It was a little after eleven when he arrived at the fenced-in compound enclosing the offices and principal terminal of Central States Motor Freight. He drove around to the left of the two-story office building and parked in an empty stall in front of a small, white, Greek cross lettered ‘visitor’. A long loading dock, open on both sides, stretched out from the rear of the building. Activity was at a minimum, as virtually all of Ben’s trucks were out making their pick-ups and deliveries. In six hours or so, when they started coming back in, every space on both sides of the dock would be occupied and a line of waiting trucks would stretch out into the street.
Entering the building, he walked up a short flight of stairs to a small waiting room. The switchboard operator, a plump, young woman with a walnut-tinted complexion and an afro hairdo, recognized him and slid open the glass panel separating them.
“Hello, Mr. Tuesday. How are you today?”
“Fine, thank you, Doreen,” he said, returning her smile, “Is Ben in?”
“Yes sir but he’s on the phone right now I’ll let him know you’re here as soon as he hangs up.” In her usual unpunctuated manner, she continued in almost the same breath, “Wasn’t that accident last night a terrible thing I didn’t know Mike real well because the drivers don’t come up to the office much leastways not this part of it but everybody say he was a real nice fellow and it’s such a shame him being married less than a year and his wife everybody says is so pretty being pregnant and all but at least he had good insurance that Mr. Wozniak gets from you for all his employees that will take care of her and the baby won’t it, Mr. Tuesday?”
The unexpected question at the end of her rambling discourse, caught him unawares. It took a moment to sort out the fact that “Mike” was the first name of the dead driver, and he realized that he had never even thought about his name before now. He still did not know his last name, but was reluctant to reveal his ignorance by asking Doreen what it was. Gladys would know, although it did not make him any less culpable for his own callousness.
“Yes, Doreen. His wife will be well taken care of,” he told her.
“Oh, I’m so glad Mr. Tuesday but it does seem so sad that the baby will never know its own daddy but I guess his wife is young enough so she’ll get over it and I think Mr. Wozniak is free now I’ll ring for you.” Plugging in the cord, she continued non-stop,” Mr. Wozniak Mr. Tuesday is here to see you.”
She grimaced as Ben’s voice came booming back loud enough to be heard plainly through the opening, “Send him up!”
Doreen shook her head as if to clear the sound from her cars. “Damn! If I could talk as loud as him we wouldn’t need no phone.”
Smiling, he turned away and crossed the reception room to another flight of stairs leading up to the second floor. He turned to the left at the top and walked the length of the hall to
Ben’s office. The door was open and, as he walked in, Ben was reaching across the top of his huge, kidney-shaped desk to pick up another call. He stood up and stretched out his free hand to grip his and waved him to one of the deep, leather armchairs facing the desk.
As Ben alternately roared and mumbled into the phone about rates and tariffs and load factors, he gazed around at the paneled, carpeted sumptuousness of the office. It was twenty feet wide and stretched across the full forty-foot width of the rear of the building. There were windows covering three sides that permitted an unobstructed view of the entire compound, and the full length of the dock. Ben’s desk was centered against the bank of windows facing out on the dock. On the left, there was a long, wide conference table with a dozen deep, leather-covered, swivel chairs surrounding it. On the right, in one corner, there was a semicircular bar with four stools and, in the other corner, a green baize-covered poker table and accompanying chairs. The wall behind him was paneled in rich, authentic, solid oak-”none of that veneer shit”, as Ben phrased it. The carpeting was a thick, shaggy mixture of gold, brown and orange. Heavy, gold draperies covered the other three walls from floor to ceiling, and could be opened or closed electronically by a button on Ben’s desk. There was a matching chair to the one he sat in to his right, and deep, oversize sofas on either side of the doorway. Numerous and various plaques, framed citations, group photographs, trophies and mementoes covered the paneled wall and stood on top of his desk and on shelves behind the bar.
