“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.

“Excuse me,” said Charles, wondering if this was one of the women he’d spoken to on the phone. “I’m here to report a recycling plant that’s dumping benzene into a local river. Whom do I speak with?”

Continuing to pat her hair, the woman suspiciously examined Charles. “Is benzene a hazardous substance?” she demanded.

“Damn right it’s hazardous,” said Charles.

“I suppose you should go down to the Hazardous Materials Division on the nineteenth floor,” said the woman with a tone that suggested “you ignorant slob.”

After eight flights of stairs, Charles emerged on nineteen, which had a totally different atmosphere. All except weight-bearing walls were removed, so that one could look from one end of the building to the other. The floor was filled with a maze of chest-height metal dividers separating the area into tiny cubicles. Above the scene hung a haze of cigarette smoke and the unintelligible murmur of hundreds of voices.

Charles entered the maze, noticing there were poles resembling street signs, describing the various departments. The Hazardous Materials Division was helpfully adjacent to the stairwell Charles had used, so he began to look at the signs delineating the subdivisions. He passed the Noise Program, the Air Program, the Pesticide Program, and the Radiation Program. Just beyond the Solid Waste Program he saw the Toxic Waste Program. He headed in that direction.

Turning off the main corridor, Charles again confronted a desk serving as a kind of barrier to the interior. It was a much smaller desk and occupied by a slender black fellow who had apparently taken great effort to brush his naturally curly hair straight. To his credit, the man gave Charles his full attention. He was fastidiously dressed and when he spoke, he spoke with an accent almost English in its precision.

“I’m afraid you’re not in the right section,” said the young man after hearing Charles’s request.

“Your division doesn’t handle benzene?”

“We handle benzene all right,” said the man, “but we just handle the permits and licensing of hazardous materials.”

“Where do you suggest I go?” asked Charles, controlling himself.

“Hmmm,” said the man, putting a carefully manicured finger to the tip of his nose. “You know, I haven’t the slightest idea. This has never come up. Wait, let me ask somebody else.”

With a light, springy step, the young man stepped around the desk, smiled at Charles, and disappeared into the interior of the maze. His shoes had metal taps and the sound carried back to Charles, distinct from the sounds of nearby typewriters. Charles fidgeted as he waited. He had the feeling his efforts were going to turn out to be totally in vain.

The young black came back.

“Nobody really knows where to go,” he admitted. “But it was suggested that perhaps you could try the Water Programs Division on the twenty-second floor. Maybe they can help.”