McCone and Friends (9 page)

When my hands reached the end of the duct I pulled hard, then moved them around till I felt a concrete floor about two feet below. I wriggled forward, felt my foot kick something and heard Shar grunt.
Sorry
. The room I slid down into was pitch black. I waited till Shar was crouched beside me, then whispered, “D’you have your flashlight?”

She handed me the camera, fumbled in her pocket, and then I saw streaks of light bleeding around the fingers she placed around its bulb. We waited, listening. No one stirred, no one spoke. After a moment, Shar took her hand away from the flash and began shining its beam around. A storage room full of sealed cardboard boxes, with a door at the far side. We exchanged glances and began moving through the stacked cartons.

When we got to the door I put my ear to it and listened. No sound. I turned the knob slowly. Unlocked. I eased the door open. A dimly lighted hallway. There was another door with a lighted window set into it at the far end. Shar and I moved along opposite walls and stopped on either side of the door. I went up on tiptoe and peeked through the corner of the glass.

Inside was a factory: row after row of sewing machines, all making jittery up-and-down motions and clacking away. Each was operated by an Asian woman. Each woman slumped wearily as she fed the fabric through.

It was twelve-thirty in the morning, and they still had them sewing!

I drew back and motioned for Shar to have a look. She did, then turned to me, lips tight, eyes ablaze.

Pictures?
She mouthed.

I shook my head.
Can’t risk being seen.

Now what?

I shrugged.

She frowned and started back the other way, slipping from door to door and trying each knob. Finally she stopped and pointed to one with a placard that said STAIRWAY. I followed her through it and we started up. The next floor was offices—locked up and dark. We went back to the stairwell, climbed another flight. On the landing I almost tripped over a small, huddled figure.

It was a tiny gray-haired woman, crouching there with a dirty thermal blanket wrapped around her. She shivered repeatedly. Sick and hiding from the foreman. I squatted beside her.

The woman started and her eyes got big with terror. She scrambled backwards toward the steps, almost falling over. I grabbed her arm and steadied her; her flesh felt as if it was burning up. “Don’t be scared,” I said.

Her eyes moved from me to Shar. Little cornered bunny-rabbit eyes, red and full of the awful knowledge that there’s no place left to hide. She babbled something in a tongue that I couldn’t understand. I put my arms around her and patted her back—universal language. After a bit she stopped trying to pull away.

I whispered, “Do you know Mae Jones?”

She drew back and blinked.

“Mae Jones?” I repeated.

Slowly she nodded and pointed to the door off the next landing.

So Tommy’s mother
was
here. If we could get her out, we’d have an English-speaking witness who, because she had her permanent green card, wouldn’t be afraid to go to the authorities and file charges against the owners of this place. But there was no telling who or what was beyond that door. I glanced at Shar. She shook her head.

The sick woman was watching me. I thought back to yesterday morning and the way Darrin Boydston had communicated with the boy he called Daniel. It was worth a try.

I pointed to the woman. Pointed to the door. “Mae Jones.” I pointed to the door again, then pointed to the floor.

The woman was straining to understand. I went through the routine twice more. She nodded and struggled to her feet. Trailing the ratty blanket behind her, she climbed the stairs and went through the door.

Shar and I released sighs at the same time. Then we sat down on the steps and waited.

It wasn’t five minutes before the door opened. We both ducked down, just in case. An overly thin woman of about thirty-five rushed through so quickly that she stumbled on the top step and caught herself on the railing. She would have been beautiful, but lines of worry and pain cut deep into her face; her hair had been lopped off short and stood up in dirty spike. Her eyes were jumpy, alternately glancing behind her. She hurried down the stairs.

“You want me?”

“If you are Mae Jones.” Already I was guiding her down the steps.

“I am. Who are—”

“We’re going to get you out of here, take you to Tommy.”

“Tommy! Is he—”

“He’s all right, yes.”

Her face brightened, but then was taken over by fear. “We must hurry. Lan faked a faint, but they will notice I’m gone very soon.”

We rushed down the stairs, along the hall toward the storage room. We were at its door when a man called out behind us. He was coming from the sewing room at the far end.

Mae froze. I shoved her, and then we were weaving through the stacked cartons. Shar got down on her knees, helped Mae into the duct, and dove in behind her. The door banged open.

The man was yelling in a strange language. I slid into the duct, pulling myself along on its riveted sides. Hands grabbed for my ankles and got the left one. I kicked out with my right foot. He grabbed for it and missed. I kicked upward, hard and heard a satisfying yelp of pain. His hand let go of my ankle and I wriggled forward and fell to the ground outside. Shar and Mae were already running for the fence.

But where the hell was Willie?

Then I saw him: a shadowy figure, motioning with both arms as if he were guiding an airplane up to the jetway. There was an enormous hole in the chain-link fence. Shar and Mae ducked through it.

I started running. Lights went on at the corners of the building. Men came outside, shouting. I heard a whine, then a crack.

Rifle, firing at us!

Willie and I hurled ourselves to the ground. We moved on elbows and knees through the hole in the fence and across the sidewalk to the shelter of a van parked there. Shar and Mae huddled behind it. Willie and I collapsed beside them just as sirens began to go off.

“Like ‘Nam all over again,” he said.

I stared at him in astonishment. Willie had spent most of the war hanging out in a bar in Cam Ranh Bay.

Shar said, “Thank God you cut the hole in the fence!”

Modestly he replied, “Yeah, well, you gotta do something when you’re bored out of your skull.”

Because a shot had been fired, the SFPD had probable cause to search the building. Inside they found some sixty Asian women—most of them illegals—who had been imprisoned there, some as long as five years, as well as evidence of other sweatshops the owners were running, both here and in Southern California. The INS was called in, statements were taken, and finally at around five that morning Mae Jones was permitted to go with us to be reunited with her son.

Darrin Boydston greeted us at the Cash Cow, wearing electric-blue pants and a western-style shirt with the bucking-bull emblem embroidered over its pockets. A polyester cowboy. He stood watching as Tommy and Mae hugged and kissed, wiped a sentimental tear from his eye, and offered Mae a job. She accepted, and then he drove them to the house of a friend who would put them up until they found a place of their own. I waited around the pawnshop till he returned.

When Boydston came through the door he looked down in the mouth. He pulled up a stool next to the one I sat on and said, “Sure am gonna miss that boy.”

“Well, you’ll probably be seeing a lot of him, with Mae working here.”

“Yeah.” He brightened some. “And I’m gonna help her get him into classes. Stuff like that. After she lost her Navy benefits when the skunk of a husband walked out on her, she didn’t know about all the other stuff that’s available.” He paused, then added, “So what’s the damage?”

“You mean, what do you owe us? We’ll bill you.”

“Better be an honest accounting, little lady,” he said. ‘Ma’am, I mean,” he added in his twangiest Texas accent. And smiled.

I smiled, too.

Devil’s Slide, south of San Francisco, is a stretch of highway where you don’t want to push your luck, but I was pushing mine on the Yamaha, even though I had Lottie—my lady, Charlotte Keim—snuggled up behind me. It was a killer day, clear and crisp, and there wasn’t a shred of cloud in the sky. We hugged the curves above the sea, really leaned into them, and left the city and work far behind us.