“If he wasn’t a Bysen, he’d be out on his can, believe me,” Grobian snapped. “No one who wants a job with By-Smart comes and goes as they please.”

Aunt Jacqui stretched, catlike, with the same look of mischief around her mouth I’d seen yesterday during the uproar at the prayer meeting. “Billy is a saint. You’ll probably find him eating honey and locusts in a cave someplace, maybe even under the boxes in the basement—he’s always preaching to Pat and me about work conditions here.”

“Why?” I widened my eyes, innocence personified. “Is there something wrong with work conditions here?”

“It’s a warehouse,” Grobian said, “not a convent. Billy can’t tell the difference. Our work conditions comply with every OSHA standard ever written.”

I let that lay. “Would he go to his sister, do you think?”

“To Candace?” Jacqui’s carefully waxed brows rose to her hairline. “No one would go to Candace for anything except a trick or a nickel bag.”

I left while she and Grobian enjoyed a complicit laugh over that witticism. I had to be at the school for basketball practice at three, which is when Rose’s shift also ended. I couldn’t keep the girls waiting for me, so that meant if I wanted to talk to Rose I had to go back to the factory.

14

(Re)Tired Gun

The yard in the middle of the afternoon looked different than at six in the morning. A half-dozen cars were parked on the weedy verge, a panel truck stood in the drive, partly blocking my way, while several men were hauling fabric, shouting to each other in Spanish. I drove the Mustang onto the weeds, next to a late-model Saturn.

The factory’s front doors stood open, but I went down to the loading bay, where a second truck was docked, motor running. I went over next to it and pulled myself up onto the lip of the dock, hoping to avoid both the foreman and Zamar. I sketched a grin and a wave at the men, who had stopped to stare at me. They had driven a forklift up to the back of the truck and were loading boxes, which they hurriedly covered with a tarp when they saw me watching. I pursed my lips, wondering what they were hiding. Maybe they were even smuggling some kind of contraband. Maybe this somehow lay behind the sabotage attempts, but they were staring at me with so much hostility that I went on in to the main part of the factory.

On one side of the floor, a team of women were folding banners into packing crates. As luck had it, Larry Ballatra, the foreman, was right in front of me, barking orders to the crew. I passed him without pausing, going straight to the iron stairs. He glanced at me but didn’t seem to really notice me, and I ran up to the work floor.