Touch & Go

by Lisa Gardner

  “Which will make breaking you all the more interesting. Now then, the fun is just beginning.”

  Z moved his hand, pushed open the door behind him to reveal a supply closet neatly stacked with piles of orange material.

  “Your new wardrobe,” he announced. “Get dressed. From here on out, you’re our prisoners. And this is your new home.”

  Chapter 12

  LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS such as Boston detectives and FBI agents generally went straight to the source. Would descend upon a company, badging the receptionist and proceeding to milk every last drop of information from the rank and file.

  Since Tessa was no longer a cop, she went about things the private investigator’s way: She identified the name of Justin Denbe’s right-hand man, tracked him down on his personal cell and arranged to meet him twenty minutes later at a coffee shop several miles and at least two neighborhoods away from Denbe Construction’s downtown Boston headquarters.

  She went with the right-hand man, figuring he’d know the most about Justin’s personal and professional life. She lured him off campus because anyone was more apt to talk without known friends or associates looking over his shoulder.

  Chris Lopez, construction manager, was already waiting for her at the Starbucks. She recognized him immediately because even from thirty feet away, his clothes and demeanor screamed construction. Well-worn jeans, red plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves layered over a plain white T, scuffed work boots complete with a layer of grime ringing the heavy soles. He wore his black hair short and she could see rings from a dark blue tattoo just creeping out above the collar of his shirt.

  Former military. The buzz-cut hair, muscled forearms, stocky build, lounging in the hard wooden chair, denim-clad legs sprawled forward.

  Currently, he was appraising her as openly as she appraised him. Which didn’t surprise her, either. Uniform was forever attracted to uniform. If she pegged him as former military, she bet he’d already pegged her as former law enforcement, some sort of internal radar system pinging both of them onto high alert.

  She took her time crossing the room. Bright, sunny Saturday afternoon, the Starbucks was still jammed, people loading up on mid-afternoon lattes and muffins. She doubted she’d pulled Lopez from work when she’d dialed his cell. Given the military and construction personnel’s reputation for working hard and playing harder, she’d bet she’d pulled him out of bed, or someone else’s bed, where he’d been sleeping off Friday night.

  She went with someone else’s bed. Hence the work clothes, including work boots; all he’d had to drag on when summoned to a last-minute meeting.

  He didn’t look away as she approached. If anything, he met her gaze head-on, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Ballsy, she thought, for a guy most likely still wearing another woman’s perfume upon his skin.

  And maybe, slightly flattering. Women like her didn’t garner a lot of glances across a crowded room. She had a tendency to hold herself too rigidly, always on guard against some unknown threat, but also walled off from polite chitchat. Then, after the events of two years ago… There were mornings she didn’t even recognize her face in the mirror. Her blue eyes were too flat. Her face too grim.

  People moved away from her on crowded subways. She told herself it was good to be tough, but there were days she still found it depressing.

  Her husband had been killed, and she lived now as an island. If not for Sophie’s unconditional love, she would exist in total isolation. It made her value her daughter more, while also worrying that having an eight-year-old as her main source of companionship was not healthy for either of them. Sophie’s job was to grow up and leave her.

  And Tessa’s job was to let her.

  She’d arrived at the table for two. She removed her long coat, too warm for a sun-baked coffee shop, and given she’d left her gun in her vehicle’s locked glove compartment, unnecessary. She draped her coat over the back of the chair, moving unhurriedly, then, at long last, took a seat.

  Neither of them spoke, and now Chris Lopez’s smile grew.

  “So,” Tessa said at last. “What was her name?”

  His smile vanished. “What?”

  “The woman. Last night. Or not the kind of thing where names are necessary?”

  He scowled.

  She held out her hand. “Tessa Leoni. I’m here in regards to the Denbe family.”

  “You’re the former cop,” Lopez said, voice a tad sulky. He shook her hand but no longer appeared so amused. “The state trooper. You shot and killed your own husband.”

  “Allegedly,” she corrected. The story of her life.

