Chapter 18: Seven Hundred Lifts

We reached the east berth at midnight, with the shower water barely dry in my hair.

Six cars came behind us with their lights off.

The gray-haired captain with the cane got out of the first one and looked up at the cranes.

"It's loud," he said. "Nobody's going to hear us."

"I don't want them to hear us," I said. "I want them to see."

Under the work lights, a blue crane lifted a container off a flatbed and swung it toward the ship.

Eleven flatbeds stood in a row, each with one box on it.

Around them were forty longshoremen in orange vests, with their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the clock.

Ilario walked a step behind my right shoulder.

I could still feel his hands on my hips from the shower, and I made myself stop feeling it.

"Who runs the night shift?" I asked.

A big man with a gray mustache stepped out from the crane crew.

He was the union steward, and he had been to my grandfather's wake with his hat in both hands.

"Miss Lucchesi," he said. "You shouldn't be here. There's trouble tonight."

"There is," I said. "Can you tell me what these crates are?"

"Pagano's. Special handling."

"Are they on tonight's manifest?"

He opened his mouth, and shut it again.

I held out my hand, and one of my captains put a clipboard in it.

"I read the shipping sheets last week," I said. "They list four hundred and six containers. Eleven aren't there."

"Every box that's on a manifest pays the men who lift it. Four dollars a lift, and a bonus at Christmas."