No Colder Place (20 page)

“So you don’t care if these murders are ever solved?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“A minute ago—”

“What I said was, I didn’t care who killed those men. I don’t. But I would prefer it if the media and police attention these things have brought, were to end. It’s not the kind of publicity I want for this project.”

“Then will you help me find this guy, this coordinator?”

She sat silent, watched me. She rubbed a finger back and forth on the wood of the old oak desk. Maybe it had been her grandfather’s desk.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Maybe I will. If I find him, I’ll call you.”

“How will I know whether you’ve decided to try?”

“If I call you, it will be because I have the answer. If I don’t call you, I didn’t try.”

As I left Mrs. Armstrong’s office, the beeper on my hip beeped.

I flicked the switch but kept walking, didn’t lift it off for a look at the readout until I was out of range of the Armstrong Properties windows. I didn’t want anyone in there thinking someone was checking on my progress with them.

The digital red phone number the beeper gave me was Lydia’s, at her office. I found a pay phone and called.

“Oh, good!” she said when she answered. “I was wondering how long I should wait.”

“Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “I’d wait forever for you.”

“For a phone call?”

“Well, maybe not. Buy you a drink?”

“Sure,” she said. “Even though I just had one.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. With the nicest guy.”

“There’s such a thing as a nice guy?”

“I may have to reconsider. A construction worker, too. Who’d have known?”

“You’re kidding. Who?”

“Your buddy Mike DiMaio.”

That stopped me. “You’ve been drinking with Mike DiMaio?”

“Isn’t that what construction workers do when they get off work—drink?”

“Come on. Really?”

“Of course, really. It wasn’t like a big deal. He asked me.”

“Asked you what?”

“
Out
, you birdbrain. For a drink.”

“I thought you didn’t like construction workers.”

“I wanted to see what one of these guys is like when he’s trying to show a woman his good side.”

“And what was he like?”

“He was very nice, but that’s what you’ve been saying about him. We talked for a while and then I came down here, where I’ve been sitting in my office doing my paperwork and taking very calmly the fact that you haven’t called to keep me informed—”

“Haven’t called? I spent my last quarter to hear some cop tell me you’d left the trailer, and then my last dimes to hear your machine babble in Chinese, and now—”

As though I’d paid it and given it a cue, an electronic voice interrupted to demand more cash for more phone time.

“Come down here,” Lydia said.

I answered, “I’m on my way,” and the phone cut us off.

I caught an express train to Canal Street, to reach Lydia’s office on the fringes of Chinatown. The downtown streets were glazed with heat as I came out of the subway, but somehow it didn’t seem as warm as it had just a few minutes ago.

Lydia buzzed me in and stood waiting at the door at the end of the hall. She still wore the blue-and-tan blouse and pale linen skirt she’d had on at the site, but she’d traded in the mud-caked shoes for white sneakers.

“You’re all sweaty,” she said. She kissed my cheek anyway, and I felt a little warmer.

“It’s hot out there,” I said as we entered her office. “You haven’t noticed?”

Lydia’s small office is tucked away in the shadowed back of the building, on the ground floor. The window’s pebbled glass cast a muted light on the deep-green walls while an ancient air conditioner gurgled in the corner like the rush of a mountain stream. It was the urban equivalent of a cool, secluded forest grove, where a man and a woman could be alone at the slow finish of a hot summer’s day.

Either that, or it was a one-room low-rent rear office in Chinatown.

“It’s not as bad as yesterday,” Lydia said, closing the office door.

“We’re not really going to talk about the weather, are we?”

“Hmmm.” She appeared to consider that. “Well, you could fill me in on the case.”

“I don’t know,” I said, reaching into the tiny office fridge. “When a man’s partner is out drinking with his partner, he kind of wants to know—”

“Whatever he wants to know is none of his business. And his partner wants to know where we stand on a case where our subject was murdered in front of us eight hours ago.”

A cold breeze swept from distant mountaintops into the forest grove. I took a bottle of grapefruit juice from the fridge, clinked some ice into a glass, settled on the junior-sized sofa. I stretched my feet onto the coffee table.

“You probably know more about where we stand than I do,” I told her. “You and Chuck and Mrs. Armstrong talked to the cops together, am I right?”

