The Glass Factory (33 page)

I got in Morse’s way, and he killed me for it. And he’s gonna pay for that.

Now the guy’s honking at us. Gina finally signals and pulls right. The guy takes off again at 90 mph. Asshole.

“You know, I still remember all of Morse’s license plate numbers? The stretch limo, the Mercedes and the Jaguar? It’s been years.”

“I know what you mean. I get the same way, waking up in the middle of the night with chemical shipment serial numbers coalescing in my brain.”

“Sick, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh …”

We pull into Morse Techtonics and stop right in front of the door. No hunting for a parking space for us, not with these government plates. Gina makes a big show of operating the hydraulic lift so I can come down to earth in my wheelchair. She scorns the security guard’s help and lifts me onto the curb, then opens the door for me so I can wheel myself in. I don’t have to put on an act. I really am in considerable pain from my unplanned exertion last night. We sign the shiny new visitor’s log, pass inspection with the handheld metal detector—my chair keeps setting it off, so the guard finally pats me down to make sure.

Gina punches the elevator button and we wait. Okay, I’ll admit my heart is pounding and my palms are cold and clammy in this June heat. Right on time for our appointment.

Gina is told that Morse is in a meeting and will be with us in about an hour. She doesn’t accept that. She flashes her U.S. Government Inspector’s ID and announces that Mr. Morse will see us now. Then we go in and break up the meeting. I must say I’m quite a sight with my bandages, blisters and wheelchair. The meeting is definitely over. They all leave except Morse and some guy who works as a beer hall bouncer in the off-season when he can’t get work in his regular line tossing railroad ties.

Morse explains: “My lawyer’s here because Miss Buscarsela gets a little—excited around me, as the record will indicate. So I need protection.”

Because I have nothing left to lose.

Gina introduces herself and gets down to business: “I’m putting Kim Tungsten on the list of Superfund sites, and I’m initiating a full investigation of the acreage surrounding Morse Techtonics.”

Morse is not fazed. “You can’t do that. It doesn’t belong on the Superfund list. Okay, it’s not clean. No place is clean. Any industrial facility is dirty.”

“Thanks for that bit of information,” Gina responds. “I know that you’re speculating on four hundred and fifty acres of undeveloped land just north of your fence. The land is worth real money if designated as clean, but is practically worthless if your site goes on the National Priorities List.”

Morse smiles. “I think we’re beginning to understand each other.” He makes a gesture to the tie tosser, who reaches into his inner pocket. I cringe instinctively. Morse gets a chuckle out of that. What the hell, I reach under my blanket and start reassembling Reggie’s Colt All-American. In separate pieces, the parts were small enough to fit snugly against the chair’s metal framing and get through the security check.

The tie tosser takes out a cashier’s check for $10,000 made out to
CASH.
He lays it horizontally across Morse’s desk in front of Gina’s eyes.

I say, “You call
that
a bribe? Don’t insult us, Morse.”

Morse, trying to get me: “So you
are
a whore, I just can’t afford you.”

Pause.

Me: “Right. So?”

Morse nods to the tie tosser, who produces another cashier’s check with $25,000 cut across it in big red numbers.

Gina continues, “We’ve detected PCB concentrations in the soils ranging from less than one to thirty-three parts per billion at the common border between Kim Tungsten and Morse Techtonics. This is sixty times the proposed limit, and this contamination has leached into the groundwater. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry procedures have recently been developed to determine milligram-per-kilogram levels of PCBs in women’s breast milk. Some of the neighborhood children have already absorbed more PCBs than an adult worker breathing high concentrations of PCBs in the workplace for one year.”

The tie tosser has one more check. $50,000. Tax free.

But not interest free.

Gina’s answer: “One eight-month-old infant had gastritis, which progressed to hypertrophy and hyperplasia of the gastric mucosa, producing mucus-filled cysts that penetrated the surrounding tissue.”

Morse waves the checks away, the tie tosser makes them disappear. No more Mr. Nice Guy. “All right, enough of this shit. We’re not guilty of any environmental violations and you know it. It’s just her, trying to get me. Al?”

The tie tosser produces another paper from his inner pocket. It’s a summons. For me. I’m being sued for harassment. There’s a twist.

I say, “You know, maybe you didn’t hear what happened to those two goons you sent to scare me away last night.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah. Right. How did they know that Billy wasn’t in the house? You know you really screwed up, sending them only ten minutes after Billy was arrested. But thanks to the call, I was up—and they weren’t expecting that.”

“Jesus, listen to these allegations!” says Morse. To his “lawyer”: “You taking this down?”

“Yes, sir.” He doesn’t move.

Gina says, “If I may continue: The EPA’s disposal rules for PCBs typically require that materials be disposed of in chemical-waste landfills or destroyed in high-temperature incinerators or high-efficiency boilers.”

“You can’t pin me with that,” says Morse. “That site’s been Kim Tungsten’s since 1986.”

“The disposal rules were published in the July 1984 Code of Federal Regulations, section forty, part seven sixty-one. You owned the site then.”

“Don’t try to hit me retroactively. I’ll throw more lawyers in your face than you’ve ever seen.”

“More than the Department of Justice?”

“Look, who knows what products that we use today,
legally,
twenty years from now you’re gonna find out they’re cancerous?”

“The penalties for improper disposal of radioactives like uranium hexafluoride are even more severe.”

“We never used uranium hexafluoride.”

