No Colder Place (30 page)

I clocked in, as it turned out, a little late that day, after Lozano and I were done. He shook his head with a sad smile and said my late time card should be his biggest problem. I told him I didn’t know what his biggest problem was going to be, and that it might come from me, but not right away.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re investigating. You turn over a rock and find a pile of shit. You ain’t gonna do anything about it?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said. “It depends on the answers I find. I have some other questions.”

“Go ahead.” He sighed. “This’s been killing me for months, Smith. It’s almost good to talk about it.”

“What was Joe Romeo’s role?”

“Nothing much. He was a nosy bastard, so I brought him in, otherwise he’d have figured it out for himself and made trouble. He was kinda useful, too. He was the one approached Hacker, got a few bucks for that.”

“Why him?”

“Why Joe, go to Hacker? In case Hacker said no, he still wouldn’t know about anyone else. And we figured, a guy like Joe, Hacker might be too scared to buy in but he’s not gonna have the guts to drop a dime on Joe.”

“And Lenny Pelligrini?”

Lozano shook his head. “Far as I know, nothing. He was a crane operator. Didn’t have nothing to do with materials. That was a bad night, when they found him. I almost …” He trailed off, looked into space, maybe thinking about what he’d almost done.

“But you didn’t.”

“No.” He seemed about to say something else, then changed his mind. He asked, “Smith? What were you talking about, about him—he had a scam going on?”

I regarded him, considered whether to tell him, and how much. “A lot of things went walking from this site early on,” I said. “Tools and equipment, right?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Always happens, more or less.”

“But it was particularly bad here.”

“I guess, for a while. Till Crowell Senior beefed up security. Junior told him it would cost more for guards than they were losing, maybe they should just let it go, but Senior, he said that wasn’t the way to do things, it wasn’t right. He brought on another night guard, more lockboxes. Made Junior chase the men down, make sure they were following lockup procedures. Things got normal again. Wait a minute.” Lozano frowned at me. “Are you telling me Pelligrini? He had something to do with that?”

“Seems to be.”

“That skinny kid? He was stealing all that shit? Jesus.”

“Yeah, he was. But I don’t think alone, Lozano.”

“No? Who—? Oh, hold on,” he demanded, as it dawned. “Whoa. You think it was
me
?” His tone was incredulous, as though being thought of as a criminal was a new idea for him.

“It had crossed my mind.”

“You gotta be—” He started strong, then deflated. His eyes looked into mine; he even gave me a rueful half-smile. “I guess I could see why. But it wasn’t me, Smith. Not that kind of shit. This’s bad enough.”

“You have any idea who it might have been?”

He shook his head. “Unless it was Joe? He had that kind of balls.”

“I don’t think it was. The guy who gave me Pelligrini’s name, the guy who bought the frontloader, hadn’t heard of Joe Romeo. I tried his name out on Pelligrini’s family, too. Nothing.”

“Then I got no idea.”

“What about Louie Falco?”

“Who?”

“Falco. What was his role?”

“I don’t know him. Who’s he?”

I’d asked it that way, same tone of voice, no big deal, to sandbag him, see what reaction I’d get. I wanted to know if Lozano’s eyes would widen, his voice miss a beat, to hear that I knew how far back this thing went; but if he was acting, he was far better than I thought.

“Who’s he?” he asked again.

“He’s a guy who’s part of something,” I said. “A guy you don’t want part of anything you do.”

“Well, if he’s got something to do with this site, I never heard of him.”

“Maybe I have it wrong,” I said.

“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe there’s shit I don’t know about. Jesus, I’m sure there is.”

I had only one more question, more about the man himself than about what he’d done. More because I wanted to know than because I needed to.

“Lozano?”

He looked up.

“How far was this going to go?”

He sighed. “Believe me, I been thinking about it. You hadn’t come, I might’ve blown the whistle myself, after Joe. Only Crowell Junior says don’t worry, John, it’s all gonna come okay. He says these things, they got nothing to do with each other. What you’re doing is right, John, to be paying your men. Soon we’ll be past this, it’ll be over. That’s what he said.”

“And you believed that.”

