The Big Dig

by Linda Barnes

  “It’s so awful!” Marian put the Kleenex supply to good use when she returned to her desk. “I mean, I know he wouldn’t have wanted to stay in a coma, and brain damage and all, but it’s hard to believe. I mean, he was standing right here. He was young. He was healthy. He was—”

  “Do you want to take a break? I can answer the phone.”

  “That’s sweet of you, but I ought to stay.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  She barely needed encouragement. “Not that well. I mean, a couple of times we had coffee. I had lunch with him once. Guess he thought I’d make a good addition to the harem, but we didn’t really hit it off, you know?” She sniffed loudly, used another Kleenex. “I had to get his mother on the line for Gerry yesterday. It’ll be so hard on her. And on Gerry, too. On all of us, coming to work like nothing happened.”

  Gerry Horgan was currently walking OSHA inspectors around the site. I wondered whether he knew about the latest wrinkle in the calamity. His wife would have phoned him, I thought, or O’Day. O’Day was on his cell phone now, his voice rising angrily.

  “Did Fournier have any close friends on the job?” I asked Marian.

  “I’m not sure. I think he and Leland Walsh go back some. He was ambitious, Kevin, wanted to go to school, be an engineer, even an architect. Maybe Mrs. H. was just trying to help him out or something, I don’t know.” She opened her top desk drawer, removed a small round compact, inspected her reddened eyes and nose. “It’s the timing I can’t figure.” Staring into the compact mirror, doing makeup repairs, she seemed to be talking to her reflection. “First thing Gerry wanted to know was who saw him fall.”

  I waited.

  “Harry Dunegin, one of the cement masons, saw him lying down there, not moving or anything. And Harry was about the first person on-site.”

  “Could he have fallen the night before?”

  “God, I hate to think of him lying there all night, like bleeding into his brain. But it couldn’t have been like that. He punched out. I mean, I saw his time card.”

  One man might punch out for another. That was one reason O’Day sat so close to the time clock.

  I said, “Maybe he forgot something, came back to get it.”

  “After the gates were locked?”

  “He could have crawled under the fence. There are a couple of spots—”

  “Maybe that’s why he wasn’t wearing his hard hat.”

  I’d wondered about the hard hat. “Did he punch in for the morning shift?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t fucking believe this,” O’Day yelled into the phone. I’d been trying to listen in on his conversation while keeping up my end with Marian, but I hadn’t gotten a sense of who he was talking to, hadn’t heard any names. He snapped the phone onto his belt and approached.

  “Marian, any guys from R.C. show up, you find me right away. I don’t want ’em in the trench unless they’re with me. Got it?” He punctuated his outburst with a pointed index finger and slammed the door on his way out.

  “R.C.?” I said.

  “Wouldn’t you know it? Today of all days? Two dead rats this morning, so we’ve got to deal with Rodent Control on top of everything else. Honestly, we can’t stop work when somebody dies, but we can’t keep going with rats. No way I’m going down there.”

  Leland Walsh had mentioned rats. They’d been a huge topic when the Dig was first proposed. No one knew exactly who’d started the rumor, but it had spread out of control like a forest fire. Rats, people said, would be everywhere once the Dig began. Thousands of previously harmless wharf rats, driven from harbor hideaways, would raid the North End, the Back Bay, downtown. They’d swarm out of the bowels of the city, swim up pipes and toilets, scurry as far as the suburbs. The truth never measured up.

  I said, “I thought the rats were an old wives’ tale.”

  “We haven’t had any problems till lately, and all Gerry needs after yesterday’s slowdown is rats. Until the site’s certified rat-free, we can’t move. The trucks are waiting, the crews are standing around.”

  I wondered aloud if some of Fournier’s pals might have stashed rats on-site, to force the powers that be to stop, take note of his injury.

  “Ugh,” Marian said. “Who’d touch a rat?”

  I pondered symbolic rats. Rats who talked when they should have stayed silent, rats who telephoned hotlines. For once, I regretted the trailer’s bathroom. With an excuse to get outside, I’d make for a secluded nook, phone the morgue, find out when the autopsy was scheduled. I tapped my feet on the floorboards in frustration. I wanted to know what the OSHA inspectors were seeing and doing. I wanted to be out on the site, viewing the scaffolding, walking the path Kevin Fournier had walked.

