Chapter 5 - The Laundry on Sixth
The car was a black Mercedes S-Class, long and heavy, with double-glazed windows that shut out the roar of San Francisco the moment the doors thudded shut. The driver, a sixty-year-old former San Jose patrolman named Thomas who had worked for Michael for eleven years, took one look in the rearview mirror, saw the two little girls sitting rigidly on the leather bench and Emma asleep in Michael’s arms, and did not ask a single question.
"Sixth and Howard, Thomas," Michael said. "The commercial wash house behind the old Greyhound yard."
"Got it, Mr. Willoughby."
The car glided down the Embarcadero, turning south onto Folsom. Outside, the city changed character within eight blocks. The sparkling glass towers of the financial district gave way to concrete warehouses, boarded-up storefronts, and the tents of the homeless clustered beneath the elevated ramps of Interstate 80. Rain had begun to fall—thin, greasy city rain that made the asphalt shine like wet slate under the sodium-vapor streetlights.
Lily stared out the window, her nose pressed against the glass until a small circle of fog formed around her mouth. "Are we going to get in trouble?"
"No," Michael said.
"Clara will be mad," Lily whispered. "She told us to stay inside the room until the whistle blew at eight."
"Where is the room?" Michael asked.
Scarlet answered from the corner of the seat. She was sitting with her back straight, her hands still guarding the paper bag of short ribs that rested between her knees. "The Alder Hotel. Room 214. Above the pawn shop."
Michael knew the Alder. A single-room occupancy building with four shared bathrooms per floor, no central heat, and a fire escape that had been condemned by the city inspectors two years ago. The city paid thirty-two hundred dollars a month per unit to private landlords who lived in Hillsborough, while the families inside bought electric space heaters that blew the circuit breakers twice a week.
"Why were you on the Embarcadero, Scarlet?"
Scarlet looked down at her shoes. Her tights were damp from the rain that had started earlier in the afternoon. "Emma was crying. She said her stomach felt like it was chewing on itself. We had two packages of saltines, but the water in the tap came out brown today. Lily said she saw a place with bread when we walked by the water on Sunday. We took the streetcar."
"Did you pay the fare?"
"The back door opened when people got off," Scarlet said, her voice small and defensive. "We just got on. We didn't hurt anybody."
"I know you didn't," Michael said.
The car turned onto Sixth Street, slowing to avoid three men standing near a fire hydrant in oversized rain ponchos. The commercial laundry was a low, corrugated-steel building with yellow sodium lights hummed above the loading bay. Steam poured from three massive vents on the roof, smelling of chlorine bleach, scorched cotton, and sour dampness.
Thomas pulled the car into the loading lane behind a five-ton linen truck.
"Wait here with Thomas, girls," Michael said. "I am going to get your mother."
Scarlet reached out and grabbed his sleeve. Her fingers were surprisingly strong, the nails bitten down to the quick. "Don't let them fire her. The man with the blue hat fires people if they have visitors."
Michael looked down at her small, pale hand against his gray suit.
"Nobody is firing her tonight, Scarlet. I promise you."
He stepped out into the rain. He did not put on an overcoat. He walked up the concrete ramp of the loading bay, through the heavy plastic strip curtains that kept the steam inside, and stepped onto the concrete floor of the wash house.
The noise hit him like a physical blow. Fourteen industrial washers, each the size of a cement mixer, churned with thousands of pounds of hotel sheets. The air was ninety degrees and saturated with moisture that settled instantly on Michael’s face and clothes. Twenty women, mostly Central American and Southeast Asian, stood along an iron conveyor belt, pulling wet, steaming linen from the bins and feeding it into the rollers of a commercial flatwork ironer that hissed with high-pressure steam.
Near the back, working the third ironer station, was a woman who could not have been older than thirty, though her shoulders were already curved like an old woman’s.
She was thin—dangerously thin—with pale blond hair pulled back in a bandana that had once been red. Her arms were covered in red heat-rash from the steam, and she moved with the mechanical, frantic rhythm of someone whose shift quota was measured by the ounce.
Michael walked through the aisle of rolling laundry bins.
A floor manager with a clipboard and a blue baseball cap stepped out of an elevated glass office. "Hey! Sir! You can't be back here! Safety violation! Get out to the dispatch office!"
Michael did not stop. He walked straight to station three, reached up, and hit the red emergency stop button on the side of the ironer.
The machine groaned. The heavy steel rollers slowed to a halt with a shuddering hiss of released pressure.
The woman with the red bandana froze, her hands hovering two inches from the feed slot, staring at the rollers with wide, terrified eyes. She thought the machine had broken; she thought her day’s pay was gone.
"Clara?" Michael said.
She turned. Her face was drenched in sweat, her blue-gray eyes—the exact same eyes as Emma’s and Lily’s—staring at this tall man in a five-thousand-dollar suit who was standing in the middle of a Sixth Street steam plant.
"Who are you?" she gasped, her voice hoarse from the chemical fumes. "What happened? Are my girls—are they hurt?"
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"Your girls are outside," Michael said. "They are in my car. They are safe, they are warm, and they have had dinner."
Clara’s knees buckled. She would have hit the concrete floor if Michael had not stepped forward, caught her by her elbows, and held her upright against the side of the silent machine.
