The Concrete Pearl (13 page)

But I didn’t trust the fake southern belle as far as I could throw her.

She opened the door.

“Tomorrow evening this time,” she said, stepping out into the night, “this will all be resolved and you can get on with the business of rebuilding daddy’s business.”

“I’m holding my breath,” I said, closing the door behind her.

Chapter 26

I slipped on the chain, turned the deadbolt.

Who the hell was she kidding? By this time tomorrow afternoon I could
get on with the business of rebuilding daddy’s business.

By this time tomorrow I’d be lucky if I wasn’t facing criminal charges.

When I was a kid of no more than ten, I went through a frightening phase. I liked to steal my dad’s old framing hammer from out of his truck and smash things with it. Bottles, cans, old Barbie dolls…Made me feel good to smash them. Until my dad had to put a stop to it.

Now I wanted to use my equalizer to smash Diana Stewart’s Lexus headlights. No, that’s not right. I wanted to smack her upside her red head. Now that would feel good. First her, then Jimmy Farrell. Then I would smack my own hard head for being caught so unawares at PS 20. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to placing little kids in danger.

Diana Stewart…The Tiger Lady. She hadn’t come here to help me
off the record
. More than likely she’d come here hoping to lure me into a trap that wouldn’t be sprung until all the interested parties met for tomorrow’s PS 20 meeting.

Back inside the kitchen for another beer, I saw that Diana left her smokes behind. Marlboro Lights. My old brand. The opened pack was calling out to me with a sweet sing-song voice.

Cancer Medusa.

I picked the soft pack up from off the small table. It felt full and thick and good. If I had my way, I’d smoke the living crap out of it.

I found some old matches in the junk drawer, lit one up, blew the smoke through the open window. The heart-racing but soothing nicotine head-rush enveloped me. Maybe I hadn’t smoked in two years but the brain never forgets an addiction. The brain never stops jonesin’ for a butt.

Legal heroin.

The Blackberry vibrated softly in the next room. I took the lit cigarette with me to my leather jacket which was set on the antique chair-back in the living room. I pulled the mobile from the interior pocket, checked out the caller I.D.

My new friend Damien Spain.

I answered it.

“You’ve been snooping again,” he said. “Thatcher Street.”

My internal light bulb flashed on.

“You’re the one who’s been following me.”

“You and me,” he said. “We can help each other out…Stop being pigheaded and at least give it a chance.”

He sounded a little drunk, like he was trying to catch his breath.

He said, “How’s about I come over and we talk about it?”

“Get over yourself, Spain. I’m not that easy.”

“You need me and my investigative skills…I need you and your construction skills.”

“How do I know you’re not just trying to get into my pants?”

“You don’t.”

“I’ll think about it.”

I ended the call, set the ringer for the highest setting and plugged it into the charger. Then I locked up the rest of the apartment, turned off the lights.

Back inside the kitchen I drank and smoked in the dark.

I cried a little too.

Chapter 27

Before hitting the sheets I managed to go through my nightly ritual of checking my personal email. I’d received one new message bearing the subject heading, “Not Spam.”

A download had been attached to the email.

I opened it.

It read: “Maybe this will help you…Please don’t call me or call
on
me anymore.”

She signed the note electronically with “Natalie.”

I downloaded the file.

It was an Mpeg.

The movie came up, began to play.

Immediately I recognized Farrell in the frame. I also recognized Natalie. She was wearing a Santa hat and not much else. Mr. Golden Smile was pushing a small pile of crumpled bills into Natalie’s black G-string. The setting was Thatcher Street. Colorful strands of Christmas lights had been tacked to the pine wood walls. In the far corner beside the dartboard, a fake Christmas tree with pics of nude women for ornaments. Classy touch.

Farrell looked positively plastered.

When he leaned in over the bar, he kissed Natalie. Not innocently on the cheek, but on the lips so that the two of them seemed to melt in one another’s arms. A woman knew how to recognize true love when she saw it, and I was no exception. Despite the cheap video, you could almost see Natalie blush. With the sound turned up, you could hear the voice of the cameraman. He was telling the happy couple to smile. He laughed a little. Then he said, “I want me a little of that, Nat sweet lips.”

