House Revenge (8 page)

11

The man sitting on the front steps of Elinore's building was about seventy, a tall, lanky guy with short, bristly gray hair. When he shook DeMarco's hand, DeMarco could feel calluses. He was wearing khaki pants, a short-sleeved blue shirt, and steel-toed work boots. His name was Jim Boyer and he was a general contractor, now retired, and had spent all his adult life on construction sites.

When Boyer saw DeMarco's face he shot to his feet and said, “Whoa! What happened to you?”

“I got jumped by a couple of guys, which is one of the reasons you're here.”

DeMarco explained the situation to Boyer. A developer named Callahan was renovating the entire neighborhood, as Boyer could plainly see, and a little old lady named Elinore Dobbs, who lived in the building they were standing in front of, was refusing to move out so Callahan was making her life a living hell—and DeMarco wanted Boyer's help to force Callahan to back off.

“Here's what I'm looking for,” DeMarco said. “I want you to walk around with me and find safety and building code violations. The bigger, the better. Then you're going to call the right bureaucrat in OSHA or the EPA or whoever, and rat Callahan out. In other words, I want you to bring this project to a screeching halt, and if you can't do that, I want you to disrupt it as often as possible. Then, when the work is stopped, I'm going to sit down with Callahan and explain to him that for the next three years you're going to devote your life to fucking up this development.”

“Oh,” Boyer said, sounding uncertain. “I told Maggie I'd help you today but I don't know about three years.”

“It's not going to take three years. I just want Callahan to
think
I have a guy who's willing to devote three years of his life to making him miserable if he doesn't leave Elinore alone.”

Boyer looked skeptical.

“Hey, maybe it will work and maybe it won't,” DeMarco said. “But in the meantime, Maggie Dolan will pay your hourly rate for whatever time you spend here. And if you know a couple of guys that have the kind of background you do, they can spell you if you're busy.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Boyer said. “I'd like to help the lady but you oughta know that most builders follow the rules and projects are inspected at various phases during construction, so it might not be as easy as you think to find problems.”

“Tell you what,” DeMarco said. “Let's just walk around and see what you can spot.”

“Okay, but I need to get a couple things out of my truck first.”

They walked a block to Boyer's truck—a Ford F-150 with a crew cab—and from the backseat, Boyer removed two hard hats, one white and one orange. “You wear the white one,” he said, “since you're the guy in the suit. The bosses typically wear white hard hats.” The other thing Boyer took from the truck was a rolled-up blueprint.

“The workers see a couple of guys walking around in hard hats, holding plans, they'll think we belong,” Boyer said. “If anybody asks what we're doing, let me do the talking.”

They started touring the development, walking first over to where the commercial buildings—the corporate headquarters for the solar energy company, the hotel, and the office buildings—were being erected and in various phases of construction. There'd apparently been no Elinore Dobbs to slow down the other parts of Callahan's project. Boyer was completely at ease walking around the construction site; DeMarco was worried about getting run over by a cement truck.

“You see those two guys up there, on the scaffolding?” Boyer said, pointing skyward.

“Yeah,” DeMarco said.

“The most common safety violation you'll find on any construction site has to do with fall protection. You see that section of scaffolding there at the end? There's supposed to be a safety rail on it, but there isn't. And that one guy, he's got fall protection, that cable coming off the harness he's wearing. But the other guy should be wearing fall protection, too. OSHA makes it almost impossible to work these days as they require fall protection anytime you're more than about four inches off the ground, and you can come out here any day of the week and find a dozen fall protection violations. A month ago, a construction company over in Everett got a three-hundred-thousand-dollar fine for repeated violations.”

DeMarco smiled. “That had to sting,” he said.

“Well, yeah, but you gotta remember that that was the fine the company got. It doesn't mean they paid the fine after their lawyers got involved.”

Boyer stopped again. “And all these cranes,” he said, pointing upward at the yellow construction cranes looming over the site. “Two, three times a year, you'll hear about one of those things toppling over and killing someone because it wasn't assembled or operated correctly.”

“A couple years ago,” DeMarco said, “a crane working on the National Cathedral in Washington collapsed, and crushed a bunch of cars in a parking lot. But nobody got killed.”

