No Colder Place (32 page)

Maybe there was no percentage, but there shouldn’t be much of a problem, either. I had the office codes. I could get the file keys. I had a feeling the night security guard had a lot to do and didn’t do it particularly avidly. I could avoid his rounds, see if I got lucky. If I did, good. If not, I was on my way to the cops, to give Bzomowski and Mackey the Crowells. It would be up to them, then, to see what the Crowells would give them.

I sat with my back against the cool unpainted block, took up the time by letting the Scriabin études play in my head. I went over the parts I didn’t understand, back through what wasn’t clear to me. Nothing resolved itself, none of the reasons for the unexpected transitions, or the harmonies that to me were discordant, were revealed as I let the notes and meters drift through my mind. But sometimes it happens that way, that as I work on a piece the only way I know, the piece is working itself out in a place in me I can’t reach, don’t even really understand. Then one day I’ll sit down to play it and know things I never knew before, things I couldn’t tell you when I learned.

The guard’s footsteps came, went, came back, went again. I timed his round, figured when in the cycle of yard—north side—south side he most likely checked the trailers. I gave Dan Senior and Dan Junior that extra half hour to clean up their paperwork, finish the last phone call, and lock up. I gave the guard the time beyond that to be just far enough away from the trailers that he wouldn’t see me coming, but close enough that he wouldn’t be on his way back for a while.

Then I started.

It was still early on a July evening. Outside, on Ninety-ninth Street, the drivers heading west would be wearing sunglasses, putting up their hands to shield their eyes from the piercing brightness of the setting sun. Here in the brick-wrapped depths of a construction site, scaffolding shadowing the window openings and just a few caged lightbulbs glowing feebly, it was twilight. The trades that were working indoors had worklights, but those were off now, and in the dimness, the sweep of bare wires and the odd shapes of columns and ducts did not announce their functions, gave no clue to their value or their place.

I made my way quietly between the dark bulks that were the field office trailers, along the way I had walked my first day here, until I came to the biggest, the general contractor’s, Crowell’s. Usually near the trailers the growl of air conditioners could be heard through every other sound; some of the field offices had two or three, stuck haphazardly out windows or on roofs. Their constant rumble was the underlying sound of work as the day went on. Inside the raw building, the air was cool, as always; but in the trailers, with their scuffed vinyl tile, their fluorescent lights and Formica tabletops, it would be as stuffy as in any small room anywhere.

That first day the air conditioners had been rumbling and the other noises on the site had started before I’d arrived, had built up as I talked to Lozano, had been going full blast by the time I’d stepped back out of his office with my assignment. Now, with the workday long over, the stillness was almost total. My own soft footsteps were sounds I could hear; a honking horn on Broadway and the gentle flap of a piece of loose scaffold netting caught by a breeze reached me here, deep inside the center, deep under the rising skeleton and skin that would be the building above me.

At the Crowell office door, I stopped to listen, for voices, for other footsteps than my own. I heard nothing. The steel-meshed trailer windows showed no lights; the guard seemed to be far away. I pressed the numbers I’d gotten from Lydia into the keypad lock on the door. I knew it would open and it did. Behind the door, on the left, was the alarm keypad, as Lydia had said, and I pressed the numbers there too. The red light turned to green in plenty of time, and I crossed the room to Verna’s desk, to find the key to the files.

It was where it should have been, in a little tray in the top drawer. A tiny silver key; I took it, but didn’t use it yet. All I wanted was one connection, one link; Falco’s phone number in Crowell’s Rolodex, his address in their book, would be enough. I took out my penlight, paged through the appointment calendar on Verna’s desktop, but I didn’t find anything.

Crowells Senior and Junior each had an office, and probably each had card files and appointment books. Senior’s office was closer, so why not start there? I moved silently across the outer office and through Senior’s door, found his desk, his card file.

I had just begun flipping through it when a soft sound behind me made me whip around, but too late.

A black crash of pain exploded at the back of my head. Thrown forward, I grasped for the edge of the desk, but my hands couldn’t grip. I slipped, landed hard on the floor. The last thing I saw before the blackness engulfed me was my own hand dropping the tiny silver key.

