The Concrete Pearl (22 page)

“Sure. But he was high by about thirty grand.”

“What was the job’s total cost?”

“Little shy of three million.”

“What’s your profit percentage on that?”

“One or two percent, if I’m lucky.”

“How much profit did you actually tack on to the PS 20 final cost?”

“Nothing. I needed work desperately. I took the job at cost, just so I could get it.”

His eyes grew wide.

“By cutting out your profit,” he said, “you inadvertently stole PS 20 right out from under Marino.”

“And now that his son-in-law conveniently contaminated the place,” I said, “he’s about to get the job back.”

My Blackberry vibrated while I shoved the photos back inside the envelope.

Chapter 47

I didn’t recognize the phone number. I excused myself, got up out of the booth, and made my way quickly out a side door that accessed the Lark Tavern parking lot. I answered the phone on the final ring before the answering service took over.

“Spike!” the caller barked.

Tommy.

“You’re shouting,” I said.

“From in jail,” he said. “Pearl Street precinct.”

I felt my heartbeat pick up.

“What happened?”

“I went to the PS 20 jobsite, checked around. I saw that somebody fucked with the top floor window, broke in through the asbestos protection.”

“Christ Tommy, that was me…Last night.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m coming down to get you,” I said. “Sit tight.”

“Least you can do, chief,” he said.

I hung up, went back inside the tavern, and retrieved Spain.

Chapter 48

I drove downtown, parked out front of the police station. The overweight uniformed cop manning the desk asked me my business. I told him my name, showed him my driver’s license.

“You arrested one of my men tonight for doing his job. I’m here to bail him out.”

The gray haired cop studied my license, slid it back across the desk for me.

“What about the private dick?” he said, referring to Spain, a slight grin forming out the corner of his mouth.

“He’s with me.”

The cop looked at me.

“You’re an attractive woman,” he said. “Take my advice. Find a new boyfriend.”

I was about to tell him we weren’t lovers but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He hit the button that electronically unlocked the door to the precinct. There was a loud buzz and the solid metal door opened by itself.

“Wait here,” I said to Spain.

“With him?” he said, cocking his head at the cop.

“Everybody get along,” I said, making my way to the door.

Tommy wasn’t behind bars. He was sitting at one of the metal desks. A uniformed cop was sitting there with him. They were both sharing a bag of Dunkin Donuts. They were both laughing.

I felt a ray of sunshine in my stomach.

“You want I should come back later?” I said.

Tommy looked up at me, his mouth full of strawberry jelly donut.

The cop stood. He was thin, about Tommy’s age.

“Tommy and I went to Waterford High School together,” he said. “Class of ’68. Shipped us both off to ‘Nam, same rotation. Just in time for Tet.”

“Why’d you bust him?” I said.

“Take it easy, Spike. Kevin’s just doing his job.”

“Why’d you bust him for checking out the site like a good contractor, Kevin?” I said.

“Site’s been red-flagged,” he said. “Unauthorized personnel are considered trespassers.”

“How you know Tommy’s unauthorized?”

Kevin wiped his mouth with a white napkin.

“I didn’t actually. We got tipped off by an anonymous caller. Called himself a ‘concerned citizen.’”

Tommy and I looked at one another.

“Spies,” I said. Marino’s henchmen came to mind.

“The establishment is coming down hard on us, Spike old girl.”

“I ain’t old yet, Tommy. But this keeps up.”

“I personally checked the situation out,” Kevin said. “That’s when I saw him up on the scaffolding and that by the looks of it, the fourth floor had been broken into.”

Tommy looked at me again. He was keeping his mouth shut, powder-covered lips and all.

“You really bust Tommy or is he just a detainee?”

“There’s no bail to speak of. No hearing. Just a warning.” He sat back down, pushing away the bag of doughnuts. “I do however require your signature for him on the complaint.”

He handed me a clipboard. I studied it. It had been written in near illegible handwriting. Cop handwriting. Although it hadn’t been signed by anyone at OSHA, the complaint had been officially lodged by them. Interesting. While Marino had his thugs tailing me, OSHA had her spies glued to me and Tommy also. I signed it and handed the clipboard back to Kevin the cop. He tore off the pink copy and handed it to me.