  “What do you miss most? The uniform, the gun or the really uncool car?”

  “The easy parking. Now, tell me what you do for Denbe Construction.”

  They’d covered the basics by phone beforehand. Justin Denbe and his family were missing—Lopez had already been aware of the situation, no doubt called by either Denbe Construction or the Boston cops, probably both, during the initial search phase. Lopez reported last seeing Justin at a 3:00 P.M. meeting on Friday afternoon in the corporate office. Hadn’t spoken or met with him since. As for the family, the house, Lopez hadn’t seen them or visited Justin’s Boston town house in months. Too busy on a job down south.

  Tessa wasn’t having this conversation because she thought Chris Lopez could lead her to the Denbe family. She was interviewing Chris Lopez as part of the next step of the missing persons’ process—developing a victimology report. Who was Justin Denbe? And who were the winners and the losers when a man like him vanished into thin air?

  “You know construction?” Lopez asked her now.

  She shook her head, taking out her phone and holding it up for inspection. When he grudgingly nodded permission, she tapped the recording app and set the phone on the table between them.

  “Denbe Construction is a major player. We bid on projects that cost at least tens of millions and often hundreds of millions. Think prison construction, senior care facilities, military barracks, et cetera. Big money, significant timeline, make-it-or-break-it kind of risk.”

  Tessa decided to start with the basics. She got out her notebook, turned it horizontally and presented it to Lopez. Here was a trick she’d never learned at the police academy, but had come up day one in corporate security school.

  “Org chart,” she asked. “Major players.”

  Lopez rolled his eyes but took the paper, her offered pen and drew the first box on the top of the page. Justin Denbe, CEO. Made sense to her. Beneath Denbe came three boxes. CFO Ruth Chan; COC Chris Lopez; and COO Anita Bennett. Tessa recognized Bennett’s name, as she’d been the one to contact Tessa’s boss bright and early this morning. Now, beneath the chief of operations’s name, Lopez drew two more, smaller boxes: MIS Tom Wilkins and Office Admin Letitia Lee.

  “COC stands for chief of construction,” Lopez explained, tapping the box bearing his name. “Anita Bennett and I act almost as cochiefs of operations. She handles business affairs, while I manage the building gigs. So admin reports to her, while the tradesmen report to me.”

  Lopez didn’t draw any more boxes. He pushed the org chart back and Tessa frowned.

  “That’s a pretty small corporate structure for a hundred-million-dollar company,” she observed.

  He shrugged. “First rule of construction: It’s all about the subs. Especially these major projects, no way you can provide all the boots on the ground, not to mention it’d be too expensive to maintain that kind of overhead in down cycles. We partner. Think of Denbe as being the head of a centipede. We develop the RFP—”

  “RFP?”

  “Request for proposal. How these big jobs start, especially if they’re government funded. The agency involved—”

  “Agency involved?”

  Lopez sighed. He leaned forward, placing his forearms on the tiny table while explaining: “Say we’re bidding on a hundred-million-dollar project to build new barracks for the navy. Obviously, that RFP is g
enerated through military channels. Then there are hospitals, which can come through private or state channels. Or prisons, which might come through the Bureau of Prisons, depending on whether we’re talking a county, state or federal facility.”

  “But it sounds like you mostly do government work?”

  “True. There are firms out there who specialize in major hotel projects, conference centers, casinos, that sort of thing. The hospitality industry. In comparison, we’re the opposite end of the spectrum—the institutional industry.” Lopez chuckled, pleased at his own irony.

  “Why?”

  “Government game is connections, and Justin has connections. That’s one of his strengths. The man knows how to work a room, and when you’re competing against a dozen other firms for an RFP worth hundreds of millions of dollars, personally knowing the senator on the appropriations committee, or having had the head of the Bureau of Prisons over to your house for dinner, isn’t a bad thing. Some firms even employ lobbyists. We attend some key conferences, get to know the major players and Justin will take it from there.”

  “So you get to know the key people who are issuing RFPs for these major projects. In New England?”

  “We build nationally.”

