The Concrete Pearl (3 page)

White knuckles.

I caught my reflection in the rearview. Bright brown eyes accentuated by brows that might have been stunning if I ever considered having them waxed. But who cares about shaped eyebrows on a construction site? I ran my hand through my thick black hair still sprinkled with plaster dust, puckered my lips, and wet the pads of my fingers with some saliva to clean the toner off my cheeks.

Fucking Jimmy…Fucking Golden Boy…

How do I best describe the James Atkins Farrell I had the pleasure of knowing back in high school?

The name Einstein isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But then he wasn’t a total disaster. In terms of athletics and
All American
good looks, he had the real shit going on. He was a tall, wiry, sandy blond-haired, blue-eyed stud. He quarterbacked the football team in the fall, played basketball in the winter, lacrosse in the spring and in the summer months he life-guarded at the Schuyler Meadows Country Club—the most exclusive WASPs nest in Albany. By the time September came around he’d become a golden-skinned God. In short, every female from hopeless pimple-faced nerd to hot-bodied cheerleader swooned over him.

Even I fell under his spell once, having shared a one-on-one heavy petting tryst in the back seat of his second-hand Volvo station wagon. But as for brains, Farrell came up a couple of bricks short of a full palate. Word up is that when it came time to graduate, the high school administration required him to make up a couple of courses over the summer in order to legitimize his diploma.

That’s when I lost track of him.

Then one beautiful spring day back in the late 1990s, the golden boy came calling on me at the Harrison Construction offices. In he walked in his finely tailored navy blue Brookes Brothers double-breasted, brand new BMW convertible parked in dad’s designated spot right outside the glass doors. Leaning down he gave me a peck on the cheek. In his low, warm, George Clooney voice, he proceeded to spread it thick.

“Sexy…hot…luscious,” he whispered into my ear. “You still got it, A.J.”

It was, of course, brownnose crap. But crap or not, that’s the kind of compliment you tend never to forget. Especially when rendered so eloquently by a multi-million dollar baby like Farrell.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a business card and handed it to me.

He’d started a new environmental solutions business. Hazardous waste removal for contaminates like lead and oil. But his main focus would be on asbestos removal.

By the end of the 1980s asbestos had become a hot business thanks to new government restrictions that banned the hazardous substance from public buildings. In order to work with existing asbestos you had to undergo rigorous training and testing. The licensed removal subcontractor had to dress up in a HEPA-authorized, environmentally independent space-suit before handling the material. He was also required to isolate and enclose the “work area” off entirely.

Conspicuous signage had to be posted everywhere:

DANGER

ASBESTOS

CANCER AND LUNG DISEASE HAZARD

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

RESPIRATORS AND PROTECTIVE

CLOTHING ARE REQUIRED IN THIS AREA

Add a pair of skull and crossbones to the mix and you got the picture super-scary clear. Listen, anybody taking on the responsibility of removing asbestos from any given building had better not be into it just for the pretty green, but for the job. Because even the slightest lack of attention to detail might result in somebody losing their life to a horrible and agonizingly protracted lung cancer.

Someone like any one of those little kids pouring out of PS 20.

I remember staring down at Farrell’s business card and thinking,
Is this the same guy I knew in high school? The dumb jock who couldn’t pass basic algebra even when assigned special tutors?

Sure, people change. Who was I to come down on him just because he’d entered into a lucrative, but risky business? Perhaps he had very good people working for him? Knowledgeable people. Honest people.

I didn’t hold my breath. But then, I didn’t exclude him from my prospective subcontractor’s list either. And as the 1990’s made way for the brave new century, A-1 Environmental Solutions took off like a high speed Otis elevator, never mind my caution. The once academic train wreck had become a thirty-something self-made millionaire. His services were inexpensive and in demand.

What was there not to like about the handsome Jimmy Farrell and A-1 Environmental Solutions?

