The Way Things Are Read Online Free PDF Page A

around to hear them?”
    “On the day shift, maybe. Overnight, we’re running the minimum number of guys we need to keep the port operational, so no. But that’s why each container’s weighed.”
    “And there’s no way to open one up from the inside?”
    “No. Do you think there would still be cases where stowaways died in transit if there was a way to escape from a sealed container? If the container was partially loaded, it could get past, but the transit times across the Pacific are too long to tuck people into a partially loaded container. They’d need food, water, air, someplace to take a shit. The scales usually catch them. Unless they’re not coming from Asia. But, hell, everything we unload comes from Asia, so….” The man’s eyes narrowed.
    “Where else would they be coming from?”
    The man folded his massive hands and glared at the mirror, then looked back at Kowalski. “British Colombia. The transit time is just a few days, so you could maybe hide a person or two in a partially loaded container. As long as the weight is within ten tons of what’s recorded on the manifest, the computer would just shuffle it on. A couple of people with food for a few days wouldn’t trigger an inspection.”
    “Sounds like it’s something you’ve given a lot of thought to,” said Kowalski.
    “Not really. I just got hired two weeks ago, and there was a training video on human smuggling when I was filling out paperwork.”
    “A training video?”
    “Right between a really old tape on sexual harassment in the workplace and an OSHA video on how to properly deadlift a cinderblock.” The man’s glare turned cold, almost vicious. “Please tell me you notified the Port Authority before you decided to waste four hours dicking me around?”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “You think that kid tonight was a stowaway.”
    “I don’t believe I said that.”
    “You might as well have. Do you have any idea how long it would take the Port Authority officers to organize a search of the storage yards? Those containers are stacked in cubes and blocks, five to eight containers high, sometimes twenty containers deep. They have to be shuffled around before they can be checked. It could take days to search the entire port. And if you think he came here in one of those containers, you can bet your ass he didn’t come alone! Tell me you’ve got guys looking, at least? Because even if you had guys looking from the moment you fuckers arrested me, it could still take days to find them! People die that way.” The redhead shut his mouth, grinding his jaw and glaring from Kowalski to the mirror and back again.
    “Hold on, there. If the boy you encountered in the storage yard came out of one of those containers,” said Kowalski carefully, “wouldn’t anyone else who was with him also have been able to get out?”
    “He was little. Not young, but half-starved. He could slip through tighter spaces than an adult.”
    “We’ve got a translator coming in to talk to him.”
    The redhead glared at him again, but the grinding of his jaw stopped. His features softened and he hunched over the table. In that moment he looked so much like the boy Ken had seen in the Youth Services Center—his expression an equal mixture of defiance and bashful shame—it was uncanny. “I hadn’t considered he might have come out of one of the containers. I just assumed that he jumped the fence to try and get away from the guys chasing him.”
    “You assumed he jumped a ten-foot fence topped with razor wire?”
    “Some things are worse than getting cut up a bit.”
    “Like what?”
    The redhead sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Being raped. Getting beaten to death. The guys who were chasing him were chasing him away from the fence, toward the storage yard. They were shouting, calling the kid a fag. That’s not a word I like at the best of times. I thought they were going to kill him.”
    “You thought he was the victim of a hate crime?”
    The large man nodded