The Concrete Pearl (11 page)

I had no way of proving it, but I did know that Farrell enjoyed his Skoll and I knew the discarded tin might have belonged to him. If it did belong to him, it was proof that he’d made the drive to Lake Desolation on Saturday. What I could not prove was what had happened there or why he went there in the first place. Who or what had been shot? And where had Farrell disappeared to as a result of it?

I had no idea.

I fingered the “Closed Untill Further Notice” note, turned it over, glanced once more at the sketch. Two wavy but parallel lines connected at one end to a kind of square. Under the sketch the letters S and C and a question mark. I couldn’t imagine what they stood for. I couldn’t even begin to come up with possibilities.

“Santa Claus,” I whispered to myself. But a whole bunch of innocent kids had been exposed to a deadly carcinogen for nearly a year and this was no joke.

I set the paper back down, sat back, locked eyes on my husband’s still alive, brown eyes.

“I’m in a real fix this time, Jordan,” I said. “You were in my boots, what would you do?”

I heard his voice inside my head.

“
It’s a mistake to stop looking for Farrell
.”

I picked up the business card, turned it over, eyeballed the impression of lipstick red lips, the name “Natalie” written over them in blue ballpoint. Turning the card back over, I took note of the bar’s phone number. Without thinking about it, the Blackberry appeared in my hand. I punched the number in.

After five rings someone picked up.

“Thatcher Street,” someone said. Man’s voice. Stern, gruff.

“Natalie please,” I said.

“Hang on,” said the man. I heard him slap the phone down hard onto the bar. There was an audible commotion coming from somewhere in the background. Then the phone being picked back up.

“This is Natalie.” Soft, tentative, afraid maybe.

My pulse picked up with the sound of her voice. A voice Farrell would be familiar with.

“Hello,” she said, begging for a response. “Hello.”

I wanted to speak. But something inside was holding me back. Fear I guessed. Or maybe I just had no idea what to say.

“Hello,” she said again. Louder this time.

Finally I opened my mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Wrong number.”

I killed the call.

I took another drink of beer, stared into Jordan’s brown eyes. He told me to give Farrell’s cell another shot.

“
You never know…
”

I did it.

The call was immediately transferred to the answering service. This time, instead of allowing me to leave a message, the recorded voice told me the mailbox was full. The connection cut.

That was it then.

It didn’t take a No-Shit-Sherlock to know there’d be no chance of contacting Farrell now. At least by phone.

Another glance at my husband.

Why not try Tina again?

I fingered in the number for the Farrell residence. Tina answered after only one ring, as if she’d been waiting by the phone.

“This is Tina,” she said, formal, unaffected.

I wondered if she picked up my name and number via the caller ID.

“Tina, this is Spike Harrison,” I said. “I was wondering if by chance you’ve heard from your husband.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “No.”

Her voice had gone from deadpan to hurt. I pictured the spent shell casing. Was a missing person’s case in fact about to turn into a murder?

“Tina,” I said, “does Jimmy own a handgun?”

She hesitated for a beat. Then she said, “I don’t think so.”

“You sure?”

“Sure as I can be,” she said, a double hint of doubt in her voice.

“What about your dad?”

“What the hell is this?” she snapped. “What are you trying to get at?”

“What kind of tobacco Jimmy chewing these days?”

She thought about it for a moment. Then…

“Skoll,” she said. “Packaged in a cute little green container.”

“He been known to grab a beer or two at the Thatcher Street Pub down in Albany?”

“Sure.”

“Christ, Tina, call the fucking cops right now.”

Suddenly commotion. Another voice coming to me from over the connection. A man’s voice.

“Who is this?” the voice demanded.

I told him.

“This is Tina’s father, Peter,” he said. “Can I ask the purpose of your call?”

“Peter, this is Spike Harrison, I’ve been looking for Jimmy—

“—Ms. Harrison,” he interrupted, “at present we are dealing with a family crisis. Your intrusion is not appreciated.”