“Is that just a logical guess, or do you know all about it?”

“It’s not a guess, but I don’t know anything about it except that it happened.”

“You haven’t called Mr. DeMattis?”

“No. I’ve been busy.”

“Doing what?”

“I saw two people. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. First tell me about Chuck and the client and the cops.”

She nodded; that was a reasonable request, since what I was asking about had happened first.

“Well, it wasn’t so very interesting,” she said. “Mr. DeMattis and Mr. Crowell Senior explained to the cops about Crowell’s interest in Joe Romeo, and what I was there for. Mr. DeMattis said he’d been looking into things from the office end, too, and hadn’t found much. I think the word he used was ‘
bupkes
’; is that Italian?”

“Yiddish. Literally, it means ‘chickpeas’; figuratively, it means ‘nothing.’” I took a swig of juice, tried to ignore the image that rose in my mind of Lydia and Mike DiMaio in a cool and quiet bar.

“Anyway,” Lydia said, “he offered to share what little he had with the police.”

“Including me?”

“Not Mr. DeMattis. Mrs. Armstrong asked him about you, and Mr. DeMattis admitted you work for him, but he made it sound like you were just one of a bunch of people doing backgrounds. She said you should work on your approach. He agreed and apologized.”

“Oh, great. But he didn’t say I was on the site?”

“No. I was a little worried that Mr. Crowell would remember your name from the time in the trailer.”

“Not likely, and especially a dull name like mine. A GC wouldn’t know the names of the guys who work for the subs unless they make a real strong impression. I just have to be careful Mrs. Armstrong doesn’t see me there.”

“Mr. DeMattis,” Lydia said, “now I remember him, from the picnic. He’s kind of obnoxious, isn’t he?”

“Besides apologizing for me to a woman who almost had me arrested, what did he do that was obnoxious?”

“He was pushy, fast, and loud, offering to do this and that for everybody. The cops’ best buddy.”

“Did he know them?”

“The cops? Yes. Bzomowski and Mackey. Homicide detectives from the Twenty-fourth Precinct. The same ones who came about Pelligrini. They seemed like okay guys, but they’re not happy.”

“Why would they be? Two open homicides in three days.”

“Anyway, Mr. DeMattis wants me to stay on the case.”

“Chuck? But there isn’t any case anymore. Joe Romeo’s dead.”

“Yes, and it seemed to me Bzomowski and Mackey really want it to be what it looked like, something that just happened as a result of a fight.”

“That’s what they want it to be. What do they really think it was?”

“Right now, that’s what they say they think. Do you think something else?”

My shoulder was stiffening up; I moved it around, trying to loosen it. “I think it’s a hell of a coincidence that one of fifty drunks randomly picked one of fifty guys to toss off the scaffold, and it happened to be Joe Romeo.” I took another swig of grapefruit juice. “On the other hand, Romeo seems like he might be the type of guy to go right up in their faces, get them so pissed off they’d do something like that.”

Lydia tilted her head. “‘Seems like.’ You knew him. Do you think he
was
?”

I rested my eyes on a framed Chinese brush painting of mountains and pine trees and mist. “No. He was a bully. Bullies are cowards. He pushed the masons around because he was a foreman, so he had authority. I don’t think he’d have gone up alone against a bunch of wild drunks like the ones off those buses.”

“So you think this was deliberate? Someone taking advantage of the situation?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wonder what Chuck thinks.”

“He must think the same; that must be why he wants me to stay.”

“How did the cops feel about that?”

“They liked the idea.”

“What about Crowell?”

“Mr. Crowell doesn’t mind, either, for now.”

“He doesn’t?” I considered that, swirling my grapefruit juice around in my glass. “His Joe Romeo problem is solved; why would he come across for this?”

“I think Mr. DeMattis made some sort of arrangement.”

“Arrangement? Chuck’s picking up the tab?”

“I think so.”

“So how can you think he’s obnoxious? He’s paying your salary.”

“When I work for you, you pay my salary. That doesn’t stop me.”

She had me there.

“Anyway,” she said, “you might want to call him. I’ll bet he wants you to stay, too.”

