Exception to the Rule Page 2

  “I’ll be in business, Calvin, and I’d like to keep you two with me. I need steady, dependable workers.”

  Pope stood. “Sorry, Garnet. Guess we just don’t see eye to eye anymore.” He grinned. “If you change your mind, call me.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” She walked around to the front of her desk and held out her hand to Pope, then to Shaw. She wasn’t going to change her mind and pay outrageous insurance for her protection. “Miriam will have your pay ready by five this afternoon.”

  Her offer of a small raise and the stock options weren’t enough to sway the two men. She’d known it wouldn’t be, but had hoped somehow to persuade them to stay. There was no need to mention an increased workload, pay and entitlements should she get the buyin partnership she was after at the new transfer point out in the Stonemarsh Shed. Her chances, at best, were iffy.

  There were only two transfer points in the entire city, and the need for another was real and demanding. If she could get solvent partners to go in with her, she’d have a good chance at securing the contract. She couldn’t handle such an expensive -- new and expensive -- deal alone, financially or managerial. Only if the others buying in came through with their shares, and that, she knew well, depended on availability of loans. Big loans. Barrow, Incorporated, and Whisnant Oil were talking. If they came through . . . IF. And if she could hold on against the sharks waiting out there to swallow her, she was going to join the fight to build a resource recovery plant to relieve the growing landfill problem. It would eventually be a moneymaker. If she could just last . .

  But damned if she’d go back to Conestoga Banking after this time and ask Donald Baskins for a loan. If all her plans materialized, she’d have enough assets and backing to find someone willing to help her without having to sleep with him.

  The uneven leg of the roller chair squeaked when she leaned back in it. She planted a boot-clad foot flat on the floor, boots not from Tony Lama but from the work shoe rack in the One Price for All store on the corner of Main and Corinth. They were serviceable. She eyed the skinned toe. After all the years of hard work with a tight economical schedule, she could afford expensive footwear, but none she’d tried were as comfortable as these, so she’d ignored the brand names and stuck with serviceable. Name brands did nothing to soften calluses and nourish her hard-working feet, so why bother paying for something she couldn’t use?

  She picked up a yellow pencil with her logo, stenciled in black, of a broom sending dust swirls aloft. Her fingers moved back and forth, then tightened until the pencil snapped. Absently, she picked at the jagged wood edges.

  She had a solid organization going, and she was going to keep it. If the transfer point deal went through, she was ready to buy two more Mack front-end loaders and another truck. That would enable her to raise the older employees’ salaries plus hire a couple or three new people. Pope and Shaw were too impatient to wait.

  Well, I can’t just sit here.

  Garnet sighed, swung her feet to the floor, eyed them for another few seconds, then pushed herself up and walked across the hall to Miriam’s office. The woman, now a good friend, had been with the business since its wobbly beginnings when Garnet stole her from Baskins. She looked at the head, brownish roots of dyed hair twisted into tiny ringlets, bent over the account books. She’d made mistakes, big ones, in her short business career, but hiring Miriam Truesdale wasn’t one of them. Even incurring Baskins’ undying hatred and the knowledge she’d have trouble securing futures loan, it was still worth it.

  Miriam looked up and smiled. “You going home? It’s about time.” Her round cheeks, bright with color, reminded Garnet of the friendly chipmunk that played near Lyn’s window at home, his cheeks full of stored goodies.

  “Yes, but I’ll have to come back.” She perched on the corner of Miriam’s desk. “Dennis and Calvin quit, so I’ll have to finish their routes. Figure up their final pay and have it ready as soon as you can.”

  Miriam’s brows, carved in smudgy ebony crayon, quivered as Garnet explained what had happened. “Huh. So the Bobbsy twins quit. What’s their problem other than ignorance? They want a raise?”

  “They want us to unionize, and they’re promoting a special beneficial insurance to go along with it.”

  “You pay good wages without dues. What’s their real complaint?”

  “I can’t give the side benefits a unionized company can, and its dangerous work without a payoff for protection. So they’re recommending I pay a bit higher premium for maximum protection.”