  “God,” Marian said, “this coffee tastes like muck.”

  “How about I make a Starbucks run?”

  “Great. I’ll take some down to Gerry.”

  “Say hi to the rats.”

  “Shit.”

  “I’ll take it down. I don’t mind.”

  Her speculative gaze wondered if I might be after her job.

  “You take yours black, right?” I looted petty cash and took off before she could change her mind.

  My morgue guy was out. Eddie didn’t know when they’d scheduled the cut. Starbucks was crowded. Marian brought coffee in to Liz Horgan, reminded me to grab a hard hat.

  Nothing less threatening than a Styrofoam tray in the hands of a secretary. I passed the kit-of-parts barrier, chain-link fencing stuck into a concrete Jersey barrier, topped with blue-and-yellow signboard. Someone had scrawled KEEP OUT in red paint on a storage bin. I got a lot of “Hey, is that for me?” on the way across the decking. Arrows pointed toward the pedestrian sidewalk across the street. Signs warned cars to yield to pedestrians. I peered down into the trench as I crossed what would someday be park land above six lanes of unseen high-speed traffic, listening to my footsteps echo on the heavy planking. The view was strange. It wasn’t like looking down from an airplane, nothing like that. The few human figures at the bottom of the pit were shortened and diminished by the steep angle, their individual features impossible to recognize. They were simply tops of hard hats, sloped shoulders, orange vests with legs. The trucks at the bottom weren’t toys; they were more like half-size models, covered in mud. I paid particular attention to the scaffold staircases. From this angle, each looked almost like a cage. Four two-by-six-foot aluminum landings joined by steeply slanting steps, ten per flight.

  Three men were huddled at the first landing of the east scaffold steps, one of them Gerry Horgan. The staircase plunged as steeply as a ladder. With both hands holding the tray, if someone behind me shoved—I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. A flashbulb dazzled my eyes, left a yellow glow.

  “Nobody comes down here,” one of the two strangers barked. “Go back up.”

  “I thought you might like some coffee.” The containers steamed enticingly. The men exchanged glances; if one broke the other would.

  “Coffee, Mr. Horgan?” I asked.

  “Sure. Thanks. You guys finished yet?”

  “Couple more shots.”

  “You said that twenty minutes ago.” Horgan raised his eyebrows. “I know, I know. It’s your job. Okay, but it’s my job to get this job done! I got cement trucks need to move today. They don’t move today, some other job gets them tomorrow. Understand?”

  While Horgan took a breath and tried to hang onto his temper, I glanced down to see whether they’d marked the place where Fournier had landed. An orange stake was thrust into the ground slightly to the right of the bottom step. I tried to trace a trajectory. If he’d fallen over the railing, landed on the edge of a metal tread, that might account for the head wound. How would he fall over the railing? Had they marked the spot accurately? I doubted anyone had taken photos in the rush before moving the man.

  The safety inspectors reconsidered, accepted coffee, and I retreated, retracing my steps. From the very top of the sta
ircase the view was obscured, dark, the pit covered by decking and walkways that cast deep shadows. I walked another twenty feet, seeking a better view. To my left, a group of hard hats leaned against the chain-link fence. One smoked furtively, one drank from a thermos, one from a Styrofoam cup. As far as I knew, no one had publically announced Fournier’s death, but from the gloom and the grim set of many jaws, I figured everyone knew. I wondered how much of the morning the workers had been idle, how much of the day they’d stay idle.

  “Hey Leland, you the one fuckin’ butchered those rats?”

  The name caught my ear. One of the group was the black man who’d tried to question me. I slowed my steps, wished myself invisible.

  “Not me. No way.” It was Walsh’s voice. I knelt, set the tray down, untied the thick shoelace of my workboot, readjusted the bulky tongue.

  “Thought maybe you used that hammer you say you’re missin’,” the first voice continued. “Got rat blood all over it, so you fuckin’ buried it in the hole.”

