Chapter 4 - A Name at the Bottom
On Tuesday morning, Sal sat at the Blue Hour's small office table with three cups of coffee nobody wanted. Victor had sent the warehouse manager, Mrs. Alvarez, instead of coming himself.
“Was Ben Ward's truck impounded?” Sal asked.
“Blocked in,” she corrected. “We aren't a government agency. We can't impound anything.”
“Then why can't he collect it?”
“Victor told the gate staff there was a dispute over company property.”
“Was there?”
Alvarez took off her glasses. “Not that I saw. Mr. Ward refused a delivery assignment. That's all I heard.”
Sal opened the printed authorization from the security desk. Below the instruction to restrict the truck was his own name.
“That's my approval line.”
“Victor said you signed off on enforcement.”
Sal remembered telling Victor, three days earlier, to handle a problem with an outside contractor. He'd been half listening, watching hockey in his den while Victor talked fast. He hadn't asked which contractor.
“I told him to handle it,” Sal said. “I didn't approve this.”
Alvarez studied him. “To the people downstairs, there's no difference.”
After she left, Sal drove to the warehouse himself. Behind the locked gate he saw Ben's dented white pickup truck, its ladder rack still strapped in place. The truck wasn't worth much to a stranger. Ben had kept it running with parts from salvage yards and evenings he should've spent sleeping.
“Open the gate,” Sal told a guard.
“I need authorization from Victor.”
“It's my warehouse.”
“And his security contract. I'm sorry, sir.”
For the first time in years, Sal discovered an order could leave his mouth and fail to move the world.
Meanwhile in Queens, Rosie asked her kindergarten teacher why the other children got picked up in cars but her dad took the bus. Nora had expected the money trouble to remain between adults. She'd forgotten how little children notice when the usual rhythms change.
At dismissal, she found Rosie holding the bear in both arms.
“Are we poor now?” Rosie asked.
“We're okay.”
“But Daddy said they took his work.”
Nora knelt to zip the pink coat. “I need you to hear something. None of this is because of you.”
Rosie looked over Nora's shoulder, toward an unfamiliar black car parked across the street. A man was sitting inside, watching the school doors.
“Is that Uncle Victor's friend?” she whispered.
May you like
Nora turned. The car pulled away before she could see the plates.
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