Read Memory (Hard Case Crime) for Free Online

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