No Colder Place (14 page)

I remembered the raised voices in the conference room in the trailer, the argument Lydia had said was not an argument, just an excited discussion of Mrs. Armstrong’s financial situation. “Has that happened to you?”

“Redlining?” she asked. “What if it has? There are other banks. Is that what you came here to find out? Whether I’m solvent?”

“I don’t know what I came here to find out. I’m an investigator. I’m supposed to be looking into a guy who’s supposed to be a crook. My second day on the job a body’s dug up. I’m fishing.”

“Have you caught anything yet?”

“Rumors. Stories. Are you going to help me?”

“Help you do what?”

“Figure it out. Whether there’s a connection between Joe Romeo and the dead man, Pelligrini.”

“No. I’m going to throw you out of my office.”

“If there is a connection, your site could have a wiseguy problem.”

“If there’s a problem, I’ll deal with it when it starts affecting me.”

“A body in the basement doesn’t affect you?”

“No. What affects me is anything that slows Crowell’s schedule. That’s it.”

“What’s the big deal?” I thought back, again, to the argument in the trailer. I went on, deliberately provocative. “A couple of days here or there. So the building opens a month later. You think that makes you look bad or something, like you’re not Super Black Woman?”

“I don’t give a damn when the building opens, and I don’t give a damn how I look. But the bank does.”

“One little building matters so much to them?”

Her eyes flashed. Gesturing around us, she said, “
This
is a little building. Ninety-ninth and Broadway is the start of something else. I’m looking at two other sites. I’ve already asked Mr. Crowell for preliminary construction budgets. Super Black Woman is going to be a force in this city, Mr. Smith. Now get out.” She picked up the receiver, pressed a button on the phone. She didn’t speak into it.

“Super Black Woman, and Crowell Construction?” I asked.

“Possibly. Why, is that too much for you to stomach, an upstart black woman working with a respected old Irish construction firm?”

“Hell, no. I’m half Irish myself. Black Irish,” I added, as I heard the snick of the lock behind me. The door opened, with Dana in the doorway. I stood. “Thanks for your time, Mrs. Armstrong. I hope, for your sake, that things on that site aren’t as bad as I think.”

“I hope for yours that you stick to what Crowell hired you to do, and keep out of things that aren’t your business.”

The courtyard behind her was completely shadowed now. Her eyes were still bright. I nodded good-bye and turned to where Dana held open the heavy door for me. I glanced at the door and the doorway as I moved through. She was right. I couldn’t have broken it down.

It was late afternoon when I left the Armstrong Properties office, and the rain seemed to have quit for good. When I got to the corner I looked down the hill, west, to the river; the dark clouds above the Palisades were streaked with a bright glow. If the sun broke through before it dipped much lower, there would be hope of a rainbow.

I checked my watch, decided it was close enough to the end of the workday, and called Lydia.

“Crowell Construction,” she told me pleasantly and professionally, answering the phone on the second ring.

“Hi, it’s me. Can you take personal calls?”

“Not as personal as you have in mind.”

“All I was going to offer you was a ride home.”

“Really? That’s totally different.”

“Different from what?”

“Every other man on this site. Where are you?”

“About eight blocks north of you. What’s wrong with the guys on the site?”

“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with them. I’m sure they’re all red-blooded all-Americans and I’m supposed to find them boyishly charming. Should I come up there?”

“That would be good. So we aren’t seen together on the site. I don’t want the other guys getting jealous.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just walk up Broadway, on the east side. You’ll see the car. You get off at five-thirty?”

“Yes. What are you going to do between now and then?”

“Drink.”

I did, too. I found a bar on the next corner with brick-patterned asphalt on the outside, and a floor so old that patches of marble tile broke the worn linoleum like an ancient mosaic surfacing under shifting desert sands. The decor was dark brown paint, the lighting too old and dispirited to give it a run for its money. The scent of stale smoke layered the air, but the air conditioner worked and the beer was cold and that was enough for me. I had a Bud there, listening with half an ear to the buzzing of the Coors sign and the subdued, sparse talk of the other patrons, guys who were lucky or unlucky enough to be able to pass a weekday afternoon in a bar.

