Chapter 9
Ben
Ben steps off the production floor with an unfamiliar sense of ease, which, of course, only serves to immediately convince him something is about to go spectacularly wrong.
The plant’s humming along without a hitch today, no jammed machines, no missing shipments, and even the morning’s manifests check out fine despite Tom huffing loudly every time Ben turned a page on his clipboard.
The day’s major tasks are handled by ten, leaving Ben free for a visit he’s been meaning to make.
He heads down four floors to Pina Cattaneo’s cubicle.
It’s tucked away in Procurement, a cheerful basement corner lit by a pink Himalayan salt lamp.
She’s swapped out her quote since he last visited, “I’m here for a good time, not overtime” now gracing the whiteboard in lavender bubble letters.
She’s flipping through a Uline catalog, legs crossed at the ankles, her chocolate-cherry hair twisted into a claw clip.
Her lip gloss matches the color perfectly, and her winged eyeliner looks sharp enough to cut.
She flicks her gaze up as soon as Ben approaches.
“What do you want?” she asks suspiciously.
He’s not bothered by the somewhat hostile welcome; they’ve known each other most of their lives.
Her mother has worked upstairs in Accounts Payable for forever, and Pina babysat him regularly when he was a kid.
She still has a makeup tutorial starring a semi-reluctant pre-teen Ben in full glam, forever ready to embarrass him.
He slides a folder aside so he can perch on the corner of her desk. “Maybe I just came by to say hi.”
“Nice try. You don’t visit me on the clock.
I visit you. I drag you out of your office, force you into lunch breaks, bring you coffee, gossip, moral support.
These are the pillars of our friendship.
” She sets the catalog aside, crossing her arms. “But you only come to see me when you need something official, you bore.”
He offers a small, guilty shrug. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m playing favorites.”
“But I am your favorite. I’m still waiting for my special treatment.” She levels him with a pointed look. “Now out with it, Benjamin, why are you here?”
The way she uses his full name, like she’s still scolding a middle schooler, makes him flash back to Pina in high school, giving him a glittery manicure while they watched cartoons well past his bedtime in the family room. ‘Benjamin, sit still. You’re gonna smudge them.’
Ben fights a grin at the memory. “I’m just running spot checks before next week’s audit. You know how my dad likes everything. And if something’s off, well…”
“Ugh, I know, you’ll get the blame.” Pina waves a dismissive hand, but a note of sympathy undercuts her teasing. “You realize I’m good at my job, right? There’s nothing to worry about.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I know, I do. I just—”
“Can’t help being a Type A neurotic?” she finishes his sentence for him. “I know, sweetie. I forgive you.”
She spins in her chair, running a glossy peach nail down the row of neatly labeled binders shelved behind her. “What do you want to see specifically?”
Ben clears his throat, trying for casual. “Maybe the hard copies of the waste disposal agreements?”
She hands him the stack without argument. “All yours. Knock yourself out. Literally, they might put you to sleep. Boring as shit.”
The files feel strangely heavy in his hand. He works a thumb over a plastic tab. “Mind if I hold onto these for a bit before bringing them back?”
“You’re the boss, not like I can stop you.
” She softens the words with a warm grin.
“But I’m telling you: you won’t find a single unchecked box, missed line or unsigned page.
And when you come up empty, which you will, you owe me lunch at Klaussens.
And no takeout. You have to physically leave this building with me. ”
Ben feigns reluctance, but truthfully, a lunch out does sound nice. “Guess we’ll see.”
“I can already taste the rosemary focaccia,” she teases, shooing him off like a stray cat. “Now scram before a real manager catches me slacking off.” The jab hits with more force than she likely intends.
He tries to laugh it off, half succeeds, waving over his shoulder as he goes.
It’s the reasonable, rational thing to expect that the paperwork is going to turn out to be as impeccable as Pina’s eyeliner.
But first, he has to look. There is no part of him that can fight that particular compulsion.
