though, not pepperoni.”
“Got one of those, too.” She reached up to the counter and pulled the second box down to them and opened it.
They were quiet again while they contemplated the cheese pizza until Sylvia picked up a piece and folded it in half lengthwise. “So, a green truck, huh?”
“Yeah, unbelievable.” Ben picked up another slice.
“You mean unintelligible. What the hell does a green truck have to do with anything?” She took an enormous bite of the pizza and stared at him while she chewed.
Ben dragged himself off the floor and to his desk. He had to admit, the pizza was making him feel less fuzzy, and he wiped the grease off on his pants before paging through his notes. “Here. Here and here. Reports of young boys getting into green trucks.”
Sylvia took the pages from him with the reports of the truck. “How many pages of this report do you have?”
Ben started digging around on the desk looking for the rest of the transcript to show her. “About two
thousand now, and they’re tip line transcripts, why?”
“Three references to a green truck out of what could be around ten thousand tips.” She threw the pages back on his desk, not caring where they landed.
“And a report I got from a homeless woman while I was papering earlier this month.” He carefully placed the pages back into the pile of important papers.
Sylvia crossed her arms and stared him down. “And how many other reports of cars are there?”
“Detective O’Connor asked me the same thing. I don’t remember now.” Ben didn’t like where this line of questioning was going, again, but he waited her out.
She sighed. “Of course there was the stereotypical white panel van, too.”
“Yes.”
She started pacing in front of his desk now. “So how do you know this is the same green truck? How do you know these reports are not just of fathers picking up their sons in the old family pickup?”
He shrugged, refusing to let her get to him. “I don’t; I just feel it.”
“You want it.” She rounded on him, sticking her finger in his face.
He batted it away. “Of course not, I just think that this is all the same guy, in my gut.”
“Well, sometimes that is all investigators have to go on. Maybe yours is more accurate than the layperson’s.” She wandered over to the kitchen to grab a box of pizza and came back to collapse on the floor beside his desk, failing the presence of any additional chairs. “So tell me, how did they find him?”
“Broken taillight.” He thought about the irony of that for a moment and let out a small dry laugh. “Doesn’t that seem to be the thing that keeps bringing people in? Small traffic infractions.”
“Guess you should be careful driving or you’ll wind up accused of mass murder or something, eh?” She nudged his knee with her elbow and winked. Ben only raised his eyebrow. “Right, sorry. Serious mood. Continue. Can I grab one of those beers?”
Gesturing his assent, he continued. “So he had a boy in the truck with him, one he’d grabbed. They found one other body so far.”
Undeliverable Page 16
