No Colder Place (34 page)

Senior said, “Daniel? Is this true, too?”

Junior said, “No. I’m not that dumb. Maybe someone like that was way back behind the guys I was dealing with, but I never heard of him.”

“No,” I said. The darkness was creeping in now, softening the pain, softening everything, and I knew I couldn’t stop it. “No. He was closer than that. Something going
on this site
. Falco had something going
on this site
.”

Junior looked at Lydia. “What the hell is he talking about?”

Images came to me: Falco leaning on the railing in the evening breeze on the Staten Island Ferry; Elena Pelligrini, wearing black, sitting in her darkened living room; Chuck walking into the night beyond the smoked-glass windows of a noisy bar.

“It doesn’t matter,” I heard her say. “He needs a doctor.”

“No.” That was Dan Crowell, Sr. “No. I have to think.”

“Don’t make this worse,” she warned him.

“I said no!”

Lydia had started to move; beside me, I felt her stop. That must have something to do with the gun. I realized my eyes had shut; I forced them open again.

“Daniel,” Senior said, “why did you do all this? Just to keep the business going? Kill those men, plan all these elaborate schemes? What was it for?”

Junior met his father’s eyes, but hesitated, as though, with everything he’d just told us, what he was about to say was the hardest admission of all. When he spoke, his voice was calm, with a clarity I hadn’t heard before.

“For you,” he said. “It was for you.”

“Me?” Senior’s voice was hesitant. That may have been an answer he hadn’t expected, maybe one he’d never heard before. “What does that mean?”

“Just until…” Junior appeared to gather strength, went on. “Another six months,” he said. “Maybe a year. That’s what the doctor said.”

“For me?” Senior repeated. “Another six months?”

He said the words vaguely, sounding like he didn’t know what they meant. He seemed to sag for a second, almost to go out of focus; then he sharpened, came back. “That’s how long I’m going to live, Daniel. I know that. Then what? What were you going to do then?”

“I didn’t care. It wasn’t going to matter after that.”

“What wasn’t?”

“This business!” The sharp contempt in Junior’s voice was a shock to me, chasing back the soft blackness like a sudden breeze. “Crowell Construction. The hell with it. I’d close it, or go bankrupt, or who gives a shit? I just needed to keep it going as long as you were around. As long as you cared.”

“Why?”

Why. A simple question, the hardest of all to answer.

“Because I’ve been watching you,” Junior said quietly. “Seeing your face every time you sent me out on the scaffold because you couldn’t go yourself, every time you had to leave early because you were too tired to stay. When you asked me to come into the business, I knew you were really in trouble. Me, here? Jesus. But that’s why I came. Because you wouldn’t have wanted me here if you’d had a choice.”

Senior seemed about to protest; Junior didn’t give him a chance.

“And then,” he said, “then, sometimes you’d screw up. That time you came back after chemo and called the steel guy to yell at him about where the hell was his delivery, and he’d delivered the week before. Shit like that. You were losing it.”

He said that, soft chin jutting forward, and then paused, waiting for a response. Senior looked at him, but didn’t seem able to speak.

Junior closed his eyes, maybe in relief, maybe in exhaustion. Opening them, he went on. “So when I saw how bad things were with the money, I thought it was the same thing. You screwing up, because you were sick. All I was trying to do was keep Crowell Construction going as long as you were around.”

Senior stared, an expression of disbelief covering his features. He regarded his son as though he’d never seen him before.

“And all I was doing,” Senior said slowly, “was trying to make sure it would keep going after that.”

The black fog that surrounded me was thicker now, too dense to see or move through. I wasn’t even sure whether people were still speaking, whether the silence that seemed to fill the room was real or was part of the fog. I tried to look around, to see.

Lydia spoke, calm, direct, controlled. “I’m going to the phone,” she said. “I’m going to call a doctor.”

“No.”

That was Dan Crowell, Sr., as calm and controlled as she was.

“Don’t make this worse, Mr. Crowell,” Lydia said. “Mr. DeMattis has Bill’s report. No matter what happens to us, this is over.”

“Maybe not,” Senior said, and his voice sounded sad to me. “There’s nothing in that report but theories; if you had any real proof DeMattis and the cops would be here by now.”