  “Neither do you close down your business on an hour’s notice, take your money and run.” Miriam frowned at Garnet. “Maximum insurance protection? Which means they get a payoff, right?’

  “Whoever’s into practicing vandalism on my property must be hoping to scare me, right? If someone’s determined to ruin me, I might have to.”

  Miriam’s tight curls clutched her head as she shook it, and black brows crawled together. She frowned at a mistake she tried to correct with Whiteout. She blew on the figure she’d painted.

  “Ha. You’d give your last penny before you’d close shop.”

  “Probably.” Bart would say, yeah, she’s that dumb. Why did she even think of Bart three years past their divorce? Because he seemed to be so right about her when she tried her damnedest to prove him wrong, she supposed. He’d even warned her she’d have to sleep with a few executives to get loans he wouldn’t sign to back her. He’d almost been right.

  Wearily, Garnet yanked a New Orleans Saints baseball cap over her short dark hair. She was just now getting to the point where relaxing might be on her agenda, and here come Dennis and Calvin to screw up the works.

  Dammit.

  “I’ll be taking Number 610 on Route One, make one pit stop and go down the east corner.”

  “You’ll be nine o’clock getting through.”

  “And I’m going to detour on Worling. Go home at five, Miriam.” At the door, she said without turning, “I’ll check on Lyn before I start the route.”

  * * * *

  Miriam stuck her tongue out at the mention of Garnet’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Spoiled, selfish, thoughtless when it came to Garnet. Miriam would have been delighted to turn the pretty young lady over her knee and blister her bottom. She did sympathize with Lyn to an extent. She was home alone a lot. She was limited to how often she saw her father since he remarried after the divorce. Garnet thought the sun rose and set in Lyn and did as much as she could for her with strictly limited time and resources. Resources were picking up but time was stretched to the breaking point. Garnet needed love and understanding that Lyn was too immature to give her.

  Grumbling, Miriam returned to her work.

  * * * *

  Garnet stopped in her office to pick up her handbag, glanced around to see if there was anything she needed to take home with her. She picked up the phone on the first ring because Miriam had gone to the copy machine when Garnet walked away.

  A muffled voice said, “Keep up your smartass refusal to cooperate, and your daughter will suffer.”

  Chapter Two Garnet hesitated at the half open door to Lyn’s room, her gaze on the bright head bent over schoolbooks. She was lucky she didn’t have to fight with Lyn about homework.

  “Honey?”

  “Hello, Mother.” The voice was cool and Garnet flinched. Lyn was ready to shut her out as usual.

  “I have to work late tonight. Two drivers quit, and I’ll take their collection route.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Lyn said. She didn’t bother to lift her head. “There’s a pizza in the freezer. Or, better still, open a can of soup, and I’ll bring a bucket of chicken around eight or nine or ten.” She mimicked Garnet’s low, sultry voice, soft and drawled. “Or perhaps you’ll be asleep before I get home which will be even better.”

  It was true her grocery shopping was way behind. As usual. Lyn’s school activities and Garnet’s work seldom synchronized. They ate out a lot, and pizzas and fast foods were utili
zed more often than Garnet would have liked.

  Guilty as charged, Garnet explained. “I have to do it, Lyn.”

  “So? Go do it, Mother.”

  She would have been more hurt by Lyn’s curt dismissal if her mind hadn’t been on the phone call. Was it a crank call? Who would pull such a wicked joke? She didn’t call the police or Bart. Neither did she tell Miriam or her other drivers, the two Colter brothers, and Rhoda McGee, her newest employee. Why worry them? She could do enough for all of them. The police would tell her to cooperate with the crooks. Easier for all concerned.

  The fight for her very existence as an independent businesswoman had been a back-tothe-wall operation from day one. The fight for loans, dealing with threats, promises, sexual harassment, Lyn’s insecure complaints, even Bart’s negative attitude. That attitude, she knew, influenced Lyn. All these she’d managed, after a fashion, but the phone call made her blood run cold.

  If anyone dared harm Lyn . .

