When Gordon asked to discuss renewal in November 2001, I brought the quantity sheets Celia and I had kept for the year. He brought photocopied pages. I recognized the difference before I understood it: I had prepared to talk about what we could sew, and he had prepared to talk about whom he could trust.
"These are from the Los Angeles Times, June eighteenth and nineteenth, 2001," he said, putting the excerpts beside my figures. "About that Dunbar robbery."
I read the identification on the pages before going further. The account described six defendants in the 1997 Los Angeles robbery, the organizer's dismissal the preceding day, and the theft of $18.9 million. Four years earlier I had heard the sum on a stockroom radio. Now it sat in a paragraph among outcomes I had not known.
The June nineteenth account said a defendant had received a sentence of twenty-four years and two months. I read that twice, not because the number was difficult but because years in print looked so manageable. The account was reporting a sentence, not telling me how anybody had lived through it or what time had actually been served.
There was a broken vehicle tail-light lens too, linked by investigators to a rented truck. I had spent years hearing people speak confidently about what ought to have been obvious. Here was an attributed account of work I had neither witnessed nor helped with. I knew only what the page said, and I kept my finger beside the paragraph while Gordon talked.
"They followed something that small," he said. "And still millions gone."
"Unaccounted for in June," I said.
"That's what I mean."
It was not quite what he meant. He wanted the missing millions to stand in the room as a permanent warning. I could see the dated words. I could not see beyond them, and neither could he through these excerpts. I moved the pages a little to recover the corner of my production schedule.
"What does this change about your order?" I asked.
Gordon leaned back. "People carry habits from one place to another. When a trade has had that kind of breach, you have to be more careful about who handles your business."
"Dunbar wasn't Harrowgate."
"I know where you worked." He said it patiently, as though I had corrected a detail that did not affect the lesson. "I'm talking about former armored-company people generally. On my account, I'd prefer not to have them involved."
I looked at him long enough that he added, "Other than you, obviously. We've dealt with each other for years."
Celia was not at that meeting. I would have to tell her what he had said, and I could already hear how my silence might sound when repeated. I asked whether he meant work history alone, regardless of the person's duties, record with us, or actual conduct. He said he wanted a clean line he could explain.
"Celia did uniform work," I said. "So did I."
"And you own the operation. That's different."
I remembered turning a cash book toward her as if the columns were a witness. Gordon's pages were real public accounts. His next step was not contained in them. The accounts described a robbery and its investigation; they did not tell him that the woman who repaired his pockets should lose his work.
I showed him the shared production records: completed quantities, corrections, delivery dates. He glanced at them and said those were useful, but this was about reducing exposure. I asked what exposure he could identify in our repairs. He said a businessman did not have to wait for a problem before setting standards.
For a moment I wanted to agree to a vague standard and argue about its meaning later. The larger account still promised relief from the arithmetic Hugh and I had done. Instead I asked Gordon to put the proposed condition in writing, along with the quantities, payment terms, and any exceptions he intended.
He gathered the excerpts but let me keep copies. I folded them separately from the order sheets. Back at the workroom, I wrote down his words before speaking to Celia, careful to distinguish what he had proposed from what the newspaper accounts had actually reported. Then I put both papers on our common table.