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DESPITE THE LOADING dock fiasco, Eli didn’t have much trouble navigating the corridor of the antiquated factory. It was even easier to use the crutches here than at Bo’s house, because the distances at the factory were long enough to work up a good rhythm. He could put just enough weight on his leg and not bust his stitches, and even with the extra effort the wounded area hurt a lot less than even two days ago. Things were looking up.
He stopped by Joe’s office and knocked on the jamb of the open door. “Hey!”
Joe’s head jerked up, and when he saw Eli, he grinned wide enough to split his face in two. “Eli! Look at you, I didn’t think you’d be around till next week! Come in, sit. Sit!”
Eli maneuvered himself into one of the two guest chairs. “Good to see you, boss!”
“Likewise. How’re you doing?”
They spent a few minutes on pleasantries, and few more minutes on catching up on what was going on in production that week. Joe’s brow furrowed and his bushy eyebrows formed a giant, brown and gray caterpillar. “We tried Pot 16 again.”
“Let me guess,” Eli said. “Stones, the kind that don’t leave melt streaks. And all the specs on the glass look good.”
Joe nodded. “You’re onto something.”
Now this is where Eli should’ve spilled his guts. He knew that was the prudent thing to do, but if he did, it would’ve meant making criminal accusations against a man, or even several men. The sort of accusations that ended both a career and personal freedom, and before Eli was ready to do that, he wanted to be sure. “Yeah, but I want to check something first.”
“Whatever it is, I want to know, Eli. I want to know right now. We’re losing two out of three melts! This product used to be a real money-maker, but now it’s barely breaking even.”
“You’ve lost every melt that didn’t have a new ring in it, Joe, going back five years.”
Joe’s eyebrows twitched. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I... I hate to say anything without being sure. But I correlated all the data available. Paul sent me all the lab records for the tests they do, and all the batch compositions. Nothing has changed there in the last twelve years. “
“We knew that.” Joe’s voice was a growl.
“And the QC data from our department, you already know that.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I think it’s the ring. But the old man and Halloran thought sending the stones out for analysis was too expensive.” Eli felt bitter bile rise up his gorge, mirroring his mood. “I can do that shit myself. The lab just has to give me the data, Joe. That’s five hundred bucks per sample. Hell, I can even help with the sample prep and cut the cost.”
Joe clambered up from his chair. “Stay here. I’ll go get coffee. How do you take yours, again?”
Eli asked for cream and sugar, and was surprised to see Joe turn the lock on his own office. “Let me in when I say, okay?” He shut the door, locking Eli inside.
Ten minutes of stewing later, Joe kicked the door. “Let me in, my hands are full!”
Eli leaned over and turned the knob. “What the...”
“Shh...” Joe kicked the door shut and handed Eli a mug of coffee. Then he pulled the venetian blinds on his little door window all the way up. “That’s so I can see who’s listening out there. Although with the lehr rumbling so close, good luck with that!”
On any other day, Eli would’ve dived into the mug. Today, though, he just turned its warmth in his hands as he leaned forward.
Somebody was skimming.
Someone involved in the whole production process. Taking a drink or a pill had led him astray in the past, and suddenly Eli realized how isolated he was in Joe’s office. Suppose Joe had drugged his coffee the way Matt and Jeff had slipped him something stronger? If he called for help, nobody would even hear him.
Was it Joe?
“It’s not me, you idiot. I was hired four years ago.” Joe’s voice startled him. Eli tightened his hands on his mug. Feeling guilty, he took a cautious sip.
“Look, I see anyone’s a suspect, okay? But it ain’t me. Think about it. It has to be someone involved with the ceramic production downstairs. I know all those guys, and I wouldn’t put it past some of them, but there’s got to be a higher-level player involved.”
“You’re onto something,” Joe mused. He paused, as though he didn’t want to give Eli bad news. Finally he sighed, set the coffee his desk, and met Eli’s interested gaze. “Look. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this, because I thought you were just being hazed. You know, with that cullet.”
Eli nodded, but didn’t reply. If he kept silent, Joe would fill the void eventually.
More coffee. More fidgeting with the mug. “Bo came to talk to me,” Joe blurted suddenly. “Bo saw someone with a BB gun. That cullet, it didn’t blow by accident, and at first I figured it was someone from labor, trying to keep the new white shirt away. You know, like hazing.”
“I know,” Eli whispered. “But the hot floor guys have been pretty cool.”
Joe’s eyebrows shot up. “Good to know,” he nodded. “But that just confirms my suspicion, and Bo’s fear. Suppose you got a bit too close with Pot 16, too close to finding out it was the rings, and somebody decided to discourage you?”