“And besides,” Junior threw in eagerly, “Smith said before, he was in here looking for something for a shakedown. I don’t think he actually told DeMattis anything. Maybe there’s not even really any report.” I saw him reach onto the desk for the gun Lydia had taken from him.

Oh, Christ, you idiot
, I thought, partly for Dan Junior, partly for myself.

“I’m sorry, Lydia.” Senior’s voice came floating through the fog, and he truly did sound sorry. “I liked you from the beginning.”

“Your son killed three men,” Lydia said. “He stole from this building and from you.”

There was the briefest of pauses before Senior said, “He’s my son.”

I couldn’t move; the blackness was a weight now, bearing down on my arms and my body, making them heavy and slow.
Lydia
, I thought, trying to tell her silently, to make her understand,
take your chance when it comes, make your move
. I knew I couldn’t help, couldn’t be part of it; but I didn’t want her holding herself back, keeping herself down because I was down, getting buried under the weight that was crushing me.

I willed her to move, to do something that would save her, that would end the chilling stillness, the old, deep silence that was filling the room.

Nothing; then soft words from Dan Crowell, Sr. in a tone I didn’t like; unhurried movement, Dan Junior walking toward Lydia. I looked at her through the thickening blackness, tried to tell her something with my eyes. She stood still, met my look, turned to Junior.

And she didn’t move; but a crash, a yell, a blur of motion erupted across the room. Dan Senior grunted, stumbled forward, someone’s short arms snared around him from behind, crushing his own arms to his chest.

Then Lydia flew ahead, spun a kick that sent Senior’s gun rocketing into the far wall. Junior swung, gun arm stiff, looking for a target. I heard the soft pop of a silenced shot and the metallic ring as a bullet hit steel. Junior yelled, moved, trained the gun on Lydia, but before he could shoot, the bulk of his father was shoved forward, into him. The Crowells, tangled together, off balance, crashed to the floor near me. Lydia and the other blur swooped down on top of them, Lydia wrestling the gun from Junior while the blur held Senior down.

Lydia straightened, held the gun out, said, “Hold this on them while I call the cops.”

“What are you, crazy?” the blur panted, in Mike DiMaio’s voice. “I’ll call the cops. You hold that. I don’t know shit about guns. I’m just a bricklayer.”

twenty-two

C
ops came, and paramedics, and so did the soft blackness I’d fought against. A complicated dance of people and equipment was played out to the accompaniment of soft questions and loud orders. I did nothing but what I was told, ended up on a stretcher with a needle in my arm and a bandage on my head. The last thing I knew about was the stretcher rolling through the shadows of the unfinished building, toward the ramp; the last things I saw were the lines and patterns of steel and pipe and wire emerging rhythmically, then disappearing again, in the darkness overhead.

In the morning, things were different. I was in St. Luke’s, I had a mild concussion, I had a different needle in my other arm and drugs in me, and I woke up with Lydia sitting by the side of my bed and one question in my mind.

“Hi,” Lydia smiled when she saw my eyes were open.

“DiMaio,” I croaked. “What—?”

Lydia blinked. “‘Oh, Lydia, so nice to see you’re alive too,’” she said airily.

“You’re beautiful,” I said, my voice hoarse, my throat scratchy. “I’m mad about you. I’m glad you’re alive. I wouldn’t want you any other way. DiMaio—”

“Who, me?”

That came from the chair beside Lydia, which, squinting, I realized was occupied too. I tried to move so I could see better, was reminded that movement ought to be slow for a while. I let the pain pass, grunted, “Yeah. You.”

DiMaio grinned. That made everyone in the room smiling except me.

“Where—?” I said, swallowed to ease the dryness. “What—?”

“You mean, how come I popped up out of nowhere last night just in time to save your ass?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean that.”

“Well,” he said, still grinning, resettling himself in his chair, “I was up here visiting Reg last night, you know, telling him what you were gonna do. And it’s funny, but when a guy doesn’t answer, you have to kind of do his part of the thinking, too.”

“Sort of like what I have to do,” Lydia remarked parenthetically, with a sweet smile at me.

I growled at her, “You think just because I’m lying here—”

“Oh, no,” she protested. “I think that’s
why
you’re lying there.”

