Memory (Hard Case Crime) (5 page)

The Unemployment Insurance office was a squarish one-story building like a truncated block, made of yellow brick and windows. On the glass doors gold lettering read:

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENT

BUREAU OF UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION

Warren H. McEvoy,
Commissioner

Cole pushed open one of the doors and went in.

He came first into a long room with a low ceiling from which were suspended fluorescent lights. The right-hand wall was a bank of windows, but the fluorescent lights were all on. There was a railing across the room, near the front, and two long wooden pews facing the railing, but no one was sitting there. Beyond the railing were rows of desks, each one flanked by a filing cabinet on one side and a wooden chair on the other. About half the desks were occupied, by soft-looking thirtyish men in white shirts and dark neckties, or by firm-looking fortyish women in plain unadorned dark dresses or suits. At a few of the desks there were supplicants, sitting in the second chair, their left elbows on the desk as they talked. These all wore hunting jackets and held caps in their hands.

One of the women at a desk near the front looked up and noticed him, and made a motion with her arm for him to come forward. He pushed open the gate in the railing and stepped through; the gate was on springs, and snapped back into place after him. He walked through the desks to the one occupied by the woman, and she said, “Sit down.” When he was seated, she said, “This is your first visit?”

“Yes. I’m looking for a job.”

“Of course.” She smiled thinly. “Have you collected unemployment insurance at any time in the last two years?”

“Yes. But not here, in New York.”

“I see. And what is your occupation?” She had drawn a sheaf of forms toward herself, and now she picked up a pen.

“Anything at all,” he said.

But if she heard him, she made no sign. She said, “I’d better do this from the beginning. Name?”

“Paul Cole.”

“C-O-L-E?”

“Yes.”

“Social Security number?”

“I don’t know. Wait.” He got out his wallet, and read his Social Security number to her.

She said, “You should make a point of learning that. What if you lost your card someday, where would you be then?”

“I suppose so,” he said.

“Your address?”

He started to reach for his wallet again, to give her his New York address, but thought better of it, and said, “Wilson Hotel.”

“I see. And your last employment?”

“I was an actor. I was on tour with—”

“
Actor
?” She put the pen down, and looked at him severely. “I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree,” she told him. “There are no openings for actors in this area, which means that you have removed yourself from the labor force. Moving to a location which has no openings for your type of employment is considered removing yourself from the labor force, and you are therefore unavailable for work, and cannot expect to collect unemployment insurance.”

“I don’t want to collect unemployment insurance, I want—”

“I’ll fill out these forms if you insist,” she said, “but I can tell you right now it won’t do any good. You’ll be rejected. You’ll have to demonstrate that you are making an honest and conscientious search for employment of a type to be found in this locality, and in which, by means of training or experience, you can reasonably expect to be considered acceptable by a potential employer.”

“I
want
a job. I want—”

“Protestations are not enough. You will have to bring us definite proof of an active search for employment. A record of job interviews, for instance. In the meantime, there is just no point in my continuing with your application.”

“Listen,” he said. “Listen to me for a minute.”

“I’m being frank with you,” she said, and smiled thinly. “I don’t know what your experience with the New York office may have been, but here we expect an honest and industrious job search, or you just can’t expect to collect.”

“I don’t
want
to collect. I want a
job
.”

“Just
saying
that isn’t enough. Can’t you understand me? You have to
prove
that you want a job.”

“But that’s why I came here. It’s the Division of Employment—”

“As I told you, there are no openings in this area for actors. Why you came here I have no idea, but you can’t expect to remove yourself from the labor force and then rest easy at the public trough.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. He was wondering if he could do any better with this woman if his memory weren’t hurt; but what did his memory have to do with this? They were just talking at cross-purposes, that’s all.

He said, “I want a job. That’s why I came here. Don’t you have lists of jobs here?”

“As I’ve told you repeatedly, we have no job openings listed here for actors.” She was getting impatient with him, as though he were trying to do something sneaky and was being insultingly obvious about it.

He shook his head and got to his feet. He said, “Where do people go when they want to get jobs? Not acting jobs, just jobs.”

“To the tannery,” she said promptly.

“The tannery? Is that what makes the stink?”

“We get used to it,” she said. She was colder than ever now.

He said, “Do they have any job openings there now?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Don’t you have a list?”

“The tannery has its own employment department. It doesn’t have to list with us.”

“That’s stupid,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This whole place is stupid.”

He went back to the railing and through the gate, and it snapped shut after him. He went back outside, and started to retrace his steps. An elderly man was coming toward him, blinking in the sunlight and holding his mouth open as though he were about to ask for clarification. Cole stopped him and asked for directions to the tannery. The old man told him, at great length, and Cole thanked him and went on.

It was beyond downtown. He walked past the movie theater where he’d gone last night, and down at the next corner there was a brick bridge over a narrow black stream between concrete walls. The stream moved fast, with little white froth bubbles eddying along over the black water.

Beyond the bridge the tannery buildings began. They were old and brick, like pictures he’d seen of New England factories, and they were connected together by thick black pipes high up near the top of the walls. There was wire fencing around all the buildings, and around the parking lots between the buildings. The parking lots were blacktop, with diagonal yellow guidelines, and were only about half full, most of the cars being four years old or more and very dirty.

