Just The Pits (Hetta Coffey Series) Read online

  A little younger than me, Fidel is skinny and would top six-five if he’d unfold his horrible posture. With a hooked nose, a black scruffy topknot of frizzy hair, and an entire wardrobe of baggy black clothing, he resembles a giant bird of prey. A buzzard. A buzzard savant.

  An engineering genius, Wontrobski is a one-man think tank on the exclusive top floor of the Baxter Building Engineering and Construction in San Francisco. Only the elite, such as the brothers Baxter and a couple of former high-ranking politicos, share his aerie. Which is amazing, in light of the fact that Fidel possesses not a single shred of social or political skill. But corporate heads, former Secretaries of State and their minions all defer to The Trob's brilliance.

  Of course, they highly discourage any Trob interaction with other employees, and certainly never let him talk to clients. When we met many years before, lunch was delivered to his loft and, most nights, dinner. He lived in a nearby hotel, slept only four hours a night—midnight to four—and was the first one in the Baxter employee cafeteria for breakfast each morning. When I worked there, I was usually second.

  For weeks after I first joined the firm, the Trob and I sat at opposite ends of the mostly empty cafeteria, studiously ignoring one another. Then one morning as I was passing his table we experienced a power failure. Hearing a frightened whimper, I reached in my purse, whipped out a flashlight, and sat with him until an emergency generator kicked the lights back on. We ate breakfast together that day and every workday until I was shipped off to Japan, where I managed to piss off the brothers Baxter by questioning their shaky ethics. One might argue that I was hardly one to be arguing ethics with anyone else, but if you're going to gouge the client wouldn't you think it wise to at least tell your own project engineer so she won't tip your hand?

  Fidel was a prisoner of his superior intelligence, a wunderkind trapped in his own safety zone, until I introduced him to Allison Cuthbert, all five-feet plus a smidgen of her. A product of Houston’s fifth ward and the daughter of a black, second generation welfare mom, Ms. Cuthbert came up hard, as we say back home in Texas. Now a prosecutor with political ambitions, she possesses the body of a gymnast, the beauty of a model, the professional scrappiness of an alley cat, and a politician’s savvy. How in the hell she and the Trob fell in love is beyond me, but now they are not only married, but expecting a baby any second, the physical attributes of which scares the crap out of me. At least the kid will be smart.

  Thanks to the Trob my past three projects, all in Mexico and Baxter Brothers related, have proven profitable if a little on the dodgy side. Since I wasn't too keen on a repeat performance involving running afoul of drug cartels, Jihadist radicals (is that an oxymoron?), suicide bombers or human smugglers, a simple day job at a mine in Baja seemed just the ticket.

  Besides, I had time to kill while waiting for my sig-other, Jenks Jenkins, also on contract to Baxter Brothers, to finish up in Dubai. Highly pissed with the present administration in Washington and tired of being used as a punching bag in the mainstream press, the Baxter Brothers were relocating their substantial headquarters to Dubai, as did Halliburton a few years back, and they’d hired Jenks to front for them. When Jenks's Dubai gig is done, our plan is to take Raymond Johnson back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

  If I lived through Pedro's lousy chauffeuring and a possible violent discharge of steam and molten rock of some sort.

  Pedro played chicken with a huge earthmover and won, leaving the driver in a shallow ditch. To take my mind from what was surely my last day on earth, I closed my eyes, decided to think positive and began a mental list of stuff I needed onboard in preparation for a voyage north up the Pacific Coast: six cases of wine, ten bottles of bourbon and a bunch of rum….

  The van slewed to a dusty stop in front of a group of doublewides marked:

  Gerencia/Administration.

  Pedro, still chattering into his cell phone and puffing away, jumped out and opened the slider next to my seat. Once out of the van, my fellow passengers took off walking with purpose toward various buildings, the van left, and I stood alone in the road like a duck looking for thunder. Hearing my name called, I pivoted and spotted a guy waving from a pickup. He climbed out and sauntered toward me.

  Six or so inches taller than my five-four, he had that lanky, but muscular, Marlboro Man build that reminded me a bit of Jenks. Longish red hair curled out from under a gold hardhat plastered with stickers like MINERS DO IT IN THE DARK and MINERS DO IT DEEPER. He wore a bright orange vest that almost matched his hair color, and his face was dotted with more freckles than a turkey egg. He had those rugged good looks that always snag my attention, and according to his hat his name was Joe "Safety" Francis. He removed his sunglasses and squinted at me with bright blue, Robert Redford eyes. As he opened his mouth to speak, I beat him to the draw. "Let me take a wild guess here, Joe. You're a miner?"

  He grinned and stuck out his hand. "Everyone calls me Safety. He said you were a fast study."

  "And he be who?"

  "Your boss."

  "Right answer." I offered my hand, we shook and I trailed him to his truck, a big old diesel dually.

  On the passenger seat was a white hard hat, no clever stickers, just my name. I tried it on for fit, adjusted the strap to my head size. "Thanks. How come my hat is white and yours is gold?" I asked, even though I knew the answer: Gold hardhats are for honchos.

