Approximately forty employees in white uniforms and white caps were hard at work in the large main room – pastry chefs, bread bakers, assistant bakers, clean-up boys – amidst the assembly tables, dough-mixing machines, cook tops, and ovens. The whir of mixer blades, the clink-clank of spoons and metal spatulas, the scrape-rattle of pans and cookie sheets being slid across baking racks, the muffled roar of gas flames in the hollow steel shells of the minimally insulated commercial ovens: this noise was music to Tommy, although like everything else about the place, it had two conflicting qualities – a cheerful and engaging melody, but an ominous underlying rhythm.
The hot air immediately chased away the chill of the night and the rain. But almost at once, Tommy felt that the air was too hot to breathe comfortably.
‘Which one’s your brother?’ Del asked.
‘He’s probably in the shift manager’s office.’ Tommy realized that Del had removed the Santa hat. ‘Thanks for not wearing the stupid hat.’
She withdrew it from a pocket in her leather jacket. ‘I only took it off so the rain wouldn’t ruin it.’
‘Please don’t wear it, don’t embarrass me,’ he said.
‘You have no sense of style.’
‘Please. I want my brother to take me seriously.’
‘Doesn’t your brother believe in Santa?’
‘Please. My family are very serious people.’
‘Please, please,’ she mocked him, but teasingly and without malice. ‘Maybe they should have become morticians instead of bakers.’
Tommy expected her to don the frivolous red-flannel chapeaux with characteristic defiance, but she crammed it back into her jacket pocket.
‘Thank you,’ he said gratefully.
‘Take me to the sombre and humourless Gi Minh Phan, infamous anti-Santa activist.’
Tommy led her along one side of the main room, between the equipment-packed baking floor and the stainless-steel doors to a series of coolers and storerooms. The place was brightly lighted with banks of suspended fluorescent fixtures, and everything was nearly as well scrubbed as a hospital surgery.
He had not visited the bakery in at least four years, during which time its business had grown, so he didn’t recognize many of the employees on the graveyard shift. They all appeared to be Vietnamese, and the great majority were men. Most of them were concentrating so intensely on their work that they didn’t notice they had visitors.
The few who looked up tended to focus on Del Payne and give Tommy only scant attention. Even rain-soaked – again – and bedraggled, she was an attractive woman. In her wet and clinging white uniform and black leather jacket, she possessed an irresistible air of mystery.
He was glad she wasn’t wearing the Santa hat. That would have been too much novelty to ignore even for a roomful of industrious Vietnamese fixated on their work. Everyone would have been staring at her.
The manager’s office was in the right front corner of the room, elevated four steps above the main floor. Two walls were glass, so the shift boss could see the entire bakery without getting up from his desk.
More often than not, Gi would have been on the floor, working elbow to elbow with the bakers and their apprentices. At the moment, however, he was at his computer, with his back to the glass door at the top of the steps.
Judging by the tables of data on the monitor, Tommy figured his brother was putting together a computer model of the chemistry of a new recipe. Evidently some pastry hadn’t been coming out of the ovens as it should, and they hadn’t been able to identify the problem on the floor, with sheer baker’s instinct.
Gi didn’t turn around when Tommy and Del entered, closing the door behind them. ‘Minute,’ he said, and his fingers flew across the computer keyboard.
Del nudged Tommy with one elbow and showed him the red-flannel cap, half out of her pocket.
He scowled.
She grinned and put the cap away.
When Gi finished typing, he spun around in his chair, expecting to see an employee, and gaped wide-eyed at his brother.
‘Tommy!’
Unlike their brother Ton, Gi Minh was willing to use Tommy’s American name.
‘Surprise,’ Tommy said.
Gi rose from his chair, a smile breaking across his face, but then he registered that the person with Tommy wasn’t an employee either. As he turned his full attention to Del, his smile froze.