The town of Washington was too short a drive, twenty-six miles, for an overnight stay, so Dorsey was forced to commute along Interstate 79 for the two-day job on Kenny Borek. He spent the first day on an uneventful surveillance of Borek, who left his apartment only once, for an afternoon newspaper. Although Borek’s Beau Street neighborhood was busy with shoppers and other pedestrians, forcing Dorsey to reposition himself several times, he was sure enough of Borek’s movements to file his first day’s report.
The morning of the second day was equally dull, so much so that Dorsey intended to knock off at noon and move on to the next job. With most of his concentration split between his father’s offer of riches and daydreams of Gretchen, he interviewed a half dozen of Borek’s neighbors and decided the man qualified as a hermit. Most of them didn’t recognize Borek’s name, and only one elderly woman was willing to venture a guess that he might be the young man who rented the second floor of the house next door. To wrap up the assignment, Dorsey spoke to the owner of the corner grocery, where Borek had purchased his newspaper the day before.
“Young guy, rents Ethel Stimic’s upstairs.” The owner, a small elderly man, stood behind a low counter loaded with bread. Wearing a cardigan sweater over a checked flannel shirt, he stuffed newspapers with advertising supplements as he spoke. “Comes in for cigarettes and the paper, smokes Winstons. Heard he was in a crack-up.”
“He’s the one.” Dorsey watched a sly grin work its way over the shopkeeper’s face. “He’s off work because of it. You don’t see him much, huh?”
“Cigarettes and the paper, that’s all he comes in for.” The old man held on to his smile, annoying Dorsey. What a lunatic, Dorsey thought.
“Haven’t heard about him working anywhere, have you?” Dorsey asked. “Something under the table, bring in a little extra dough?”
“All I know is he smokes. And if he can’t read, he’s wasting a quarter every afternoon.”
The old man’s grinning got the best of Dorsey, and he decided to close out the conversation and head for Midland, the site of the next job. He gave the shopkeeper a business card and asked him to call if anything occurred to him about Borek.
“Some kinda detective, huh?” The old man settled onto a stool behind the counter. “Supposed to be interesting work. You look bored, like I’m keepin’ you from something.”
“We get our slow days too.” Dorsey turned for the door.
“Maybe I can pick this one up for you.” The old man pulled the sweater closer to his chest.
“What have you got?”
“You sure can’t be their ace, I can tell,” the old man said. “Why waste your time going door-to-door? This Borek got hurt in a bad car crack-up, hurt so bad he can’t work. Tell ya something. I’ve been on this corner for thirty-seven years. Know ’em all, every house, every car and its parking spot. And none are missing. Borek, he got hurt driving a car, but he sure don’t own one.”
In the front seat of the Buick, Dorsey reviewed portions of Borek’s claim file, spreading the statements and forms across the unholstery. On the day of his accident, Kenneth Edward Borek, age thirty-one, was operating a 1972 Electra, license plate 618-KE3. There was no indication that a full check on the ownership had been run.
Dorsey drove to the Washington barracks of the state police, where for twenty minutes he sat in a chair of plastic-covered cushions waiting for Corporal Dennison. During that time Dorsey again decided to refuse his father’s offer. And then again the thought of being able to keep up with Gretchen financially, as the years went by, crept into his head. Money’s the biggest problem you two could have, Dorsey told himself. She’ll be making plenty and you’ll bring in shit by comparison. Lots of tension from that. It could be avoided.
“This is what you do for a living?” Corporal Calvin Dennison watched the lines of information forming on the CRT at his desk. Tall and black, with short-cropped trooper’s hair, he laughed and gave Dorsey a playful slap on the shoulder. “Figured you for sheriff by now. You were hot shit, DA office detective. Good to see you got humble, good for the soul.”
“You’ve done pretty well yourself.” Dorsey sat in a chair opposite the CRT. “Let’s see, you were a rookie at the Monroeville barracks eight or nine years ago. And now, after eight or nine years, you make corporal. That’s one hell of a leap.”
“It’s the skin.” Dennison slipped a palm across his ebony chin. “Upper echelon still got it in for us. Figure if we’re too slow to go on the take with the rest, we just don’t have the stuff for the job. Me, I have every intention of taking a payoff and breaking the color line. Not for myself, you understand. I’ll be acting as a pioneer, in the service of my brethren.”
“What about the car?” Dorsey asked.
“Not really supposed to do this,” Dennison said, craning his neck around the CRT to smile at Dorsey. “But you were a fellow soldier in the war against crime.”
“Some people might figure me for a deserter.”