  “Anybody uses Walsh’s hammer to crush rats gonna find himself in trouble,” another man observed.

  “Anybody do that?” Walsh didn’t need to raise his voice to sound threatening. I picked up the tray, moved behind a pile of metal girders. How long had his hammer been missing? Doctors might not distinguish a hammer blow from a fall. I wondered if medical examiners would.

  “Any of you kill those rats?” Walsh increased his volume. “Hey, listen up. I asked a question!”

  I peeked between the girders. The workers seemed to be listening, but no one stepped forward or gave anyone else away. A man with wire-rimmed glasses twitched his lips.

  Walsh said, “Yeah, well, I know it couldn’t possibly be any of you guys, but if you do it again, could you dump ’em on another site?”

  “Guys next door probably dumped ’em here,” wire-rimmed glasses muttered.

  “Or better,” Walsh went on, “next time bury the suckers. Whatever, so we can keep working. This is getting to be one sorry site.”

  “Come on, Lee, give us a break. You’re the one slowing things down, hunting for those fuckin’ tools.”

  Were Walsh’s tools among the stuff that had walked off-site, the stuff Fournier had mentioned on the hotline? I considered my secluded spot behind the girders, and the way Walsh had suddenly appeared while I was talking with Liz Horgan. Plenty of hiding places on-site. Had Fournier made his calls via cell phone from somewhere nearby? From the phone in the trailer? Had someone overheard him? I’d need to go over those recordings again, find out if there was a record of the time each call had come in. You dial Boston 911 and your number pops up on a computer screen before you say a word.

  Had Fournier told someone about his hotline calls? Why would he?

  A dead man couldn’t give the inspector general’s office further details about stuff going missing, or about selling dirt. Fournier could have been silenced because someone discovered that he knew more than he should, that he would talk, that he had talked. His fall had temporarily closed the site, slowing progress. Was that the goal? To slow the site, to shut it down?

  The Dig had been fought by preservationists, environmentalists, neighborhood activists. Most had been bought off, one way or another. The Fire Department, wary of having to respond to emergencies in the new tunnels, had been soothed by the purchase of a new fireboat for the harbor. Neighborhood organizations had been quieted with participatory councils, environmentalists placated with facts, figures, revisions.

  Most critics made do with irate letters to the press, calls to the talk-show nasties. The most-offended filed lawsuits. If anyone—unplacated by Dig officials, unsatisfied by the law—had resorted to sabotage, why select this site? What would a slowdown or temporary work stoppage on one site prove? How would it help? Who would it help?

  I needed to study maps, contracts. What other work was predicated on the completion of this section of tunnel? Was an on-time-performance bonus at risk? According to Eddie, Horgan Construction was bidding on other contracts. If work slowed or stopped at this site, Horgan would be less likely to win other bids. Rival contractors would pounce.

  “Took your sweet time,” Marian observed when I got back to the trailer.

  Chapter 13

  If I hadn’t had Veejay to find, I might have haunted the morgue after work or hounded Fournier’s relatives. But I had Veejay—and Eddie, who assured me he had a handle on things as I hurried toward Government Center, cell phone to ear. The autopsy, booked for late afternoon, would most likely get held over till morning. The family hadn’t been keen, but the doctors had persisted, pressed by insurance investigators.

  “They have the tox results yet?”

  “Partial. No alcohol in his blood. They’ll get the rest ASAP. They can prove he was tanked or tranked, the insurance guys’ll eat it up.”

  “Find any ex-cons on the payroll?” Earlier I’d shipped a list of Horgan employees to Spike at Eddie’s office.

  “Nobody rings the chimes.” I could almost see him shrug. He knew what I knew: Ex-cons change their names, borrow social security numbers.

  “Ya find out anything about dirt?” he asked.

  “I’m making a list of trucking companies, anybody who’s driven in and out. Call me as soon as you hear on the autopsy, okay?”

  “Carlotta, maybe you’re jumping in a little too deep here.”

  “You think so? Some guys fall from heights like that and get nothing but bruises. This one’s dead.”