When he had first called on Ben, and had his initial look at the office, he had been somewhat astonished and slightly amused by its pretentiousness in what was otherwise very ordinary and rather non-descript surroundings. Ben had been a truck driver before the war and a tank driver during it. After being wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, he was discharged and returned home in early 1945. He had bought his first truck with the allotment checks his mother had saved for him and had married his childhood sweetheart two years later. Over the years, both the family, and the business had grown and prospered. He how had eight children, four grandchildren and over a thousand pieces of equipment and two dozen terminals, all of which received equal care and attention.
Ben was a short, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man in his early fifties, with more hair over his eyes than on top of his head. He wore open-necked, short-sleeve shirts winter and summer, and chain-smoked enormous, fat, green cigars. He was loud, coarse and vulgar-and generous to the point of not being aware of his own generosity. He was adored by his family, admired by his contemporaries, and respected by his competitors. As a client, he had found him to be shrewd, intelligent and honest-and he had come to realize that the ostentatious office was the one form of self-indulgence that Ben allowed himself.
He heard him tell the switchboard operator to hold his calls before he replaced the phone and leaned back in his chair. Without any further greeting, he bellowed, “Well, what did ya find out?”
“That you were right.”
It took a moment for Ben to recognize the import of his reply. He snatched the cigar from his mouth and jerked forward.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch! You tellin’ me that somebody really did slip him a mickey?” “That’s only part of it. According to the coroner, there is pathological evidence indicating not only that he was drugged, but also that he was probably knocked unconscious by a blow to the head when he started to come to, and then was almost suffocated to boot-all of which combined to leave him helpless when he saw he was going to crash.”
Ben’s eyes and mouth had gradually widened as he enumerated the driver’s misfortunes. In as close to a whisper as he could possible get, he growled, “Jeesuss H. Keerist!”
“Chances are, he was just regaining consciousness as he passed Closter’s car. Closter told the deputy that his eyes were open and staring straight ahead as he went by.”
“The poor bastard”, Ben said in the same awed tone. Suddenly, a look of baffled surprise and anger contorted his face. He leaned across the desk, roaring, “Who! Who did you say he passed! Did you say ‘Closter’?”
He was startled by the violent reaction to the witness’ name, and took out his notebook to be sure he had it right.
“Yes. William Closter”. He spelled it for him. “He was one of the witnesses-the one who thought the driver was dead before the crash. Why? Do you know him?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know him,” his voice calmer as he sat back again. “Bill Closter is traffic manager for Affiliated Consolidators. The trailer that Haggerty was hauling was loaded with their freight.”
Now it was his turn to be surprised, and puzzled. He realized that ‘Haggerty’ was undoubtedly the driver Mike’s last name, but he was at a loss to know what to make of Closter’s connection with the contents of the wrecked trailer. Consulting his notebook, he recounted Closter’s version of the accident as he had described it to the deputy, including his and Elise’s brush with death. As he finished, he suggested-only half willing to believe it himself-”Maybe his being there was just a coincidence. It is on his way home.”
“Coincidence, my ass!” Ben exploded. “I don’t believe in coincidences like that!” Puffing furiously on the cigar he added, “But what the fuck was he doing there!”
“Maybe he didn’t recognize the trailer.”
Ben chewed angrily on his cigar. “Not a chance. He personally supervises every load that goes out of his place. Besides, the ‘flammable’ placards would’ve made it even easier for him to recognize it.”
He recalled noticing the placards himself. Unaccountably, Closter had apparently refrained from mentioning the most obvious fact of all to the deputy. He probably should have gone to see him instead of taking Elise home. But, he was not sorry, not now.
“Well, his being there doesn’t change anything, Ben,” he told him, “unless you think he was, in some way, responsible for what happened.”
“Him? Nah! How could he be?” He pondered his own question momentarily. “But, why the hell didn’t he say something about being there when I talked to him earlier?”
“When did you talk to him?”
“Coupla’ hours ago.”
“Did he call you?”
“No. I called him to tell him about the wreck.”
“What did he say?”
Ben’s voice rose to another crescendo. “That he had heard about it on the ten o’clock news last night! The little, lyin’ sonofabitch!”
