I started up the stairs when I noticed a normal-size door behind them. It was unpainted and in the dim hall light I hadn’t seen it earlier. I came back down and tried it. It opened fairly easily and took me to the hall where Chamfers’s office lay.

Six or seven office doors topped with chicken-wire glass were cut into the hall wall on the left side. On the right, just beyond the entrance I’d used, was another set of metal double doors. I tried these out of curiosity and found myself looking at a long, open assembly room. A dozen or so women were standing at high tables putting screws or something into the machines in front of them. A lone man was going over a piece of equipment with one of them. The room could easily have handled five times that number. It looked as though Diamond Head might have fallen on hard times.

I shut the doors and went on down the hall to try to find Chamfers. Or actually his secretary. I was hoping not to see the plant manager at all. I raked my fingers through my hair, hoping to make myself look a bit more professional, and poked my nose into the first door I came to.

Like most offices carved out of industrial space the room was a tiny cube, just big enough to hold some filing cabinets and a battered desk. A middle-aged man was hunched over a stack of papers, grasping the phone in his left hand as if it might float away otherwise. A few brown strands were combed over the receding hairline in front, but he’d given up the struggle to fit into his seersucker trousers. I didn’t think he’d been part of the team I’d seen with Chamfers on Friday.

He didn’t look up when I opened the door, but continued frowning over his papers. Finally he said, “Of course you haven’t been paid. That’s because you’re not paying attention to our new payables policy. Everything has to be routed through Garfield in Bolingbroke.” He listened some more, then said, “No, it wouldn’t make sense for them to handle the orders as well. How can they possibly know out there what our requirements are? I can talk to the federal prosecutor if you won’t deliver the copper by Friday.”

They went back and forth some more on whether the feds needed to be involved. I eavesdropped unashamedly. My man apparently won, because he dusted his hands triumphantly when he hung up the phone. It was only then that he noticed me.

“I’m looking for your benefits manager,” I said.

“What for?” His victory over the copper supplier made him truculent.