The Big Dig

by Linda Barnes

  I wondered what he’d say if he saw the bullet wound in my thigh, and then I wondered what he’d say when he saw the bullet wound in my thigh. “No,” I said softly, thinking about the big difference a small word could make.

  He held the ice pack to his head. The cut was high on his forehead, not much damage considering the heft of the pipe under my car seat.

  I inhaled, blew out the breath slowly. “So tell me about the evening’s plans.”

  “Carlotta, are you checking out Kevin’s death?”

  I liked the way my name sounded on his lips, so I tried his on mine. “Leland, think about it. I was there before he fell.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “More of an answer than I got.”

  His repertoire of grins ranged from rueful to charming to full-bore sexy. I put this one in between boyish and disarming. “Hey, I was only gonna break into a storage shed.”

  “For fun?”

  “Things disappear and reappear, for chrissakes! I put my tools away, I expect to damn well find ’em where I put ’em.” He reached over, added more brandy to his cup, offered me the bottle. “There’s this storage hut, pretty much like the others, except nobody has the keys. That’s where I think my tools must be. Hell, I don’t know what’s in there, but nobody can find the keys and that makes me dead curious. So tonight I went in to bust it open and find out what the hell’s in it and why everybody gets bent out of shape whenever I ask.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Horgan. O’Day.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I remember cutting the fence. I was pretty full of myself. Gonna do a little spying, brag about it to a pretty woman.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Do you remember going down the scaffold stairs?”

  He shrugged.

  “Did you see who hit you?”

  Another shrug.

  “What do you know about selling dirt?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your friend Kevin called the IG’s hotline, said things were walking off the site.”

  He sat up straighter. “Tools and shit. I told him that.”

  “He called again. Second time he said someone on the Horgan site was selling dirt.”

  Walsh shook his head slowly. “I don’t know jack about that.”

  With effort I kept the exasperation off my face. When I’d found him, almost under the truck wheels, it seemed as though I’d stumbled onto another accident about to happen. If Kevin Fournier hadn’t slipped, if he’d been killed because of something he knew, it followed that a second accident might have been arranged because Walsh knew the same thing. Dammit, if he didn’t know anything, why risk killing him?

  Walsh said, “Fuck, if they’d checked, those pathologists at Albany Street, they’d know he hadn’t fallen down any stairs.”

  “They did check.” Someone could have thought Walsh knew, assumed he knew. “I’ve got the report.”

  “Can I see?”

  “He was your friend. There are photos that might be hard to forget.”

  He hesitated.

  “I used to be a cop. I’ve gone over it and there’s nothing there. A skull fracture’s a skull fracture. Pathologists can’t tell what caused it, a fall or a blow. And they can’t tell if he fell or was pushed, either.”

  “Shit.” Frustration brought his hand down hard on the table, and the sound echoed in the small room. “I’ll save myself the grief then, but goddammit, I wish I could do something.”

  “Maybe you’ll remember more about tonight later. Sometimes it’s like that with a hit on the head.”

  “Sure you don’t get hit a lot?”

  “Not often.”

  The slow grin again. “Hit on?”

  I drank coffee.

  He got to his feet, returned the ice pack to the freezer. When he came back, he stood behind my chair and rested his hands on my shoulders. “They shifted most of the dirt the end of last year, start of this one, December, January. Day after day, trucks pulling up to the bucket, dump trucks, whole line of ’em.”

  If it happened months ago, why had Fournier chosen to drop his dime now?

  “You sure he said dirt?” Walsh’s fingers pressed against my shoulder blades and I had difficulty suppressing a moan. Sam Gianelli had asked the same question, and I realized I’d been thinking about Sam for awhile, watching Walsh move, comparing him to Sam, his stature, his build. I wondered if I’d ever see a man completely as himself, not in comparison to Gianelli. The thought made me sad, and then—I don’t know—defiant. I wanted Walsh to help me forget Gianelli.

  “Other room we passed through,” he murmured. “Is there a couch, something soft to sit on?”

  “Used to be. Now it’s just pillows on the floor.”

  “Sounds fine.” He didn’t ask for an explanation and I liked that.