  "Because I'm a guy?"

  "Wrong answer."

  "Your jefe also said you could be a pain in the ass."

  "The Trob is always right."

  He grinned, put the dually in gear and took off down the road. "Anything I can fill you in on before we get to your office? Like, what we've hired you to do?"

  "Not really, " I lied. "Besides you didn't hire me."

  "Point taken. Your official title is Liaison Materials Engineer."

  Like I didn’t already know that. "I don't liaise well with others, but Materials Management is my game."

  "So we've—" He braked to avoid an out of control dirt hauler the size of a locomotive. The big machine rocked to a stop as well and a diminutive Mexican woman waved, then gave us a "sorry" shrug.

  Safety cursed under his breath and said, "Trainee. We're so hard up for people that we started a driver’s training program for local Mexican women. Unfortunately we've had one fatality and almost had to dump the program, but the Mexicans wouldn't hear of it. After all, while learning the women get a hundred a week, US, and after that, it doubles. They'd probably faint if they knew what you make."

  "How do you know what I make?"

  "I don't, exactly, but I can guess. People like you don't come cheap."

  "Yeah, well, for your information, I can be very cheap."

  "Heard that, too."

  We shared a chuckle and I decided Joe could be my new best friend. I also noticed his speckled finger didn't sport a wedding ring, and that's a good thing. I've found that male new best friends are better when there's no wife involved.

  "Okay, Joe, I lied. I do want to know why I'm here."

  "Like I said, you're the project manager's eyes and ears regarding material and equipment purchases and movement. You know, keep a sharp lookout for, uh, inconsistencies."

  "So the Trob also told you I'm overly nosy?"

  "Not really."

  "Well, I am. Who all knows about me?" As soon as I said this I winced. I have tried, honest, to lose my Texas accent when speaking with other professionals, but once in a while something like who all slips out. At least I rarely say things like, "Nice meetin' all y'all, y'all," anymore.

  “Who all? Well, hell, everybody. Not often we get a female engineer on one of these godforsaken projects.”

  I wondered if he was bulling me or whether he really thought I was just a material tracker. Time would tell. I wish Time would tell me what I was really looking for. Any mid-level grunt can track and expedite materials and equipment.

  "How about the Mexicans?" I asked. "What do they think about me being h
ere?”

  "You got a problem with Mexicans?"

  "Nope. I have a problem with the way their politics work and I've found it pays to expect hanky panky out of Mexico City, not to mention payoffs locally to keep things moving."

  "Maybe that’s why they want you here."

  "To figure out who's on the take?"

  "Exactly."

  "Then they're wasting their dough. I can figure out who they are, but you can't mess with City Hall, as they say. It's what they do in Mexico. Price of doing bidness."

  "Oh, we don't want to stop them, we just want to pay off the right people and get it done with. We keep getting hung up on permits and quite frankly we can't figure out who to bribe. Damnedest project I've ever been on. Not that the Canadians especially want to know about any payoffs, but one of my jobs is to grease the skids and I keep running into bureaucratic stonewalling. I don't dare offer any mordida for fear we'll insult the wrong guy. And so far, no one has even hinted at being willing to take a gift or two to get the job done. It just ain't natural."

  I laughed. "So, the Trob also told you I'm good at ferreting out the bad boys?"

  "I heard you're one of the best."

  "Did you also hear I like bad boys?"

  3

  KNOW THE ROPES (Nautical term): Understanding knots, ropes and rigging. Or in my case, getting the lowdown.

  On the way to my new office Safety gave me a quick jobsite tour, pointing out various areas under construction, laying out schedules for completion, and explaining which subcontractor did what to whom. As soon as I settled in, I'd get a plot plan and an organization chart to put names and companies to the various phases of the project. He said mining was being done at some old pits, but most areas were still under construction.

  We parked in a slot with his name on it near the front door of a doublewide with a hand painted sign: Gerente. Management.

  "Hey, Safety, you ever read a book called Up The Organization?"

  "Naw."

  "It was written eons ago and one of the things I remembered from it was about assigned parking. This guy took over a company and the first thing he did was get rid of honcho spots near the door. He reasoned that if management was so damned important, they should get there first."

  As expected, the office facilities were hardly plush. This was, after all, a temporary construction site office set up in connected doublewides. I saw only two private offices, a smattering of cubicles and one fairly large room designated as a Conference Room that would seat maybe ten. I'd already seen training class notices posted at my marina’s meeting rooms back in Santa Rosalia, so figured onsite buildings were already overcrowded.

  Safety guided me to a small cubicle with his name and position printed on a little slide-in plaque beside the door opening.

  "You know, I don't always see eye-to-eye with the Safety department," I told him.