I folded it, stuffing it into my jacket pocket.

“Let’s go, Tommy,” I said.

He got up, shook hands with his old friend.

“Next time, donuts are on me, pal,” he said.

Chapter 49

We dropped Tommy off at his apartment after stopping at a convenient store so he could pick up “a quick six pack.” Then we drove back to my place.

By then it was past eleven.

I was dead tired.

Spain followed me to the door.

“Good night,” he said. But gut instinct told me he wanted to come in. I could read the want in one eye, the loneliness in the other.

“Lock your doors when you get home,” I said.

“That’s supposed to be my line,” he said.

As he turned for his refurbished Charger, I let myself into my apartment. The place was dark, like it always is when I come in during the night. But something was different this time. Something didn’t feel right.

It all had to do with my sense of smell.

There was an odd odor in the air. Like cheap cologne. Old Spice maybe. Same thing my dad soaked himself in whenever he shaved. All cologne smells the same to me. But not Old Spice. That one I knew like I knew my own face.

I flipped on the light, took a look around. Nothing out of place. All books stacked in order on the bookshelves, mom’s antique table set in place up against the wall, television turned off, photos hung level and undisturbed.

For a brief second I thought about going back outside, grabbing my equalizer. But then I found myself stepping into the kitchen.

Again, nothing out of place.

Inside my bedroom however, the smell of Old Spice got stronger; more prevalent. I gave the square-shaped room a quick scan. Nothing had been messed with. Not the dresser of drawers, not my bed. I went to my desk, looked down at the desktop. The laptop was turned off and okay. But when I opened the desk drawer, I got a terrible chill. The chill lodged itself in my sternum. While nothing was missing, my intuition told me someone’s hands besides my own had been rummaging around inside the little space. Someone like one of Marino’s thugs in search of the evidence I collected up at Lake Desolation?

I pulled out the “Closed Untill Further Notice” note.

If one of Marino’s men had been in the place, why not take the note?

I took a step back.

It had been another long day and I’d had a couple of drinks too many at the Lark Tavern. I might have been imagining things…even the smell of Old Spice.

I tossed the note back inside the drawer, closed it back up and tried to forget about the whole thing. Back inside the living room, I set the deadbolt and the chain on both doors. In my bedroom, I never bothered to get undressed before I collapsed onto my bed and fell fast asleep.

Chapter 50

The Blackberry vibrated against the nightstand. It woke me with a start.

I picked it up.

“You awake?” Tommy said.

“You wanna call it that.”

He told me to turn on Channel 13.

“Now!” he snapped.

I grabbed the clicker off the nightstand, thumbed the power button. The channel was already set to 13 from the previous morning. A commercial was being broadcast—an ad for choosing Time Warner cable over satellite. When it was over and the news anchor reappeared, she started in on the headlines for the top of the seven o’clock hour.

“The brutal murder of a local Albany bartender tops the news,” Chris Collins said into the camera, dark eyes focused on my own through the T.V.

She got my attention.

I sat up.

“You still there?” Tommy said.

The old mason laborer would be standing in the living room of his apartment dressed in the baggy Levis, fresh white T-shirt and old work boots. His eyes would be glued to a 1970’s era color TV set.

“I’m here,” I said, my own eyes awaiting the Channel 13 video feed.

“This the girl Natalie you told me about?” he said. “The topless one from Thatcher Street?”

The video feed came on. It showed a half-dozen APD surrounding the parking lot of PS 20. There was an EMT van parked in the middle of the lot directly beside the construction trailer, the words Harrison Construction emblazoned on its side in huge red-block letters. Portable sodium lamps illuminated the lot like daylight. Laid out beside the EMT van, what looked like a body with a rubber sheet pulled over it.

A still photograph appeared. It was superimposed over the video feed.

Natalie Barnes
, the caption beneath it read.
29-year-old West Albany native
.

