I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands so I put them in my lap and wiped the sweat from their palms. Something that might have been a grin flitted Fuentes’ face as I tried to dry my hands.
“It’s a generous offer,” I added.
“Like I said,” the muscular man said. “Any good company takes care of its employees.”
He looked me up and down as if he could tell everything about my character just from that one quick study, and after a few agonizing seconds, he nodded his head like he was satisfied with what he found. He looked toward the shadow in the corner again and then reached across the table to offer me his hand.
“Do we have a deal, then?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said as I took his meaty paw in mine for another finger crushing shake.
“Good, then it’s settled,” Fuentes said with another quick smile that dissolved into a scowl before I could blink.
I shifted in my chair as I waited for him to produce a contract, but he just leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
“But before we give you a contract to sign, I want to see you in action,” he informed me when the silence began to drag on. “And if you pass, we’ll get to the paperwork.”
“And if I don’t?” I asked as I looked around the gray room and wondered what kind of test run he wanted me to perform.
“You’ll be dismissed immediately,” Osvaldo responded in a flat, no-nonsense tone. “And we’ll find another attorney.”
“Is there a contract that you need me to review?” I asked, though I wasn’t quite sure how that would work with the two of them sitting in the same room.
Maybe it would be like law school, where they tossed out questions and asked me to come up with a solution as quickly as I could. But those questions had been asked by men and women with decades of experience in their respective fields. Somehow, I didn’t see Alvaro or Fuentes as legal experts.
“No, no,” the beefy man waved his hand dismissively and then glanced over to Alvaro.
The vice president finally emerged from the corner, and I had to admit, it was an intimidating sight even though I knew he was there. He reached inside his jacket, and I was convinced he was going to pull out a gun. Instead, his hand emerged with a manila folder that he handed to Fuentes without a word. Before he stepped back into the shadows, Alvaro gave me a quick glance and what I thought was a nod of approval for my performance so far.
“There was an issue on the loading docks a couple of weeks ago,” the company president said as he passed the folder to me. “Just a minor accident. But OSHA wants to do an inspection.”
“Of course,” I nodded while I flipped open the file. “How long until the inspector gets here?”
“Thirty minutes,” Alvaro said in his soft, deep voice.
“Okay,” I said with a nod of my head as I looked up from the reports.
I’d taken a labor and employment law class my second year of law school when I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to specialize in. The OSHA rules and regulations had been a big focus, and I was sure that I remembered enough to get through one accident inspection.
“What do you think, jipato?” Osvaldo asked.
The nickname brought a smile to my face. It was what my mother had called my father for his pale skin despite his Cuban heritage, and I knew it would bring a smile to my exhausted mama’s face to hear that someone had given the same nickname to me.
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “I’ll need to see the dock area where it happened.”
If I could squeeze in a quick Google search, then I would be prepared enough to answer any of the inspector’s questions as well as offer any relevant arguments against the need for any further action. One good thing about federal agencies like OSHA was that their websites always had relevant material available if you knew where to look.
“Great,” Fuentes said.
“Let me just take a few minutes…” I muttered as I read through the report again.
I pulled my phone out as well and looked up the relevant regulations that had been cited in the report as well as a few others I vaguely remembered from my law school class. I perused the OSHA website for similar cases and made mental notes as I pored over the material.
When twenty-eight minutes had passed, Fuentes clapped his hands together loud enough to hurt my ears. When the sound finally died away, I thought I’d gone deaf for a moment, but the noise from the floor soon filled the room again.
“This government man will be meeting us at the spot,” Alvaro explained as he walked toward the door.
“Was the accident in this building?” I asked as I stood and then walked around the conference table to join the two men.
I thought about the accident that I’d heard during my first interview, it hadn’t seemed like there was anyone hurt. But if Alvaro had glared down at me like he had with the men that day, I was pretty sure I would’ve pretended that I was okay for the moment, too. Though that was only a few days ago, and Osvaldo had said the incident in question had happened weeks ago.
The report had identified the warehouse by number, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the buildings to know which one was referenced. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen any obvious numbering system on any of the buildings or docks.
“It was next door,” Osvaldo answered while