  He looked toward Heaven as if asking for help, but gave me a wink, showing he'd heard it before. The Safety Engineer's job on any project is one of the most difficult and confrontational. Personality issues can be paramount. These engineers have to be both pleasant and ruthless. They can be the messengers of bad news to a project management concerned with expense and time overruns due to software, chemical, electrical, mechanical, procedural, and training problems. Safety had his job cut out for him in Mexico, what with their tendencies towards mediocre management systems and questionable, to Gringos, business ethics.

  "I know what to expect down here," he told me. "My old man was Safety on projects all over the world. We kids were dragged from town-to-town, country-to-country."

  "Tell me about it." We chatted a few minutes about our childhoods in construction camps and figured out we almost met a time or two. He was in the middle of recounting a story in India when he was a teen when his pager squawked and we were summoned to the Project Manager's office.

  "Am I gonna like him?" I whispered as my new BFF led me through the office building.

  "Probably. Most do."

  "Good enough for me."

  I could sense right off why Safety said most people cottoned to the project manager. Bert Melton had that baby face that makes men appealing to women, and a great head of graying hair envied by men. He exuded a gentle nature with a soft voice and kind demeanor, which made me wonder how in hell he ever achieved project manager status, even though I knew from the corporate literature that the fifty-five year old held a BS in Geology and Mechanical Engineering, as well as an MBA, making him, on paper, more than qualified.

  However, in the construction/engineering game most top brass are usually tough SOBs, because brains alone don't count when juggling the politics, budgets, funding, schedules and personnel issues on a project of this caliber. Then I remembered where we were; most companies would deem this a hardship post.

  After introductions Safety left, closing the door behind him. Before Bert could say anything, I asked, "So, who did you piss off to get sent down here?"

  He looked startled, then laughed and shook his head. "I know that's what some people might think, but actually I asked for this one. I figure this will be my last assignment, if I can ride it out until I retire. I like to fish, I love Mexico and," he waved his hand toward the coast, "the Sea of Cortez is right out there."

  "Do you live in Santa Rosalia?"

  "Yep. I've been here almost five years already. I was with the first group of scientists sent to test the waters, so to speak. See if mining again was feasible. I bought an old miner's house near the hospital and spent, or rather the wife did, almost a year renovating it."

  As he said this his jaws tightened, which I understand completely. "Been there, done that. I rehabbed a hundred-year-old home in Oakland once and at times wanted to throw a bomb into it. Rewarding, but a lot of work and money. Well, good for you. I love staying in town, but sure don't look forward to the commute."

  He smiled knowingly. "I’ll get Safety to have another talk with Pedro."

  "Don't do it on my account. I'm gonna have my own wheels after this weekend."

  "Probably a wise move. I have a company truck, but the downside to that is we can't drive anywhere off site between dusk and dawn."

  "Kinda puts a kink in your social life."

  He looked uncomfortable for a moment, making my nosy meter twitch, but then he smiled. "Not really. I can walk everywhere in town and if I don't feel like hoofing it back up the hill to the house, there are taxis. I hear you're living on your boat."

  Hmmm. There were a lot of I's there for someone whose resume said he was married.

  "I love living on a boat, but when we get those trailers up here I might stay over a few nights a week to avoid that death-defying drive twice a day, if that's okay by you. Say, I saw a boat in the marina named Lucifer. Is that yours?"

  "It's the company boat, but I can use it when I want. Nice little Whaler. Some of us go out any Sunday we can."

  Nice little expensive Whaler and perk for a project that was hemorrhaging money, I thought, but kept that comment to myself. "By the way, if you want to hang on to your fishing poles, you'd better take them off of Lucifer, or at least put 'em inside the cabin. I thought about snagging one for myself."

  "I'll tell the guys. No one has felt much like going down there since the accident."

  "What accident?"

  "Safety didn't tell you? We still don't know what happened. All we know is one of the guys in Purchasing, a Mexican national, must have taken Lucifer out by himself. Some pangueros found the boat beached near their fish camp at San Lucas cove, south of here a few miles. Funny thing is, Rosario wasn't authorized to use the boat and everyone here swears he would never take it out without permission. He was doing us a favor by repairing the radio. He's good with things like that. A nice young man, kind of quiet and, as the kids say these days, nerdy, but a college grad and a big help around here. I miss him."

  "You had to fire him?"

  "No. He never came back to work. Some say he's too embarrassed that he too
k the boat out and ran aground or something. But most say there is no way the kid would do anything like that. Who knows?"

  "Didn't the guard see him, or the boat, leave the marina?"

  "No, it was cold and the night guard was holed up trying to stay warm. Wind was howling. Certainly no night to be out on a boat, that's for sure."

  "Well, at least it wasn't an OTJ."

  Melton looked surprised, then grinned. "Yeah, I guess. On the job accidents are bad for any project manager's career."

  "Never seemed quite fair to me, blaming the head guy for an accident, but it works for the military. Anyhow, how long ago did this guy disappear?"

  "Over a week now, so it doesn't look good, even if he—" a whistle blew. "You hungry?" he asked. "The mess hall has pretty good food and we can make the first serving."