“That does seem strange. He may have a perfectly logical explanation although, I can’t imagine what it would-or could-be. And, he evidently has no intention of revealing it, if he can possibly avoid it.”
“Goddam right it’s strange-and, come to think of it, he didn’t seem very surprised either, when I told him about the missing freight.”
“There is something missing, then?”
“Yeah. Fifty boxes of ladies sweaters; a complete shipment; and six boxes of caviar out of a ten lot.”
“Caviar?”
Ben laughed mirthlessly at the note of incredulity in his voice.
“Yeah. But that’s not so strange. A lot of times a thief will take something just because it’s handy.”
“But, why not take all ten boxes?”
“Who knows? Maybe that’s all he could carry.”
“Is that all that’s missing?”
Ben nodded, lighting a fresh cigar.
“What else was on the trailer?”
He shuffled through the accumulation of papers scattered on top of his desk until he located a computer print-out list and handed it to him. The word “Manifest” was printed at the top of the sheet along with the trailer number, corresponding to that he had noted on the wrecked trailer; and the destination, Kansas City, Missouri. The first two items listed underneath read “10 bxs-Caviar-Affiliated Imports,” followed by “50 bxs-Clothing, N.O.I.-Royalty Knitwear.” He quickly glanced through the rest of the list-canned pet food, machinery parts, soap, tools, cosmetics and the lighter fluid were the biggest lots besides the sweaters-and remembered Ben’s words of the night before that there was “nothing worth killing a guy for”.
“I suppose you noticed that the sweaters and the caviar were loaded right on the tail where it was nice and easy to get at them?” Ben asked with heavy sarcasm.
The fact that the two items were listed first had indicated as much. He knew the freight was always manifested in the reverse order of actual loading. That way, it was easier to check when it was unloaded at destination.
“That was convenient, wasn’t it?”
“Too Goddam convenient, if you ask me.”
“You said before that Closter supervises every load that goes out of his place. Do you think he could have planned it that way? That he set it up for the hijackers?”
“Oh shit! I don’t know, Mark. He always seemed pretty straight to me. Not like some other traffic managers I know, always with their hand out.”
“All right, Ben. All we know so far is that he saw Haggerty get killed. We don’t know that he had anything to do with how or why it happened. I’ll go see him after I leave here and see if I can get him to explain his being there. Before I do though, I could use some more information about him and his employers.”
Ben seemed slightly mollified. “Okay. What d’ya want to know?”
“First, who or what are ‘Affiliated Consolidators’ and what, if any, is their connection to ‘Affiliated Imports’?”
Ben leaned back in his chair, cigar clenched between his teeth. “Affiliated Consolidators, Affiliated Imports and Affiliated Warehousing are all part of Affiliated Distribution Systems. Affiliated Consolidators accumulates both import and domestic shipments for various shippers and arranges for transportation to regional distribution points, and beyond to final destination. Affiliated Imports acts as broker and receiver, and handles all the paper work on import shipments. They also act as the shipper for the stateside transportation which is arranged by Affiliated Consolidators. Affiliated Warehousing provides the storage facilities for the freight while it’s waiting to be shipped, or at the regional distribution centers, if the consignee doesn’t want immediate delivery.”
For someone whose normal tone of voice suggested either a violent temper barely under control, or a fit of apoplexy on the verge of happening, he had learned that Ben could be surprisingly reasonable and patient when called upon to explain the workings of the transportation industry to a laymen such as himself.
“As traffic manager, I presume Closter has the authority to select the methods of transportation and the individual carriers for the freight shipped by Affiliated Consolidators?”
“Right. All the shippers who turn over their freight to them have to agree to let Affiliated-Closter-handle the routing.”
“It sounds like a lot of responsibility and a lot of authority for one man.”
“It is. He’s got between thirty and forty truckloads and half a dozen carloads of freight moving out of there every day. He spreads it around, too.”
“What do you mean, ‘spreads it around’?”
“He’s used about every carrier in the city, at one time or another. Usually a guy moving as much freight as he does, will concentrate on as few carriers as possible. It makes his whole operation simpler. Less tracing, fewer bills to handle, better scheduling. But, he says he doesn’t want to rely on just a few carriers, so he gives everybody a shot at it.”
