Episodul 43 · The Broken Stripe

At noon on Sunday, Krista sent the result she had promised: a photograph of an unmatched haul entry. I need the depot register before I call this missing cargo. The archive opens tomorrow. Wednesday evening, at the latest.

Tesa called Soles.

— She asked for two days.

— She found something in them.

— Then she can tell us what it means on Wednesday. I’m not waiting another week.

On Tuesday morning, Maxim returned from his first run and drove them to Ivo’s. Tesa was waiting by the riverbed.

The path to Ivo’s shed narrowed beside the footbridge. A man in muddy work boots waited on its loose third board. Tesa stood farther down the bank; Maxim followed Soles.

The man blocked the path.

— He’s tired of your questions.

— Then let him tell me.

Soles tried to pass on the bank. The man shoved him sideways onto the bridge. The board dropped beneath his heel. His bandaged hand failed to hold; his right caught the solid beam along the edge.

Below him were Kale’s blocks. He saw the corner his head would hit.

— An accident. That’s all it takes.

Soles wanted both feet on dirt. He drew his knee up to crawl back, but the man pressed a boot onto the loose board. It tilted farther. Soles hung against the beam, his cracked rib taking the weight. He could not breathe.

He wants me to stand. Then he can push.

He hooked his right elbow over the beam and dragged his weight onto it. The man bent to peel his arm away.

Tesa caught him once under the jaw.

His teeth snapped shut. He staggered onto the path and sat hard. Tesa steadied the board with a foot while Maxim helped Soles onto the bank.

— Get up, she said. Somewhere else.

The man left holding his jaw. Soles waited for a full breath, his good hand shaking against Maxim’s sleeve. A boot had almost been enough to send him home.

He let go and walked to the shed.

The shed door had been painted recently, gray, a coat brushed over rust without cleaning it off first. Soles knocked twice and waited.

Ivo’s niece opened it. She was slight, with a flushed, round face and an apron damp at the hem. Behind her, onions were frying.

— He’s inside, she said, without asking who they were. He was expecting one of you.

— One of us? Tesa repeated.

The woman looked at her, then at Soles, then at Maxim, who had stayed two steps back with his hands in the pockets of his overalls.

— He told me not to let you all in at once. Says he doesn’t like feeling interrogated.

She moved aside enough for Ivo to come out, not enough for them to enter. Ivo came out with a steaming cup and looked them over.

— You, he said, pointing at Soles with his chin. The rest of you, through the side door. There’s an engine assembly I can’t lift on my own.

Maxim and Tesa went around to the side door. Tesa looked back once before going in.

Ivo sat beneath the dripping eaves and left Soles standing.

— You brought an army, he said.

— I brought people who care.

— That’s what armies do, too.

Metal clanged inside. Maxim said something and Tesa laughed.

— You called me “Kale’s boy,” Soles said. When they took Kerr away.

— I said a lot that day. There were sirens.

— How did you know my father?

Ivo looked into his cup.

— Kale came here years ago, when the company still had machinery and I still had a boat. He fixed my winch once, without my asking. Said he couldn’t stand seeing something that could work but didn’t. That stayed with me.

— And after the company closed?

— I stayed with the sheds and the scrap. Nobody told me to leave.

— Who could have told you?

For the first time, Ivo looked him straight in the eye.

— You’re smarter than you look, he said. Or maybe just more stubborn.

That wasn’t an answer. Soles waited.

— Banks left everything here because it wasn’t worth the cost of moving it, Ivo said at last. But someone still had to sign the paper saying no one had thrown me out. Every year. One signature. A man who could just as easily not have signed.

— Who?

— Who doesn’t matter. What matters is that I learned not to see certain things, so he’d keep signing.

The rain was dripping faster now through the split eaves. Soles looked at Ivo’s hands, cracked too, his nails worn down by years of work.

— What didn’t you see?

Ivo set the cup on the bench between them.

— One night, six years ago, maybe seven, I don’t remember exactly, a truck came in on the upper road, toward the northern bank, where a construction site had just been finished. It was empty. I saw it leave two hours later, full. Not with earth. With crates. A lot of them.

— From an empty building site.

— From a site that, on paper, still needed one more delivery. The last one. I didn’t ask anyone anything. I’d learned not to.

— The truck, Soles said. Would you recognize it?

— I was in my sixties then, not my eighties. Yes, I’d recognize it. Yellow, with a black stripe along the door, broken in the middle.

Ivo rose slowly from the bench, one hand on his knee.

— That’s what I saw. It isn’t proof of what was in the crates.

— Why didn’t you tell the investigator?

— He asked about Kerr and Kale. I told you this because you keep coming back. Now you can tell him, and I can regret it.

Maxim and Tesa came around the corner, lowering an engine block between them onto a pallet. Maxim was sweating; Tesa had oil on her cheek.

— He said lift, not throw, she told him.

— Then he should have put that before the swearing.

Maxim flexed his fingers and let her steady the load before they released it.

Ivo sized them up and turned back to Soles.

— Don’t come back here, he said. I’ve nothing else to give you.

He went into the shed and pulled the gray door behind him without closing it all the way.

Back in the truck, Soles repeated Ivo’s account. Tesa began searching for the broken stripe on her phone.

— A yellow truck, Tesa said at the end. Do you know how many yellow trucks there are in this city?

— With a broken stripe?

She kept searching.

Halfway back, the temperature gauge on the dashboard began to climb.

Soles noticed first. The needle kept rising. The thin whine had become a dry grinding.

— Maxim.

— I see it.

— Pull over.

— It’s only two more streets—

— Pull over now!

Maxim stopped beside a concrete fence covered with old posters. A thread of white steam rose from the grille, then another, thicker one. The sweet smell of antifreeze filled the cab.

Tesa looked at the steam, then at Maxim.

— It has personality, she said.

Maxim didn’t answer. He killed the engine and kept his hands on the wheel.

Soles waited clear of the steam, then opened the hood with his right hand. Coolant dripped beneath the pump. Its pulley sat crooked against the polished edge of the belt.

— The bearing, he said. It’s gone completely. The pulley’s wobbling. Another two streets and it would have snapped the belt. You’d have lost your steering, too.

Maxim looked at the crooked pulley, then at the coolant on the road.

— How much?

— The parts? Not much. I’ve had them in my cart since Saturday.

Maxim turned toward him.

— In your cart.

— Pump, tensioner, gasket. I didn’t place the order.

Tesa leaned against the fence while Maxim stared at Soles’s phone.

They called a tow truck. Soles ordered the parts on his phone while they waited at the roadside, for pickup the next morning. Tesa left on foot before the tow truck arrived. She said she had someone to see about a yellow truck, and Maxim didn’t ask who.