The Concrete Pearl (31 page)

“I need to leave this godforsaken place,” I said.

Turning, I walked towards the Concrete Pearl.

Chapter 75

The following day, the bodies of Jimmy, Tina and Peter Marino, were laid to rest in an emotional custom-tailored-for-the-media triple casket funeral. The funeral services were conducted at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in downtown Albany. Following that, daughter and father were buried side by side Peter’s late wife, Marie, at the Albany Rural Cemetery. Jimmy was buried a few plots down from them in a lonely plot, forever castigated from the family at arm’s length. But not entirely out of sight either.

I would have liked to report that no one showed up for the services. Or that the bodies of Farrell and Marino were buried in unmarked graves. But the church was jam packed with old friends, business associates, almost the entire Schuyler Meadows Country Club roster, most of the East Hills residents, plus business associates past and present.

It was more like a social event than a funeral service, the glamorous housewives decked out in the latest fashions, their husbands standing outside the church in tailored suits, smoking cigarettes, trying to subdue their giggles with fisted hands pressed up against their mouths. If the joke was that Farrell had cheated, the punch-line came in the form of his having been caught. Because after all, Jimmy might have been a golden boy, but he was as dumb as a box of No. 5-sized gravel.

How the hell did he get so rich so fast? How did the dumb jock become such a huge success?

Well now they had their answer.

Greed.

And for many of the residents of the East Hills community, greed made perfect sense. Greed was their common denominator.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the funeral services Spain insisted we head over to the port. When I asked him why, he told me that someone important wanted to meet with us in private.

“Someone
very
important,” he stressed.

“Obviously,” I said. “And what does Mr. Important want to discuss with us?”

“Not me,” he said. “You.”

But when I asked Spain if he might find it in his heart to reveal the I.D. of Mr. Important, he just pursed those sore lips and cocked the scarred side of his face over his shoulder.

The silent, you’ll-find-out-when-you-find-out treatment: I was getting it whether I liked it or not

Moments later we stood on the edge of the dock not far from the warehouses that were no longer being demolished by Marino Construction. Seagulls soared and hovered over the dark river water.

“Okay Spain,” I said. “Why are we here?”

“Because I asked him to bring you,” came the voice of Derrick P. Santiago. “I knew you wouldn’t come alone if I asked you personally.”

The DA approached us on the pier dressed in a dark suit, narrow framed sunglasses shielding his eyes. He was carrying a brown paper grocery shopping bag.

“And what is it I can do for you, Mr. Prosecutor?”

He looked down at the tops of his polished Flourshiems. Then he looked back up at me.

He said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep everything…everything you’ve learned about me, about my past … to yourself. Do you understand?”

“The past has a name,” I said, feeling my blood beginning to simmer. “Stella. And she lives very much in the present.”

He nodded.

I looked at him, at his dark eyes protected by the thick brow, the hawk nose, the clean dark face, his lips pressed together. He knew that I had the power to destroy him and his aspirations. Knowledge was power and now I knew more about him than anyone, save Tess, Stella and Spain. But then I needed him. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed him to help me get rid of that OSHA monkey; to help me get rid of those civil lawsuits. I needed him but I didn’t have to like it. And I could destroy him with one phone call to the press, but what good would it do anyone? And besides, maybe in the end, that was a phone call for either Tess or Stella to make.

“Your secret,” I said, my heart dropping into my stomach. “Your fucking secret is … safe.”

He went to hold out his free hand for me to shake, until he remembered the bag he was holding in his other.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, opening the bag, digging into it. “Thought you might want this back.”

He pulled out my equalizer…the framing hammer that Marino used to kill Natalie. It had been cleaned of blood, brains and hair. But that didn’t make it any more attractive to me. My stomach dropped to my ankles just looking at it.

“No thank you,” I said.

Santiago smiled, as if he didn’t understand my apprehension.

“You’ve carried this around for a lot of years,” he said. “I just thought—”

“—You thought wrong, Derrick,” Spain said, pulling the hammer from his hand, tossing it into the drink.

For a beat, we listened to the gulls squeaking and squawking at the splash the hammer made in the river. Until they died down.

That’s when Santiago once more tried to hold out his hand for me to shake.

I ignored it.

Tough, hard-headed girls don’t go down,
I thought.
They survive anyway they can.

He let the hand fall.

“Sure thing,” he said. “I get it.”

About-facing, he walked the empty pier alone towards a brilliant political future.

Chapter 76

Months later I was back in our old offices, seated behind dad’s big mahogany desk. There was a drafting table set up against the far wall. A cabinet with books about engineering and construction project management methods took up the whole of the opposite wall. There was a leather couch pushed up against the third wall. Scotch-taped to the wall-paper above it were about two dozen Christmas cards I’d received in the last week alone.

I didn’t use the couch for lounging.

Like dad, I used it like a table—an area where I could sort out the separate bids I was presently receiving via fax for an historic cathedral renovation in south Albany. The project called for a boatload of asbestos removal and thus far, I’d received three quotes all within ten percent of one another. In the end, only the fair-and-square low bidder would win.

Harrison had been officially hired back to complete the renovation at PS 20. I’d hired a new asbestos removal outfit to complete the job Farrell started but cheated on. My new lawyer was attempting to secure A-1 Environmental’s bid bond in order to pay for the asbestos repair. But at this point, with the three civil lawsuits that had been pending against me all throughout the previous year now settled out of court, I would have gladly paid out of pocket. Small price to pay for getting a second chance to make good in this impossible business; this man’s business. And besides, the Harrison bank accounts no longer had liens placed against them. The liens had been successfully bonded. Now it was just a matter of filling them up with pretty green again.