“Is it any more costly?”
“Indirectly. His freight charges wouldn’t be any higher since we all have the same rates. It would show up in his labor and handling costs. But, what the hell, it’s all charged back to their customers anyhow.”
“How long has he been traffic manager for them?”
“Seven or eight years now. He was transferred here from their west coast office.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Just fair. We’ve handled some of his business off and on for four or five years now. I’ve had him and his wife out to dinner a few times, but we never did get to be very friendly.”
“What is his wife like?”
“Nice. Nice, but quiet. She looks more like his sister than his wife, and he treats her as if she was. Not that he’s mean to her, or like that, but like she was just part of the furniture.”
Ben’s description did not fit the picture of the man who apparently had been so concerned about his wife that he asked the deputy to take his statement before Elise’s. It was an indication that he may have had some other reason to want to get away from the scene of the accident as quickly as possible.
“Are there any children?”
“No. One time after we were out with them, my Josephine told me that his wife said they couldn’t have any. She didn’t say why, but she did tell Jo that she had wanted to adopt a kid, but he wouldn’t go for it.”
“Does he drink much, or gamble?”
Ben shook his head. “Not that I know of. He’s never taken more than a coupla’ drinks when he was with me, and light ones, at that. And I don’t think he gambles at all. Leastways, I never heard him talk about it, and a gambler always likes to talk about it, win or lose.”
“How about other women?”
“Hah! If you had seen him, you wouldn’t ask.”
“Why? What does he look like?”
“Short, fat and bald. He looks like a penguin.”
“Even short, fat, bald men can attract some women with the right kind of bait.”
“You mean whores? Nah! He’s not the type.”
There was no point in further speculation on the subject, especially since Ben apparently had no direct knowledge of Closter’s sex life.
“How much of his freight do you handle?”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe two or three loads a week. I’d like to get more of it, but like I said, he doesn’t give too much to any one trucker.”
“Have you had any trouble with any of his shipments before this?”
He took a moment to consider the question. “No. A little damage once in awhile, but nothing serious. For the most part, it’s a good account. It’s steady and we clear a good buck on each load.”
“Do you know if any other truckers that handle his freight have had any trouble?”
The ends of his thick eyebrows drew together in a deep cleft of concentration. “Yeah. It seems like I did hear something about a coupla’ hijackings, now that you mention it. But hell, hijacking and pilferage are a way of life in this business.”
“Could they have been the same shipments you mentioned on the phone last night?”
He slapped the desk with the palm of his hand, vibrating the pictures and mementoes that stood along the edge. “Oh, for Christ sake! They are the same ones! I remember now. I was half-bombed when I heard it. That’s why I didn’t connect it up right away.”
“Do you remember who you heard it from?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was Al Davidson. He’s the owner of Dixie Transport. It was at a traffic club dinner a few months ago.”
“Maybe you could call him and see if he can give you any more details about it.”
“Call him hell! I’ll go over to the traffic club for lunch and see him. He’s there every day. Why don’tcha come along?”
“Thanks, Ben. But, I think I’d better go see Closter. I’ll call you later to see what you’ve found out from Davidson. Be sure to ask him if the other drivers were harmed in any way.”
“Okay,” he answered calmly. Then, his face suffused with anger and he exploded again. “Goddam it, Mark! That makes me madder than anything! I don’t give a shit for the fuckin’ freight! But, they didn’t have to kill that poor sonofabitch! He wouldn’t have tried to stop them. Hell! I tell all my drivers not to try to be heroes if they get stopped by hijackers. It won’t get them any fuckin’ medals-and the goddam freight’s insured anyhow!”
Ben stopped his diatribe and glared at him argumentatively. He grinned back in agreement. “It’s good advice, Ben. But maybe Haggerty had the misfortune of recognizing the hijackers, and they killed him to prevent him from identifying them.”
He took a few seconds to consider the premise before responding, “Yeah. Maybe that’s what did happen.”