So while the dumb-as-a-box-of-pea-stone golden boy had figured out a way to tap into the
American Dream
of wealth, prosperity and social graces, a whole lot of brainiacs who’d gone on to earn advanced degrees still struggled to pay the rent.

Hey, but ain’t that America…

Go fucking figure.

I slipped out of the Jeep, stood in the empty back lot, feeling more than a little out of balance. I pulled off Tommy’s Carhartts, tossed them into the back of the Jeep. Breathing in and out, I tried hard to regain my equilibrium. Enough to get my thought process spinning again.

Back behind the wheel of the Jeep, I found the business card inside the cup holder.

“Damien Spain, Licensed Private Detective.”

A phone number was printed below the name. Nothing else.

I turned the card over. Something had been written on the back.

“I…CAN…HELP.”

“Who said I need any help, asshole?” I said out loud.

Felt good to say it.

I shoved the card back into the cup holder and backed out of the lot.

Chapter 4

Cruising Old Wolf Road in the open-topped Jeep, sunglasses wrapped around my head, with the summer wind blowing through my hair, I downshifted to make the hard right turn into the Aviation Industrial Park. I drove past the identical single-story brick and glass buildings that lined both sides of the industrial park. When I came to Building Twelve, I pulled in.

The lot was empty.

It was Monday morning. A workday. Yet the place was deserted.

By contrast, the building next door at lot Eleven was buzzing with activity. The offices of Marino Construction were surrounded by cars, S.U.V.s and pickup trucks. The place had that alive vibe to it.

I couldn’t help notice that a new poll barn was being erected in back. Poll barns are a must-have for construction outfits that want storage and easy access to heavy equipment. Part of the barn had already been erected. Its privacy-fenced perimeter barely hid an operating backhoe that was chewing up the earth, probably to make way for more pole barn piers.

Marino Construction had been in business as long as Harrison. Maybe even longer. About the only difference between the two competing firms now was that Marino hadn’t fallen apart after the death of the founding Marino, his paunchy, slick-haired, sixty something son Peter still presiding over the General Contractor’s helm like a street-hardened “Boss” over a third generation mafia family. He also held the distinction of being the father-in-law to our golden boy Jimmy. If anyone knew the word up on Farrell’s present whereabouts, it would be his Godfather-in-law Peter Marino.

On the other hand, maybe the temperamental Godfather would be the
last
to know.

I got out of the Jeep and made my way to the front vestibule.

A hand-written notice penned on your everyday white copy machine stock had been Scotch-taped to the glass door.

Closed Untill Further Notice

Whoever wrote the note had put two L’s on the end of ‘Until.’

The brilliant Farrell must have written it himself.

Reaching out, I grabbed hold of the opener and tried the door.

It was locked.

I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. Maybe Jimmy wasn’t answering his phones, but I never expected him to be M.I.A. I had OSHA, the EPA and the cops parked outside my red-flagged jobsite. The one person I needed to clear the situation up immediately-if-not-sooner, had suddenly closed the doors of his business.

I pulled the paper off the door, staring down into it. The words didn’t change. I was about to crumple it up, toss it onto the concrete walk when I noticed something had been written on the back of the paper. I turned it over, found a sketch. Two parallel lines that connected to a square on the far left side, but that were left open at the far right. The lines had been drawn in black pencil. No. 2 Ticonderoga if I had to guess. Below the lines were scrawled two letters: an “S” and a “C.” Directly beside those a question mark (?).

I couldn’t imagine what S and C meant or why a question mark had been placed beside them or why I was wasting my energy on it.

Details…Details
.

Folding the paper into squares, I buried it in the right-hand pocket of my Levis.

I decided to walk around the perimeter of the square-shaped building, yanking on locked doors as I passed them by, peering through dirty smoked glass. By the looks of it, the place had been cleaned out. Not a single piece of furniture, contaminate removal equipment or even so much as a stapler had been left behind. So it appeared from the outside anyway. No scaffolding, no storage bags, no fifty gallon chemical penetrate drums, no vacuum equipment, no portable respirators, no HEPA space suits, nothing.

