No Colder Place (15 page)

“Is that surprising?” she asked. “They do it that way in Chinatown all the time. Junk on the inside, marble on the outside. It’s obnoxious but I don’t think it’s unusual.”

“It might not be. But it started me thinking, and I just wanted to check it out.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I’m not sure. But it seems to me the documents call for better materials than we’re using.”

“‘We’?”

“Just trying to get fully into character.”

“But what do you mean, ‘it seems the documents call for’? You learned that in my office? Didn’t you tell me you have the drawings stuck up on a column up there so you can see what you’re supposed to be doing? Don’t the drawings say what the materials are?”

“No. They show you what the brick pattern is and where to put your brick ties but they don’t say what they’re made of, whether they’re galvanized, what gauge they are, and so on. That’s all in the spec book, and that’s not something the bricklayers or carpenters or laborers use. They just take what’s handed to them by their supervisors and build with it.”

“So you mean you’re supposed to be using good materials but someone’s substituting cheap ones?”

“Looks that way.”

“Who?”

“Well, most likely it’s the subcontractors, like Lacertosa.”

“That’s who you work for?”

“Right. They and the carpentry sub, Emerald—they’re the ones doing the gypboard walls—and some of the others could be putting one over on Crowell. That would have to mean both Crowell and the architect’s rep are asleep, but it could happen.”

Lydia pursed her lips in thought. “Crowell pays for materials?”

“Crowell has contracts with all the subs the same way the owner has with Crowell. They’re paying them a fixed price to do their share of the work. If the subs can use cheaper materials, they make a bigger profit. Crowell and the architect are supposed to monitor that so it doesn’t happen.”

She asked, “What if the architect’s rep were being paid off?”

I nodded. “That’s possible. Then it just means Crowell isn’t paying a lot of attention, and they’re getting screwed. It was Dan Junior who was with the architect’s rep today when he came around. Do you suppose that’s the usual thing?”

“I’m sure it is,” she said. “The guy—the architect’s rep, that skinny guy, Hacker—just came into the trailer and asked for Dan Junior. I buzzed Junior, told him who it was, and he came out of his office with his hard hat and they left together. It was like they do it all the time.”

“Did they have much to say to each other?”

“No. Dan Junior had his regular goofy smile, and he winked at me as they left. Hacker didn’t say anything.”

“I wonder how hard it would be,” I said, “to put something over on Dan Junior.”

“If you asked Dan Senior,” she replied, repositioning the air-conditioning to point directly at her face, “I bet the answer would be, ‘Not very.’”

The dojo where Lydia practices Tae Kwon Do isn’t far from where I live in Tribeca. As we headed there I told her about Joanie Wisnewski and Sal Maggio, about the mist and the dog’s clanking chain and the chance that we might be able to connect Joe Romeo to the stolen front-loader.

“Or we might find out they have a whole other problem on that site,” she said. “That Joe Romeo is a loan shark and a drug dealer, but someone else is stealing from the Crowells.”

“We might,” I said. I stopped at the light, waited for my chance to get off the highway. “The other thing I did today was to barely avoid getting arrested for assault and attempted rape.”

“What?”

I glanced sideways at her. “At least I got your attention.”

“Did you say that just to—”

“No. It really happened. But I didn’t do it.”

“That’s what they all say. What are you talking about?”

I told her about Denise Armstrong.

“Boy,” she said, when I was done. “It sounds like she had your number from the beginning.”

“I underestimated her.”

“Because she’s black and she’s a woman?”

“I don’t like to think that,” I said. “But it’s probably true.”

I could feel Lydia’s eyes on me, but she was silent. I steered the car through the streets of Tribeca, near Lydia’s dojo, near my apartment.

“What do you think of her now?” she said.

“There aren’t many times I’ve been tempted to use the word ‘ruthless,’” I answered.

“And really smart, she sounds like to me. I haven’t known you to get outmaneuvered like that very often.”

“At least I have the consolation of knowing that I deserved it.”

“Why is that consoling?”

“It’s a Catholic thing.”

“You’re only half Catholic.”

“I’m only half consoled.”

“What’s the other half?”