  We moved to the living room, set about building a fire in the fireplace. He had a system: He liked to place the logs vertically, didn’t approve of newspaper for kindling, but decided to roll a few sheets tightly rather than rummage for shim shingles in the cellar. He claimed that making and lighting the fire exhausted him to the point that he had to lie down on the rug. When I offered a pillow for his head, he said he’d prefer to rest it in my lap.

  “Or do you want to talk politics first?” I’d thought his other grins were sexy, but this one was devastating.

  “I’d rather talk music.”

  “That’s what you like to know about a guy? Before?”

  “It’s one thing I like to know. Before what?”

  He ignored the question. “Me, I’m kind of a musical throwback. Temptations, Marvin Gaye, all that Motown shit. Dancing and listening, both. I like to dance. Slow stuff, you know?”

  Delta blues is my passion. My ex-husband, a bass player, shared it. Sam likes more modern stuff, mainly big band, some alt rock, but we could always agree on Bessie Smith. I thought I could deal with Motown. Hell, I could probably deal with a man who adored overweight Wagner-singing sopranos; it’s musical indifference that leaves me cold.

  “You’re so pretty, you know that? Hey, you don’t like it when I say that?”

  I hadn’t pulled away, nothing as strong as a flinch, but he read me well. It’s true; I don’t like pretty. Pretty seems to me a weak word, and I guess, above all, I want to be strong. I’m not a girl who wants to be a boy; it’s nothing like that. I love the melting, aching feeling I get when I’m with a man, but there’s only so much I’ll give up for that feeling, so in the end, I know I’ve got to be strong.

  “Hey, come back. You want to talk about your ex?”

  “No.”

  “How about religion?”

  I laughed. “You get far with lines like these?”

  “Always. You bet.”

  “Half Jewish, half Catholic, if you need to know. You?”

  “Jewish and Catholic both?”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna feel real guilty afterward.”

  “After what?”

  I raised an innocent eyebrow.

  He said, “Me, I’m a pagan. You ever go with a brother before?”

  “Hasn’t happened, but I don’t go by black or white.”

  “What do you go by?”

  Chemistry. That was the simple answer. And unfailingly, I got it wrong. My cop friend, Mooney, once said he’d arrest any man I got the urge for, with total confidence that the bastard would have something arrest-worthy in his past.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “We could try it on a little.”

  He reached up and touched my cheek, circled my neck with one hand, drew me down to meet his mouth, and I felt the old familiar tingle in my stomach. He smelled of coffee and brandy and disinfectant. It was warm by the fire, the rug thick and soft. We both wore layers and layers of clothes against the outdoor cold, which made undressing nothing like the scenes in movies, more of a frantic race against the clock than a languorous cinematic seduction. Face it, panty h
ose and long underwear and camisoles are funny. So are condoms. We laughed a lot and then we didn’t.

  “Do you happen to have a bed?” he asked after a long time.

  “Upstairs.”

  He sighed and tugged a strand of my hair. “I thought maybe you just had pillows in all the rooms. Wouldn’t be a bad thing. Your hair smells great.”

  “It’s usually red. I dyed it brown for the Dig job.”

  “Can you dye it back?”

  We started collecting our scattered clothes, and something, maybe the jingle of change when he lifted his pants off the floor, reminded me. I asked if he’d show me the key chain token Kevin had given him, the good luck charm.

  He reached into his righthand pants pocket, reached deeper. Then he groped the lefthand pocket. “It’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone? You sure you didn’t take the thing out and leave it home?”

  “I don’t think so. No. It must have dropped out of my pocket, or …”

  “Do you remember the design?”

  “A circle. With sort of wavy lines.”

  “Could you draw it?”

  His mouth tightened. I found a piece of paper and a pencil on my desk, and slowly, with much erasing, he drew an awkward replica while the dim glow of the dying fire gleamed against his dark skin.

  “It’s not my best skill,” he said when he was through.

  “No,” I agreed.

  We went upstairs, made love again, less urgently this time, slowly, rhythmically, satisfyingly. It took me a long time to fall asleep afterward. Black Jeeps haunted my dreams.