Ben is intercepted before he can make it back to his office by Amy Calhoun, one of their tow motor drivers. Her cheeks are red, and she’s breathing hard.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she begins in a rush, “but I can’t find Tom anywhere. We’ve got a real clusterfuck of a shipment down there and the driver’s mad as hell, blocking the bay. The weight labels on the crates don’t match the total weight on the manifest. He won’t move until we unload and fix it.”
The crisis turns out to be one of those common but persistent headaches: reweighing crates, reprinting labels, hand-correcting manifests, and reassuring the increasingly irritated driver that, no, he’s not actually going to be over capacity, and yes, everything is being sorted out as quickly as they can.
Tom never shows. Ben tells himself it’s probably nothing, maybe Tom got pulled into something else, like everyone else around here.
But the thought gets stuck, just long enough for Ben to imagine him hanging back on purpose, letting the problem escalate.
Making Ben be the one to sort it out. Or fail to. Stop being paranoid, he tells himself.
By the time he sees the shipment secured and the truck finally roll off the property, his stomach is growling and lunchtime has come and gone.
He detours through the break room, still keyed up from the chaos, rummaging in the fridge until he spots the plastic container with yesterday’s turkey sandwich. Armed with it and his stack of files, he finally settles at his desk.
One by one, he goes through the binders: the fluorescent bulb and battery recyclers, the non-hazardous waste and recycling contracts, the paper shredders. All routine stuff, everything in order.
Then he spots a binder that dwarfs all the others: Finny’s Disposal.
They’ve been a loyal supplier for years, and apparently each season of that long relationship comes with its own forest’s worth of paperwork.
Inside are third-party audits, OSHA safety statistics, order portfolios, disposal facility details, annual capacities, and backup possibilities, MarineSelect noticeably absent from the approved subcontractors list. Usually, if Finny so much as sneezed near a shipping container, odds are there’s a three-page report documenting it.
He lifts the sandwich for a bite. The bread’s a bit stale, and the lettuce is pitifully limp, but he’s too hungry to care. As he chews, he notices that, sure enough, every box is neatly checked off, every signature present and accounted for.
All signs point to Finny’s being in perfect standing, absolutely no barrier to renewing their agreement.
Except, as Ben flips through the last section, where the newest contract should be, there’s just empty space.
The three-year renewal was due in the middle of November, and there’s no updated paperwork attached. Not even a draft.
He stops chewing mid-bite, a cold knot forming in his stomach. Of all the things he expected to see in Finny’s file, ‘nothing’ wasn’t on the list.
Finny’s is a small, family-owned business; Robert Finny, the owner, must be pushing seventy by now.
Ben wonders if maybe Robert quietly retired and shut down his operation, except a quick scroll through their website shows they’re still very much up and running.
There’s even a Christmas greeting on the main page. No sign of trouble.
Confused and unsettled, Ben turns back to the stack of binders on his desk. He sets the half-eaten sandwich aside and rifles through them until he hits the last one, labeled ‘MarineSelect.’ Giving the paperwork its own binder and corresponding tabs is generous, it’s hardly more than a dozen sheets.
The first pages are a new supplier agreement form, and Ben skims it. In theory, the paperwork is in order: safety stats, annual reports, capacities, audited financials, roughly twenty items that need verification before a contract can be approved. But nothing is finished.
In a supply-chain emergency, a member of site leadership can sign off to temporarily waive one or more normal vetting requirements for a thirty-day probationary period.
It’s a rarely used rule, but it’s obviously been invoked here; on the following pages, every single requirement is checked ‘Waived.’ All of them.
What the heck?
He flips to the next tab: the MarineSelect agreement, dated in mid-November, right around the time Finny’s renewal should’ve been processed. Attached are neat forms noting all the waivers, the thirty-day probationary period coming due this Monday, each accompanied by a signature.
His own name again and again in crisp, confident ink, undeniably his looping cursive: B. Whitaker III.
It’s on every relevant contract line, approving every waiver. He stares at it for a moment, a hollow sensation opening in his chest. Whatever is happening here apparently has Ben’s personal stamp of approval.