Scam at Mount Diablo

CHAPTER ONE

The CE warehouse stood at the dead-end of Innes Avenue, a cracked road lined with struggling grass. They’d added to the building over the years, and it needed repair, just like its neighbors. Someone had painted it blue, and it matched the sky at ten to seven on this spring morning. Perhaps the owners wanted it to look like a happy place in which to work. The email said to use the staff entrance at the back when the reception was unattended. It was on the edge of Bayview-Hunter’s Point bordering on India Basin, parts of which had a bad reputation. Jack was fond of his 1999 truck, so he was happy to abide by the instruction and drove through the open steel gates onto the cement roughened with grit, which crunched under the Yukon’s tires as he went around the back of the building, avoiding the potholes, and parked.

A rattling sound started when he reached for the switch to put up his window. Instinctively, he turned his head to the noise to see a forklift, sixty feet away, coming straight at him with the forks raised three feet off the ground. There was no driver, and it was moving like someone running, whereas when working, they should work at less than walking speed. Left unattended, with its momentum, it would hit the driver’s side, and the forks would go into and possibly through the truck’s door.

Jack reversed his truck with the accelerator pedal pushed to the floor, the tires smoking, leaving rubber marks on the concrete. He watched the forklift buck and sway over the rough surface. A wheel went into a pothole. It jumped ten degrees to the right, wobbling like jelly, past the truck into a stack of pallets, scattering them and stalling.

Jack heard a yelp as a small brindle-colored dog ran out. It had blood on its shoulder and hip. Jack parked and walked towards the dog, talking to it like a mother comforting a child. The dog snarled at Jack, showing its teeth and gums. It limped back under the mess of pallets. Jack got down on one knee. The dog struggled under the pallets to a cardboard box with flooring of a few rags and stretched around to lick the wounds it could reach. Jack scanned the yard. There was no one.

Jack’s appointment was in less than ten minutes. He needed to go through the warehouse, so he wore his safety boots for protocol, jeans for comfort, and a long-sleeved white shirt to look professional. Yesterday he had a haircut, military style, high and tight, zero on the sides, number two on top. The early morning spring chill massaged his scalp. He went through the staff entrance and into the warehouse to see the pallet racking five levels high, full of electronic consumer goods. Jack’s email told him to go to a door, and he could see it, a hundred and fifty feet away.

He walked until he heard a scraping noise above him and stopped to look up. A cardboard box was inching out at the top level. Jack stepped back and watched a one-foot cubed cardboard box land at his feet and smash open on impact, revealing a white two-slice toaster that most probably would no longer work. Jack picked up the toaster and stepped over the packaging, listening and keeping his eyes on the shelves above him.

Four men came into the row in front of him. They were wearing high-visibility industrial clothing. Yellow shirt with a silver reflective band and the CE logo across the chest, navy-blue denim pants with a silver reflective band above the knee, and industrial boots. Three came up to his shoulder, but about ten pounds heavier. Indistinguishable in their uniforms, shaved heads, and beards. The fourth one was three inches taller, shaved head, clean-shaven, twenty pounds heavier than his own six-foot, one-eighty pounds. Jack stopped walking when they were eight feet away.

One triplet took a half step forward. “In case you haven't figured it out, stupid, you’re not welcome here.”

Jack assessed the sequence in which they would come at him and thought of Kenny, who would advise he upset their order of attack. “The forklift and the falling toaster, that was you guys?”

“We’d hoped you’d take a hint and go. Now it looks like we'll have to stuff you back in your truck with bruises and blood as a souvenir.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t pick up on your subtlety, but you must understand I have an appointment with Martin Geller in five minutes, and I don’t like being late. I think it’s impolite. Don’t you?”

“You're not going to a meeting with Martin Geller or anyone here at CE,” said the big guy. “Get him.”

It was like releasing attack dogs as the big guy raised his hands, turning them into fists. The one on the left kicked at his groin. Jack sidestepped the kick, knocking it into the speaker's path, who was now making his move. Jack hit him straight in the face with the toaster, backhanded it into the face of the third one, and then back to the first one. He passed them and flipped the toaster to the big guy, who caught it instinctively with both hands like a football as Jack stabbed a kick at his groin, sending him to the ground with a groaning noise and a hammer fist to the back of his head.

Jack kept walking to the door at the end of the row, tugging on his shirt to ensure it was on straight as he stepped into the foyer. No one was there, but the directions given to him were straightforward. He walked down the concrete passageway behind the reception desk for fifty feet, passing three closed white doors on each side until he came to a set of open double mahogany-grey wooden doors. Jack’s dealings with Martin had only been via email.

He looked inside. Two men sat at a twenty-foot-long dark brown wooden table with five black low-backed executive chairs on each side. A boardroom with the smell of furniture polish and old leather.

“Martin Geller?” said Jack.

A man in pleated navy-blue trousers, a custom-made white shirt, no tie, no jacket, and a sensible haircut across his black hair stood and extended his hand. “Martin Geller. Nice to make your acquaintance, Jack, and please call me Martin.”

