I walked to the shipper’s desk and grabbed an order to fill and a hand
truck. I took an order sheet, read the list of items by warehouse location, and headed for the first item to be
picked. Luckily it was a full case of Scotch whiskey. I picked it off the
pallet of cases, hoisted it on my shoulder, and walked over to the shipping
floor.
The floor was laid out in a grid, which turned the whole process into a
game of industrial bingo with liquor cases. I liked orders of whole cases; they
were easy. The day warmed as it wore on. Sweat soaked my once-clean T‑shirt,
and caked the dirt and dust. I finally hit a bottle order. That required
individual bottles from cases and took longer since I had to go to the bottle
room.
I grabbed a cardboard box and got the top off with my cutter, building
dividers with the cut-off pieces. I held the order up for reference as I walked
the long racks, checking the shelves for the right bottles. The racks ran three
high and a good fifty yards long of open cases of everything Buffalo Wholesale
kept in stock. Dusty and close back there, awash in halogen light, everybody
hated the bottle orders. I was no exception. Luckily my next orders were
whole-case orders, so things moved along pretty quickly for the first part of
the day. I grabbed a sheet from the order pile and a two-wheeled dolly and went
out to the case racks.
It was grunt work of the first order, and the heat and humidity mixed
with the dust and diesel fumes in a kind of lung-crushing heaviness that left
me sweaty from just breathing. The big push came from liquor stores and bars
stocking up for the holiday weekend, and that had us working overtime most
nights. I was well into my orders, and had a six-case load of cheap sangria
wine on my dolly. I was really pushing hard, looking forward to the spot on the
floor to dump my order..
Some joker threw a perfect strike with a piece of scrap wood right under
the tire. The two-wheeler jolted to a stop and I tripped forward. My momentum
carried me past the dolly, and I managed to roll to the side as the glass
inside the cardboard cases shattered, releasing its fruity alcoholic contents.
I heard the laughing, but I wasn’t quick enough to find out who it was. I got
up, checked for my own breakage, and went to get the trash can full of
quick-dry to clean up the mess. The stink of cheap wine hung in my nose while I
worked the broom, the puddle becoming a solid wet mass of grit. I shoveled it
into the dump bin and shoved the whole mess off to the side to be ready for the
next victim.
I took a break at 11:30. The sweat and grime stuck to me as I downed a
bottle of water. I was still aggravated at the idiot who tripped me up. All
this character building was getting old fast. Break over, I pulled a bottle
order for about two dozen individual bottles for a bar on the Elmwood Strip. I
grabbed an empty box, a bunch of scrap cardboard, and checked my box cutter as
I proceeded along the bays of open cases. One of the other guys jerked his head
to the side, motioning me to follow him around the back of the racks. I nodded back,
very cloak and dagger, and followed him. It was the closest thing I had had to
a lead since I started. Three guys stood back there, talking amid the din.
“Hey, yo, Andy!” Jake called.
I paused before I looked up, forgetting for a moment I used my middle
name for this job. Jerry Fornes, Bill Francis, and Jake Crawford waved me over.
They held the most seniority in the distribution center and were next in line
for driving jobs when they came open. I had talked to Jake before, just guy
stuff. He was friendly enough. He reminded me of my kid brother, strong and
stocky with a thick head of curly, blond hair and a dirty blond shadow of a
beard. He was quick with a hand if I needed it and showed me the best ways to
do the job. I liked him and hoped he wasn’t involved in the scam.
Jerry and Bill, on the other hand, were harder to read. Jerry wore a
permanent scowl and held his arms crossed and his legs apart. Bill kept his
hands in his back pockets with a more vacant expression, almost as if he were
constantly amazed that he was hanging out with Jerry. They were all business,
all union, and always passed over for the better driving jobs. They would get
out sometimes, taking loaded vans to the bars or liquor stores, but nothing
that paid as well as the bigger loads. I made a note that where one was, the
other was pretty close by, not that there was anything wrong with that.
“Yeah, Jake. What’s up?” I asked, nodding to Jerry and Bill. They nodded
back in acknowledgment.
“Nice trip, Banks?” Jerry asked, jabbing Bill in the side.