“Or maybe just make me quit the job,” Eli said. “I doubt it was a murder attempt, or anything.”
“Let’s hope,” Joe said, and drained the rest of his coffee.
Eli didn’t move for a while. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“There was a girl who worked here. Theresa was her name. She... she’d been here while the glass was good, and two years later, she started to point to the rings going bad. She said she had some proof, but she didn’t get to show it.” Joe’s voice grew cold and somber, and Eli had a bad feeling all over again.
“Why not?”
“She quit. Changed jobs. It was kind of sudden, but she quit right after someone trashed her car right outside. Lights, widows, the whole shebang. We got security cameras right after that.”
Eli set the mug on the corner of Joe’s desk. The coffee smelled acrid all of a sudden, and its bitter acidity wasn’t doing his stomach any favors. “You figure she was run off?”
“Maybe. There’s no proof. That’s three years ago. I tried to reach out, but she moved out of state.”
“I wonder how did she figure it out?”
Joe shrugged his shoulders. “Like you, probably. Nosing around, correlating data. But it was all on her laptop when she left. That’s before we all had computers in our offices, too.”
“Seriously?” Eli was incredulous. How could anyone get any work done without a computer?
“Yeah. It worked okay. Remember, the Old Man is very old-school, all pencil and paper. He’s afraid our systems will get hacked and the formulas will get stolen, and all that stuff. Being analog has worked for thousands of years.” He smiled. “Tesla, Edison, all those guys – they didn’t need computers. The whole industrial revolution happened without them. What you see here-“ he waved his arm around, encompassing all there was to Zimm Glass, “this is like a time-capsule, and it works just fine the way it is.”
“Except when it doesn’t,” Eli said.
“Yeah. So. What do you think is going on?”
Eli shrugged. “Not sure, but I can tell you those rings aren’t made from the right high-temperature refractory ceramics. I worked with ceramics so I know what to look for, and these are getting chemically attacked and falling apart.”
“Sure. Glass melt’s amazingly corrosive. You got all that flux in there, sodium, potassium, it’s all chewing away at it.”
“Except this melt’s got lithium, too. We don’t use it much because it can cause crystallization.”
Joe frowned. “But the stones, they aren’t...”
Eli shook his head. “No, they aren’t crystals. I made a slide and checked it under the microscope Paul has upstairs in the lab. It’s not lithium crystals. It’s all refractory bits, falling apart but not melting. So I wanted to send it out, but-“
“Yeah. But.” Joe thought for a while. “So why would a refractory we’ve been using for the last thirty years fall apart all of a sudden?”
“Uh, lithium? I just told you. Not many glasses use the shit because of the crystallization issue. And lithium is super aggressive in the melt. It’s useful to lower the melting temperature of the whole batch, but you have to watch for surface crystallization. And being aggressive means the pot and the ring won’t last as long.”
“The pot isn’t lasting as long as for the borosilicate glass, that’s true,” Joe said slowly. “But it’s lasting for a few months regardless, whereas the rings...”
“...have changed,” Eli finished for him. “Five years ago.”
Joe stood up. “I think I’ll go and see the ceramics area.”
“Me too,” Eli said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Joe frowned. “You shouldn’t come. I don’t know...”
“I’m fine,” Eli said. “Really. As long as we take the trolley paths instead of the stairs.”
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ELI FOLLOWED JOE DOWN the hall that emptied onto the hot floor. The hustle and bustle of production made him stop. The carriers moved hot, fresh-pressed glass on their paddles to the lehr and Joe had to cut through without getting in their way. Eli didn’t have Joe’s speed. He stood and watched instead. His attention was drawn to Bo almost automatically. He couldn’t see his face behind the dark heat shield, but he’d have recognized his broad shoulders anywhere.
Bo was holding the punty over the mold just then and the glass gob, still glowing and viscous, flowed into a droplet shape before the cutter cut just the right amount and let it fall into the graphite mold.
Eli thought he saw Bo nod his way, but he knew he couldn’t disrupt their work flow just to say hi. Even before Eli could nod, Bo took two steps backs and turned toward the glory hole, wholly engrossed in the process of gathering glass.
“Eli. Eli! Go ahead!” The carrier stopped to let him go, and Eli nodded his thanks and made his way past the first lehr, then past the second one. He saw the foreman talking to Joe, looking at a piece of pale yellow glass and pointing something out. His eyes lifted toward Eli, morose and not exactly welcoming.
He made his way over. “Hi, Halloran.”
“I guess one industrial accident wasn’t enough to keep you away?” Halloran shook his head. “This ain’t no place for a cripple, kid.”
“Good thing I’m not a cripple, then,” Eli said, forcing a smile. “What have we here?”