Nicolas Boni, the third grader who was thought to have developed mesothelioma did not have the disease at all. He was misdiagnosed. Because of his less than stellar living conditions inside the Albany projects, he’d contracted a rare form of tuberculosis, the symptoms of which matched almost identically that of the fatal form of asbestos cancer, minus the terminal prognosis. Having been receiving treatment at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, Nick was back in school. Thankfully, his mother dropped her lawsuit. In return, all of us at Harrison Construction chipped in and bought Nick a new coat, snow-pants and a new Wii video game system for Christmas.

For the rest of that summer and through some of the fall, I saw Spain only on occasion. We emailed from time to time, sometimes talked on the phone. Judging from our last conversation, he was seriously contemplating pulling up stakes in Albany, packing his bags and moving west to California to be close to his son. But I suspected that what he also wanted was to try and win his wife’s heart back.

I made sure to stop in and see Tess nearly every Tuesday night when the Blisterz rocked out. I’d sit at the bar, have a couple of beers. On occasion Stella brought me a steak, medium rare, baked potato and a garden salad. “On the house,” she’d inevitably insist. I had no choice but to accept her generosity. But I did take her clothes shopping before she began her first fall semester at Albany Law School to make up for it.

As for the surviving members of Albany Development Limited, Joel Clark no longer occupied a county jail cell. He hired a powerhouse attorney who was fighting his numerous state indictments. But by all appearances, my dad’s longtime lawyer was fighting a losing battle.

It also hadn’t helped Joel’s cause at all once Victor Dott began singing like a bird, having agreed to cooperate fully with both the state and FBI law enforcement officials in exchange for a lenient sentence inside some federal country club prison.

Despite the introduction of parasitic clams to Lake Desolation via the Desolation Kill, New York State EnCon was able to save both bodies of water from irreversible damage. Ironically however, Marino’s and Farrell’s original idea of turning the area into a high-end casino, hotel and residential condo development was adopted by the organization that owns and runs the Fox Woods Casino in Connecticut. By the looks of things, old man Dott would prove the big winner in all of this when he and the development company finally closed on his lake-front property. How’s that for the American dream come true? I wondered if he could spend the money from prison?

Marino Construction was still up and running stronger than ever now that Marino’s number two took over the reins. In fact, Marino would be my direct competition in the cathedral renovation bid which was scheduled for a public opening at four o’clock that afternoon at the downtown site. In the meantime, I’d keep collecting the subcontractor and material supplier bids just the way my dad taught me, scrutinizing each quotation package item for item, making sure it was complete according to project plans and specifications—apples for apples; oranges for oranges.

It was close to mid-day.

While a rehired office staff busily decorated the office with garland, colored lights, mistletoe and a plastic Christmas tree in preparation for the annual Christmas party, I felt my stomach growling. But never fear. Outside the office windows, I saw a big black Ford F-150 pickup pull up to a snow bank. The man driving it was no stranger.

Good old Tommy.

He pounded the horn, waving at me to hurry up. I knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to grab a quick lunch at the Miss Albany Diner, then get back to finish up the bid so that he could personally drive it out to the cathedral in time for the public bid opening.

As the smooth radio voice of Nat King Cole sang, “
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…
”, I got up from behind the desk, made my way around front, brushing back my newly trimmed hair with open fingers. I pulled a cig from the pack set out on the desk, fired it up with Jordan’s New York Giants lighter that Spain had given back to me. I exhaled blue smoke while my eyes shifted to the wall-mounted portrait of my old man—the proud face of John Harrison, construction legend.

“Going to lunch,” I said out loud. “And Merry Christmas.”

How’s a headstrong girl like me succeed at running a general construction outfit?

She listens closely to her old man. In my mind I heard his exact words.

“
Make it quick…You’ve got a bid to put together
.”

Some things never change.

Not even from the grave.

Also by Vincent Zandri

GODCHILD

The Land Rover headlights drill through the early morning desert darkness, two fiery eyes burning on the silent horizon barely an hour before the sun rises over Monterrey.

Four A.M.

The appointed time.

She's been waiting for them, per instructions from her LA. contact. The halogen signal promised just last night in Houston when finally, over caviar, Dom, and cocaine, she signed on to do the deal.

Her first and last (although that “last” bit will remain her little secret).

She is a writer by trade. But this morning, she is more like an actor, playing the role of the burrier. A border burrier (a bastardization of burro and courier), all packaged nice and neat in the guise of a beautiful woman. For the sake of the assignment, she has assumed the role of the in-between girl—the paid runner who takes the risk not just for the money, but for the sheer thrill.

That’s burrier.

Not courier.

In the border world between Texas and Mexico, there's a distinct difference.

For the burrier, it's not about the need to run drugs. It's about the want.

Technically speaking, she doesn’t need the money.

According to her phony bio, she doesn't have a family to feed, a brood of shoeless children living in a one-room shack with no hot water and no father to help carry the weight. What she's supposedly got instead is a two-bedroom town-house in the Hollywood hills, a loft apartment in Manhattan’s Tribeca, a six-figure modeling contract with the Ford Agency, and a two-hundred-dollar-a-day coke habit.

But all this is not enough.

As a burrier she can savor the elation of slipping into a skintight leather jumper and motorcycle boots. The sheer power of firing up a Suzuki GSX1300 Hayabusa equipped with leather saddlebags and a CD/stereo combo with enough lethal amperage to scare off even the most rabid coyote.

The burriers are as beautiful as they are dangerous, and they are the only gringos the brothers will deal with these days.

Their philosophy: Why eat bread when you can have pure honey?

Her philosophy: What a story this is gonna make.