“Mike,” I sighed, “go on.”

With a grin from her to me, DiMaio continued. “So, anyway, I thought to myself, if you screwed up—uh, I mean, if anything happened to you—maybe there wasn’t anyone else who knew what you knew. See, I didn’t know about Lydia then.” They smiled at each other. My head hurt.

DiMaio went on. “So I thought, maybe these bastards’ll get away with all the shit they’ve been pulling, if Smith screws up. Maybe no one’ll ever pay for what happened to Reg. And I said that out loud to Reg, that I was worried about that. And you know what?”

“What?”

“He woke up. He looked at me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at me. Like he knew how it was when you and me was laying bricks together. You know?”

“Uh-huh.” I knew.

“So when he did that, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get my ass back to that trailer and make sure everything went all right.”

“Christ,” I mumbled. “A babysitter.”

“One you needed,” Lydia said.

“
We
needed,” I pointed out.

“True. And I already thanked him.”

I looked at DiMaio, met his clear blue eyes. I was searching for the words, the right ones, but he stood, stuck his hands in his pockets, grinned again. He said, “Nah. Wouldn’t be like you, Smith. Say something nice, I might pass out or something.”

“My job,” I said. “Passing out. Hey.”

“Hey what?”

“Speaking of jobs. Why aren’t you at work?”

DiMaio looked away. “Site’s closed down today.”

“Shit,” I breathed. “Just today?”

He shrugged. “For a while. Mrs. Armstrong’s there, Crowell’s bonding company’s there. Cops, auditors, Christ knows what.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The grin came back suddenly. “My money’s on Mrs. Armstrong. Word is, she made it clear she’ll be goddamned if she’s gonna stop this building. When the men showed up this morning, they told us call tomorrow. Seems like some trades could be back to work in a day or two.”

“That’s good news.”

DiMaio, hands still in his pockets, looked down at the floor, pushed at something with the toe of his workboot. “Lozano was there. I saw him.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He had nothing to say to me, I had nothing to say to him. Just looked at each other. Shit.” He shook his head. “I liked that guy.”

“I know. So did I.”

Lydia rose from her chair, stood next to DiMaio. “Now that you’re conscious,” she said to me, “go back to sleep. The police will come by later, to talk to you. I already spoke to Bzomowski and Mackey.”

“They know about Hamilton?” I asked. “About me being there?”

She nodded. DiMaio glanced from me to her, seemed about to ask something. Lydia stopped him with a look, the kind that says,
I’ll tell you later
.

“They’re pissed?” I asked her.

“Angry but ready to talk. Depending on what you have to offer, it will probably turn out all right. You want me to stay, for when they come?”

“No,” I said, closing my eyes, inviting the soft darkness back. It didn’t come, just regular tiredness, and relief. “No, I’ll deal with them. You kids run along.”

I opened my eyes briefly when I heard DiMaio snort, smiled and closed them again as Lydia leaned forward and brushed her soft lips on my cheek.

Chuck came to see me later that day, moving through the door hesitantly, with a worried smile. Whether the worry was for how I was, or for how things were between us, wasn’t clear.

“Hey,” he said, looking down at me from the side of the bed. “You still speaking to me?”

“Why not?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I lied to you. I sent you into what turned out to be a den of God-knows-what. You came this close to getting killed and it wasn’t me had anything to do with pulling you out. Other than that, I guess, no reason.”

“Hell,” I said, “every friendship has its problems.”

He relaxed then, but after that, I didn’t have much to say to him, though I wasn’t sure why. Something I’d heard, something I knew, kept me from hearing him, from saying to him anything he didn’t know. I was waiting, until I could think more clearly, remember better.

He seemed to take it as a symptom, the sleepiness and distraction of a man with a concussion. I let him think that, didn’t tell him about Falco and the ferry, didn’t ask him anything. Finally, he left.

The cops were easier. Bzomowski and Mackey turned out to be okay guys, one tall, one shorter, one light, one dark, one younger, one about my age. They were pissed off at me because I was there when Hamilton was shot and never told them; they were pissed off because I’d been investigating and hadn’t given them anything I’d found; they were pissed off because I was a P.I. and they were cops. I couldn’t blame them for any of that.