  Trouble was brewing, had been for some time in the form of vandalism, then Dennis and Calvin quitting, but suddenly, the last phone call made it sinister and threatening. She’d worked hard without hurting anyone, but this . . . this newest threat was inconceivable.

  When she and Bart divorced, she’d fought for her loan to get started, her only real qualifications were her ability to organize, budget and work harder than most people. Life with Bart in the military with its low pay scale had taught her to economize and not be a packrat of unnecessary things since she was the one who had to take care of it all when transfer time came around.

  She’d built her own company with minimal backing and a skeletal payroll and had done well until the protection rackets began moving in. They talked to her workers, tried to undermine her trust by hints the business was going under. She’d refused to pay protection insurance and protection racketeers, and they were now getting back at her.

  “You’re fighting city hall, state bureaucracy, federal guidelines and the big payoff game, Garnet.” Dennis had warned her about organized crime. “You’re fighting World War III with civil war ammunition.”

  She hadn’t paid a lot of attention to how serious he was, but it seemed she should have been listening to what he was trying to tell her. Not really, because she wasn’t going to unionize anyway. Nor pay ridiculous insurance for supposedly more protection.

  On top of all that, the guilt when she realized how much Lyn resented the divorce, separation from her father, and the long hours Garnet was forced to put into the business. It was necessary, but it must seem like plain old neglect to a sixteen-year-old girl.

  Garnet hadn’t spoken in so long that Lyn turned to look at her. The teenager’s beauty struck Garnet anew. Big, blue eyes fringed by incredibly thick lashes, blonde hair caught in a heavy ponytail, tied with a red ribbon. Rosy lips were parted angrily over small white teeth. Garnet knew an instant of regret that Lyn looked like Bart and not her.

  “I keep a loaded thirty-eight under the mattress of my bed. Will you sleep there tonight?”

  Lyn laughed. “You gonna be out all night, Mother? My, what will the neighbors think?”

  She ignored the sarcasm. “Would you like to stay with Bart an extra night? We can call to see if they’ll be at home.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Garnet studied her daughter’s bent head. Blonde, like Bart’s. Hard, also like her father’s. On both sides, paternal and maternal, Lyn came by her stubbornness honestly.

  “Call to see if it’s convenient, and I’ll drop you off as I go to work.”

  “All right.”

  Garnet fixed a peanut butter sandwich to take with her and started past Lyn’s room to her own. Lyn was speaking on the phone and laughing.

  “Don’t I wish, but you and I know better, Dad.” Garnet didn’t know what was said but could imagine it wasn’t a compliment to her. “Even if some man slightly off his rocker asked a garbage woman for a date, Mother would say ‘no’ before he finished asking ‘will you?’ She’d think he was after her virtue.” A brief pause before Lyn continued. “Uh huh. But her success is tied up with the mechanically defective, stinking trucks. Even she smells like them.”

  Garnet shoved the hurt aside and kept walking. No need to quarrel with Lyn. What she said was probably true. No matter how much she bathed, scrubbed, perfumed, gargled and sprayed, it seemed to her that garbage stench remained. There probably wasn’t enough Estee Lauder in the city of New Orleans to cover the smell.

  * * * *

  Garnet called a cab, something she seldom did, to take Lyn by Bart’s house. She watched Lyn go up the flower-bordered walkway of the rambling brick house three miles from their townhouse. Sue, the young woman Bart found who wanted nothing more to do than sit at home and match his sox, waved from the side porch. Garnet returned the wave, and then directed the driver to Cleansweep.

  Miriam had gone on home as directed, so she walked through the empty building to the back. From the enclosed area, she took ‘Gruesome Green,’ the container truck usually driven by Dennis Pope. The heavy vehicle purred through going-home traffic. As worried as she was, she loved the feeling of power as she guided the heavy machine through busy streets. It was the feel of her own success, the satisfaction of having something that belonged to her, that she’d worked her tail off for. But she’d done it, all on her own. In spite of Bart and Lyn’s …. and her …. doubts. In spite of everything. If not for the gnawing fear crawling uneasily across her belly, she’d enjoy this unscheduled trip.