I thought about how I’d spent my afternoon, and my morning too, and the other mornings this week, about the bricks in a north-facing window bay on the sixth floor of a building down the street that wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t put them in. Each one of them, lifted and turned and placed by my hands, each now in some way part of me, part of the memories my hands had, my arms and my back, memories that would stay part of who I was long after I’d forgotten about the building and the work I’d done there.

I drank my beer and thought about that, about what it meant, wondered whether what it meant to me was the same as it was to Mike, to the Crowells, to Reg Phillips. There was no way to know, so I wondered.

When the beer was almost gone and the accompanying cigarette just a memory, I looked at my watch, drained my glass, and went out to meet Lydia.

The sun had made it, splitting a heavy cloud over the Hudson and pouring out a deep yellow light that glowed triumphantly off every west-facing surface it found. It lit glossy terra-cotta, bounced off windows, sparkled on the chrome on parked cars, and gave a delicate golden outline to Lydia’s head and shoulders as she leaned on my car reading a magazine.

“Hi,” I said, coming up to her, kissing her cheek. She smelled of freesia, and faintly of sweat. I took up a position next to her against the car. “Come here often?”

“Depends what’s parked here.”

“Oh.” I decided not to touch that. “What are you reading?”

“
American Builder
.” She showed me the magazine. The cover was an aerial photograph of a deep pit excavation surrounded by a tall construction fence. Three tower cranes cut the hazy sky; the background was mountains. “I borrowed it from the office. I thought I should try to learn something about what it is you big tough construction guys do all day.”

“You’re including me in that? ‘Big, tough’? I’m flattered, I think.”

“Think again.”

“Oh. Trouble?”

“Not that you’d notice. I love this job. I especially love the adorable way every man on that site has of hitting on me every time they open their mouths.”

I looked into her narrowed eyes. “There’s nothing I can say to that that would be right, is there?” I asked.

“No.”

“Umm … Can I distract you by getting in the car?”

“You can try.”

I tried it, unlocking the car, restraining myself from opening her door for her. She slid in and fastened her seat belt with a forceful click. I started to lower the windows and then changed my mind, switched the air-conditioning on.

We joined the traffic flowing up Broadway. “I’m sorry,” she said aggressively. “I suppose I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

I shrugged. “I got you into this.”

“Well, that’s true. And you’re a man.”

“I can’t help that.”

“That’s no excuse. Go ahead and open the windows.”

“You’d rather that than air-conditioning?”

“No, but you would. You always do.”

“Let me sacrifice my desires to yours this one time. It’ll help me regain some of the moral high ground.”

“No, it won’t, but okay, leave it on. You’re just lucky I’m such a professional.”

“I’m sure I am,” I agreed.

“Oh, I guarantee it. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have been able to put my personal feelings aside to do the kind of serious snooping I did today.”

I glanced across the car at her. “You did serious snooping?”

“Someone has to.”

“Ouch.”

“Well, maybe you are, too. How would I know? It’s not like you keep me updated.”

“How can I, during the day?”

“Another bad excuse. You haven’t even asked me to have dinner with you tonight.”

“Would you have?”

“No. I want to work out.”

“After that?”

She sighed. “Not unless there’s something we don’t have time to go over now, okay? My mother’s cousins are coming over after dinner and I ought to be there to be nice.”

“Can you be nice, given the mood you’re in?”

“Why not? They’re not construction workers.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t start getting monosyllabic on me. I’ll tell you what I did today if you tell me.”

“I would have anyway.”

She suddenly grinned, and leaned back in the seat. “I know that. Do you know how hard it is to keep this up?”

I looked over at her again. “Keep what up?”

“The bad-tempered expression of righteous anger at my second-class status.”

“It’s a strain?” I asked. “Because if it is, you could stop. I wouldn’t mind.”

“And abandon the principles of militant feminism?”

“Just for twenty minutes?”

She gave the idea two seconds’ thought. “Okay,” she said, as I U-turned to head south. “But I get to come back to it at any time, without warning.”