Pain smacked me slowly, rhythmically, in the face, but the real bursting, blinding pain pounded inside my head with each blow. Half-aware, I tried to lift my hand, keep the blows from landing, but my arms wouldn’t move. I turned clumsily on my side, to move away. A hand pushed me onto my back again, and I heard myself groan as my head hit the floor. Another smack. A voice said, “Wake up, you son of a bitch.”

I started to open my eyes, but the bright light above me was a stabbing pain as bad as the pounding. I squinted, trying to find the voice. Another blow; with the pain, a wave of nausea.

“The light,” I said, my lips thick, my words a harsh croak. More awake now, I tried to move my arms again, but my wrists were bound tight together behind my back.

There were no more blows; I lay still, heard someone move around the room, then come back.

“It’s off,” the voice said. “Open your eyes and talk to me, Smith, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

I opened my eyes again then, and found myself looking into the shadowed, soft face of Dan Crowell, Jr. “What the fuck are you doing in my trailer?” he said.

He was standing over me as I lay on the floor of his father’s office. The light in the outer office, Lydia’s office, was on, spilling in through the door. I opened my mouth to make some sort of answer, but before I did he lifted his right hand, showed me the silenced revolver there, pointed it at my head.

“I’m not much of a shot,” he said. “But you’re a hell of a target. You yell, make any kind of noise, no one’ll hear you, but I’ll shoot you anyway. Got that?”

Behind his words I could hear the churning of the air conditioners; cold air fell on me in waves from the one in the window above me.

I didn’t think I had the strength to make a noise you could hear from the next room; forget about outside the trailer over the air conditioners, as far away as wherever the guard might be now.

“Yeah,” I managed.

“Good. Now answer the question. What the hell are you doing in here?”

“I was trying to rob you, for Chrissakes. Could you move that gun?”

The gun went nowhere. “What do you mean, rob me?”

“Jesus, what do you think I mean?” I rasped. “I had a run of bad luck at the track. Two guys named Guido are out to break my legs. Every GC I ever worked with keeps cash in the office. I was looking to score.”

“How’d you get in?”

“Happens to be something I can do, beat an alarm system. I learned it in Houston.”

Dan Junior didn’t move fast, but he didn’t have to. There wasn’t anyplace I could go. He stooped, swept the gun butt into the side of my head. Pain crashed like cymbals, burst like fireworks. Over it, I heard him speaking.

“Bullshit, Smith. You’re not from Houston, you’re not a fucking mason. You’re a goddamn private eye, you work for DeMattis, and I want to know what the fuck you’re doing in my trailer.”

He stepped over me, perched on the edge of his father’s desk; the movement was dizzying for me to follow. He tossed something toward me; it fluttered down and landed on my chest. The copy of my license, from under the flap in my wallet.

“If you’re thinking about stalling until the guard comes around,” he said, “don’t bother. He knows I’m in here. What the hell, it’s my trailer. I’m working late, so what? He won’t come looking over here. He won’t hear you, Smith, he’ll never see you. If I shoot you, he’ll never know. Talk. That’s your only choice.”

“Shit,” I said, so weakly I could barely hear myself. I asked him, “You knew all along?”

“What, that you weren’t a mason? If I had, you’d have been out on your can the day you started.”

“Mrs. Armstrong told you.”

“Nah. It was your little sweet-talk with her before that tipped me off, but she just blew right by it. But I started thinking: you just came up from Houston, how did you work for her five years ago when she did her office? You didn’t work for her, how do you know her? So I got your social security number from the records, did some looking into it. Looks like you and that little Chinese girl aren’t the only investigators around here.”

He smiled smugly. “So, what, Smith? She put you here? Tell me about it.”

So Mrs. Armstrong hadn’t blown my cover. Well, I could return the favor. “No. I work for DeMattis. I met her a couple of years ago, on a whole other case. She was probably as surprised as anyone to see me here. Remember, DeMattis doesn’t work for her. We work for you.”

Crowell Junior nodded; then the smile faded. His soft face grew dark. “So now talk to me, Smith. Tell me what the hell you’re doing here. Because here’s the deal. You don’t talk to me, I shoot you and stuff you in the hole Pelligrini left. You do talk, maybe you and I can make a deal.”

