Best Foot Forward (15 page)

I tried to clear my mind. “Lou, you're telling me that the West Virginia Shoe Company is in Thailand?”

“It's a crazy world. Your people who pay the tab have us take the merchandise from Thailand to Long Beach, California. You following me?”

“Lou, you're absolutely certain about Thailand?”

“That's our business. We ship from Asia to America every day.”

This couldn't be right. Gladstone Shoes are made in America.

My mind was struggling to take this in. “Lou, what happens in Long Beach?”

“You'll have to call Cross Country Trucking. They pick up after your load clears through customs. I don't know where they take it.”

I looked in the little mirror on the far wall and saw the QUALITY FIRST sign reflected backward, which is what mirrors do.

 

This would have been a cool clue in a detective story, but it didn't mean beans in a shoe mystery.

 

I raced downstairs to talk to Murray, who was trying to explain to a customer that he'd called American Express twice and both times they told him her card had expired.

I picked up shoe after shoe from the displays. All the labels promised the same thing:

Not
Thailand.

The woman gave Murray her Visa card. That was refused, too.

Diners Club, MasterCard.

Nope.

“We still take cash,” Murray offered.

I raced into Mrs. Gladstone's office, but she was out to lunch.

I had to talk to
somebody.

Tanner was standing at my desk.

Could I trust him?

“What's wrong?” he asked.

I showed him the computer screen. Told him what I'd found.

“You keeping all this safe someplace?”

“I've got a file.”

“It's locked?”

“No.”

I felt a chill go through me.

I told him that the missing piece was what happened to the shoes once they got off the boat in Long Beach. I hadn't called Cross Country Trucking yet.

He handed me the phone. “Call them, but don't ask straight out.”

“Will you stay here while I call?”

“Yeah.” He stood there like a sentry.

I called Cross Country Trucking and got a guy named Sal on close to the worst day of his life. He had a tractor trailer stuck under an overpass in Nashville. He told me they had another pickup scheduled tomorrow if the weather held in the Pacific.

I asked, “What's your usual route, Sal?”

“We pick up at Long Beach by customs and drive it straight through to the Bangor warehouse.”

And no one caught on until now.

I felt nauseous.

Tanner sat down when I told him. “You understand you got information a lot of people don't want you to have.”

I didn't like the way he said that. “I . . . understand that.”

“You understand that people do all kind of things to not get caught.”

I gulped. “Well, yeah . . .”

“Keep your head down.”

I slumped in my chair. “What do you mean exactly?”

“Anybody outside of us asks, you know nothing.”

 

“Mrs. Gladstone. I think, that is, I know . . . at least I think I know . . .”

“Out with it, Jenna.”

I blurted, “Gladstone shoes are being made in Thailand and then shipped to Bangor.” I told her what Lou had said.

She looked sadly at the picture of Elden as a laughing child. He'd been a cute little boy. She reached for that photograph. Everything within me told me to shut up, but the truth was stuck in my throat and if I didn't say it, I'd probably choke.

“That's not him anymore, Mrs. Gladstone.”

I thought she was going to start yelling.

“It's not him. You've got to have another picture in your mind of him because if you don't, your son is going to keep hurting you.”

She put the picture down fast and stared out the window.

I wasn't sure if I should say this next part. “Mrs. Gladstone, sometimes the worst thing you can do for someone you love is look the other way when you know they're doing something really wrong.” I told her about my dad driving drunk and how I had to stop him.

She looked at me almost tenderly.

“That's the hard part of finding out the truth, ma'am.”

“And how is your relationship with your father now, if I may ask.”

I let out a big breath. “We haven't got one right now.”

“I'm sorry, dear. You deserve better.”

“So do you.”

She looked at Elden's little boy face. “He was such a thoughtful child. I don't understand what happened.” She turned back to me. “Get me Leona Kyler on the phone in San Diego.”

Leona Kyler is one of Mrs. Gladstone's top store managers. Her store is always in the top five in sales year after year.

I got her on the line.

Mrs. Gladstone reached for the phone. “Leona, just how tough are you feeling today?”

Leona Kyler was feeling really tough. She marched down to Long Beach, shoved her Gladstone's security pass around, and demanded to look inside the shipping crates after they got through customs for inspection. She said the whole shipment contained Rollings Walkers with minuscule easy pull-off labels that read MADE IN THAILAND. Those labels got them through customs, she said, but it was obvious they were yanked off by the time they got to Maine.

Mrs. Gladstone picked up the crab shell on my desk. “Shells are interesting creations, Jenna. They can protect, they can cover.” She held it up to the fluorescent light. “Or they can hide. Have you ever heard of a shell corporation?”

“No.”

“Too often they are companies that only exist on paper that are used to hide illegal financial activity.”

The puzzle pieces were coming together.

Plant 427 was in Thailand.

West Virginia Shoe was the cover-up company.

Trade Winds International was nothing but a no-information website.

Mrs. Gladstone whirled into action. “I'm going to need to talk to an attorney, Jenna, one who isn't connected with the company. It appears I'm swimming with at least one shark. They won't be too happy about being discovered.”

