The Broken Sign Dropped Something That Was Never On My Invoice

Dorian Krell called me sweetheart before he asked my price.

"It's a little glass tube," he said. "How hard can it be?"

"For you, hard enough to call me. For me, $1,380."

He laughed as if I had said something cute.

I was Aviva Rosen, twenty-seven, a Jewish American woman who bent neon tubes for a living. I had olive skin, brown eyes, and dark curls that I tied above the small white burn on my forehead.

That burn had taught me to check where I put my head. Clients like Dorian taught me to check where I put my name.

I set my work order on the bar at the Lantern Room in Fresno. Outside, heat rose off the loading yard. Inside, the club smelled of floor cleaner and old lime peels.

Dorian was a white man of forty-seven, with pale gray eyes, swept-back blond hair, and silver cuffs that shone when he moved his hands.

He spread those hands as if he had welcomed me home. His smile stopped well below his eyes.

"The last fellow charged half that."

"You called because his sign fell."

The fallen piece was a blue glass swallow above a service door. Its hollow mounting rail had split around a bad anchor. The tube had cracked at the tail.

I pointed to the line above his signature.

"Removed rails and scrap become my property. Disposal is included."

"Take the junk," he said. "Just make my bird fly."

He signed with a thick gold pen.

People noticed my small hands before they noticed my case of tools. Some saw a girl with a ladder. They rarely saw the numbered paper beneath their own wrists.

I photographed the rail before I touched it.

Then I traced the bird onto pattern paper and bent copper wire along its broken tail. I practiced hard curves in copper before I tried them in hot glass. That day, I kept making a small open loop, like a gate left ajar.

The curve needed room. Force it closed, and the glass would pinch.

"You making jewelry?" Dorian asked.

"Making sure you don't buy this repair twice."

He lost interest.

I killed the sign circuit, checked it, and took down the damaged rail. Something clicked inside it.

At first I thought it was a loose washer.

A black device, smaller than a matchbox, slid into my glove. It had a lens at one end and a memory card slot at the other. A piece of foam held it behind an old screw hole.

From there, the lens would have faced the loading bay.

I photographed it where it rested against the torn rail. Then I put both pieces in a clean parts box.

Dorian appeared at the service door.

"Find anything worth money?"

"Bad anchors."

"Story of my life." He patted my shoulder without asking. "Take your scrap and go work your magic."

Back at my shop south of the Tower District, I washed my hands twice.

I had found cameras before. Usually someone wanted to catch a worker stealing tips. This one had been hidden with care.

I disconnected my work computer from the network. With a card reader, I made a full copy of the memory card. A disk tool gave the copy and the original matching long strings of numbers and letters. I saved the report and wrote down each step.

Then I opened one copied file.

There was no sound.

A woman stood in the Lantern Room's loading bay, holding a brown ledger against her chest. Dorian took her phone. When she reached for it, he held it above his shoulder.

Two men blocked the open gate.

The woman tried to go around them.

Dorian grabbed her ledger. He wrote something on a white delivery board and held it toward the men. The camera caught the words when he lowered it.

BLUE HOUR. KEEP HER INSIDE. GET THE OTHER BOOK.

He pointed to a gray van. One man took her arm. The other opened the rear door. She braced a foot against the step, and Dorian pushed it inside with his shoe.

I stopped the file.

My shop fan rattled against its guard.

I put the card back in the recorder. I sealed the device in a clean bag, signed across the seal, and placed it in my glass annealing cabinet. The cabinet was cold, unplugged, and had a lock. I hung a red tag across its switch.

My mother called about Friday dinner. I let it ring, then sent her a message that I was safe and working late.

On the county missing-persons page, I found the woman.

Nessa Ward. Twenty-nine. Payroll clerk. Missing six days.

I called the number beneath her face.

"I think I know who took her," I said.

The man who answered asked my name, then waited while I found my voice.

Before I could give him the address, Dorian's name lit up my other phone.