He came up to Jack’s shoulder, was of average build, and exuding an energy not uncommon among entrepreneurs, gestured towards the other man.

“May I introduce Peter Wasserman, our CFO.”

Peter used his arms on the side of the chair to push himself to a standing position. He was an inch taller than Jack, but his stooped posture made him two inches shorter. His floppy black trousers and white shirt, half a size too large, indicated clothes were the least important part of his day, or they had fitted him in the past. Wispy gray strands of hair did not cover a scalp with small liver spots.

“Call me Peter,” he said as they shook hands.

The firm grip from the arthritic hand bent like a claw from someone who looked like he needed a good night’s sleep surprised Jack.

Stella had told Jack that Martin had turned fifty a month previously but still held a military bearing. Peter, Stella did not know, but Jack figured he was older by twenty-plus years and had a shuffling gait like he was wearing ankle cuffs.

Stella had volunteered his services because Martin Geller was an old friend of her dead husband from when they were in the Marines together. Jack knew the story of her husband, Bobby West, who’d worked himself into a heart attack victim while building an industrial empire. Jack had witnessed people working themselves to death in his consulting travels through corporations, and the thing they were after often seemed pointless when they were dead.

Stella said Classy Electronics, better known as CE, imported electronic goods and sold them to retailers. He was now familiar with the two-slice toaster. Martin had bought software to improve the operations in the warehouse. The implementation had been longer than planned. It had run over budget, and now it was operational, the situation in the warehouse was worse than before they installed the software. Martin had heard what had happened at the Link Industries factory in Plymouth, and he’d phoned Stella asking for a recommendation. Stella had sent Jack’s email address to Martin.

The assignment did not sound complicated, and Jack was familiar with the warehouse management software.

“There is one thing we can’t put our finger on,” said Martin. “We have always had a fairly consistent shrinkage problem in the warehouse.”

“By shrinkage, he means theft,” said Peter.

Jack was aware of shrinkage being the corporate euphemism for theft but nodded toward Peter in acknowledgment.

“Quite so,” said Martin. “When the system first went in, it improved for a month, but the warehouse has become chaotic, and the shrinkage figures are back to where they were before.”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

“Can you start today, Jack?” said Martin.

It was odd starting work on a Friday. It lacked continuity.

“I can start on Monday. There’s a ranch I have to babysit, and I can get myself settled there this weekend.”

“Stella said you lived in San Francisco,” said Martin.

“I do. Diamond Heights. The ranch belongs to my uncle. I’m just staying there until he can find a manager.”

“Will you have to travel far to come here?” said Martin.

“It’s an hour away at Mt. Diablo on Marsh Creek Road.”

“I know that road,” said Peter. “I have friends living there. It’s a beautiful area.”

Martin clapped his hands together and wriggled them. “Now that’s settled, I stopped off at Uncle Benny’s Donut and Bagel on the way here.”

Martin opened a door through which Jack could see a kitchen and Martin collecting a tray laden with bagels and three coffees in eco-friendly takeout containers. Definitely not the healthy eating Kenny would recommend, but he didn’t need to know. No one can ignore the sweet, freshly baked smell of bagels mixed with the acidic aroma of black coffee.

Jack did not mention the driverless forklift, the falling toaster, or the warehouse's four attackers. There’d been no attempts to kill him. More like someone wanted to discourage him. Jack asked about the dog.

“From what the staff say,” said Peter, “it arrived about a month ago and took up residence behind the warehouse. No one can get near it. Some people who work in the warehouse leave their leftover lunches. On the weekend, it must exist on rats.”

Jack had to get to the ranch. He was feeling guilty about the dog and knew the feeling of having no one to look after you. When the drunk driver went through a red light and killed his parents, him strapped in the back seat of the car, five years old. He still recalled the feeling of loss. His parents didn’t answer his cries, and the anger that someone had made this happen consumed him. The PTSD had started at that point. The dog’s injury was not his problem. It was an offshoot of people trying to make a not-so-subtle attempt at discouragement with a runaway forklift. Not too dissimilar to what happened to his parents.

Jack went to his Yukon. No one was in sight. He pulled on a pair of leather work gloves, went to the jumble of pallets, and pulled them away until he came to the cardboard box with the snarling dog. A cut from shoulder to hip needed stitches to Jack’s eyes. It was a Staffie. Skinny. Not the American, AmStaff. The English one. Smaller than the AmStaff. The dog needed a vet. He went to the truck and fully opened the rear doors. Jack returned to the blood-streaked snarling dog, talking gently and closing the box's flaps with his hands. The package was two feet square and three feet long. Guessing the dog's weight at twenty-five pounds, Jack squatted, sliding one arm under and the other around the box. He stood, walked with his bulky package to the truck, and put it inside. There was no movement inside the box. Jack closed the doors.

He did not have time for this, and the amount of guilt that consumed him puzzled him.

As he drove away, Peter Wassermann was at the warehouse door, watching.