I wanted to tell him to stop pretending he didn’t know me. But he hung up before I had the chance to get it all out. When the Call Ended signal revealed itself, I dialed the Farrell residence once again. But this time all I got was a busy signal.

Phone off the hook.

Setting the cell back down, I took one more good look at Jordan.

“Well,” I said, “what now?”

As if directed to do so, my eyes found their way to the Thatcher Street business card. Drinking the rest of my beer, I got up from the desk. I took a quick look around the bedroom, at the queen bed, the simple dresser, the framed shot of Jordan and I on our wedding day that hung on the wall above it, the body-length Ikea dressing mirror set in the far corner, my bathrobe hanging from it blocking out most of my reflection.

“Been a while since I went out for a drink,” I said.

I stored all the evidence, minus Natalie’s card, inside my desk drawer. Then I got up and went to my dresser. Inside my underwear drawer I grabbed a ten and two fives from out of a coffee can where I hid some emergency cash and quarters for the laundry machine. I shoved the cash into my jeans pocket along with my Blackberry and Natalie’s calling card. Grabbing up my keys, I exited the apartment by way of the back terrace door.

Chapter 21

I backed out of my parking space, pulled out onto the apartment complex road that led me to the main drag. I couldn’t help but notice another set of headlights in my rearview. Another car pulling out of a spot in the building lot next door to my own.

I didn’t think much of it at first. People were always coming and going from the apartments at all hours of the night. But these headlights followed me all the way up the complex access road. When I made a left onto the main road in the direction of the downtown, the lights followed me.

I pressed my foot on the gas, tried to create a little distance between me and those headlights. That’s when I killed my lights altogether.

When I hooked a quick left down a neighborhood street perpendicular to the main road, I gunned the Jeep. I also prayed that no cops were patrolling the area.

Having made it to the end of the street, I once more looked into the rearview.

The headlights were gone.

Maybe I was growing paranoid. But better safe than stupid and sorry.

I put my lights back on, turned right, and followed Broadway all the way to where it intersected with the lower Concrete Pearl. Not far from the Thatcher Street Pub.

Chapter 22

Thatcher Street was a throw back to the days when lower Pearl Street thrived as a Barbary Shore of smoke billowing factories and mills that lined the banks of the Hudson River. There were lumber yards, steel mills, paper factories, ship building plants and ports of call that made the riverfront a longshoreman’s paradise. Everywhere you looked you would find strong-backs dressed in dungarees or overalls, lifting and hauling everything from one-hundred pound bags of iron ore to sandbags to newly cut wood planks.

All these years later, the mills and factories had been relocated to Mexico and China, leaving only the unemployed rusted and rotted out building shells to line the Concrete Pearl. But the Thatcher Street Pub had somehow survived. Maybe one of the reasons behind its survival were its topless bartenders. The bar still attracted tough guys who worked with their backs and rough necks. But nowadays you could also find the occasional stockbroker, lawyer or doctor bellying up to the bar alongside them.

I walked in through the front screen door.

Every set of male eyes turned to me. I felt the eyes burn holes into my skin. I made my way to an open spot at the near end of the long bar, not ten feet away from the unoccupied pool table.

As the faces of a dozen men scattered about the bar returned to their beers, shots and mixed drinks, I took a good look around. Located at the far end of the bar was the kitchen. The door to the kitchen was open. I saw a big man with a dirty butcher’s apron wrapped around his belly and chest. There was a spatula gripped in his hand. He seemed to be arguing with someone who stood just beyond my line of sight. But when that unknown person revealed herself a couple of seconds later, I knew precisely who she had to be.

Jimmy Farrell’s Natalie.

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she composed herself, took her place back behind the bar. Eyeballing me—her newest customer—she made her way over.

I pegged her for between twenty-five and thirty. She wore only a sheer black satin thong that fit snug around narrow hips. She was a brunette like me, her eyes brown and a little puffy from tears, her skin sun-lamped tan. She wasn’t what I would call tall, but she wasn’t short, her long hair as striking as her narrow waist.