“Mad.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. I don’t even know exactly why I went there; it was just an instinctive thing, to see what she was like. I’m going to go back to the cases we’re supposed to be working on.”

“Cases?”

“Joe Romeo, and Reg Phillips.”

“And Pelligrini in the basement, and the frontloader? And the chintzy goods?”

“May all be part of the same thing. Maybe not. We’ve opened some doors. Now we just have to wait and see what comes through them.”

I pulled to a stop in front of Lydia’s dojo, a grimy-faced loft building that hasn’t been gentrified yet and maybe now won’t be, as the yuppie wave of the eighties recedes.

“Golly,” she said as she got out, “you’re philosophical, for a bricklayer.”

“And you’re gorgeous. For a secretary.” I ducked as she whacked me with her rolled-up copy of
American Builder
, and I grinned as she stalked away from my car.

ten

i
drove away from Lydia’s dojo watching the lowering sun play off puddles and glint from windows. I took the car to the lot and left it there, walked home through damp, sparkling streets. As I reached the door to Shorty’s, a couple was coming out, bringing with them a wave of cool air, the aroma of beer and grilling burgers, and the easy sounds of the kind of talk people use not so much to tell each other anything as to reassure each other they’re still listening.

The place, as always, pulled at me, and I paused and thought about it. Then I went on a few steps farther and unlocked the door that led upstairs. I climbed the two slanted flights and let myself in. It wasn’t as cool up here as in the bar downstairs, it wasn’t as companionable, but I’d already had a beer, and up here was where the piano was.

I opened the windows at both ends of the apartment to get the air moving; there’s no air-conditioning up here. I spent the first nine years of my life in the South, and some of the years right after that in tropical places, as my father was posted on short tours by the army. I have what Lydia calls a perverse liking for hot, damp weather. And this building doesn’t get much sun; it’s shadowed by the factories and warehouses around it. The only place the sun pours into is the back bedroom, the room I built for Annie, and no one uses that room anymore.

I sat down at the piano bench, set the timer. I lit a cigarette and studied the music. I’d practiced a little yesterday, late in the day, but not as much as I’d wanted, not as much as I’m used to. The Scriabin études I’d been working on for a while were just starting to connect for me, beginning to build on each other. A set of études is always interlocked, one to another and each to the whole set. Some of the relations, of key or meter, are clear from the start; a few come out gradually, as you play them; and always there are some that surprise, that reveal themselves suddenly, maybe after you’ve been playing the pieces for years. These Scriabin études were new to me, the links among them endless and encouraging, and I was impatient to get back to them.

I put the music up on the stand and played scales and exercises to get ready. The cool smooth keys gave almost imperceptibly under my fingers; my arms and my body moved with the notes ringing through the room. I began to focus, to lose the day that had just been and the evening coming up, to think of nothing except what to do now, this instant, how to play this note, this chord. When everything else was gone for me but the massive solidity of the piano and the whirling, vanishing, transitory sounds, I was ready for the piece.

Breathing deeply, hands resting, I ran my eyes over the music again. I concentrated on the opening notes, the few measures after; then I began. I searched for the rhythm, the tones, the timing, tried to keep the staccato notes as sharp as I wanted, the arpeggios as smooth. I went back over some passages a dozen times, played others straight through. I worked out some pedaling, changed it, went back to what I’d started with. Back and forth I flipped the pages, worked through the music, the sweet passages, the quick ones, the powerful ones, looking for what they were, and what they were to each other.

I’d been working awhile, I didn’t know how long, when the phone rang.

It startled me; I’d pretty much forgotten it existed. I shook my head, to clear it, and cursed myself for not turning the phone off before I began. I got up and answered it.

“Smith.”

A quiet, contained voice told me, “It’s Maggio.”

Joanie’s guy. I reached for a cigarette, pulled myself back from the music. “This is fast,” I told him.

“I like to take care of things fast. I don’t like things hanging over me.” Through the phone I heard the dog bark, heard its chain rattle.

“You found something?” I asked.

“Your frontloader.”

I paused in my search for a match. “No shit.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It’s more than I wanted.”

“Good, because you won’t be getting it back.”

“Why not?”