“The color darkened in the lehr,” Joe answered in his usual, almost absent-minded way. “I’ll talk to Paul.”
“If you talk to Paul, he’ll want to pump nitrogen over the melt. An’ I said I don’t want any newfangled equipment like gasses around the furnace. We did it fine before, we can do it again.” Halloran narrowed his eyes. “Where are you off to?”
“The planning office,” Joe said. “See if we can shuffle two orders, get some extra time on those wingtip lights.” He turned to Eli. “Come on, there’s nothing like explaining the problem in person!”
Eli knew there was no problem with the wingtip lights, and he also knew that going toward the planning office, with the dark and rumbling lehr on their right and the row of dirty windows on their left, would lead them into the clean and shiny packaging area. Which would, in turn, lead them down another sloped path, toward the mixing room. The texture of old paving stone caught his sneakers as he planted the right foot and dragged the left one with a feather-light whisper, swinging forward on his crutches. Paying attention to his footing made him realize that decades of heavy, steel-wheel trolleys full of glass wore grooves into the stone that hid from the sparse light bulbs.
“You know this way?”
“I haven’t been down here much,” Eli admitted as they slowly descended between old brick walls. “Just to check out the colors of the cullet, but mixing’s Mr. Sloan’s area of expertise.”
“Yeah. Although we fill in for his guys every so often. You should join Paul when he’s filling in, and he’ll show you how it’s done. Mostly we just get the colorants and conditioners ready, and the labor weighs out the bulkier ingredients.”
The smell of acrid chemicals hit his nose as they stepped out into a dusty, cavernous space. The mixer dominated their view, large and round, with conveyor belts running to it in both directions. A huge hopper of sand, filled from the outside, dominated the corner like an altar, and a double row of wooden bins separated them from the machinery, forcing them to walk around.
“Smells like the chem lab,” Eli noted in a quiet voice.
“Same materials, but in larger quantities. Look – potassium nitrate, sodium, lithium - it’s all here. Plus the colorants we use most often.” Joe waved in an expansive gesture, and Eli paused and looked. His eyes were drawn to a huge bin of tiny, round pellets. They were white, almost translucent around the edges and that’s where the chemical fertilizer smell was coming from – or so he thought.
Eli gestured toward the label. “Saltpeter Flux?”
“Yeah, sodium nitrate. A real workhorse. Come along!”
This wasn’t the time to gush over Bo’s band and about how good Saltpeter Fluxx sounded on stage. Eli filed the information away for later. They walked casually around several trolleys heaped with raw materials that would be charged into pots later. Eli saw Mr. Sloan’s gray head through the window of his office door, but they didn’t stop by.
“Down this way,” Joe said. “This goes to the basement under the hot floor. You’ll get to see the burners that power the furnaces!” The hallway they were in now was narrower than the others, barely wide enough for a single trolley pushed by two thin men. The wall to the right was old fieldstone, craggy, with formerly white paint peeling and revealing mortar and irregular blocks in the dim, yellow light of caged light bulbs. Dark holes in the wall on the left made Eli’s imagination race.
“What’s in here?” Eli realized he had just whispered.
Joe laughed. “We call’em the caves,” he said, and stopped at the next black gaping maw in the dungeon-like wall. He patted the masonry. “Ah, here it is. The light switch is on the left side.” He clicked it on.
A warm glow of ancient bulbs flooded a small space full of refractory ceramics. “This is our storage,” Joe said. “Rings, a replacement pot over in the back – see?”
“Yeah,” Eli said just to break the silence. The pot was in two symmetrical halves, just like in the catalog. Cementing it together and seating it into the outer perimeter of the furnace was as much art as it was a science.
Joe clicked the light off, plunging them into darkness. “The other caves have more of the same, plus a bunch of refractory brick. This is where the guys go when they need new parts.”
Few more caves, and Eli heard the unmistakable hiss of a fire and smelled dry heat and burning dust. The basement sprawled, supporting the hot floor above their heads with thick walls and pillars. The only source of light was a fire ring with tall, bright flames shooting up in a pre-programmed sequence, licking the refractory that must’ve been the bottom of the furnace.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. Get closer, feel the heat.”
Eli edged his way closer uncertainly, all too aware of the mass of molten glass just twenty feet above. Heat seeped into his bones, a not unpleasant sensation in mid-April.
Joe chuckled at Eli’s contented sigh. “I know. Kinda creepy knowing what’s overhead, but it’s nice and warm. Come winter, you’ll see the office staff sneaking down here and warming their backs.”
Eli startled as the ceiling above him trembled. “What’s that?”