“
That
time, nobody got killed,” Boyer said. “Which is why there are about a million rules these guys are supposed to follow when it comes to cranes, and about half the time they don't follow them. They're supposed to use load charts to figure out the crane's boom angle. The crane's not supposed to lift things greater than a certain percentage of its rated capacity. They're supposed to conduct trial lifts before hoisting people up in a box. And on and on and on. A company I used to work with over in Framingham got a seventy-thousand-dollar fine for operating a crane too close to energized power lines. If I was to spend a couple days out here just watching the cranes I know I'd come up with violations because experienced operators think they're too smart to have to follow all the nitpicky rules.”

Boyer watched a crane swing a pallet loaded with bags of cement over a couple guys standing beneath it, then said, “Let's go back over to Elinore's building. I want to take a look at those three-deckers they haven't torn down yet.”

On the way back to Elinore's, they walked past the sign that ­DeMarco had already seen that showed what the new high-end condos were going to look like. Boyer stopped, looked at the sign, and said, “This could be easier than I thought.”

“What do you mean?” DeMarco said.

Boyer point at the sign and said, “Flannery.”

The sign, in addition to showing an artist's rendition of the completed structure and photos of model apartments, listed the name of the architectural and engineering firm responsible for the design as well as the name of the general contractor, which was Flannery Construction.

“Flannery's a shitbag,” Boyer said. “One of those guys who will cut every corner he can possibly cut, which is probably the reason Callahan hired him.”

Boyer looked down at the footings for the new apartment complex for a moment, then started moving again, walking toward the four three-deckers that were waiting to be razed. But before they reached the houses, Boyer stopped again, this time near half a dozen industrial-sized Dumpsters where debris from the demolished buildings had been placed. He pointed at a chunk of six-inch carbon steel pipe lying on the ground near one of the Dumpsters. The pipe had a white, crusty film on it.

“Asbestos,” Boyer said. “That's probably a steam pipe that came from one of the apartment buildings they already demolished. A lot of the buildings that used to be here were constructed before World War II and they used asbestos for insulation back in those days, on the pipes and in the walls. Linoleum and floor tiles contained asbestos, too. To remove asbestos, you basically have to shrink-wrap the building, the workers gotta be in space suits with respirators, you have to dispose of the stuff at a hazardous waste site, and a whole bunch of other things to make sure the workers don't end up breathing the shit.

“I'll bet you anything that Flannery, being the dirtbag he is, had his guys in the buildings at night when there was less chance of an OSHA inspector coming around, and they did the rip-out wearing nothing but those little paper filters over their mouths and noses. Flannery is required to have records showing what he did and how he disposed of the stuff, and knowing Flannery, he might not have 'em. Improper asbestos abatement is a showstopper.”

“That's what I like to hear,” DeMarco said.

“Let's go look at the triple-deckers. I was raised in a place in Southie just like the ones on this block. It's gone now, too.”

The narrow three-story houses were nothing but shells, the exterior walls still standing, but the interiors gutted. Boyer pointed at one of the standing walls. “Bet you a nickel that's lead-based paint. Lead paint is like asbestos. There're a bunch of rules you gotta follow to remove it and dispose of it.”

Boyer stopped abruptly. “Whoa! You see there, the soil around that hole in the ground, how oily and black it looks?” Boyer got down on one knee, pinched a bit of dirt between his fingers, and smelled it. “There used to be a fuel oil tank here and they yanked the tank out of the ground. But the tank leaked at one time and now the soil's contaminated. You can't just dump the dirt that's here and you can't leave it here. It's hazardous waste now. The soil all around this area has to be tested for oil contamination, and whatever's contaminated has to be properly disposed—which means, expensively disposed.”

“Outstanding,” DeMarco said.

“I've got enough right now to cause this guy some misery. And I know just who to call. There's this one young lady who works for MassDEP and—”

“Mass dep?”

“The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Anyway, this young gal is a bear when it comes to this kind of shit, especially asbestos violations. Her dad died of mesothelioma.”

