Another sign. Red letters on a white background. Place was full of signs. He ignored this one, too, because he didn’t plan to be working around the grain-unloading area or any damn area. All he planned to do was find Mr. Matthew Hope, who had disappeared inside here someplace. And when he found him—
White letters on a red background this time. More damn signs in this place. He was walking through a large open outdoor space adjacent to the parking lot and separated from it by a cyclone fence with an open, unlocked gate in it. The parking lot had been full of signs advising that only employees of the Brechtmann Brewing Company could park here, but he’d ignored those signs, and then ignored the sign on the cyclone fence, and was now ignoring every sign in sight. All he wanted to do was walk past these railroad cars, and get inside where—
Jesus!
Matthew Hope himself coming out of the building and—
Hurley ducked behind the closest railroad car.
“This is where our grain comes in,” Curtis said. “The malt and the corn. The cars you see out here each hold about two hundred thousand pounds. Hoses suck the grain up to the fifth floor, where it’s crushed and then transported to the scale room where it’s weighed. Right now, these cars are bringing in malt.”
“From where?”
“The Midwest, mostly. Want to see how we brew the stuff?”
Matthew looked at his watch.
“Don’t worry, they’ll let us know when she’s free,” Curtis said.
Hurley waited until the door to the building had closed behind them. He walked out swiftly from behind the railroad car, up the concrete steps, opened the door, and caught sight of them just as they entered the elevator at the far end of the corridor. He watched the floor indicator. Two, three…
The needle stopped at four.
He pressed the button alongside the doors. A sign on the doors read:
The stainless steel doors opened.
Same sign inside the elevator.
Made him feel like lighting a cigarette.
He pressed the button for the fifth floor.
“We store the malt here on the fourth floor,” Curtis said. “These bins hold a hundred thousand pounds each.”
“Uh-huh,” Matthew said.
“Downstairs was the beginning, if you will. Where the malt came in. Beginning, middle, and end, right? Up here is a sort of intermission, the malt just lying here until the actual brewing process begins. Now we’ll go downstairs again, and I’ll show you the middle.”
“The middle, uh-huh.”
“The mashing and cooking.”
“Uh-huh, mashing and cooking.”
“To get the wort we need.”
“The what? ”
“The wort. W-O-R-T. It’s this sugary sort of solution that we send to the brew kettles.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Never get off at the same floor. Do that and you ran the risk of your man standing there staring you in the face when the elevator doors opened. Always go to the floor above, take the steps down — the way Hurley was doing now — open your door cautiously, take a peek around it, see what was happening. No surprises. Hurley hated surprises.
A huge, plastic numeral four, white on a black field, alongside the stainless-steel door. Same grain-hazard warning sign on the door. White on red. He put his ear to the door. Nothing but the thrumming of heavy machinery somewhere in the building. He took the knob in his hand. Twisted it slowly. Opened the door just a crack—
And saw them getting back into the elevator!
What?
Hurley hated surprises.
He kept the door cracked just a jot until the elevator doors closed behind them. He came out onto the floor. Just these huge metal bins. Not a soul anywhere in sight. Didn’t anyone work here?
Indicator over the elevator. Dropping. Three, two…
And stopping on the first floor.
He went back to the staircase and started downstairs.
A glistening stainless-steel tank some twelve feet in diameter. Capping the tank, a domed copper top. The tank and its domed top resembled a diving bell that had mistakenly surfaced inside the building. Set into the copper top was a circular opening some three feet in diameter. A steel-rimmed, thick glass lid on hinges was folded back against the sloping side of the dome. The lid resembled an oversized porthole cover. The opening in the tank was protected by a steel safety guard in the shape of a cross, quartering the space into pie-shaped wedges so that no one but a very small midget could accidentally fall into the tank. Steam billowed up out of the tank.
“The temperature in there is something like a hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit,” Curtis said.
He was wearing a yellow cloth cap with a pair of red Bs intertwined on its crown, the distinctive Brechtmann Brewing colophon. He had given Matthew a yellow paper cap with the same red colophon on it, in obedience to a sign that warned:
Matthew felt like a jackass in the paper hat.
The room containing the mash tank was stiflingly hot.
Several control panels at the far end of the room were studded with switches and toggles and red lights and green lights and temperature valves — but no one seemed to be monitoring them. The room was empty except for Curtis and Matthew, who stood on the raised metal platform that ran alongside the tank. Matthew remembered Anthony Holden telling him there were only fifteen men on the afternoon shift. Divide those fifteen men by the five floors in the building…
“This safety guard lifts out,” Curtis said, “if you’d like to take a peek inside here.”
Matthew did not want to take a peek inside there.
But Curtis was already lifting out the heavy, cross-shaped guard. With some difficulty, he set it on its side on the floor of the platform, peeked into the tank himself, and then stepped back for Matthew to take a look.
“This batch we’re brewing is Golden Girl,” he said, “that’s our premium beer. Which means it contains the highest percentage of the choicer two-row barley malt.”
“As opposed to what?” Matthew said.
“Why, the six-row,” Curtis said, sounding surprised. “There’s a price difference of at least a dollar a bushel. We brew Golden Girl with more of the two-row. Our other beers have some of the two-row in them, but they’re mostly six-row. The process is exactly the same, of course. Malt and water in the mash tank — which is what this is — and corn and water in the cooker over there.”
Matthew looked over there. Another huge stainless-steel tank. No dome on this one. Only what looked like a shining copper conning tower. The entire room seemed nautical to him.
“We bring both to a boil,” Curtis said, “and then pump the corn and water into the mash tank with the malt. Take a look inside here.”
Matthew took a look inside. He saw a bubbling, boiling brownish solution. Rising steam hit his face. The smell was of hot beer. No, not quite beer. Primitive beer. Fetal beer. An overpowering aroma that made his nostrils and his throat feel congested. He remembered what Anthony Holden had told him: “There was a time when I detested the aroma of malt.”