  “Yeah. Well, don’t hold your breath is all. I seen a lot of cuts where what they come up with is what ya call inconclusive.”

  A car horn blared. “What? Sorry, Eddie, didn’t catch that.”

  “First off, we got no proof this guy was the guy made the hotline calls. Second, we got no proof the guy dying is anything but an accident.”

  “You can get proof that he made the calls, Eddie.”

  “He ain’t talkin’. He’s dead.”

  “Everybody’s got a message machine, right? Get the tape off his. Take it, and the hotline tapes, over to your FBI pal.”

  Silence.

  “You put me on-site, Eddie. You want to pull me off?”

  More silence. In front of Faneuil Hall, signs advertised the great April Nineteenth Patriot’s Day tribute, calling it a rededication of the Cradle of Liberty. I wondered which ex-presidents were booked to speak—Carter, probably, Clinton, the senior Bush. I wondered who was responsible for security, who got stuck with deciding which one delivered the first address. The protocol would be sticky. I thought Senators Kennedy and Kerry were scheduled, with Senator Gleason, the conservative from Idaho, balancing the ticket.

  Eddie finally spoke. “Just remember you’re working for me on this one. Don’t embarrass me.”

  I assumed he meant no unauthorized activity, no B&E’s at the trailer or the Horgans’ home, no troublemaking. I told him not to worry, and for the moment I meant it. I had other fish to fry.

  Dana Endicott was late.

  She’d picked the spot, a high-traffic Harvard Square café. Any location far from the Dig was fine with me; I wouldn’t risk running into a hard hat from my secret life. I dumped my backpack on a round table in a corner and went to stand on line.

  I got two cups of the daily special, doctored one to suit myself, and set the other down on the table just as she came in the door. She wore a mid-calf navy cashmere coat paired with high, sleek boots, another thousand-buck outfit. She cast her eyes over the tables, spotted me quickly, and approached.

  “Have you found her?” She jerked her chair back with such vigor it clanged against the table and spilled the coffee. “I got a message from her mother. She says she’s okay!”

  “If you want cream or sugar, it’s do-it-yourself.”

  “Black’s fine.”

  I explained that Veejay hadn’t spoken to her mother at all, that Mom had merely relayed a message from Peter.

  “She didn’t talk to her? She just—accepted the guy’s word
? What kind of mother—” her voice trailed off.

  “Exactly. What kind of mother is she? What do you know about the family?” I kept my voice low. The couple at the next table were practically entwined and I doubted they were monitoring anything beyond mutual attraction, but it’s a habit.

  “Hardly anything. Veejay didn’t seem to mind going home, but she never got excited about it either.”

  “Was she close to her sisters?”

  “She only mentioned one. She and her sister bought a dog together, when they were young, but she wound up taking care of it.”

  “Jayme, Jackie, or Elsie?”

  “Are there three?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The place was noisy with chattering patrons and the whirr of an espresso machine. Mass Ave traffic sped by the window.

  I said, “Did Veronica ever mention this Peter to you?”

  “Maybe he works at the dog place, or the bar.”

  I’d called them both. “No.”

  “Damn,” she murmured. “I’m scared to read the papers. Seems like every day there’s a plea from some missing kid’s father, or they find an unidentified body in a pond in some town I never heard of.”

  “Did Veejay mention anyone named Rick?” I watched her face. There was barely a flicker in her eyes.

  “Maybe. I think so. But Rick and Peter don’t sound remotely alike—”

  “Do you know Rick’s last name?”

  “It could be in one of these.” She held up two small books, one spiral-bound, one with a floral-fabric cover. “Address books. They were in the junk drawer in the kitchen. I brought them for you, and her phone bills.”

  “You didn’t have to. I could have picked them up.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. Tonight’s not going to work. I have a meeting this evening.”

  “I thought we were going to your house.”

  “This meeting just came up. I’m sorry, but since I brought the phone bills and the address books, it’s not like you’ll be spinning your wheels. Peter’s probably in there.”

  “I need to see her room. I’ve talked to her parents, her sisters, her coworkers. I’ve talked to you. But I’m not getting a fix on her, on who she is, or where she’d go.”