They were heading back toward where Boyer had parked his truck, DeMarco holding his borrowed hard hat in his hand, when his cell phone rang.

He didn't recognize the number.

“Hello,” he said.

“This is Superintendent O'Rourke. Elinore Dobbs is in the hospital.”

12

Elinore was in Mass General, the same place that had treated DeMarco. She was in a room with a woman who appeared to be on life support, judging by all the tubes going in and out of her. Elinore's right arm was encased in a cast from hand to elbow, and there was a bandage above her left eye. She didn't seem to be sleeping, but her eyes were closed and she was making little whimpering sounds as if she was in pain. She looked so small lying there in the big hospital bed.

DeMarco walked over to her and touched her gently on the shoulder and said, “Elinore.”

She slowly opened her eyes. “Who are you?”

Aw, jeez.

DeMarco left her room and walked back to the nurses' station. “I need to talk to Ms. Dobbs's doctor,” he said.

Elinore's doctor was a woman named Webster who looked like she should still be in college—or maybe high school. She was short—about the same height as Elinore—maybe five foot two. She had short blond hair, bright green eyes, and a button nose. She was cute—and just looking at her, you could tell she was smart as a whip.

“Do you have any idea what happened to her?” DeMarco asked.

“The EMTs who brought her in said she'd fallen down a flight of stairs,” Dr. Webster said. “She has a broken arm. Her left ulna is cracked, which really shouldn't be a problem, and she'll make a full recovery from that injury. The big problem is she hit her head hard when she fell and she has a subdural hematoma, which means she has blood in the layers of tissue surrounding the brain. We may have to operate to relieve the pressure but I want to wait a while to see if the swelling subsides.

“The problem is her age. A younger person with the same injury would probably be okay in a couple of weeks without surgery or any other form of drastic intervention. But with the elderly it's different. As people age the tiny veins in the brain are more susceptible to tearing, and, as we age, the brain actually shrinks a little, creating more subdural space for the hematoma to expand into.”

“She didn't recognize me,” DeMarco said. “That lady was as sharp as a tack yesterday. There wasn't anything at all wrong with her memory.”

“That's another symptom of subdural hematomas in the elderly: confusion and memory loss similar to what you see in people with dementia.”

“Is she going to get better?”

“I don't know. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you that she'll recover completely, but because of her age, she may not. We're going to keep her here for a couple more days, watch for swelling and internal bleeding, and maybe she'll recover. And maybe she won't. All I can tell you is that I'll do my best but you should pray for her.”

DeMarco wasn't a big believer in the power of prayer.

He did, however, believe in the power of revenge.

When he stepped into Superintendent O'Rourke's office, the first thing O'Rourke said, when he saw DeMarco's face, was: “Jesus. What happened to you?”

The swelling on DeMarco's right cheek had gone down but the skin under his eye was various shades of purple, blue, and black. DeMarco told O'Rourke about the parking garage mugging.

“Did you report the attack?”

“No.”

“But you think the McNultys did it?”

“I
know
they did, but I can't prove it. And what happened to me isn't important right now. Do you have somebody investigating what happened to Elinore? I don't believe for one fucking minute it was an accident.”

“Calm down. And, yeah, I've got a guy on it. Normally, I wouldn't treat this as a criminal matter but considering what's been happening with Ms. Dobbs and because of Congressman Mahoney's interest . . .”

“Can I talk to your investigator?”

O'Rourke hesitated, then said, “Sure.”

The crack investigator O'Rourke had assigned to the case was a detective named Fitzgerald. He was in his fifties—most likely close to ­retiring—and a good fifty pounds overweight. He was wearing a white polo shirt with a small orange stain on the breast that DeMarco suspected was pasta sauce, wrinkled gray pants, and thick-soled, ankle-high boots, the kind he'd probably worn when he was a beat cop thirty years ago. He had a badge clipped to the front of his belt that you could barely see because of the gut flopping over the belt, and, on his right hip, in a pancake holster, a short-barreled revolver.

“So what do you think happened?” DeMarco asked after the introductions were made.

Fitzgerald shrugged. “I think she tripped at the top of the stairs and fell.”

“Bullshit. I want to see the crime scene,” DeMarco said.