“For the record, Ben, could there have been any kind of mechanical failure to account for the way the acci.. .the way the truck crashed?”
“No way,” Ben asserted, leaning forward to rest his hairy, thickly-muscled forearms on top of the desk. “In the first place, the kind of rig Haggerty was driving has twelve forward speeds. On that long, level stretch of highway-depending on what kind of time he was trying to make-he would have been in the upper range-maybe even in eighth or ninth gear.” As he had earlier with Closter’s job and employers; he now explained the operation of the truck with patience and a modulated tone of voice. “After he passed the crest of the hill, and started on the downgrade, he’d have had to start down-shifting into the lower gears, to cut his speed in order to make the curve. By the time he got into the curve, he’d be shifted all the way down into second or third gear. That’s the way it would’ve been if he was actually driving that rig when it was coming down the hill.”
“But you don’t think he was?”
“Goddam right he wasn’t. Because when we got the fuckin’ tractor back here this morning, it was in neutral! And there’s no goddam way for him to be going as fast as Closter says he was, unless it had been set in neutral at the top of the hill.”
“You think that someone else was in the cab with him before he got to the crest of the hill and that; whoever it was; then shifted it into neutral and jumped out as it started downhill.”
“It had to be Mark!” he agreed, rattling the paraphernalia on his desk with another slam of his palm. “It don’t make no sense otherwise. He sure as hell wouldn’t have put it in neutral himself, and the goddam rig had to be free-wheeling all the way down to build up enough speed to crash the way it did.”
“Could the impact of the crash have affected the position of the gears?”
Ben pursed his lips around his cigar. “It don’t figure. But, the tractor is over in the shop now being taken apart to salvage what we can for spare parts. If anything did go wrong with the gear box-either before or during the crash-we should be able to find it.” As an afterthought , he asked, “Maybe you want to take another look at it before we strip it?”
He shook his head. “No. That won’t be necessary, Ben. I saw enough last night to be satisfied that it was totaled.”
“Yeah.” Almost in a murmur, he added, “so was Haggerty.” He sat staring silently at the clutter on his desk and then slowly turned his chair to face the windows behind him. For long moments he sat looking out over the length of the almost empty loading dock, and then heraised his right hand and rubbed it vigorously over his face and the half-inch bristle that covered the top of his head.
Finally, he turned back to face him again. “He was a good boy, Mark.” His voice had an unnatural huskiness that muffled it deep in his chest. “I like most of my drivers-Hell! I like all of them! But, he was one of the best-with a real pretty wife-and a baby on the way.” His voice trailed off as he swallowed rapidly. Then, resuming his normal ear-splitting tone, and with yet another desk-jarring slam of his hand, he burst out, “I hope we can get the bastards that did this to him!”
He felt strangely moved by the obviously deep feelings of the trucking company owner for his dead driver. “I’ll do what I can to see that we do, Ben.”
He asked for the address of Affiliated Distribution Systems and jotted it down in the notebook. Replacing it in his breast pocket, he glanced at his watch and saw it was almost a quarter to twelve. He stood up saying, “I think I’ll run over there now and see if I can catch Closter before he goes to lunch.”
Ben rose and reached across the desk to shake hands. “Okay, Mark. Probably be a good idea if you did before the little sonofabitch decides to skip town.”
He grinned. “I think he’d be gone by now if he had any ideas like that. And, besides, maybe he doesn’t have any reason to.”
“Well, there was some reason he was out there last night, and it wasn’t just a fuckin’ coincidence.”
He walked to the door and turned back to ask, “Incidentally, are you positive about the time Haggerty left here yesterday?”
“He clocked out at two-oh-five. I checked his card myself.”
“And nobody heard from him after he left?”
“Nobody. Not a peep.”
They stood looking across the sumptuous office at one another and he realized that they were both probably thinking the same thing-that nobody would ever hear from Mike Haggerty again-at least, not in this world.
As he walked out of the office and down the hall to the stairs, he heard Ben pick up his phone and roar, “So! Who wants what?”