Something inside me caved in.

“Is that her?” Tommy repeated.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s her.”

I told him I’d have to call him back. I hung up.

Collins spewed on about a brutal attack in the parking lot of PS 20; about the local bartender being repeatedly hit over the head with a “common carpenter’s framing hammer.”

I shot up and out of bed, stood on the bare floor, still dressed in my clothes from the night before. A still shot of a framing hammer appeared on the screen. The hammer was as familiar to me as my own face. A big twenty-two ounce job with a rounded high-brow head, blue injected nylon grip, a three-eighths inch steel band that ran three inches down the handle’s backside and sharply curved raptor claws. A hammer manufactured a whole lot of years ago by a now long gone company called “Dead On.” The tool had blood stains on it, and little bits of hair. It was identical to the model and make of the equalizer I stored under the driver’s seat of my Jeep.

“Oh Christ,” I whispered.

My vision blurred. There was a strange electric hum or buzz coming from inside my head. I grabbed my keys from the counter inside the kitchen, ran back out into the living room, and threw open the back door. I ran around the building to the Jeep. No need to unlock the door, it was already unlocked.

I opened the driver’s side door and felt under the seat.

The equalizer was gone.

My heart pushed itself up into my throat.

I ran back inside the apartment and called Spain. He told me to drop everything, to run down to the bottom of the Wards Lane hill to the Burger King. He’d pick me up there.

I hung up the phone, threw on my jacket and stuffed the Blackberry in the pocket. Keys in hand, I slipped back out of the apartment through the back terrace door.

I ran like hell.

Chapter 51

I took a small table set up against the wall by the ladies’ and men’s rooms in the back of the Burger King. There was no one eating in the place that early, except for an aged black woman. She was seated at a table a couple up from me, hovering over a breakfast of deep-fried French toast shaped like lady fingers. She wore a long wool coat even in June and a wool hat that covered her ears.

I pulled the phone out of my jacket pocket and speed-dialed Joel.

He answered after the second ring. He’d heard about the murder and he’d already been on the phone with the DA’s office.

The news he had for me was not good.

“Our deal to put a hold on the indictments pending Mr. Spain’s independent investigation is off,” he said. “Santiago wants to go ahead and prosecute for the PS 20 asbestos removal negligence case. The APD is in complete agreement with the DA, which means Santiago will also proceed with the indictment for Barnes’ murder. He’s able to fill in the blank spaces between the asbestos scam and Barnes’ murder, it could lead to a case of homicide for which you, as an obvious suspect, face probable arrest…Make no mistake about it, this is the real shit, Spike.”

I felt numb as I watched the old woman eat her French toast. The voice inside my head kept whispering,
This isn’t happening
. But I knew that it was.

“What the hell am I supposed to do, Joel?” I said. “You see me capable of murder?”

“I think if you make an effort to work with Santiago,” he said, voice part mumble; part staccato nervous. “Maybe work up some sort of plea bargain, things can work in your favor.”

“Why would I kill Natalie Barnes? Why isn’t somebody finding out who got into my Jeep and stole my equalizer?”

“APD found no prints on the hammer other than your own,” he said. “And something else too. The hammer claws have got paint on them. Small amount of black paint they think came off of a car. In this case, Farrell’s impounded BMW. It was reported broken into yesterday after the trunk was pried open with a claw hammer. That’s
after
somebody smashed open the lock on Dott’s front gate with a hammer; after somebody smashed the taillight on an impounded Hummer with a hammer; after somebody tried to break through the window of Farrell’s office building with a hammer.”

“I’m trying to find him, Joel—”

“Don’t tell me anymore. I don’t want to know. But I don’t have to be a criminal attorney to know that if Farrell winds up dead, those little hammer stunts could very well tie you to his murder after the fact.”

I exhaled a breath.

“What’s the APD cooking up as my motivation?”

“Goes something like this: you’ve been implicated in an asbestos scam along with a suspected offender. You’ve been working with him all along. Colluding with him. And now that he’s bolted the scene, you’re left alone to take the blame.”