“Crime scene?”

“That's right. This wasn't an accident. Elinore Dobbs was in better shape than you are, Fitz, a lot better shape. She moved like somebody half her age. And she would have been careful going down those stairs because the lights on the landings were out. When I walked down those stairs, I held on to the rail because the light was dim, and she would have done the same thing.”

“The lights on the landings were on,” Fitzgerald said. “At least they were when I was there.”

“What?”

“But, hey, the boss said you were a guy with some juice so if you wanna drive over there, let's go.”

Fitzgerald turned out to be right: the lights on the staircase landings were glowing; there were hundred-watt bulbs in the sockets. Those lights hadn't been on the last time DeMarco walked up the stairs.

When he saw Elinore in the hospital, DeMarco's first thought had been:
Lawsuit
. He was going to file a lawsuit on her behalf against Callahan for the poorly lighted stairs, which the suit would claim was the reason she fell. And he was going to hire a mean-mouthed barracuda for a lawyer to press the lawsuit, the kind of lawyer who could win a case against the Cub Scouts. But that plan just went out the window.

“When did she fall?” DeMarco asked.

“I don't know when she fell, but the medics were called at seven thirty this morning.” At seven thirty, DeMarco had still been in bed, and by the time he met with Boyer at Elinore's building, she'd already been taken away by the medics.

“Who found her?” he asked Fitzgerald.

“Some wino. Since the front door to the building doesn't lock and most of the units are empty, winos sneak in here to sleep. Anyway, this guy was walking up the stairs and saw Elinore lying on the landing between the second and third floors. He said she was unconscious when he found her, and he went outside, found a woman with a cell phone, and she called nine-one-one.”

“Huh,” DeMarco said. He walked up and stood on the third-floor landing, looking at the stairs Elinore Dobbs had tumbled down. He tried to imagine her losing her balance, a hand reaching out, trying to grab the banister, the terror she must have felt before the impact. Then he noticed something: just a smidgen of sawdust on the top of the landing, which he was sure he wouldn't have seen if the landing lights hadn't been so bright. He knelt down and looked closer, then said to Fitzgerald, “Come here.”

On one side of the landing was a wall and on the other side was the landing newel—a post with a round ball on top that the handrail attached to. He pointed at the hole in the base of the newel, a hole about one-eighth of an inch in diameter.

“You see that little hole?” DeMarco said.

“No,” Fitzgerald said.

“Get down on your knees and look.”

With a grunt and considerable effort, Fitzgerald knelt.

“Now do you see the hole?”

“Yeah.”

“It's new,” DeMarco said. “You can see the wood is white inside and you can see a bit of sawdust on the floor beneath the hole. I think someone drilled that hole recently. Now look at the wall on the other side of the staircase. There's a hole just like this one, about an inch off the floor.” DeMarco paused, then said, “I think somebody strung a trip wire across here.”

“Come on,” Fitzgerald said.

“Get a CSI over here and have him check this out,” DeMarco said.

“A CSI? You think this is television, DeMarco? What's a CSI going to do?”

“I want him to look at these holes. And take fingerprints, too.”

DeMarco could tell Fitzgerald was about to give him an argument, then remembered the political muscle that DeMarco had. “I'll see if someone's available,” Fitzgerald said. “But we may be waiting quite a while.”

It turned out that they didn't have to wait even half an hour. It must have been a slow day for crime in Boston. A kid in his twenties with spiky dark hair, a grapevine tattoo on his neck, and a ring in one ear arrived carrying what looked like a tackle box. If he hadn't been wearing a blue Windbreaker with yellow letters that said
POLICE
on the back, DeMarco would have guessed the kid belonged to a not very successful rock band.

DeMarco told him to dust for prints and take a close look at the two small holes. The kid, not knowing who DeMarco was, looked over at Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald nodded. “Why am I looking at the holes?” the CSI tech asked.

“Because I think someone rigged a trip wire across the landing and made an old lady fall,” DeMarco said. “So just look and tell me what you think.”