By the time the twenty-three second video clip ended, no doubt was left in my mind. The cameraman’s voice belonged to Peter Marino.

I played the clip again, and again, and yet again.

I might have been more than a little drunk but it didn’t take a sober soul to know that Natalie and Jimmy cared for each other. More than a bartender would care for the average customer, anyway. And not only did they care for each other, but Jimmy’s own father-in-law didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

Or did he?

Does Jimmy have another woman in his life?
Yup, you betcha princess.

“The plot…she thickens,” I mumbled to myself. My voice sounded strange. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I saved the Mpeg on my PC before I closed down the email and the computer altogether. Peeling off my clothes I threw myself on the bed and passed out.

That night I wrestled with the sandman.

Buried beneath the sheets in black panties and T-shirt…Under the erupting volcano…

I’m lying on my back in a deep hole. It’s like a grave, only somehow I know it’s not a grave. Voices come to me from outside the opening. But I can’t see any people. I just see bright sunlight. Suddenly a bulge forms along the left trench wall. The bulge gives way. The wall caves in on top of me. Then the other wall collapses. The sandy wet soil buries me. I try to inhale but breathe in only dirt and sand. I’m gagging on the wormy soil that fills my mouth and nasal passages until a set of hands reaches in for me, pulls me out…

My father.

The dream shifts to a different place; a different time…

I see Jordan. He’s climbing the scaffolding that surrounds the Keybank building exterior down off the lower Concrete Pearl. I see his muscular body grabbing onto the iron crossbars, see him plant booted feet on the first section’s lowest cross brace, watch him heave his body up onto the second section, then the third and fourth until he is far above the solid ground.

Standing outside the Jeep in the construction site lot, I watch my husband and I feel my heart beat triplets in my chest.

A voice breaks me from my spell. A voice and the figure of a woman.

Shielding the sun from my eyes with my right hand, I look up to the top of the scaffolding. It’s there I am able to make out Diana. The project manager stands four-square on the top most scaffolding tower section, her knees pressed up against the metal parapet’s edge. She’s tossing me a wave not like we’re Harrison Construction co-workers, but best friends.

“Jordan,” I hear her shout in slight Virginia drawl, “there’s a perfectly good set of stairs inside the bank building.”

Although I can’t hear him, I know my husband is laughing.

It dawns on me that he’s not only having fun, he’s showing off.

He gets to the top, climbs up over the short rail, onto the planking.

Safe and sound.

I turn back to the Jeep.

Suddenly a commotion. That’s followed by a sickening thud. I feel the thud in my chest cavity as much as I hear it. Like a watermelon smashed against a concrete slab. I look over my shoulder. I don’t believe what I see. Can’t believe it.

Jordan.

On his back. On the ground.

Chapter 28

Morning came down hard.

Hangover the size of a cement mixer.

The Blackberry exploded from the opposite end of the apartment. What dumb ass switched the ringer from vibrate to the loudest ring-tone possible? Would that dumb ass be me?

Motherfucker…This had better be good!

I rolled over. It hurt to move. Hurt to breathe.

Through burning eyeballs I glanced at the clock radio. Same clock radio I’ve had since college when I didn’t get hangovers even after drinking and smoking all day and night.

7:30 in back-lit, white-on-black letters.

I shed the covers, pulled myself up, swung my legs around, planted bare feet on a cold hardwood floor. A quick look in the mirror across from me revealed a hard-headed monster with a sagging face veiled by a nest of black hair. My throat was on fire; my chest filled with enough tar to pave over a Wal-Mart parking lot.

What kind of idiot starts smoking again after two years quit?

That idiot would most definitely be me…

I got up, made the trek through the bedroom to the living room, plucked the Blackberry off the charger and thumbed Send.

“Yeah.”

“Turn on Channel 13,” Tommy ordered. “Then call me right back.”

I hung up, grabbing the remote to turn on the TV.