  “Okay, national building projects. But these projects are for hundreds of millions of dollars, and must take, what, years to complete?”

  “Just the on-site build will tie up a couple of years,” Lopez clarified. “But take a major prison project we just completed. Took us ten years, start to finish. Our client’s the government, right? And governments don’t move fast.”

  “I get it. So, on the one hand, you’re landing projects in the hundreds of millions, but on the other hand, it’s taking you up to ten years to complete them. Big money, big risk, like you said. But Denbe’s a second-generation firm, right? Started by Justin’s father. Meaning you guys have longevity on your side.”

  “We are not the new kids at the party,” Lopez agreed, “but nor are we resting on our laurels. When Justin took over after his father’s death, he became obsessed with growing the firm. Way he saw it, the industry was at a major turning point, where the big were gonna get bigger, but the small, smaller. He didn’t want to get smaller. Of course, the challenge in construction is how to grow a company without growing your overhead. We’re a boom-and-bust industry, right? We increase our staff, double our costs during the boom, and suddenly, we can’t survive the bust. Hence, Justin’s centipede model: Denbe Construction provides the leader for each segment of the build process—the best project manager, the expert tradesmen, et cetera, for guidance and troubleshooting. Basically, we provide the generals, our subs provide the troops. Meaning Denbe can staff lean, while still being a leader in the industry.”

  “So does that make you the expert on the experts?” Tessa asked Lopez. “After all, if your guys are the best of the best, and you’re the overseer of the best of the best…”

  Lopez rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if I’d say I’m that smart, or just that stubborn. Look, I can draw you all the pretty pictures you want, but basically large-scale construction means large-scale headaches. First, I gotta hand-hold dozens of subs to put together one coherent RFP. Except putting together a building proposal is a lot like a political campaign. All the subs put on their best faces and make their brightest promises, hoping you’ll pick them for your winning team. But maybe, when the HVAC subcontractor was campaigning that hard, he forgot to read the fine print on the spec sheet. Or he mistook the number seventy for, say, the number seven, so he underbid the project by quite a lot. Most subs will try to weasel out of such mistakes. My job, three years later when we’ve actually started building, is not to let him. On a good day, that can mean forcing a sub to eat an error worth tens of thousands of dollars—no big deal when the sub’s total contract is for fifty million. On a bad day, however, when the error runs into the tens of millions, meaning the sub is now losing money on a project I’m not letting him quit—a quote is a legally binding contract—that can mean threat of lawsuits or even death. Hey, it happens.”

  Tessa was impressed. “So you’re the company bad cop. Does that make Justin the good cop?”

  “Pretty close. Justin is strategic. When a sub sends us twenty sets of boots on the ground, but the overall timeline of the project clearly demands forty, he sorts it out. When the electrical plan manages to violate four basic codes, he’ll get on the phone and hash it out. When an RFP gets tied up in a committee, he does some schmoozing and pulls it out. Justin’s not just smart, he’s useful smart. He not only gets things done, but makes you happy to have done it. Guys like me, we respect that.”

  “Guys like you?”

  Lopez shrugged. “Army ranger.”

  “Lot of former military on the payroll?”

  “You could say that.” He held out his hand for her notepad. When she handed it over, he drew a line down from his name on the org chart and added four horizontal boxes beneath. Design Manager; Structural Engineer; Superintendent of Security; Quality Engineer.