Cole had to ask directions again, and then at last he found the sign that said
Employment Office
, with an arrow pointing to a concrete walk between two of the buildings. He went down that way and came to a green door that also said Employment Office, and went inside. There were wooden steps to climb, and then a small wooden room and a high counter. A young girl sat at a desk behind the counter, typing on an old Remington. She got to her feet when she saw Cole, and came over to the counter, saying, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a job.”

“Oh.” She whisked a white form up from under the counter, and picked up a black ballpoint pen. Very quickly she asked him his name and age and Social Security number and address and telephone number and next of kin, but she was slowed down at almost every question, and stopped completely by the last two. He had no telephone number and no next of kin.

“No relatives?”

It was easier to say no than to explain. This girl, like everyone else, asked him a lot of questions about himself, but, like everyone else, she really had no interest in him.

She shrugged faintly, and said, “Skills?”

“What?”

“Skills. Have you ever worked in a tannery before?”

“No.”

“Unskilled labor,” she said, and wrote something on the form. “What was your most recent job?”

“I was an actor.”

“A what? An actor?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave that employment?”

“I was in the hospital.”

“Is your health good now?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, and then looked directly at him. “If you aren’t, you might as well say so. You have to have a physical examination before you can be employed here, and if you have any disabilities the doctor will find them.”

For unskilled labors, the disabilities would have to be physical. He said, “I’m healthy now.”

“All right.” She shrugged faintly again, and wrote some more on the form. She had long straight streamers of black hair on her forearms; it made her look like a zebra. Her black hair was untidily upswept onto the top of her head, and her neck was long and thin and pale, with vertical ropes under the flesh at the sides. The top button of her white blouse was open, and the top of her chest was very white and very bony. Her hands were thin and long-fingered, and there were flakes of dead skin, like dandruff, on her knuckles. She was wearing colorless nail polish, which made her hands look as though they were trying not to show hysteria.

She said, “Have you ever been in any trouble with the police?”

“No.” He didn’t know if the business in the other town was trouble with the police or not, but too many disinterested people had been asking him personal questions. From now on, he would tell them as little as possible. “Name, rank, and serial number,” he said.

She looked up from the form. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.”

She was willing to forget it. She said, “We may have an opening in the shipping department. Please wait.”

He said he would. She went over to a filing cabinet and looked at things in it for a while, and then went over to the desk, carrying a five-by-seven file card, and made a telephone call. She talked softly, and Cole couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then she came back and said, “Do you have any limitations as to what hours you can work?”

“No.”

“Is the four-to-midnight shift all right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Just take this form,” she said, snapping another white form onto the countertop from underneath, “and follow the directions on it.” She stapled it to the form she’d filled in before.

“How much does this job pay?”

She seemed surprised. She said, “I really don’t know. You’ll have to ask at the finance office. That’s on your list there.”

He picked up the form she was pointing at, and looked at it. It was mimeographed and the reproduction was uneven:

JEFFORDS LEATHER WORKS, INC.

Instructions to New Employees

Read Carefully!!

Welcome to Jeffords Leather Works, Inc., a locally-owned and fully unionized leather working plant organized in our city in 1868! And, most particularly, welcome to the Jeffords ‘family’ of employees!

For your convenience, we have arranged the ‘orientation’ of new employees in as simple and short a manner as possible. Merely follow the steps outlined below, and you should have no difficulty of any kind. All locations are listed on the map.

Note: You have already completed step (1).

_ _ _ _ _

(1) Go to Employment Office and make your application. (You have already completed this step.)

(2) Go to Finance Office in Building 4. Speak to Mr. Cowley.

(3) Go to Union Steward’s Office in Building 1. Speak to Mr. Hamacek.

(4) Go to Doctor’s office in Building 6.

(5) Go to
Shipping Dep’t
in Building
3
.

(6) Return to Employment Office in Building 2, and give this form back to the clerk on duty.

_ _ _ _ _

He studied the instructions and the map, then he said, “I have to cross the street four times.”

“There’s very little traffic this time of day,” she said.

He looked at her, to see if she was making fun of him, but she wasn’t. She’d thought he meant the traffic would delay him. He didn’t say anything else, but went outside and stood in the thin sunshine, looking at the instruction form. He looked at the arrow by the legend
You are here
, and then he gazed around at where he was. The building he’d just left, Building 2, humped squat and square, dirty bricks, behind him. To his right was some scrubby ground, and a concrete wall, on the other side of which must be the Swift River. Ahead of him, not shown on the map, were the railroad yards. To his left was the long low brick shed that was Building 3, the Shipping Dep’t, where he would go for step (5).

He turned to his left, went around the corner of the building, and down the concrete walk between Building 2 and Building 3. The wet cardboard stink was much stronger here in the middle of the factory than anywhere else in town. He breathed through his nose because when he opened his mouth the smell became taste.

He passed between Building 1 and Parking Lot 1, and went by the Union Steward’s Office. He paused for a second, but the Union Steward’s Office was step (3), and he hadn’t done step (2) yet, and he was sure they wanted the steps down in order, so he went on, and crossed Western Avenue. He went down between Building 4 and Parking Lot 2, and midway along the brick wall of Building 4 there was a green door. He opened it and went up a half-flight of steps, and on the corridor wall at the top there was sign reading
Finance Office
, with an arrow pointing to the right. He went that way, and found the Finance Office.