  Chapter 27

  “What on earth did you do?” Marian gawked at me from behind her desk.

  For three seconds I thought she’d seen love-bites on my neck or read my mind, knew I’d spent the night entwined with carpentry foreman Leland Walsh. Why wouldn’t it show, the way I felt: loose, easy, and well-used?

  It occurred to me that she was probably asking why I’d been fired.

  “I’ll fill you in later, call you with the gory details,” I promised hurriedly. “I don’t want to run into Liz Horgan.”

  “You can say that again. She’s in a mood.”

  “She’s here?”

  “Down the trench with some union safety officer.”

  “Two things, Marian, okay? That’s all.” While I spoke, my fingers were busily yanking items out of my desk drawers. “I came across this weird stuff with the trucking invoices. Most of them were for work done in December and January—”

  “Who asked you to check the invoices? I thought you were doing the look-ahead schedule—”

  “Liz asked me to do it,” I lied. “She said there was another trucking company, just recently, and I can’t find any invoices on that firm.”

  Marian pouted her lips. “There was a trucker in, maybe a week ago, for a couple loads. I saw him pull up.”

  “Which outfit? Norrelli?”

  “I can’t remember the name, but they had a red diamond in the logo, if that helps.”

  “You’re fabulous, Marian.”

  “I’m so sorry you’re leaving. Jeez, they’ll have to bring somebody in. I’m drowning here. Hey, did you give my note to Krissi? Did she say anything, send a reply?”

  Shit, I’d left the note in the car, which was parked in a nearby tow zone. “I never saw her. I’m sorry. I gave Liz the book.”

  “Oh, never mind. It’s nothing. Throw it out. I’m just worried about that kid.”

  Worried about the kid’s dad, more likely. More specifically, worried about ingratiating herself with the kid to earn points with the dad. Still, I wasn’t sure. Her interest might be genuine. Over-suspicion can be as big a job hazard as lack of suspicion in my business.

  “Worried about the dog, too,” Marian said with a sigh.

  “But I told you—”

  “Yeah, but have I seen the dog? Did you see the dog?”

  “No.”

  She gave me a look.

  “One other thing, Marian, did some keys go missing from here?”

  “Keys?”

  “To a storage shed.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” She seemed puzzled. “Mrs. H. didn’t accuse you of stealing, did she?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  I got out as quickly as I could, with promises to stay in touch that rang false on both sides. I walked down the concrete steps, steadying myself on the rough wooden handrail. The thud of hammers and the rattle of rebar blended with the hum of overhead traffic; the earth smelled rich and damp. When I had a chance, after I found Veronica James, I’d ask Eddie for a job where I could get dirty, work with my hands, make a small piece of a lasting tunnel.

  I would have said good-bye to Harv O’Day and the handful of workers I knew to speak to, but I was wary of spotting Walsh. He’d planned to turn up on time, make as if nothing had happened. He’d promised to watch for reactions, tell me if anyone asked him pointed questions about his whereabouts last night, if anything brought back memories.

  Of course there might be no work on-site today, if those red eyes I’d seen last night meant rats were still hanging around. Rats. Were other sites closing because of rats? Another oddity for my report, along with the weird phone call reciting Dig-related traffic closings, the husband sleeping on the couch … I thought about Liz Horgan’s haggard face and limp blonde hair, her empty house. If something were wrong with the daughter … If something were wrong with the daughter, it might account for her parents’ moodiness, but not the disruptions and tensions on the site.

  I like to wrap up cases. I like to solve them, type neat final reports, get paid, and feel that I’ve earned every penny. Instead I’d have to set about salvaging remnants, slapping together a patchwork summary to pass along to the next operative, assuming Eddie Conklin didn’t override my judgment, ignore the hotline calls, declare Fournier’s death an accident, and give the Horgans a green light.

  Dammit. I shouldn’t have gotten fired. I listened to the radio on the way home—rock, cranked as loud as I could stand it—but it didn’t drown the reproachful chorus in my head.

