Wild Card

ended with clearing out the DC-9’s transport hold, which was precisely what they and the rest of their crew had done minutes earlier. It was obvious they’d seen all they would have preferred of the questionable freight, and didn’t intend to see any more unless and until they were told to move it over to the terminal. Either that or they heard from their boss, Tom Bruford, the other man outside the jet representing Sun West, that they would need to put their aching arms and backs toward doing something else with it… though they hadn’t the foggiest idea what that something might be.

“A couple, well, I don’t know. It seems pretty unusual,” Bruford said now. An assistant transport manager with the freight forwarder, he was short, thin, tired-eyed, thirtyish, and in his blazer and tie, the only one in the group to be sporting ordinary business attire. “They’re stacked one on top of the other, right? I’m guessing it’s just spillage on that bottom crate.”

Hendricks gave him an irritated frown.

“I used the word ‘probably’ for a reason,” he said. “Do we really need to argue?”

“I wasn’t arguing.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

“I’m just trying to explain something about the fish crates.” Bruford sighed. “They’re required to have Styrofoam liners, absorbent pads for drippage—”

Hendricks held up a hand to stop him.

“Before you raise more of a fuss,” he said, “you might want to remember the shipment’s got six containers in total listed on your manifest, and I’ve got them all sitting on that truck over there, and won’t have any choice except to reject the whole goddamn skid load for likely contamination if you won’t cooperate.”

Bruford opened his mouth to answer, decided he’d better snap it shut for his own good. In his sound and objective critical estimate, the inspector was a hump of the first order. Wait and see, in a minute he’d claim he had cut Sun West some kind of break by conducting his spot check out here on the runway instead of routinely waiting till the crates got inside the Customs building — which happened to be right next door to the freight forwarder’s international reception terminal, a hell of a lot more convenient location for everybody involved.

“Got to be spillage, but I’ll go have a look,” Bruford said, and turned toward the skid truck.

Hendricks tagged along with him.

“They’re pushed a little over to one side,” he said. “I had them separated from the rest, see?”

A Hump with a capital H, Bruford thought. “I can see that, right, thanks…”

Dropping back about a foot, Hendricks glanced at the documentation on his clipboard.

“Trinidad,” he read aloud in a sour tone. “I noticed that’s the shipment’s country of origin.”

“Right.”

“You ask me, whoever carries imports or exports from over there is only looking for trouble,” Hendricks said. “Its national health regs, oversight procedures, airport security… they’re all a joke.”

Crouched over the supposed leakers, Bruford was thinking he didn’t remember having asked the fat leprechaun for his opinion about that or anything else. In fact, he’d have gotten along just fine and zipa-dee-doo- dah dandy without it.

As he’d started telling Hendricks, the rugged three-hundred-pound-capacity wooden crates his men had offloaded onto the truck were a standardized type the Trinidadian client, an international seafood wholesaler, always used for moving large fish. Each ordinarily would have three sides pasted with the requisite stickers marking out its point of departure, weight in pounds and kilos, exact contents, and other important information. The contents code labels on these half dozen boxes in particular read “YN/THU-NALBA”—an abbreviation used industry-wide for yellowfin tuna, scientific name thunnus albacares.

A quick examination of the skid load Hendricks had cited did reveal evidence of a leak in the topmost crate, and irrespective of his feelings about the inspector, Bruford couldn’t deny it looked fairly serious. Most of the spillage was at the lower left-hand corner, where he saw a wet, dark red slime that appeared to consist of blood, mucous, and maybe some water from melted packing ice. The heavy goop had run onto the lid of the crate underneath, and then gone dripping down over the crate’s side panel, soaking through most of the adhesive markers there and causing a couple of them to warp and peel away at the edges.

That, Bruford decided, was the discouraging part. On the positive flip side, he didn’t notice any visible damage to either of the crates, which meant that the problem in all likelihood could be attributed to the upper container’s load exceeding its weight limit rather than a break in the wood or insulating material during transport — that second possibility a worst-case mishap liable to spoil the fish inside.

“That fluid’s been seeping out so fast you ought to be glad I held back the crates,” Hendricks commented from behind him now. “If I’d let them stay together with the rest of your freight, sent ’em ahead to check-in, there’d be botulism and God knows what other germs crawling on everything off the plane. It’d leave you open to all kinds of financial liability.”

Bruford had to bite his lip in annoyance. Yeah, right, he thought. Such big-hearted concern. Hendricks breaking his chops was bad enough. Hendricks chumming up to him, freely offering his sage advice, took the prize cake. As if the guy was doing anybody here a favor. As if he didn’t have the slightest inkling freight forwarders were indemnified against that sort of thing. And as if it made more sense from a public health standpoint to keep the boxes sitting out in the baking Miami sunlight than to have them segregated inside the terminal’s enormous cool room, where their perishable contents could be refrigerated while awaiting inspection.

Bruford sighed, rose from his knees. “You want both crates opened?” he said resignedly.

Hendricks nodded.

“Be safest for everybody involved,” he said.

Bruford raised a hand and beckoned over a couple of his waiting freight handlers, one of whom had already pulled a crowbar from his leather tool-belt holster. “The inspector would appreciate a peek inside these two,” he said, motioning toward the crates.

The handlers looked at him unhappily.

“Right here, huh?” said the guy with the crowbar.

“Yeah,” Bruford said with a commiserative nod. “Here.”

The handlers turned toward the skid truck and got to work.

For a minute Bruford stood watching them start on the top crate. Then he turned to Hendricks, figuring he’d see how his theory about excess weight had gone over.

“Suppose the crate’s leaking because it was overpacked,” he asked. “We going to need to put it on a scale for you?”

Hendricks shrugged.

“Look at it from my position,” he said. “There’s a big enough difference between its declared and actual weight, it could be an intentional duty violation.”

“Or an honest mistake.”

Another shrug. “Subject to enforcement either way.”

Bruford frowned. He was guessing his question had been answered with the closest equivalent of a solid yes available in this piss-pond bureaucrat’s lingo. He was also wondering what cosmic sin he could have committed to merit God’s having punished him with the ridiculous crap being squarely dished out on his head today. But maybe there was no cause-and-effect explanation. Maybe sometimes you just had put it down to a hump being a hump to his core.

Bruford expelled another breath. Behind him the fish crate creaked and squealed in protest as its lid was wedged upward with the flat end of the crowbar.

He had started turning toward it again to check on his men’s progress when the most awful scream he’d ever heard tore through the air from that same direction, shredding through the loud turbine roar of planes that were landing and departing on the airport’s busy runways.

His skin erupting into gooseflesh, Bruford whirled around the rest of the way to discover the brawny six-footer who’d been working at the crate howling his lungs out, shrieking like a terrified little kid. He had his back to the skid truck and was pressing his fists into his temples, the crowbar he’d been using dropped heedlessly on the tarmac beside the box’s displaced lid. Meanwhile the other handler had remained by the crate,