“I wanted to. Christ, wouldn’t you?”

His voice almost broke on that one.

I didn’t have an answer to it.

“What about Crowell Senior?” I asked.

“I didn’t talk to him. I don’t talk about this stuff much, Smith, not to the other supers, not to anyone. Partly, it’s safer that way. Partly, I can sometimes forget it’s happening, that way.”

Lozano and I left the storeroom, back to his office, he to his paperwork, me to punch my time card and head up above.

“What now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’m going to sit on this for a while,” I said. “There’s something else I need to know, another piece, before I’m done.”

That wasn’t completely accurate. It was true I didn’t have the whole picture, not even close. There
was
one more thing I wanted to know, to be able to show, and my plan was to try for it at the end of the day.

But whether I was satisfied or not, whether I got what I wanted or got a handful of air, I was ready to come in. One more try; then I’d call Bzomowski and Mackey, go down to the precinct, give them everything I had, no matter if I had everything I wanted or not. I’d waited too long already, and what I had might be enough. Three murders, one attempt. At least two scams that needed to be protected. If all this was connected, as it had to be, this was way beyond me now, and the end that would be best for Chuck, for Denise Armstrong, and for all the men on this site, wasn’t something I could control anymore.

But I didn’t tell that to Lozano. I didn’t want him afraid, knowing how close I was to blowing the whole thing. Not that I was worried about Lozano. He wasn’t dangerous. But frightened men are unpredictable: they act in strange ways, and they talk. If Lozano felt safe, at least for now, my chances were better of coming up with something when I took my last shot.

“Sit tight,” I said. And for some reason, looking into his eyes, I said, “I’m sorry, Lozano.” He nodded, and half smiled.

I left the office, felt Lozano staring after me as I went. I didn’t close the door behind me; all the men knew Lozano’s door was always open.

I crossed the raw concrete from the trailer offices to the hoist, ready to head for the sixth floor, ready to start the day. Mike, I knew, would be up there by now, laying out our work, wondering where I was, wondering about me. I stood at the barrier with three other guys, watched the hoist creak down from above. I was ready to step on, but when it opened, it wasn’t empty.

Dan Crowell, Jr. and Denise Armstrong, both in green Crowell hard hats and deep in conversation, moved aside as they came out, to let us enter.

I almost made it, almost walked right past her behind a tall pipe-fitter I thought might shield me. But it didn’t happen. Still talking to Dan Junior, she glanced around her, it seemed automatically, to get the lay of the place. An instinct, maybe, so nothing would take her by surprise.

I did.

She stopped in the middle of her sentence. “Mr. Smith!” She stared into my eyes.

“Mrs. Armstrong,” I answered smoothly, stepping back out of the hoist I’d gotten halfway into. The operator closed it and it started up without me. “How are you?” I asked before she had a chance to say anything else.

Crowell Junior looked from her to me. “Smith,” he said. “You two know each other?”

“I worked for Mrs. Armstrong on another job,” I answered. “That little terra-cotta renovation up Broadway. Your office?” I said to her, making it a question, though not the one I was asking out loud. “Nice building. Well built, when it started. Easy to repair, because of that.”

“Yes,” Denise Armstrong said. She’d skipped half a beat, but maybe no one noticed that but me. When she spoke, her tone was deliberate, her smile impersonal. “My office. Quite a good job, that renovation. You’re working here now?”

“Yes. I’d heard you owned this building, too.”

“I do. I trust the work you do here will be up to the standard your employers have come to expect from you, Mr. Smith.” She smiled again, a smile that was borderline frosty, and turned away. “Dan, I need to ask you about the windows.” She started across the concrete without looking back. Dan Junior trotted after her.

I lit a cigarette, watched them on the other end of the building, Dan Junior pointing out details at an opening in the masonry, Denise Armstrong nodding her head. The groan of wood and the creak of gears announced that the hoist guy had come back for me. He made some crack about buddying up to the big boss; I made some crack about using it if you’ve got it. He took me up to the sixth floor and I headed along the scaffold to find Mike DiMaio, and my work.