  You don’t need high-tech gizmos for fingerprints. You can pull decent prints with basic tools and I had them, the black powder, the fine brush, plus the length of pipe used on Walsh’s head. Twenty minutes later in my office, I bent to work wearing disposable gloves. I didn’t think I’d find anything. Crooks use gloves, too; that’s an axiom of the business. But I’m a glutton for tying loose ends.

  I splashed powder the length of the pipe, and damned if someone hadn’t been foolish enough to grasp it with ungloved fingers. A slow smile spread over my face. Crooks are dumb; another axiom of the business. I could plainly see, not a thumb, but three well-defined fingertips. I had Scotch tape and three-by-five cards handy.

  A storage shed that couldn’t be opened. Which one? Why didn’t Marian know anything about it? What could be kept in one of those small huts that would be worth killing to protect? I let my mind wander while my hands worked. Counterfeit hundreds. Pirated video discs. Kiddy porn. Drugs. I hadn’t come up with anything pointing at cocaine or ecstasy or heroin, unless selling dirt meant selling heroin. I lifted the prints to the cards, labeled them, placed the pipe in a plastic bag, stuck it under my desk. Eddie could run the prints for me.

  I could almost hear Walsh’s deep voice, talking about an ex-cop who gave bad sites clean slates, made trouble for sites that had no trouble. Eddie certainly had been eager for me to make a quick entry and exit on the Horgan site.

  Exactly what should I include in my final report? Would Eddie run the prints if I told the tale of Walsh and his nighttime adventure? Did I even want to mention the locked storage shed?

  Maybe I’d get better results if I asked Eddie to run the prints as a favor, told him I wanted to check out a potential tenant, a boyfriend of Paolina’s. Damn. Who do you trust? Who can you trust? My current tenant’s footsteps raced precipitously downstairs while I was pondering the question.r />
  “Want work?” I yelled.

  Roz usually moves fast, so the speed of her descent didn’t alarm me. Slower, heavier footsteps followed, which didn’t faze me either. Roz sleeps late, and seldom sleeps alone, or with the same guy twice, for that matter. She wore a fuchsia T-shirt with the motto “Yankees Suck,” and her hair had come out navy blue.

  I asked her to photograph the print card and make three copies in her cellar darkroom. I’d keep one, send one to Eddie, one to a cop pal, probably Mooney. If Moon came out with a different result than Eddie, I’d learn something. I considered asking Moon to run Leland Walsh’s name and description through the system. I tugged a lock of my hair.

  “Carlotta?” Roz shifted from foot to foot. Probably hadn’t said farewell to the boyfriend.

  “Oh, yeah, look, I need them fast.”

  “Good, it’ll cost you more.”

  “This mean anything to you?” I showed her Walsh’s drawing of the missing gold disc.

  “Is it a tattoo?”

  “I saw it on a piece of metal, same size it is now. Colored. Red, blue, green. Maybe enamelled. Could be a gang symbol, I suppose, or a tat.” Pity it didn’t feature Marian’s red diamond truck logo, I thought.

  “I can ask around.”

  “Could be corporate. Some logo deal.” The slow voice belonged to Roz’s sometime lover, sometime karate instructor, a man who goes by the single name Lemon.

  “I’ll run a graphics check,” Roz said. “Lemon’s got a great Mac setup. Tons of people want to know, like, if somebody’s using the same corporate name. I’ll make like I wanna use this wavy-line thing for my company logo, but I don’t want to get sued by Acme Consolidated, or some other outfit already owns it, okay?”

  After they left I worked on my report. “Stuff walking off the site.” “Selling dirt.” Why had Fournier been so fucking oblique? Was he trying to shield someone? Holding back deliberately? Why? I knew jerks used the hotline to get rivals into trouble. I wondered if anyone had ever used the hotline as a threat: Do what I want or I’ll turn you in. If Fournier had been motivated by the simple desire to see justice done, why hadn’t he told his story in words anyone could understand?

  I shoved the incomplete report into my desk drawer, shut it with a bang, and locked it. I’d finish the damn thing later. It was Monday, the beginning of a new work week. I’d been fired off the Horgan site, but look on the bright side: I had another case, a rich client in the hospital, a client who refused to speak to me.