“An amnesty is granted,” Dennison said. “Ford did it for the pussies who ducked out to Canada; I can exercise my official powers as well.” Dennison looked closer at the CRT. “Okay, here it comes. Electra, same plate. Registered to Carmen’s Rentals, Main Street in Brownsville. Hate the place.”
“Carmen? Why do you hate his place?”
“It’s Brownsville I hate, not Carmen.” Dennison cut the power to the CRT. “Nasty place, cramped little hole near the river. Carmen, he rents old secondhand bombs for cheap.”
Back in his car, Dorsey concluded that Dennison could be right; Brownsville might be hell, but the road to hell was paved in rose petals. U.S. 40, the National Road, was the route to Brownsville through wooded countryside and farmland at the roadside. Touching on little hamlets named Scenery Hill and Richeyville, it was Dorsey’s favorite stretch of road, especially when autumn turned the woodlands into smears of reds and browns and yellows intermixed. For twenty miles or so, U.S. 40 could pull him away from depositions and court appearances and remembering to give the subject of his surveillance a block-and-a-half lead. And as he pulled into Brownsville, crossing the bridge and turning left at the Russian Orthodox Church to get to the business district, the beauty of the countryside held on to Dorsey long enough for him to conclude that factory towns were aberrations. Just sooty pockets of life dropped into valleys that were green in summer and surrounded by even greener hills.
The show lot at Carmen’s Rentals, dominated at the center by an office trailer, was located near Water Street and was clogged with junkers. Dorsey figured them to be second-and third-hand models picked up cheap at the wholesale auction near Harrisburg. When he pulled into the lot and stepped away from the Buick, he found a comical pride in having the best-looking machine in sight. Once inside the office he identified himself to a receptionist and asked to see the owner. Leaving her desk and opening an inner door, she told an unseen someone that the guy from the insurance company was here.
“How’s that, insurance company?” a voice from the office said. “Here about the accidents?”
Dorsey shouted past the receptionist that he had come to discuss several of them. The receptionist quickly ushered him in and closed the door as she left.
A fat young man dressed in jeans and a terry-cloth sport-shirt rose from his seat and offered his hand across a metal desk, the kind Dorsey remembered from community recreation centers. He introduced himself as Carmen Avolio and poured them each a cup of coffee from the Mr. Coffee sitting on a corner filing cabinet. Dorsey took the plastic cup in his fingertips to save his palms from burning.
“So, what’s it gonna be?” Avolio strained his recliner chair to its limit. “How much higher can my rates go?”
“The accidents.” Dorsey hoped to string Avolio along. “Face it, there’s been more than one.”
“Too many in too short a time,” Avolio said. “The guy on the phone, the agent, that’s what he said. Still, look what’s on the lot. Crap on wheels. Shit, I get another rate hike, they should just come and shut me down.”
“It’s the medical.” Dorsey sipped carefully at the coffee. “Crap, sure, but they’ve got people inside them when they get smacked. Borek, for instance.”
“Fuckin’ shit, man.” Avolio pulled his weight forward and rested his elbows on the desktop. “Listen, I rent cars, fuckin’ cars. Fast and cheap. A guy comes here because he can’t come up with the daily rate at Hertz or Avis. Only way this place stays open. I start demanding customers take a defensive driving course, I better turn the place into a Seven-Eleven.”
“Business is good? High volume?”
“Real good,” Avolio said. “Rural place like this, where people are hard pressed for enough cash for even a used car? Sure, business is good. Young kids, they like to have a car for the weekend even if it’s only a rental. I have ’em coming from all over, hitchhiking to get here. And that’s where these accident-prone assholes come from. From all over.”
“All over where?” Dorsey asked. The fat man began counting on his fingers.
“There was Borek from Washington, then a guy from Greensburg, another from Homestead, and a guy from Uniontown. Last was the little blond chick from Somerset, fucked up her knee in a crash on One-nineteen.”
“Karen Stroesser?” Dorsey asked. Stroesser was Dr. Tang’s lateral compartment patient.
“She’s the one,” Avolio said. “Couldn’t make up her mind which car she wanted. She’d look at one, then ask how heavy it was, kept banging her foot on the bumpers, testing them. Finally she takes out this Chrysler, one of the big ones. And one of the best cars on the lot. Had hopes of having it around for a while. It’ll be okay, the dents and all are pounded out, but people get leery when a car’s been in an accident. They think the frame’s bent no matter what you tell ’em.”
Dorsey asked for copies of the rental agreements and four out of five names were familiar: Borek and Stroesser, Klazak from Homestead, and Stark from Greensburg. Only the Uniontown man was a stranger. All four had been the subjects of investigations done for Fidelity Casualty. Before leaving the office, Dorsey placed a call to Ray Corso. Carmen collected two dollars for the copies and three for the toll call.
