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A new plant manager signs for steel he has never watched anybody make, and finds out the mill runs an honest second shift at night, on a furnace that is supposed to be cold, for somebody who is not the customer whose name is on the certificate.

Terrence Vaughn has been at Calumet Specialty Alloys four months. In his second week he reads a sulfur number that is over the aerospace limit and decides it is a reporting convention. He is right that it proves nothing. He spends the next three weeks learning that being right about that is not the same as being honest.

Twice a month a furnace that goes cold at seven in the evening comes up blue white behind a wall and runs until dawn, and a plain white truck with no lettering on any surface backs to the north door. What goes out on it is exactly what the certificate promises. That is the whole problem.