DiMaio was laying a reinforcing ladder in a bed of mortar when I came up. “Christ,” I said, “you got that far already?” We were working high by now, above his shoulders, almost to mine, and yesterday we’d rigged a plank platform on the scaffolding to work from, to bring our work back to waist height. A few more brick courses and we’d have to take the planks out from the scaffolding above, to stick our heads through as we finished out the bay.

DiMaio looked down at me. From the platform he was taller than I was, though not by much. “Someone’s gotta do some work around here, Smith,” he said. “I got here early.”

“So did I.” I slung my tool bag onto the platform next to where I’d be, stepped up there myself. I looked at his work, found my place in it.

For a while I worked silently, following DiMaio’s lead, placing the bricks and
the
mortar and the ladders, laying in the ties. The sun from the east was hot and steady, throwing crisscross shadows from the safety netting onto our work, and us.

DiMaio didn’t have much to say either, just tips to help me out. Lozano came around once, with his clipboard, greeted us both as though it were the first time that day. Kenny, the Jamaican laborer who was low-ranking man on the crew, and, on that account, stuck with the daily coffee run, came by to ask what we wanted. We gave him our orders and a few bucks, and went back to work.

I started a shift in the pattern, headers that would mark a line around the building at the level of the center of the windows. DiMaio’s line was done, and he’d begun the bricks between the window openings, something we were both supposed to be responsible for.

I placed a brick, tapped it back, moved it forward, to line it up with the one beside it. “Mike?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I have a line on what happened to Reg.”

DiMaio froze in his movements. Then he reversed them, put the brick he’d just lifted back down on the pile he’d gotten it from, straightened up. He turned to face me.

“You been standing here all goddamn morning and you waited till now to tell me?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But it fits. But I don’t want you to do anything about it, Mike.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“If I’m right, it’s part of the whole thing. But I don’t know how and I can’t prove it. I want to work it out, so I know; then I want to go to the cops. They’ll take care of it.”

“I can’t believe you fucking know what happened and you’re just standing there like that.”

“I told you, I don’t know. I have an idea. I want to tell you. But I want
you
to tell
me
you won’t go off half-cocked.”

He regarded me silently, motionless on the scaffold. The sun had moved around by now; we were both in shadow.

“What you’re saying,” he spoke slowly, “is that it wasn’t Joe. Because if it was, you wouldn’t give a shit what I do, being he’s gone.”

“I think it was Joe,” I said. “But it goes deeper than that.”

“Then what the fuck—?”

Steps on the scaffold made us both turn; it was Kenny, carrying a cardboard box from the deli on one palm, like a tray. “Great,” DiMaio said. “Coffee break. You can tell me about it on our own time, not Lozano’s.” We took our coffee and doughnuts from the box. Kenny grinned, wandered on past us, whistling a reggae tune.

DiMaio and I sat in the shadow of our work. I peeled the plastic top off my coffee.

“I went up to City College.”

DiMaio ripped open two sugar packets, gave me a questioning look. “You really think that has something to do with it?”

“Not directly. But Reg had a project going that involved studying the drawings for this building.”

“Yeah, he told me. See if he could figure out what the engineer was thinking, or something.”

I nodded, swallowed. The coffee was only lukewarm, but my cinnamon doughtnut was fresh.

“You think there’s something wrong with the drawings? With the design of this thing?” DiMaio asked.

“Not what he was looking at. Not the structure, the important stuff. But there is something wrong, and I think he saw it.”

“What are you talking about?”

I reached up, picked a reinforcing ladder off the platform. “This stuff,” I said. “You were the one who clued me in. All the cheap materials going into this building. It wasn’t what Reg was looking for in the drawings, but I think he saw it.”

“Saw what? That the place was made out of cheap shit?”

“No. Saw that it wasn’t supposed to be. This isn’t what’s in the drawings, Mike, or the spec. The building was designed to be quality, inside and out.”

“That’s bullshit. How can it? Lozano buys us what the specs say to buy. The architect must have called for this shit.”

I shook my head. “I had a look at the spec. The stuff I saw was higher quality than this. If I could see that, Reg must have seen it, too.”

“But the architect’s rep that comes around, that skinny guy—”

“Hacker. He’s in on it.”