“There was a release of uranium hexafluoride gas eleven months ago. It turned to a white powder and was found on your side of the property marker. This is documented. We also found carbon tetrachloride—”

“Hey, hey: People used to use carbon tet for home dry cleaning. I bet your mom used it to take spots out of the rug.”

“Don’t talk about my mother.” Gina glares at him.

“I’m calling for judicial review of every one of the Agency’s decisions.”

“Delay all you want,” says Gina. “The longer you delay, the worse the environmental damage, the more you’ll have to pay in the end.”

She gets him with the only thing he understands: Money.

“And what if I cooperate? After all, I provide a lot of jobs, and computers are a new, clean technology.”

Gina smiles. “I think we’re beginning to understand each other. But the colorless chemical by-products of your manufacture of adhesives and plastic computer casings are just as deadly as the black clouds of soot produced by the old, dirty industries.”

Morse says, “I beg to differ—”

Gina: “Oh, stop pretending! You probably think the appearance of cooperation will help you delay long enough to disband Morse Techtonics and form some other corporation that’ll be untouchable for another few years.”

“Can’t I?”

Gina’s starting to lose her cool, it’s my turn to take the relay. “Please leave us alone.”

The tie tosser says, “Huh?”

“Get going.”

It takes a moment, but Morse gives his approval and the big guy steps around the desk.

He brushes close to me. I can feel the floorboards bend under his weight.

Gina looks at me like she’s not sure she should leave me, but I tell her, “Go ahead.”

“Okay … I’ll be right outside.”

They both leave us. Morse is probably taping the whole conversation anyway. But I don’t care.

I tell him, “I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”

“You can’t do that.”

I quote from the scripture. No, not that scripture. This one: “‘A private person may arrest or prevent escape in cases of murder, manslaughter one, robbery, rape or sodomy, and in immediate flight therefrom.’ I charge you with all of the above, but I’ll settle for First Degree Murder.”

“Who am I supposed to have killed?”

“Me.”

He laughs. “Have fun making
that
stick.”

“And what is this garbage?” I say, throwing the summons back across the desk at him. “Somebody’s been harassing the hell out of me and it wasn’t the county officials you’ve been corrupting because they’re not smart enough to do it. No, this took planning. First the child abuse allegations—that was you all over, Sammy, hitting me where it hurts the most, then there was the guy with the wrench—you shouldn’t work so cheap, Sammy—then last night—”

“You continue and I’ll sue you for libel and I’ll win.”

“So you
are
taping the conversation, huh?”

Still doesn’t faze him. “My lawyers will blow your brains out.”

“Not before I blow out yours.”

“Oh, good, here come the threats.”

“Turn up the volume, I don’t care.”

“What was it you said to me? ‘I’ll cut off your dog’s paws’? Was that really you?”

“No.”

“Let me give you some advice—”

“No, don’t. Your advice tends to stick in my throat. It’s a real choke hazard.”

“Just trying to do business.”

“How much money are you worth, anyway, Sammy? How much?”

“Have you considered psychotherapy?”

“I know just
one
of your corporations is bringing in twenty percent a year on an $84 million investment. That’s an annual profit of $16 to $17 million. That’s not enough? Why the rest? Why?”

“There is no such thing as too much money. In fact, I’m thinking of shifting some of my interests to South America. There’s tons of money to be made investing in Third World development.”

“And I thought I warned you to stay the hell out of my hemisphere.”

“Keep talking, babe, the tape’s rolling.”

“Oh shut the fuck up! And stop smiling at me.”

“You got a short fuse, honey.”

“Not as short as yours.
I
don’t kill people that get in my way. That is, until today.”

I throw aside the blanket and raise the Colt level with Morse’s chest. No reason to take a chance on missing him just to splatter his head. His hand edges toward the desk panel.

“Don’t
move,”
I snap at him. “Touch that and I sneeze.”

He stops. He waits. He says, “Just like old times, huh?”

I tell him, “You know, last night I hit my kid. Hard. I hurt her. If I can hurt the one person I love the most in all this world,
imagine
what I can do to the ones I hate.”

He might be getting a little worried. “What do you want?” he asks.

“I want you to suffer. I want your lungs to burn up from inside, just like mine. But there’s no time for that. So this will have to do.”

“What?”

“I’ve forgiven a lot of criminals over the years. But a gleeful serial killer like
you
—”

“What’s with you?”

“Sorry, I guess some people just die more gracefully than others.”

“Wha—what are you talking about?”

“You mean, you don’t know? And I thought you had feelers everywhere. You see? Even I thought you were omniscient. I’m dying, asshole! I’m dying of lung cancer thanks to you and your fucking methyl isocyanate.”

“It’ll never hold up in court.”

I stand up out of the wheelchair and lean on his desk. The gun’s about two feet from his heart. No problem there.

“Boy, you really are dumb, aren’t you? Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m here
because
it’ll never hold up in court? And that in a few weeks I’ll be beyond their reach anyway? Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

This is turning into a replay of the scene we had several years ago. Only this time I’m not thinking of the future. I’ve got him.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. So maybe we can make a deal.”

“You’re forgetting one thing.”

“Uh, what?”

“Morse, this is me. Remember? The woman you murdered.” Well,
finally
he’s starting to look a little worried.

“Wait: I can explain that—”

“Explain
what?
I’m the star witness in the case against you. I can’t pin my murder on you, I can’t pin criminal neglect of a thousand workers on you, I can’t even pin the toxic dumping and corruption of local officials on you, but there is a
higher
court of law that considers it a crime to inflict unnecessary anguish, and you are guilty as hell, Sammy, and the judge is passing sentence.” I lean the gun closer.