I didn’t believe that. One way or another, he was going to kill me, even if only because I’d seen him with a gun, threatening to kill me. Because now he’d shown me, if I hadn’t known it before, that he had something to hide.

“So what the fuck were you doing in here?”

I was still dizzy, beginning to feel sick. Concussion, the part of my mind that could still think told me. You’re going to fade out on your own soon, Smith. When you do, it’s over. You have to set him up before that. I put as much strength into my words as I could. “Looking for something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something concrete.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You and the subs,” I said. “Substituting crappy materials for what you were supposed to use. I know about it; I wanted solid proof.”

He frowned, said, “To take to DeMattis?”

I tried to give him a laugh. The sound I made didn’t convince me, but maybe he was an easier mark. “Screw DeMattis. I was going to bring it to you.”

“What the hell—”

“Blackmail, you asshole. I didn’t tell Chuck or that Chinese girl about it. Why would I? I thought it might be worth a couple of bucks to you and your father to shut me up.”

I struggled to keep my eyes focused on him, fought to stay away from the edge of the black pit that yawned for me. Come on, Junior, I thought. Fall for it. Either way, I’m gone. But this way, maybe not Lydia, maybe not Chuck.

He appeared to be considering. “DeMattis doesn’t know?”

“No.”

“And that Chinese chick he insisted on sticking in the office—her either?”

“She doesn’t know a damn thing. She was only there to get me the alarm code, that’s all. She’s not really an investigator, anyway.”

Then: “I ought to shoot you myself for that.”

My heart leaped, my blood raced, and Junior swung around at the sound of that voice. He wasn’t fast enough to get ahead of Lydia. She was through the door and had her gun jammed into his back before he saw her move.

“Jesus,” I breathed. “Where did you come from?”

“You told me you didn’t need help,” she said, from behind Dan Junior. “But remember, we decided I was going to stop listening when you said that?” Then she spoke quietly to Junior. “I’m going to take this gun out of your hand now. If your heart even starts to beat faster I’ll shoot you. Thank you very much. Now go stand over there. Spread your legs and put your hands on the wall. Try not to move, I promise you’ll like it better that way.”

She stood motionless, waited for Junior to set himself up as instructed. I didn’t move either, until he’d stopped; I didn’t want to distract her. Then I sat up, slowly, carefully, closing my eyes against the flood of sickness that came with movement. Lydia, without taking her eyes off of Junior, rummaged around on Senior’s desk, found a scissor, knelt behind me, and cut the tape from my wrists.

“What happened?” she said.

“I got cocky. I never heard him coming.”

“Dumb.”

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, her voice softer than before.

“I’m all right,” I told her, as the room spun and the darkness gathered at the edges of my sight. I leaned my back against a file cabinet, tried to take some even breaths.

“Macho knee-jerk answer. You need a doctor.” She stood, reached for the phone on the desk. “I’ll call—”

“No,” a man’s voice came from the doorway, a voice used to being obeyed. “Don’t do that.”

The bulk of Dan Crowell, Sr. loomed in the light from the outer office. Standing in the doorway, he switched on the overhead lights in here, the ones Junior had shut off so I would talk to him. The sudden bright flood revealed Senior’s angry face and the gun in his hand. My eyes squeezed shut, trying to block out the stabbing pain; I forced them open.

Looking up, I saw Lydia and Dan Senior facing each other, each with a revolver raised; but while hers was pointed at him, his was pointed at me.

“Put down the phone and the gun,” Senior ordered her.

Lydia couldn’t play the same game; Junior had moved fast away from the wall, was already behind his father.

Slowly, Lydia placed the phone in its cradle and the gun on the desk.

Under her breath, I heard her mutter, “Dumb.”

Without moving, Senior demanded, “Daniel, what the hell is going on here?”

They know all about it, Dad, the materials and the murders and everything. We have to kill them and bury the bodies
. That’s what I expected to hear from Junior, what I waited for.

But Junior just looked stricken and confused. His mouth opened, closed again; he made no sound.

“Daniel!”