I’ll bet he does, I mused. And he’s picking up the tab.

“How about the rest of your afternoon?” I prompted as Lydia went back to her club soda.

“How about yours?” she countered.

“You go first.”

“I already went first,” she pointed out.

It was easier to give in than to argue. I pushed the dark, cool bar of my imagination away, told her about Hacker.

“My God,” was her response. “Do you think it’s true, that there’s nothing structurally wrong with the building now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But probably. With concrete and steel, there are all sorts of other checks: testing labs and sign-offs, papers at the Building Department. And big liability if anything goes wrong. I think this is probably just about what Hacker says it is, materials substitutions that make a good building into a chintzy one.”

“Still, it’s pretty serious, isn’t it?”

“It is if you’re the person paying for the quality materials. I felt guilty talking to Mrs. Armstrong, knowing this.”

Lydia’s eyes widened, and I thought I heard the rumble of thunder over the mountaintop. “You talked to her, too? You’re holding out on me.”

“On the contrary,” I said innocently, “you’re holding out on me.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. I felt the air growing thick and sticky as I heard myself say, “You were out drinking with a bricklayer. Italian, too. I mean, what would your mother say?”

Her eyes flashed. “You’re kidding. You can’t possibly—”

I held up my hand for her to stop. “Wait,” I said wearily. She was right, and she was right about why I’d dropped the news about my chat with Mrs. Armstrong the way I had. I lit a cigarette, reached onto the windowsill for the ashtray she keeps there in case smokers come by.

“Don’t start,” I said. “It’s been a long day. I’m a deeply flawed human being. You knew that.” I drew in a lungful of smoke, wondered why the things that comfort us are the things that kill us.

“I’ll tell,” I said. And I told her, almost word for word, about my talk with Mrs. Armstrong, who didn’t like me very much.

She asked a few questions, all of them good ones. When I was done, she said, staring into space, “I wonder if she’ll look, and I wonder if she’ll find him.”

“I don’t know. I can’t read her. She hates me, but I don’t know if it’s personal, or because I’m just another piece of low-class, ham-fisted white trash trying to push her around.”

“You’re not so bad,” Lydia said softly.

I looked at her in surprise. “I’m not? I thought you were about to throw me out of here a minute ago.”

“I was. And you can’t do that, Bill. You know you can’t.”

I ground the end of my cigarette around in the ashtray. “I just…”

“I know. But you can’t.” She fixed her obsidian eyes on me. “I’m an investigator. You put me on that site to see if I could learn anything. If every time I’m alone with a guy—”

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s close.”

“I can’t help how I feel,” I said.

“Neither can I,” she said, her voice quiet. “But you can help how you act.”

I looked at her, and away, to the framed prints on her walls, and back to her again. I wanted to say something, though I didn’t know what; then, inexplicably, she smiled.

“So do you want to hear about it?”

“About what?”

“My afternoon.”

“Don’t play games.”

“I’m not. There’s no reason not to tell you about it. It’s just that it wasn’t a big deal, and you were making it into one.”

“Okay,” I said, after a moment. I leaned back on the sofa. “Tell me about this little deal.”

She recrossed her legs, settled more comfortably in her chair, too. “We went for a drink,” she said. “And he is a nice guy.”

I couldn’t argue with that, and a part of me felt bad about wanting to. “What did you talk about?”

“The trouble on the site. It was a natural. And softball. That was why I went out with him in the first place.”

“What was?”

“He had an opening line I couldn’t resist.” In the hard consonants of Mike DiMaio’s Brooklyn accent, she said, “‘You swing a bat the way you swung that two-by-four, I’ll bet you hit three-fifty.’”

Lydia’s lifetime average in the Central Park pickup league where we play is .296; she’s very proud of that. Mine’s .270.

“I can see how that would make a man attractive. What was on his mind?”

“Nothing different from what you’d expect, I don’t think. But he was a perfect gentleman. We went to a bar called the Liffy, on Ninety-sixth Street. We talked.”

“About what?”

“He wanted to know who taught me to swing like that.”

“Did you tell him?”

“And blow your cover?”

“Yours. He already knows about me.”

“Oh, right. No, I didn’t. I told him I learned from my brother.”