  She pushed the levers and buttons and dumped the load from Gruesome Green, heard the whining, grinding machinery chewing and gobbling at the refuse. When the attendant banged the truck body twice, she shifted gears and pulled away.

  Along dark side streets, she peered into gloomy alleys, looking for signs with a familiar name. On the dingiest curve, she spotted number Twelve-Twenty-Four with the ‘T’ missing from Twenty. The street dead-ended so she pulled into the widest space to leave the awkward truck.

  To say it was a poor neighborhood painted a much cheerier picture than it would ever be. Weeds grew through a sagging fence with more pickets missing than remained. Garnet walked back to Twelve-Twenty-Four and turned up a walkway, broken cement but clear of weeds and trash. At the door, a shocking pink, she knocked.

  Almost immediately, the door opened, and Garnet stared at a young black woman.

  “Yes?” The question was abrupt, but the girl smiled, showing a tiny dimple in her left cheek.

  “Does Ottice Watson live here?”

  The smile faded as the light-skinned girl folded her arms and looked up and down Garnet’s shapeless figure in oversized blue coveralls, generously streaked with garbage residue.

  Must look like leftover ice cream, Garnet thought, and as Lyn would say, smell even worse. It was too late to think of dressing to impress anyone.

  “Who wants him?”

  “My name’s Garnet Madigan. I’d like to talk to him.”

  “He don’t know nothin’ and he didn’t have nothin’ to do with whatever happened.”

  Garnet grinned. “In that case, can I just have a word with him about a job?”

  “Who is it, ‘Melia?” The voice came from inside the house somewhere.

  “Say she Garnet Madigan. Wants to talk about a job.” Amelia stepped back but didn’t ask Garnet to come in.

  “Kinda job you wanta talk about?” Body and voice matched, both giant-sized. The man was at least six and a half feet tall and half that wide, reminding Garnet of the garbage compactor at the landfill. Except Ottice Watson was not compact. Ebony face had a mirror-finish shine, his nose flat across the bridge, widening even with thick plumcolored lips. Bristly hair kinked close to a head made like a bowling ball with kidneyshaped ears flattened against it. A furrow of white and pink curved upward from his left ear to the center of his forehead where the hair separated into a narrow part, evidence of an impromptu operation sometime in the distant past. A clean white undershirt topped nondescript gra
y pants. He was barefoot.

  The man had recently been paroled from state prison where he’d served seven years of a twelve-year sentence for murder. Garnet had never met him personally, but she’d seen him across the room every day for several weeks. She’d served on the jury at his trial, her vote hanging the jury when she wouldn’t go for the premeditated murder charge. He had killed a white man, the man who had raped and murdered his wife, Addie. Ottice was at the police station when the man was brought in, heard him laugh about ‘good black pussy them girls wuz glad to give away.’ In front of a dozen witnesses, he simply reached out and cuffed the man alongside the neck and broke it. He admitted to the jury that his actions were premeditated, that his intentions were to kill the man if he got the chance. But Garnet refused to budge and finally won three more jurors over to her side.

  “You working now?” Garnet said.

  Ottice grunted. “You my probation officer?”

  “No.” She motioned to the torn screen. “May I come in?”

  Black eyes went over Garnet, feature by feature. Not a beauty queen, her shadowed face was heart shaped, unlined, a half smile turning a wide mouth up at the corners. She slouched as though tired or didn’t give a damn. Right at the moment, it was about even on both counts.

  Ottice shrugged, gave a half grunt, half laugh, and turned back into the room, leaving Garnet outside to make up her mind whether to enter the shabby living room.

  She went in, let the screen door bump her hip, and waited until Ottice looked at her again.

  “Well? You da one come here. Aint’ yo’ usual stompin’ grounds, so you must want somp’n.”

  “I need a driver if you’ve still got your license.”

  “’Bout the only thing they left me.”

  “I’m not union. Starting pay’s competitive, but I can’t offer a load of benefits like McCarver or Georgio and other big companies.”

  “Dey ain’t exactly standin’ in line at my front door.” Ottice tried to stare her down, but it had been tried before. She stared right back. He spoke to Amelia. “Any coffee left?”