He looks at his wedding picture on the coffee table, the one that was turned facedown. He thinks of the mess they made of his wife’s things and knows this was meant to intimidate him. Someone wanted him to know how easy it would be to get to him. Into his apartment, into his bedroom, the deepest part of his marriage. He doesn’t know why someone would have taken the gun. Except that taking it would rattle his nerves, which, in fact, it has.
Jay runs through a list of clients in his head, ones who might be disgruntled enough to pull a stunt like this. But his mind keeps coming back to the longshoremen, the strike, and the vio lence that’s erupted over the last few weeks . . . and the fact that he let himself get pulled into a very public fight.
He thinks of the black Ford and the white driver and begins to wonder if he hasn’t been reading this whole thing wrong from the get-go. He remembers the car tailing him on Market Street a couple of nights ago, how quickly it turned and sped off when they came upon the lights of police squad cars. What if it was never a cop following him, he thinks, but someone aligned with the ILA, the faction that’s against the strike? What if their new tactic is to come after
He opens his eyes at about a quarter to six. Bernie is standing over him, pushing at his left shoulder to wake him. He’s laid out on the couch, where he must have nodded off sometime during the night. He does not remember how much of it was a dream. The darkness is gone, and he feels washed clean.
He follows the smell of coffee into the kitchen. Bernie sets a steaming cup for him on the table. The phone is still there, bro ken into a dozen pieces. She does not ask him about it, probably knows she wouldn’t get the truth if she did.
Chapter 12
Two days later, not even a full forty-eight hours after he told his father-in-law he didn’t want to get involved, Jay is standing on the docks at the Port of Houston, an hour before the dock workers union is set to vote on a strike. He waits on wharf 12, next to a roach coach that smells of coffee and fried bologna and pork tamales. He lights a Newport and keeps his eyes peeled, on the lookout for a white man in his forties with a buzz cut and sunglasses, the one driving the black Ford, and the one he now suspects broke into his apartment.
Wharf 12 is a public dock run by the port authority. It’s sand wiched between two other docks that are considerably larger and move a lot more inventory in a day. Over the years, wharf 12 has become a kind of de facto break room for longshore men working up and down the Ship Channel. Here the ones who didn’t get a work assignment for the day wait around to see if their luck might change; they gather to get a bite or call home or play cards. The doors of the pier’s warehouse are open, and a group of men sit inside, taking advantage of the shade. It’s a half hour to dusk, and still, it’s nearly ninety degrees outside.
For Jay, the sun and the salt water at the port, the smell of fish tails caked up on the shore and the fuel from the barges all mix into a heady cocktail. He feels dizzy and hot. He tosses his ciga rette and buys a grape Nehi from the food truck. Standing in the shade of the warehouse, he watches ships in the distance.
There are men in motion everywhere, up and down the Channel, dressed in coveralls or Wranglers, lifting bags of pure cane sugar, bales of cotton, and boxes of computer chips. They load and unload fan belts and air- conditioning units and sacks of grain, baby dolls and skis and grain mustard, doing the work by hand, in teams of two, lifting and loading, their backs bent at a harsh angle. They labor in near silence save for the grunts of their breath.
A few of the wharves operate by forklift. Two or three men work the machines, which load goods mechanically into long rectangular metal containers that look like boxcars on a train. The containers are then transported onto the ships by even big ger machines. Even at a distance, Jay can see it’s an infinitely more efficient way of going about things, easier and faster too. In an instant, he gets a clear picture of how labor problems might be solved in the future: machines.
At a quarter to seven, the kid shows up. He’s alone, his arm still in a sling.
His name is Darren. He’s nineteen, as Jay guessed. He grew up on the north side, went to high school out in Kashmere Gardens, a rough neighborhood north of the Loop, full of Sec tion 8 housing and street toughs. He likes football and Michael Jackson (the new stuff ) and is thinking about taking a few classes at a community college in the fall. “I need a job I can work if
Jay offers to buy the kid a soda. Darren says no, that he doesn’t want to bother Jay with anything. But Jay insists. Ten minutes later, he leaves the food truck with two sodas, plus a hot dog loaded with mustard and onions and a bag of Fritos, all for the kid. They sit on a couple of empty crates inside the warehouse while Jay watches the boy eat. His lip’s healed, and the bruises have faded along his jawline. The thought actually crosses Jay’s mind: did someone get pictures, some physical record of the injury, something besides the arm sling?
He shakes the thought and reminds himself that this is not a real case.
He’s going to help the kid, sure. If Darren can identify the guys who jumped him, if he can provide a name or two, Jay will pass it along to the mayor. Beyond that, it’s out of his hands, and he’ll carefully advise his “client” that pursuing this any further than that is foolish. In the meantime, the kid gains him entry into ILA headquarters, and maybe Jay gets to make an ID of his own. Since the break-in last night, he’s wondered more than once if the man in the black Ford and the guy who jumped Darren are one and the same, and he’s ready to tell the man, in no uncertain terms, to think twice before he crosses Jay again.
“You look good,” Jay says, nodding at the healed cuts on the kid’s face.
Darren nods, stuffing Fritos into his mouth. “I’ll be all right.” He wipes grease and salt on his pants leg. “I get one of those?” he asks, pointing to Jay’s cigarettes. Jay passes the kid his Newports, watching him fire one up, which the kid does with ease and grace, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. “So, I guess you want to know how it happened, huh?”
“You told your father and the rest of them that you were com ing home from a meeting at the ILA headquarters,” Jay says.
“It was a week ago, about,” the kid says. “The union was just getting into this thing serious. Some of the Brotherhood camp was making their case about the wage discrepancy.” He trips over the word, as clumsily as if he were wearing too tight shoes. Jay finds himself nodding along, encouraging him. “How many people were at that meeting?” he asks.
“A couple hundred, maybe more,” Darren says. “It was the first time some of the white ones came out and said they gon’ stand with us if we walk.”
“What time did you leave that night, Darren?” Jay asks.
“I cut out early, before nine o’clock. That’s when my shift at the bakery starts.”
Jay scratches his chin. “So you think they actually followed you out? Watched you leave, then cut out after you?”
“Looks that way, don’t it?”