  “This is the core build team,” he explained. “Design manager oversees the architects. That’s Dave, only one of us whose misspent youth wasn’t funded by Uncle Sam. Now, the structural engineer, Jenkins, is former air force. Everything is funneled through him, including layers and layers of plans. You think I like details? Jenkins dreams in blueprints. He’s also an antisocial son of a bitch, probably has some kind of Asperger’s, but the man is scary smart and not too bad with a forty-five, so we forgive him his other sins. Let’s see, that brings us to Paulie, the superintendent of security. Now, security systems have two components, electronics and hard line. Paulie handles both and is the craziest mother you’ll ever meet. Former Navy SEAL, and how Justin ever gets him through security clearance, I’ll never know. Especially after that last incident, involving two bars, the entire town’s PD, and Paulie’s new court-mandated anger-management classes. But Paulie’s not really too bad, just as long as you keep him off the sauce. That’s my job, and Justin’s. Which brings us to our quality engineer, Bacon. His real name is Barry, but call him that and he’s liable to hurt you. Bacon is ex-marine, Force Recon. He wears a spoon around his neck. Claims he used it once to kill a guy. We don’t argue much with Bacon.” Lopez looked her in the eye, his voice dead serious. “This team, we’re the ones who work with Justin the most. We work close, we work well. And I can tell you, to a man, we have his back.”

  “Interesting circle of friends.”

  Lopez just shrugged. “These aren’t projects for the faint at heart. It’s a tough job, moving around the country to follow the work. It’s a rough job, spending the first year living in a trailer, pissing in a pot. Us military types—we’re used to it. We don’t expect indoor plumbing. We can fix three squares with a hot pot. Not to mention, for most of us, these paychecks are a nice step-up. Justin’s good to us. Pays well, respects us. Construction’s a shitty industry these days. Firms are folding all around. But Justin’s kept doors open, jobs secure, paychecks coming. Even a muscle head like me is smart enough to appreciate that.”

  “Justin is a good boss,” Tessa stated.

  “Yeah. And we’re terrible employees, a bunch of disrespectful, drunken, wiseass personal fuckups. So that’s saying something.”

  “You mentioned Justin had to get the crazy former SEAL through security clearance. Does everyone on your crew have to pass background checks to work these sites?”

  “Basic CORI Criminal Offender Record Information check,” Lopez supplied. “Looks for outstanding warrants. Frankly, if a building is new and unoccupied, they often waive even that. The trades, we’re not the noblest bunch. Even the government understands that if you set the security standards too high, there’ll be no one left to work the site.”

  “Rough-and-tumble crew, to go with the rough-and-tumble management team?”

  “The kind of guys who know how to show a girl a good time,” Lopez assured her. He had his smile back.

  Tessa swit
ched gears: “If the employees at Denbe Construction love Justin so much, who would hate him?”

  “Every rival that lost a job to him. And every sub we awarded a contract to, who then lost his shirt on his legally binding bid he completely fucked up. Priced out seven items instead of seventy, remember? Couple of times, we’ve had angry subs show up on site, packing heat. ’Course, we’re not the kind of guys you want to draw down on. And I include Justin in that category. He shoots with us at least once a week, and he gets his slug through the center of the dime just as often as the rest of us.”

  Tessa blinked her eyes. “You are a crazy crew.”

  “Hell, it’s a crazy business. Got a fresh piece of paper? I’m gonna need the whole thing if you want a proper enemies list.”

  TESSA WRAPPED WITH LOPEZ an hour later. It took that long to establish the long list of rivals and subs who held grudges against Justin personally, or Denbe Construction generally. The list was further complicated by the complex dynamics of an industry in which firms bought and sold subs and rivals, let alone folded under one name just to reemerge a month later under a new moniker. Lopez highlighted two firms, ASP Inc. and Pimm Brothers, who were longtime Denbe nemeses. The Pimm Brothers were two sons from another family-operated business. When they struck out on their own, they’d assumed Justin would switch his relationship from their father’s company to theirs. When he hadn’t, they’d never forgiven him.

  More soap operas here, Tessa thought, than in most Mafia enterprises.

  Which brought her to the next topic of conversation. Justin Denbe’s personal life. Lopez, so insightful on the intricacies of the construction industry, immediately turned stupid when it came to the subject of Justin’s marriage.

  Best she could get from him was that he respected Mrs. Denbe and had a soft spot for Ashlyn. Apparently, most of the core build team had known Justin’s daughter since she was a toddler. From the time she was three, Justin had often brought her on site and let her run around with power tools. Justin liked to boast she’d take over the firm one day. Why not? Lopez had offered with a shrug. Girl seemed capable enough.