I figured if I needed a lawyer, she would have mentioned it. The only lawyer I'd ever met did mom's divorce. As for sharks, I'd met enough of them to know that they were always hungry.

 

The next day, Mrs. Gladstone struggled to speak. “The press has done the investigative work for us with regard to this overseas operation in Thailand. Apparently the conditions in the factory are
deplorable.
” She raised her ancient chin high. “We are running, it seems, a full-scale sweatshop.”

I took a deep breath. I knew sweatshops were places that hired poor people and made them work too long hours for hardly any money. She held a paper in her hand, put on her glasses, and began to read. “Gladstone Shoes has been found to have engaged in systematic and serious violations of workers' rights in Thailand, including, but not limited to”—she winced—“child labor. The children at the factory were found to be of eleven to fourteen years of age. They are forced to work twelve- to fourteen-hour shifts. They are exposed to gross health and safety infractions. They are fined if they do not meet their production quotas for the day, and the quotas are set unfairly high.”

I was having trouble breathing.

“It was found that workers of all ages at this factory were subjected to verbal abuse and harassment, workers are restricted from using toilet facilities regularly, and those who have complained have been fired or penalized.” She shook her head. “God help us.” She stopped and collected herself. “There are no pay slips so that people actually know how much they're making, no emergency processes in place, the cafeterias are dirty, the food is unsafe, employees do not have protective equipment when working on the machines, there are heavy chemical fumes and poor ventilation . . .” She threw the paper down. “All in the name of the almighty dollar! Let's save money at the cost of our responsibility to our workers!”

I didn't know what to say. I tried to picture what it was like there and couldn't.

“I thank God this has been discovered. I'm going to do everything I know to make it right for those people!”

Her phone buzzed.
“Yes,”
she said impatiently. “Tell him to wait, Murray. . . . Yes, I know he says it's terribly important.” She turned back to me. “An article about this is coming out in tomorrow's
Dallas Herald.
After that, it will be picked up on all the news wires.” She pushed her chair away from the desk. “There is no excuse and I will not make one. I should have known what was happening in my own company. I just thank God my husband and father aren't here to witness this.”

I didn't say what I was thinking—how Elden probably masterminded this whole thing.

“It's going to be a feeding frenzy for a while with the media, Jenna.”

I thought about that one trip Mom, Faith, and I took to SeaWorld, where we watched the sharks being fed. They'd just swoop in and gobble up the food—bumping into each other, swishing through the water, those big jaws chomping away at lunch.

“Tell me what you want me to do, Mrs. Gladstone.”

She raised a bony finger and pointed it at me. “I want you to learn from this. I want you to write it on your heart. I want you to see and understand that businesses who do this
should
and
must
answer to the consequences.”

 

I stood on the sales floor of Gladstone's and looked at the children's tree. All I could think about were eleven-year-old kids working in some Thailand sweatshop making shoes all day, every day of their young lives.

Tanner was heading out. I stopped him.

“There's going to be trouble tomorrow, Tanner. Something big.”

He turned around. “I figured it was coming.”

“You want to go get a pizza?”

“Yeah.”

He headed out the door and started walking down the street.

“I meant
together.
”

 

“How bad's this thing that's coming?”

I explained about the article in the paper, the accusations, how Gladstone's wasn't about that, but we had to deal with what had been done.

Tanner ate some pizza. “People think they can shove poor people around and they won't get caught. They think kids'll get too scared or be too stupid to turn anyone in. You know what's stronger than fear?”

“No.”

“When someone who's been sat on decides they've had enough.”

He touched his scar when he said it—it was so long. It curved across his cheek. I didn't mean to stare.

“You want to know how I got it?”

I looked away. “I'm sorry . . .” I studied the deep-dish pizza. “Actually, Tanner, yes. I'd like to know.”

“My father was back from jail. He and my mother, they had a fight. He had a knife. He was screaming, telling her he was going to cut her up. I stood between them. I told him no, he wasn't—he'd have to go through me first. He got to me, but not to her.”

He tapped the table knife.

I didn't know what to say.

“I was twelve years old. That day I knew I didn't have a father.”

 

Tonight I knew I wasn't a kid anymore.

There was too much happening; I needed to be strong and fully grown-up to handle it.

I felt like unseen evil forces were banding together. I was glad to get in my car, glad to hear the door lock click tight. The air was stuffy, but I didn't want to crack a window.

I drove home looking over my shoulder, but only briefly. I needed to keep my eyes on the road. Every car has a rearview mirror, but if you spend too much time looking there, you'll probably crash. You've got to look ahead to where you're going much more than always checking back from where you came. Driving teaches you a lot about life, although they haven't quite figured out all the applications in Driver's Ed.

I turned right and headed for Michigan Avenue, drove down the Magnificent Mile with the megastores and hotels and expensive restaurants. I could see the old Water Tower lit up in the distance—it looked like a cream-colored castle. It was one of the few things still standing after the Great Chicago Fire.