“Very smooth,” Bill added, sniggering. “No hard feelings?”
“Naw,” I said with a smile. “But you know what they say about payback.”
“You guys know each other?” Jake asked.
“We’ve seen each other around,” Bill piped up. He stood shorter, maybe 5'7",
with a muscular build and close-cropped medium brown hair. He looked like the
kind of guy who might have always wanted to be a cop but wasn’t tall enough to
make the cut. He stuck his hand out. I shook it firmly. He introduced himself
then Jerry.
“Nice to meet you guys,” I said.
Jerry Fornes stood taller than I, wiry with skinny forearms entwined by
tattoos. Some of them were the work of a pro, trying to cover up the
characteristic blue ink work of a jailhouse amateur. Flecks of silver salted
his black hair and goatee and framed his acne-scarred cheeks and forehead.
“Jake says you’re OK,” Jerry said, his voice grating like sandpaper on
asphalt.
“Opinions vary but my mother loves me,” I shot back.
“He also said you were a smart ass,” Bill said.
“Jake talks a lot, don’t he?” I said, looking at Jake, who smiled and
shrugged.
“Mostly to us, which is a good thing,” Jerry said, slapping Jake on the
back. “He says you told him about doing time in Alden, something to do with
assault and pissing in a cop car?”
“It was late, I had too much beer, and I needed to take a leak. Seemed
like the thing to do.”
“In a cop car?” Bill asked.
“The window was open. It looked like a nice, clean place.”
“What about the assault?” Jerry chimed in.
“The cop was still in the car,” I responded.
That brought a round of head shaking, and I think the phrase crazy SOB was whispered among the bunch
of them.
“So what is this, meeting of the local MENSA chapter?” I asked.
“The what?” Jake asked. I was going to explain it but decided it would
take too long.
“We just wanted to see what kinda guy you are,” said Bill. “Jake says
you seem pretty stand-up.”
I nodded. Who was I to argue?
“We have a little business on the side,” Jerry started. “We were
thinking maybe we need to bring another guy into it, if you’re interested.”
“Wait a minute. This isn’t one of those Amway or Mary Kay kinda things,
is it?” I asked sarcastically. “Because I had this neighbor, see, and he was
always trying to get me into . . .”
“Be serious for a second, will ya?” Jake pleaded.
“All right, guys, what’s the deal?”
Bill and Jerry looked at each other, shrugged, and turned to me.
Bill spoke first. “You think you’re pretty funny, tough guy?” Apparently
he didn’t.
“OK, so I have a good sense of humor screwed up with a bad sense of
timing. Your point is what? ’Cause I have to get back to work,” I said.
“Trust me, guys,” Jake piped up. “He’s the best guy to bring in.” He
shot me a dirty look, like I was blowing this big opportunity.
Jerry considered the last statement and said, “We have a partnership
here, a little side business like we said. We operate off the losses here at
BWB, sorta like a salvage company.”
“Salvage company,” I repeated. Now we were getting somewhere.
“Yeah, like that,” said Bill, pleased to see I was catching on. “You
know, with all the breakage that happens around here, it’s a shame to let the
rest of the unbroken bottles in the case go in the dumpster. So we have a
market for all the stuff that would just be tossed otherwise.”
“I’m surprised management here hadn’t thought of that,” I said, playing
along.
“They ain’t too bright,” Jerry said, looking around. “So you want in or
what?”
“Yeah, sure. I mean, all we’re really doin’ is cleanup, right?”
“You know, I think he gets it,” Jerry exclaimed. He laughed and stuck
out his hand to shake mine. “Maybe he is smarter than he looks.“
Jake slapped me on the back, letting me know that I was in with the
gang.
Bill looked around then turned to me. “After the shift we’ll be at the
back of the warehouse, out by the old Parker trailer in the back. Know where
I’m talkin’ about?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” I told him, turning to go back to work. Finally a
break I could use. I stopped for a second to get a drink of lukewarm water from
the fountain near the shipping floor doorway and wiped the excess off my chin.
“C’mon, you chimps, back to work!” the shipper called from the front of
the pick line. “These friggin’ cases ain’t gonna move themselves.”
This was going to be a long night.
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