I tried to recall the last time I’d personally spoken to Farrell on the phone. It had to be last week sometime since it was my job to personally expedite the project, which meant scheduling Jimmy for the school’s third and final asbestos removal procedure.

I tried to recall the topic of our conversation.

Did its focus shift from the final contracted phase to anything else? Had I noticed if Farrell sounded strange? Were there signs of stress in his voice? Nothing that caught my attention. But then I hadn’t been looking for anything either. He did, however, ask me for more money on top of the Albany School District’s two-hundred-plus grand I’d already paid him for two completed phases. I told him we were up to date, that he would receive his final payment upon completion of the third phase and Indoor Air Quality sample approvals on behalf of Analytical Labs.

But he’d come up short on payroll that week.

Ten grand would tide him over nicely until the final monies were due. Not wanting him to give me a no-show excuse, I advanced him the cash out of a Harrison cash checking account. Not that I could afford it. But forwarding personal funds now and again was by no means an unusual practice in my business. As a matter of SOP the GC often bankrolled at least a portion of the project. If you did it effectively enough you racked up future favors with the subs and material suppliers.

I brushed back my hair, felt the heat of the late morning sun on my face, felt my temples pulsing. If Farrell’s operation had shutdown; if he was nowhere to be found, then I would have to face the Tiger Lady all alone. Maybe that’s how Farrell envisioned it when incorrectly spelling out “Untill” on standard white copy stock.

I shot another glance over at Marino Construction, took another look at the new poll barn going up. I had no choice but to go there, see if anyone knew anything at all about the A-1 Environmental Solutions sudden bug out. Farrell was betrothed to Peter Marino’s daughter. Farrell’s unexpected departure from planet Earth was no longer my problem alone. Whether Marino knew it or not, it was about to become a family affair.

Chapter 5

Maybe making an inquiry at the Marino Construction offices seemed like the logical thing to do. But it wasn’t going to look good. Not by a long shot. I not only considered Marino my direct competition, but lately we hadn’t been getting along as much as the United General Contractors Association might have hoped.

I blamed the Concrete Pearl.

The depressed, five mile, downtown boulevard had become the site of a major Business Improvement District called, appropriately enough, The Pearl Street Convention Center. Proposed improvements to the Hudson Riverfront roadway included a new twenty-story Hyatt Hotel, a gambling casino, a convention center, an aquarium, an indoor/outdoor shopping mall and a parking garage. With all that excitement and proposed cash about to be floating around the city, every contractor and subcontractor from dumpster services to steel erection wanted in on the action.

Who could blame them?

The “convention center” was the capital city’s future, its price tag estimated to be anywhere from three-hundred to four-hundred mil. A huge chunk of change for Albany. With my lonely school project located on the northern fringes of what would be the “redevelopment” action, you might think I’d secure Harrison a huge slice of the convention center pie.

But the bastards were shutting me out.

The convention center underwriter, Albany Development Limited and its contracted construction manager, Marino Construction Incorporated (Go figure!), had removed me from the bidder’s list due to our having become a liability. Harrison had demonstrated itself a “significant health and safety risk” based upon the recent rash of jobsite accidents. Which meant that if I ever hoped to pick up some of that redevelopment work, I would have to complete the PS 20 project without a single fuck up.

But even that was no guarantee I’d suddenly be invited to the party.

My participation in the Pearl Street Convention Center would ultimately have to be approved by Peter Marino personally (Again, go figure!). So, to let him in on my present crisis could very well mean pounding the final nail in the Harrison Construction coffin.

Listen, maybe the final nail had already been pounded.

If Marino had a TV in his office, he might already know about the asbestos leak at PS 20. That is, if a Johnny-on-the-spot reporter had gotten word of the disaster over the police scanner. He might know all about OSHA’s surprise inspection; about the entire adolescent-filled school being contaminated with the very asbestos fibers his son-in-law had been contracted to remove; and about General Contractor Ava “Spike” Harrison being ultimately responsible for it all.