As for her breasts, they were a little bit smaller than my own. What Jordan would call “pert and spunky.” She forced a smile, never once giving me any indication about how odd it was that a lone female would just happen to walk into a man’s bar and order a drink.

“What can I get you?” she asked in that same soft, gentle voice she’d used on the phone.

“Corona,” I said.

When she slid down to the steel cooler, pushed back the lid, I could see that she was wearing a pair of baby blue Nike Air running shoes on her feet. The sneakers looked kind of silly up against all that exposed skin.

She uncapped the beer, brought it to me, set it down on the bar.

“Need a lime wedge?”

“Naked is good,” I said.

She smiled like I was making a joke.

I laid out a five spot on the bar, told her to keep the change.

She was about to turn away when I said, “Natalie?”

She turned back quick, smooth hair moving in a wave as she did it.

“How’d you know my name?”

Before I could answer, one of the male patrons held up an empty beer bottle.

“Nat,” barked the gray-bearded man.

Nat ignored him.

“I’m an associate of Jimmy Farrell’s,” I said.

She just stared at me; into me. I sensed that if she’d possessed an Adam’s apple, it would have bobbed nervously up and down.

“I need to find him,” I said.

“You the police?” she said.

“Natalie,” grey-beard called out. Louder this time. Booze-soaked baritone bouncing off the plaster walls.

She turned, slow.

“Hold your water, Roger,” she said. It was a scold. Big old Roger began to pout, bottom lip protruding out from underneath thick grey hair.

I leaned over the bar, close to her face, tried to talk under my breath.

“I’m not the police,” I said. “I run a construction company. Farrell was subcontracting for me on a job at PS 20 just up the road. He seems to have run off without finishing the job and with quite a large portion of the school’s money in pocket.”

Natalie shook her head, crossed her forearms over her chest, as if suddenly embarrassed over her semi-nakedness.

“What do you want from me?” she asked. Her pretty face suddenly became a tight canvass of exposed nerves.

“I’m aware that Jimmy and you were friends,” I said. “I thought you might help me figure out where he took off to.”

She inhaled, exhaled.

“I haven’t seen or heard from Jimmy in weeks,” she said. “He used to come in sometimes after work. We get a lot of construction workers in here.”

She was holding back on me.

“But you were friends.”

“He was a client,” she stressed. “Good customer. Good tipper.”

“Natalie, my patience wears thin,” shouted grey-beard.

“Did you see each other outside the pub?”

Natalie’s eyes went wide.

“We’re not allowed to fraternize with the clientele,” she said.

“But you were friends,” I pressed.

“Like I told you,” she said, “he was a good customer. That’s all I have to say about it.”

Interesting how she kept speaking in the past tense. For a split second I thought about pulling all the cash from my pant’s pocket, handing it to her. Maybe some pretty green would jog her memory. But I had the feeling all the cash in the world wouldn’t make an ounce of difference to Natalie, much less an extra fifteen bucks.

I slipped off the bar stool, dug a Harrison Construction business card out of my pocket. Before I handed it to her I grabbed a stubby pencil from the Lotto Quick Draw container, jotted down my personal email address on the back.

“Please Natalie,” I said. “More than three-hundred kids have been exposed to asbestos fibers everyday for more than nine months. If I don’t locate Farrell, their life or death will fall squarely onto my shoulders. If you’d rather not speak about him here, at least email me with something.”

She took a minute to absorb what I said. Then she took the card from off the bar, slipped it behind the string on her thong where it remained pressed up against her right hip.

I made for the door. But before I opened it, I turned to see her standing before gray-beard. He was leaning his bull-like torso over the bar, a bill of large denomination lodged between his teeth. He was attempting to stuff the bill between Natalie’s pert and spunkies…In vain. As his belly laughter filled the narrow barroom, Natalie peered at me over her left shoulder.

For just a second our eyes locked.

A feeling of dread washed over me.

I sensed that Natalie had lied to me; that she knew exactly what had happened to Farrell. And that it was not good.

Chapter 23