“Sold for parts already.”

I lit up, shook out the match. “Why for parts?”

“You’re lucky it was. That’s the only reason it’s okay for me to tell you about it. Guy who bought it off the guy who had it is pissed.”

“About what?” I took a deep drag.

“Guy who had it promised he’d get the papers, too. Thing’s a lot more valuable with the papers. You could sell it almost legit.”

“But he didn’t, this guy?”

“Nope. Never came back.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“Sure as hell. Without papers, you need a buyer not too particular. Or you got to sell it for parts. Parts, you could lose money. There’s not that big of a market for these things.”

“So the guy who bought it lost money?”

“No, he’s not a guy loses money. But he didn’t make as much as he wanted, and he’s pissed.”

“So he was willing to talk about it?”

“Yeah. He says if you could do him a favor and find this other guy, the one who sold it to him, he’d like to break his head.”

“Who is this guy who doesn’t lose money?”

“Uh-uh. He’s not that pissed. And by the way, he wanted to know who you were, too. I told him no dice.”

“I get your point.”

“But I could tell you who’s the guy who sold it to him. That’s what you said you wanted to know.”

“It is.”

“That name you gave me. Romeo? No good. This guy never heard of him. Guy who brought the thing is called Pelligrini,” Sal Maggio said. “I don’t know him, but that’s his name. Lenny Pelligrini.”

I leaned back in the desk chair, pulled on the cigarette again. Lenny Pelligrini. “You don’t know him,” I said to Maggio. “Do you know anything about him?”

“Such as what?”

“Is he connected?”

“Fuck you,” Maggio said. “You’re asking that because he’s Italian?”

“No. I’m asking that because he’s an Italian crook.”

“Shit.” In Maggio’s silence I heard the dog’s chain clanking and jingling. I wondered if it was settling in for the night. “What the hell do you care?”

“I want to know what I’m up against.”

“Yeah, well, if I was you, I’d drop it right here. You got your insurance money, right?”

“My friend’s insurance money.”

“Whatever. So walk away.”

“Then he is connected.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about Pelligrini himself. He sounds like a jerk, you ask me.” Maggio paused. “You gonna drop it?”

“No. But I’ll keep you out of it.”

“Don’t do me any big favors, Smith. I can take care of myself.” I heard the pop of a beer-can top. He drank, I smoked, and we both said nothing.

“The law gonna get in on this?” Maggio finally asked.

“Not from my end. I said I’d keep you out of it.”

“Not just me. This guy I called for you. Better not be trouble for him.”

“I can’t promise him that. But not from me.”

“All I’m asking. Just keep your own mouth shut,” Maggio said. “This Pelligrini kid? He’s just a punk. But he was talking like he knows a guy.”

“Who’s this guy?”

“Name of Falco. Louie Falco. You know him?”

I took a last drag on my cigarette, stubbed it out. Instantly I wanted another one. “No,” I said. “But I know a guy who used to know him.”

“Yeah? Then you don’t have to know him, you know about him. He don’t like people getting in his way.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Maggio. Take care of yourself.”

Maggio snorted. “Oh, yeah. Sure. You too.”

“I’ll be sending you a thank-you in the mail.”

“Don’t bother. Just tell Joanie I helped you out,” Maggio said. “She’s a good kid.”

After I got off the phone with Sal Maggio I tried to go back to the Scriabin, but it was no good. I felt the ache of the past three days in my shoulders, heard the sound of a motorcycle in the street below. A couple of guys came out drunk from Shorty’s, laughing and insulting each other. I turned to check the clock behind me on the desk, and decided as I was doing it that the answer didn’t matter. I closed the piano, calculated the length of a karate class, and called Lydia.

“Chin Investigative Services, Lydia Chin speaking.”

“I know.”

“You think that makes you smart?”

“Don’t be rude to me or I won’t tell you what I just found out. Did you have a good class?”

“It was great. I worked so hard I sweated like a pig and forgot all about construction workers. Then I got to fight four bouts.”

I glanced at the piano, thought about my hands moving over hard, flat keys, thought about forgetting everything in the timbre, tone, and length of sound. “Did you win?” I asked.