“Fair enough,” I said. We rolled down Broadway. “So tell me about your snooping.”

“You mean I get to go first?”

“Sure. But not out of chivalry,” I added hastily. “Only because your report interests me deeply.”

“It better.”

I nodded, and she began.

“It’s because Verna was out today,” she said. “Because of the body yesterday; she was still shaken up, so Mr. Crowell gave her the day off. He offered it to me, too, but I thought that wouldn’t look good for Mr. DeMattis, if his operative took the day off just because there was a body.”

“Besides which wild horses couldn’t have kept you from someplace where there was a body.”

“Besides that. So I came to work, and two things happened: One, I got to answer all the phone calls, and two, I got to be alone with the files.”

“That’s good?”

“Sure it is. Files are wonderful things.”

“And phone calls?”

“Even better. For example, a gentleman called for Mr. Crowell, Senior. When he wasn’t there, he asked for Mr. Crowell, Junior.”

“‘Asked for’?”

“More like demanded, actually. How did you know that?”

“It was the way you said ‘gentleman.’”

“Oh. Well, Junior wasn’t there either, so the guy got to yell at me.”

“He yelled at you?”

“Of course he did. I’m a secretary. That’s what secretaries are for. All men are entitled to yell at other men’s secretaries.”

“I don’t—Go on,” I said, swallowing the rest of that sentence.

“Smart move. Ask me why he yelled at me.”

“Why did the gentleman yell at you?”

“Because he wanted to be paid.”

“By you?”

“Don’t be cute. By anyone. By the Crowells. He’s some kind of supplier of something and he was tired of being jerked around, having his chain yanked, getting screwed over, being stuck behind the eight ball, and having all sorts of other unpleasant-sounding things done to him. He wants his money.”

“Hmm,” I said. I moved us onto West End Avenue. “Anything in that?”

“I wondered the same. So I headed for the files.”

“And what did you find?”

“After a complicated and nowhere-near-exhaustive search, I can tell you it’s crowded behind the eight ball.”

“The gentleman’s not alone?”

“The Crowells owe money all over town. Many people are demanding what’s rightfully theirs.”

“Interesting.”

“You think so?”

“To the likes of you and me. But I wonder how unusual it is in the construction industry, to be behind in your bills.”

“I have no idea,” she said. “And how far behind?”

“What happened when the Crowells came in?”

“Junior was first. He saw the message slip on the board to call the guy and took it down. He called, and the whole thing didn’t sound pleasant. Something about, ‘You leave my father out of this, you deal with me.’ I wasn’t able to overhear anything else.”

“But not from lack of trying.”

“You bet not.”

“And Senior didn’t call him?”

“Not that I know.”

“Who pays the bills?”

“You mean, between the Crowells? Junior actually writes the checks. I know that because he wrote two yesterday. But I think Senior looks at the invoices when they come in and tells him what he can pay.”

“Not surprising. Where am I taking you, by the way?”

She looked over at me; by now we were on the West Side Drive, flowing smoothly with the river of traffic beside the real river, which shone bronze in the afternoon sun. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Home. But you’re not even invited, that’s how much I want to prove I’m different from all those guys who hit on you.”

She sighed. “It’s probably just some very subtle kind of pass, but I’ll ignore it. Take me to the dojo. Maybe if I punch a bag for an hour or two I’ll feel better.”

“Don’t you have live men there you can punch?”

“I sure hope so.”

The rest of the drive downtown was my turn, to tell Lydia about my day, where I’d been and what I’d done.

“Start from why you were in my office this morning, looking at drawings and things,” she instructed.

“
Your
office?”

“I’m just trying to get fully into character.”

“An approach I can only approve of.”

“And your approval means so much to me.”

“I’m grateful. I was trying to find out how the building’s supposed to be made.”

“Why?”

“There’s some chintzy material, apparently, going into the construction of the place.”

“‘Apparently’?”

“Mike told me. I’m not good enough at this to have picked up on it, but a lot of the things you won’t see when the building’s finished turn out to be pretty cheap items.”