Dorsey gave Corso a quick rundown on what he had found, hoping his voice conveyed what he thought was the gravity of the situation, an organized rip-off. He also suggested that they meet as soon as possible to map out a strategy.
“It’s certainly something to think about.” Corso sounded preoccupied. “Write up the report and enclose the rental agreements. When they get here I’ll have the legal people look it all over. Then maybe we’ll get together and review a few things.”
“Ray, please listen.” Dorsey was fighting Corso’s famed inertia. “Four, maybe five guys, here alone are putting shit over on you. All have lost wages to figure in on a final liability settlement. We have to talk.”
“Send in the report,” Corso said, ending the conversation.
Dorsey knew Corso’s history and knew he was a jumper. Claims work is filled with nomads moving from company to company, and Ray Corso was a true bedouin. One step ahead of the ax, Corso moved to another job, pushing a hoax as a successful claims manager, just as his former employer learned to appreciate the magnitude of his shortsighted laziness. The Inert One. Dorsey thought the nickname was well earned. Slow-boat, pipe-smoking asshole was another.
Next day, enjoying the scenery and a tape of Count Basie backing up Sinatra, Dorsey headed for Beaver County and Midland. As he drove, he ran through the pertinent facts of his next case. Edward Damjani, twenty-six years of age, resided in Midland. Employed by Kensington Steel as a crane man, he was receiving $335 per week in workers’ compensation benefits. Diagnosed as suffering a low back strain, he treated primarily with a chiropractor and occasionally with a local orthopedic who was known to Dorsey as a claims whore. The medical reports showed Damjani to be a big man, six feet seven inches and 240 pounds. As Dorsey pondered the last of these facts, Basie and Sinatra closed out, the tape ended, and the radio came on.
“Friends in Jesus, this is Father Andrew Jancek. The past few years have seen disastrous changes in our lives, the types of changes that serve to illustrate how tenuous are our security and faith in our fellowman. Institutions on which we have learned to rely, institutions to which we gave our labor and loyalty, have purposely betrayed our faith in them. Our labor’s fruit has been stripped from us and used to enrich others, who now turn their backs to us.
“To the workers of this area, a job is more than a weekly paycheck. The work we do shapes our lives: how we deal with others, how we raise our families, how we practice our faith and pass on our values. The theft of our jobs is truly the theft of our souls. Please join my friends and me in our efforts to recover our jobs and our dignity. Any contribution, large or small, in time or money, will aid in our crusade to halt the plans of our so-called industrial leaders to desert the working person. Thank you.”
An announcer provided an address for contributions, which was followed by a weather update. “Christ,” Dorsey said, “the guy does radio spots too.” Makes sense, he thought, more sense than those late-night TV spots.
Crossing the Ohio River at Shippingport, under the shadows of the nuclear plant’s twin cooling towers, Dorsey recalled that Midland was laid out like most river-valley mill towns. Kensington Steel occupied all the riverfront within the city limits, conveniently situated to receive bargeloads of coal and to expel refuse into the already murky water. Next, on the valley flats, were a few streets of small row houses followed by a main street dominated by merchants. From there the land went quickly upward, terraced with the homes of the sons of immigrants and those of displaced cotton sharecroppers. Wooden frame or brick, these homes appeared to have fingernails dug into the hillside, bracing for the next violent storm, natural or economic.
Ohio Street ran up the hillside, Damjani’s home sat one and a half blocks up from the valley floor, one of several soot-stained brick houses lining the left sidewalk. Dorsey drove past Damjani’s, made a wide U-turn at the next intersection, and slid the Buick to a stop at the curb across the street. His plans to conduct a series of neighborhood interviews changed immediately when he saw what must have been Ed Damjani walk down the steps of number 211’s front stoop.
Goddamn, Dorsey thought, this has to be the biggest mill hand on record. He had expected a large man, but one who was running to sloppy fat at the waist. Damjani’s figure ran like a V from shoulder to hips, and the rolled sleeves of his flannel shirt strained at the seams. With surprising vigor for an injured man, he strode down the street, away from Dorsey. Hoping to pass himself off as a shopkeeper, Dorsey stripped off his tie and sport coat, allowed Damjani a one-and-a-half block lead, and began his surveillance.
Lagging behind, Dorsey watched Damjani turn right onto Merchant Street, Midland’s business district. When he followed around the corner and Damjani was nowhere to be seen, Dorsey felt a hard chill. A confrontation like the one with Radovic is sure to go bad for you, he told himself. This guy won’t have to call for help; he could kick the shit out of a Toyota all by himself, take on two at a time. Dorsey sighed with relief when Damjani stepped out from a drugstore, opening a tin of Skoal and shoving a plug deep into his mouth. After sucking at it to his satisfaction, he moved down Merchant Street at a double-time step. A man with an appointment to keep, Dorsey thought.