“Just a heavy cart of glass, probably,” Joe said, unconcerned. “Come on, let’s see more.” He cut toward the dim, dark area on the left, reached for the wall, and flicked the switch on. “This is the ceramic plant, and there’s the kiln over there.”
“Oh.” Eli made his way in and looked around. The place had a particular, wet clay odor he associated with his previous job. Similar, yet different. “What sort of ceramics do we make here? Where is it mixed?” Mixing clay, microcrystals and various additives was a messy and a complicated process, but Eli didn’t see the equipment he knew they would need.
“It’s delivered in pails,” Joe said. “It’s some kind of an expensive compound. I don’t know much about it.”
“Uh huh,” Eli said as he made his way around the casting tables. At least the ground was newly poured concrete and free of obstacles. He recognized the molds, the channel of water that would run when needed, the industrial scale used to weigh out the right amount of the wet material. “Over there,” he pointed with a crutch. “In that corner.”
Joe jogged around. “The buckets, sure. Let’s see!”
Eli read the label. “Oh, the good stuff,” he said appreciatively. “High-temperature, corrosion-resistant zirconia! This stuff is amazingly expensive. We researched the crystal growth in a similar material when I was on my old job. I met one of the lab techs who works for the company at a seminar, and we helped each other out a good bit.” He straightened up and looked Joe right in the eye. “Is there any raw material we can take with us?”
“Probably,” Joe said. “Why?”
“Since this is the only melt with lithium in it, if this stuff is what it’s supposed to be, it shouldn’t be falling apart so easily.”
“Wait.” Joe almost reeled back. “What’re you sayin’?”
“Look at these labels, Joe. A bit dirty, don’t you think?”
“It’s not a clean environment.”
“The code here – that’s the production date. Unless I misremember things, this material is almost six years old.”
Joe stared at Eli agape, then shut his mouth and pressed his lips into a thin line. He pulled a utility knife out of his pocket, opened the screwdriver arm, and pried a lid open.
“Looks wrapped up and unopened,” he whispered.
“From one bucket to another,” Eli said as he stooped and poked the hard, raw ceramic mass with his fingers. It was still wrapped in a sealed bag. “Open it? There’s just one way to find out.”
Joe closed the screwdriver and unfolded a knife. The plastic bag rustled as he cut a hole in it, and Eli dove through the opening with his fingers. The clay was smooth, moist, and hard. Kind of like the regular clay used for the refractory bricks Paul used in the lab to build a proper melting stage in an electric furnace.”
“Do you have a flashlight?” Eli asked as he dug his fingers in, working hard to pry a chunk off the clay block. “Stuff’s hard. They knead it before use, right?”
“Yeah. There’s a kneading machine behind you.”
Eli pulled the sample out, stood, and held it out so Joe could shine a beam of his high-powered light on it. The labels had made him suspect, the feel of the ceramic had given him that “oh-oh” feeling, but seeing it in his palm confirmed his suspicion.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Joe asked. Eli glanced at his narrow lips and tight jaw.
“Well, we’ll need to send a sample in for analysis, but if I recall things right, this is no high-tech zirconia refractory.” He rolled the sample into a ball and shoved it into his pocket. “Look, it even left smudges on my palm. This is the cheap stuff.”
Joe closed the pail and cleaned off his knife. “Okay. I’ll need a copy of the invoice. But knowing how much of this stuff we order, if they paid for the good stuff and actually bought the cheap stuff, we’re talking about, what, few hundred thousand bucks a year?”
“Over half a million, from the prices I saw online,” Eli said. “Enough to split with an accomplice on the other side.”
The light seemed dimmer and the walls started closing in. Now that they knew, Eli saw no reason to stick around.
Apparently, Joe agreed. “Let’s make sure first, find out what we’re paying for and how much. And let’s send that sample to an independent lab for analysis.”
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THEY WALKED OUT OF the ceramic area with Joe turning the lights off. Going up the sloped hallway was harder, and with a sticky ball of secret in his pocket, Eli expected someone to jump out of the caves at them and bash them in the skull. This wasn’t just a case of a poorly melting glass. This was about money and fraud, and whoever had been stealing from the company for this long would do whatever he could not to get caught.
“Just a hill. Halfway there,” Joe said, keeping his voice low.
Eli forced a laugh. The glum atmosphere was getting even to Joe. “Happy Halloween,” he said in a spooky, low voice. They would get to their well-lit offices, grab a mug of coffee, and laugh it off.
Production noises were getting closer.
And closer.
Louder.
Metallic and huge and fast.
“Watch out!” Joe shoved Eli the side. A rumbling, heavy trolley crashed down the slope as Eli slammed his head into dry and porous stone.
Joe screamed. Something heavy crashed into a faraway wall.
Then silence.