Save Me

Chapter Sixty-two

Rose pushed up her fake glasses and walked up to the counter, holding a steno pad she’d bought at a drugstore down the street. The office of the Maryland Occupational Safety & Health Administration was small and cluttered, with an old-fashioned coat rack, a fake ficus plant, and an umbrella stand. Mismatched government-issue chairs were grouped in the waiting area around a rickety coffee table covered with stacks of Maryland Department of Labor forms, a multi-colored brochure entitled Workplace Safety and YOU, and a beat-up copy of People magazine.

“May I help you?” asked an older African-American woman behind the counter, smiling in a sweet way.

“Hi, I’m Annie Adler.” Rose was sure this was going to be her last lie, but it was hard to quit cold turkey. Maybe if they had a patch, or something. “Joe Modjeska sent me. You know, Mojo? He worked here, until about six months ago.”

“Mojo! Of course, how is he? I love that man.”

“He’s doing great, working for Campanile, just over the border, in Pennsylvania.”

“I know. He always said he was meant for better things. A big man with a personality to match.”

“Tell me about it. He shoots a sixty-three now, and it’s all he talks about.”

“Golf, golf, golf! That man lived for golf!”

“Don’t they all? Me, I live for shoes.”

“Ha!” The woman extended a hand over the counter. “I’m Julie Port. How can I help you?”

“I’m a writer for Hunt Country Life, a magazine in southern Pennsylvania, where Mojo lives.” Rose brandished her steno pad. “We’re doing a short profile on him, and I wonder if I can ask you a question or two. He said you might not mind, and the good press would help him out.”

“Sure enough.” Julie checked the waiting room, which was empty. “We’re not busy today, and I can take a couple minutes. If it helps Mojo, I’m in.” She moved to the side, opened a swinging door in the counter, and gestured. “Come with me. We’ll go in the break room.”

“Thanks.” Rose followed her past a few workers talking on the phone and typing on computer keyboards, then they went down a hall to a lunchroom with round Formica tables, hard plastic chairs, and a bank of vending machines.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Julie waved her into a chair, sitting down.

“Thanks.” Rose took a seat, put her steno pad on the table, flipped it open to the first page, and slid a pen from her purse. “Now, he began working here about five years ago. He was at Homestead before that, wasn’t he? In Reesburgh?”

“Yes, he was. He was their Director of Safety.” Julie’s face fell into lines, her jowls draping her lipsticked mouth. “He took it very hard.”

“What did he take hard?” Rose didn’t know what she meant.

“He blamed himself, but it wasn’t his fault, any of it.” Julie clucked. “Forklift accidents are among the most common, and it wasn’t his fault that that man died.”

Whoa. Rose realized she meant Bill Gigot. “Mojo has such a big heart.”

“He surely does, and he was an excellent safety manager, I’m positive of that. He’s very diligent.”

“That sounds like him.”

“Yes, and from what he told me, the lighting was insufficient in the loading area where the man worked, and he wasn’t real experienced with the forklift. In fact, Mojo got him a job in the peanut building.”

Rose made rapid notes, for real. “Peanut building?”

“Where they made the peanut butter crackers. They had to use dedicated equipment and such, to protect people with peanut allergies. It’s FDA and state regs.”

“So you were saying.”

“Anyway, to get back to the story, the man didn’t have enough experience operating a forklift. Also, they require forklift travel lanes and the like. You can’t play fast and loose with a forklift.”

“Of course not.” Rose kept making notes.

“Mojo didn’t like to talk about what happened, but I could tell how sad he was, inside. The man went over the side of the loading dock, killed when his head hit the floor. Mojo found him, on his rounds.” Julie clucked. “He made sure the man’s widow got herself a nice check without even having to file or sue.”

“So that’s the kind of man he is, huh?” Rose made another note, and Julie shook her head.

“No good deed goes unpunished, though. Before you know it, Mojo’s tossed out.”

“Oh no.” Rose lowered her voice. “They fired him?”

“I think they asked for his resignation, you know how they do. But he was too proud to let on, with me.” Julie frowned. “Don’t put that in your story, okay?”

“None of this will be in, I promise.” Rose suppressed a guilty pang.

“Thanks.” Julie nodded. “Tell you somethin’ else about him. He came in as a director after his training, but he never lorded it over anybody.”

“What did he do here?”

“Oh, right. You might not know, because the compliance offices in Pennsylvania are run by the feds.” Julie cleared her throat. “Well, OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, administers workforce safety out of D.C. But some states, like Maryland, have their own compliance agencies, too.”

“I see.” Rose took notes, and Julie warmed to her topic.

“We cooperate with the feds, and we work hard to ensure that every man and woman in the state has safe and healthful working conditions.”

“So Mojo came here after his training. Where did he train?”

“Baltimore, with everybody else.”

“Why did he need training, if he’d been a safety manager at Homestead?”

“That’s what he said!” Julie laughed. “We train anyway, and he didn’t know the way we do things down here.”

Rose thought a minute. “I didn’t ask him, but was he a Maryland resident then?”

“No, he had to move here.”

Rose hesitated, and Julie leaned over.

“Next, you’re gonna ask me how he got the job, and that I don’t know. He moved to Harford County, just over the state line. I knew he wouldn’t stay forever. He wanted to go back to Pennsylvania, and they were building the house. You’ve seen that place of his?”

“Yes, that’s where I interviewed him.”

“His wife’s family, they got money. That, he told me.” Julie leaned over again. “How else you think he could afford to build custom, especially from that fancy company? He liked it so much, that’s who he went to work for.”

“Campanile.” Rose made a fake note, and suddenly a fluorescent light began to flicker overhead.

“Uh-oh!” Julie looked up, curled her lip in annoyance. “Here we go again. Building Maintenance’s gotta come change that bulb. I don’t know how to do fluorescents, you know, those long, skinny ones.”

“Me, neither.”

“Mojo wouldn’t have any of that, of course. If he was here, he’d get on a ladder, grab a screwdriver, take off that panel, and change that bulb himself, no waiting.” Julie nodded. “Mojo can fix anything.”

“Even lights?”

“Sure enough. That’s something else you probably don’t know about Mojo. You can put it in your article.”

“What?”

“He’s a master electrician.”