The technician applied fingerprint powder to the newel, the wall opposite the newel, and the handrail but didn't find any prints. DeMarco wasn't surprised there were no prints on the handrail because they'd be smeared by people holding on to the rail while coming down the steps. But he thought the tech might find something on the lower part of the newel, an area where you wouldn't expect people to touch. And if the tech found prints, they could lead to the McNultys, whose prints would be in the system. But no such luck.

“Dust the top of the steps near the post,” DeMarco said, thinking maybe someone put a hand on the steps kneeling down to drill the holes, the way Fitzgerald had put his hand on the steps when he knelt down. But there was nothing, not even a print left by Fitzgerald, who'd probably smeared everything when he looked at the holes. Or maybe, if the McNultys had anything to do with this, they'd worn gloves. Whatever the case, there were no prints.

“Now take a close look at those holes,” DeMarco said.

The CSI examined them first with his naked eye, then took a magnifying glass from his equipment box and lay down on the steps so he could put his head close to the holes. He examined the hole in the newel first, then the one in the wall.

He looked up at DeMarco and said, “You can see threads.”

“Threads?” Fitzgerald said.

“Yeah, screw threads,” the technician said. “I can't prove someone installed a wire, but if someone did, they might have drilled the holes, then screwed in an eyebolt or an eyehook like you use to hang pictures and then ran a wire, like picture-hanging wire, through the eyebolts. But that's the best I can tell you, and I'm just guessing.”

“Well, I think that's exactly what happened,” DeMarco said. Looking at Fitzgerald, he said, “Someone, most likely the McNultys, attached a wire to hooks like your technician said, then Elinore walked out here on this landing and headed down the steps and tripped. They were trying to kill her, figuring a woman her age would break her neck.”

“I guess that could have happened,” Fitzgerald said, although he didn't sound like a true believer. “But where's the wire? And with the lights on, if there had been a wire, she should have seen it.”

“I'm telling you those lights weren't on yesterday,” DeMarco said. Then, before Fitzgerald had a chance to debate the issue, he said, “What was the name of this wino who found her?”

“Greg Canyon, like Grand Canyon.”

“Let's go talk to him. And let's go find out where the fucking McNultys were when this happened.”

“What are you saying? That the wino rigged a wire, then took out the wire and the eyebolts before the medics got here?”

“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe the McNultys rigged it the night before and then got the wino to find her and remove the wire. And one other thing. I think they screwed in that hundred-watt bulb
after
the wino found her, while Elinore was unconscious and he was waiting for the medics to arrive. So I want to know where the McNultys were last night and this morning. Ditto for the wino. We'll go talk to the wino first.”

“That might be kind of tough,” Fitzgerald said. “I mean, he's a street person. He doesn't have an address.”

“If the guy hangs out in this area, we should be able to spot him. We'll drive around and look. And I want you to do a record check on him. See if he's associated with the McNultys or Sean Callahan. See if he was in prison with the McNultys or went to school with them or if Callahan ever employed him.”

DeMarco could tell he was annoying Fitzgerald, snapping orders at him—and he didn't give a shit.

Fitzgerald called somebody at the station and told whomever he talked to to e-mail him a summary of Canyon's record if he had one. Then he and DeMarco got into Fitzgerald's car and started cruising the streets near Delaney, trying to spot Canyon. According to Fitzgerald, Canyon was very tall—maybe six five or six six—and had wild black hair that went down to his shoulders and was wearing jeans and combat boots. “And he had on a ski jacket, a dirty blue one,” Fitzgerald said. “Even though it was already about ninety when I talked to him.”

DeMarco thought a ski jacket would be a good place to stash a few light bulbs and the wire that had been used.

Half an hour after they started their hunt, DeMarco was growing impatient and said, “Did you get that e-mail with his record yet?”

Fitzgerald pulled over to the curb and took out reading glasses and his cell phone. “Yeah, here it is.” He squinted at the screen and said, “Just the usual shit you get with bums. Assaults for fighting with other bums. Peeing in some merchant's doorway. Being drunk in public.” Fitzgerald laughed. “The only people ever charged with being drunk in public are homeless people. Half the guys who go to Fenway are drunk in public and a lot more violent than most bums, but we never charge them.”