The sidewalks of Merchant Street grew more crowded as they moved along, mostly men of Damjani’s age, all dressed like him and moving in the same direction. Also in the crowd, Dorsey spotted a sprinkling of older men, mill pensioners, wearing fedoras and navy or black windbreakers. A block farther, police cruisers could be seen, along with a station wagon bearing the logo of a Pittsburgh television station. In the denser crowd and with better camouflage, Dorsey closed in on Damjani, twice brushing against his arm as they passed bars, coffee shops, and hardware stores.
When they came to the hall of the steelworkers’ local, Dorsey realized that Damjani had reached his destination. The crowd came to a halt on the sidewalk before the hall, and a ring of police and sheriff’s deputies barred the entrance, allowing people to go in slowly in single file. Dorsey watched as Damjani waved to another young man standing inside the police cordon. The man returned the wave and had a word with one of the deputies, pointing at Damjani. The deputy stood aside, and Damjani moved quickly ahead of the rest and was inside the union hall as the deputy retook his position.
Whatever it is, Dorsey thought, it’s big and this guy looks to be part of it. He dipped a shoulder and began to glide and angle through the crowd, jockeying for a position in the entry line. Twice he was rebuffed but then found a soft spot in the line and slipped by some retirees. He took a few hard looks and curses but found himself moving single file through the police cordon and into the union hall.
Staying in step, Dorsey walked through a thin lobby and into a long, low-ceilinged auditorium filled with rows of wooden chairs. Ushers, dressed in work clothes and looking like union brothers, moved the line along toward the front of the auditorium, where a low stage rose. Standing along the side walls were camera crews from local TV stations in Pittsburgh and Wheeling, each with a reporter giving his appearance one last check before the film rolled. Dorsey was directed to a chair in the eighth row, between a frail-looking young man in his twenties and one of the blue-jacketed retirees, two chairs away from the center aisle. As he sat, he spotted Damjani with several men at the front left corner of the auditorium near a flight of portable steps leading to the stage. There was a thin blond woman with the group. Damjani gave her a thumbs-up gesture.
“Hey, you.” The retiree was addressing Dorsey. “You from Midland? You look new.”
“From up river,” Dorsey said. “On the other side near Wireton.”
“This is gonna be worth the trip for ya.” The retiree gestured his head toward the stage. “You’ll see. I went up the Mon Valley for the last one. These guys helped save my pension, is what they did. Some of my medical coverage too.”
“Figured it was time for me to see this myself,” Dorsey said.
“Won’t be disappointed.” The retiree turned his attention to the stage.
The stage was furnished with a lectern and six folding chairs fanning out on either side. Still with his friends, Damjani glanced at his watch and turned to check the progress being made in seating the audience. Dorsey watched him consult his watch again and signal several men in the back of the room, who closed the auditorium doors. Next, Damjani led his group onto the stage to their assigned seats, the chair closest to the lectern on the left remaining open, apparently for himself. Satisfied with the arrangements, Damjani strode to the lectern and tapped the microphone twice with his finger.
“Workin’, right?” His words reverberated throughout the hall. A TV camera crew did a lighting check, and Damjani momentarily shaded his eyes. “Good, real good. Wanna thank everyone for comin’ today.” Damjani grinned. “But, what the hell, you sure ain’t missin’ a day of work for this. Anybody here still on a payroll?”
The audience reacted in outbursts and angry calls. The retiree next to Dorsey and the young man on his right shouted and raised their fists. Damjani threw up his fist too and paraded from one end of the stage to the other. They’d kill me, Dorsey thought, a line of cold sweat inching down his spine; if they knew, I’d be dead. Cold meat floating downstream in the Ohio on its way to Cincinnati. Better show that Wireton is with them all the way. Dorsey stood, whistling and clapping. TV crews and radio reporters held microphones over the heads of the seated, gathering background.
“We’re here to show the man we’re behind him,” Damjani shouted through the mike. “To show him Midland is behind him one hundred percent. And to show them bastard sumbitches we ain’t buyin’ their bullshit! Kensington Steel never lost a dime in this town. Made money on us is what they did. Now they’re pullin’ out. No way!” The crowd went into a frenzy, and Damjani waved his arms for several minutes before he was able to be heard. “I’m takin’ up too much time. The man says it a lot better than I ever could; he says it so everybody knows, so everybody sees it like it really is. You know who I mean. Father Andrew Jancek!”
The cheering was deafening as a thin man in a clerical collar walked to the lectern from offstage left. He stroked his gray and white beard, took silver wire-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket, and waited for the crowd to shout itself out.