“This is continuous dumping, not a one-time accident.”
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “We only handle spills.”
“Can I speak to your supervisor?” growled Charles.
“Just a minute,” sighed the woman.
Charles waited impatiently, rubbing his face with his hands. He was perspiring.
“Can I help you?” asked still another woman coming on the line.
“I certainly hope so,” said Charles. “I’m calling to report that there is a factory regularly dumping benzene which is a poison.”
“Well, we don’t handle that,” interrupted the woman. “You’ll have to call the proper state agency.”
“What?” yelled Charles. “What the hell does the EPA do then?”
“We are a regulatory agency,” said the woman calmly, “tasked to regulate the environment.”
“I would think that dumping a poison into a river would be something that would concern you.”
“It very well could be,” agreed the woman, “but only after the state had looked into it. Do you want the number for the proper state agency?”
“Give it to me,” said Charles wearily. As he hung up he caught Ellen staring at him. He glared and she went back to work.
Charles waited for the dial tone, then dialed again.
“Okay,” said the woman after hearing his problem. “What river are you talking about?”
“The Pawtomack,” said Charles. “My God, am I finally talking to the right people?”
“Yes, you are,” reassured the woman. “And where is the factory you think is dumping?”
“The factory is in Shaftesbury,” said Charles.
“Shaftesbury?” questioned the woman. “That’s in New Hampshire, isn’t it?”
“That’s right but…”
“Well, we don’t handle New Hampshire.”
“But the river is mostly in Massachusetts.”
“That might be,” said the woman, “but the origin is in New Hampshire. You’ll have to talk to them.”
“Give me strength,” muttered Charles.
“Excuse me?”
“Do you have their number?”
“No. You’ll have to get it through Information.”
The line went dead.
Charles called New Hampshire information and obtained the number to State Services. There was no listing for Water Pollution Control, but after calling the main number, Charles got the extension he wanted. Thinking that he was beginning to sound like a recording, he repeated his request once again.
“Do you want to report this anonymously?” asked the woman.
Surprised by the question, Charles took a moment to respond. “No. I’m Dr. Charles Martel, R.D. #1, Shaftesbury.”
“All right,” said the woman slowly, as if she were writing the material down. “Where does the alleged dumping occur?”
“In Shaftesbury. A company called Recycle, Ltd. They’re discarding benzene in the Pawtomack.”
“Okay,” said the woman. “Thank you very much.”
“Wait a minute,” called Charles. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll turn this over to one of our engineers,” said the woman. “And he’ll look into it.”
“When?”
“I can’t say for certain.”
“Can you give me an idea?”
“We’re pretty busy with several oil spills down at Portsmouth, so it will probably be several weeks.”
Several weeks wasn’t what Charles wanted to hear.
“Are any of the engineers around now?”
“No. Both of them are out. Wait! Here comes one now. Would you like to speak to him?”
“Please.”
There was a short delay before a man came on the line.
“Larry Spencer here!” said the engineer.
Charles quickly told the man why he was calling and that he’d like someone to check out the dumping immediately.
“We’ve got a real manpower problem in this department,” explained the engineer.
“But this is really serious. Benzene is a poison, and a lot of people live along the river.”
“It’s all serious,” said the engineer.
“Is there anything I can do to speed things up?” asked Charles.
“Not really,” said the engineer. “Although you could go to the EPA and see if they’re interested.”
“That’s who I called first. They referred me to you.”
“There you go!” said the engineer. “It’s hard to predict which cases they’ll take on. After we do all the dirty work they usually help, but sometimes they’re interested from the start. It’s a crazy, inefficient system. But it’s the only one we’ve got.”
Charles thanked the engineer and rang off. He felt the man was sincere and at least he’d said that the EPA might be interested after all. Charles had noticed the EPA was housed in the JFK Building at government center in Boston. He wasn’t going to try another phone call; he decided he’d go in person. Restlessly Charles got to his feet and reached for his coat.
“I’ll be right back,” he called over to Ellen.
Ellen didn’t respond. She waited several full minutes after the door closed behind Charles before checking the corridor. Charles was nowhere to be seen. Returning to the desk, Ellen dialed Dr. Morrison’s number. She had convinced herself that Charles was acting irresponsibly, even taking into consideration his daughter’s illness, and that it wasn’t fair for him to jeopardize her job as well as his own. Dr. Morrison listened gravely to Ellen, then told her he’d be right down. Before he hung up he mentioned that her help in this difficult affair would not go unrecognized.
Charles felt a building frenzy when he left the Weinburger. Everything was going poorly, including his idea of revenge. After his time on the phone, he was no longer so positive he could do anything about Recycle, Ltd. short of going up there with his old shotgun. The image of Michelle in her hospital bed again rose to haunt him. Charles did not know why he was so certain she was not going to respond to the chemotherapy. Maybe it was his crazy way of forcing himself to deal with the worst possible case, because he recognized that chemotherapy was her only hope. “If she has to have leukemia,” cried Charles shaking the Pinto’s steering wheel, “why can’t she have lymphocytic where chemotherapy is so successful.”
Without realizing it, Charles had allowed his car to slow below forty miles an hour, infuriating the other drivers on the road. There was a cacophony of horns, and as people passed him, they shook their fists.
After stashing his car in the municipal parking garage, Charles made his way up the vast bricked walk between the JFK Federal Building and the geometric City Hall. The buildings acted as a wind tunnel and Charles had to lean into the gusts to walk. The sun was weakly shining at that moment, but a gray cloud bank was approaching from the west. The temperature was twenty-four degrees.
Charles pushed through the revolving door and searched for a directory. To his left was an exhibition of John F. Kennedy photographs and straight ahead, next to the elevator, a makeshift coffee and donut concession had been set up.
Dusting Charles with a fine layer of confectioner’s sugar as she spoke, one of the waitresses pointed out the directory. It was hidden behind a series of smiling teenage photos of John F. Kennedy. The EPA was listed on the twenty-third floor. Charles scrambled onto an elevator just before the door closed. Looking around at his fellow occupants, Charles wondered about the strange predominance of green polyester.
Charles got out on the twenty-third floor and made his way to an office marked DIRECTOR. That seemed like a good place to start.
Immediately inside the office was a large metal desk and typing stand dominated by an enormous woman whose hair was permed into a profusion of tight curls. A rhinestone-encrusted cigarette holder, capped by a long, ultrathin cigarette, protruded jauntily from the corner of her mouth and competed for attention with her prodigious bosom that taxed the tensile strength of her dress. As Charles approached she adjusted the curls at her temples, viewing herself in a small hand mirror.