Channel 13.

By the looks of it, a live report was being broadcast from a hospital room. A young African American boy was sitting on a hospital bed, bare-chested, little legs dangling down off the white-sheeted mattress. On one side of him stood a grown woman. His mother? On the other, a suited man with a face I recognized. I’d voted for him in the last election for Albany County DA.

Derrick P. Santiago.

A well educated, handsome, coffee-with-milk skinned, fifty-something man. A late bloomer in terms of politics but an up and comer in the Albany political scene nonetheless. Maybe a future mayoral candidate.

Crime reporter Chris Collins was already in the middle of interviewing the prosecutor.

“…and you’re certain, Mr. Santiago, that this eight year old boy’s condition is directly related to the asbestos fiber contamination of Albany Public School 20.”

A statement posed as a question that made my heart skip a beat.

“This little boy, Nicolas Boni, a third grade student at PS 20, has been experiencing lung pain and breathing difficulty for some weeks now. The pain and discomfort has increased in recent days. Over the past twenty-four hours, the medical staff of the Albany Medical Center has conducted extensive tests. I’m told it’s quite possible that Nicolas has contracted mesothelioma, a lung disease that occurs from prolonged exposure to asbestos fibers.”

“But are you attributing Nicolas’s condition directly to the asbestos contamination at PS 20?”

Collins, asking the critical question. 

“I believe the disease, which is known to be terminal, was contracted as a direct result of asbestos contamination much like the gross contamination discovered yesterday at the school.”

My head spun. I felt suddenly out of balance. I braced myself by setting my hand down flat on the table, arm straight and stiff.

Collins put the mike to her own heart-shaped lips.

“Are you looking to bring an indictment, Mr. Santiago?”

The mike back in the politician’s face, dark, soil-colored eyes not focused on Collins but on the TV camera. On me!

“My office is aware of the fact that Mr. James Farrell, owner and operator of A-1 Environmental Solutions, was hired by Harrison Construction for the very sensitive job of removing all the existing asbestos material at the school. Obviously, Mr. Farrell doesn’t fear conviction by the county. Because we know without a doubt that he not only neglected to properly remove and dispose of the asbestos, he purposely and maliciously falsified Indoor Air Quality testing samples. Since, by law, Harrison Construction is required to oversee the removal process, we believe it’s possible they were aware of these false samples and did nothing to stop them. We now have a sick child because of these crimes and who knows how many more to come.”

“Why would Harrison Construction put themselves at such risk?”

“Obviously in the interest of completing a project on time or even improving upon the project schedule. Which, in the end, increases Harrison’s profits. Ava Harrison, the owner of Harrison Construction, may very well be named as a conspirator in the indictment against Farrell. We’ll be presenting what we have to a grand jury as early as tomorrow morning.”

“What kind of charges will the two business owners face if more children like Nicolas come forward? Or what if the disease proves terminal? Would the county go after Harrison and Farrell to face homicide charges?”

The little boy’s mother began to weep. The little boy simply looked on, deer-caught-in-the-headlights-confused.

“I cannot comment on that possibility at this time,” Santiago said.

Collins turned to the camera.

She said, “It should be further noted that Farrell has been missing since this past Saturday after leaving his mansion in Albany’s posh East Hills suburb for a fishing trip just outside of Saratoga Springs. In the meantime, sources tell Channel 13 that his business, A-1 Environmental Solutions, has been shut down, the offices emptied out. Numerous attempts to contact him have been met with futility.

“While we hesitate to speculate on the nature of Mr. Farrell’s disappearance and the sudden, if not suspicious, nature of A-1’s apparent bug out, what one senses is a guilty man fleeing from justice. That leaves Ava ‘Spike’ Harrison alone to answer to charges of negligence in what has now become the life and death case of Public School 20. While it should be noted that Ms. Harrison made herself available for comment briefly by phone yesterday afternoon, her statements shed very little light on both the school’s contamination or about Mr. Farrell’s disappearance. Since that time, Ms. Harrison has been absent from the jobsite and unavailable for further comment.”