A Safe Place for Dying

by Jack Fredrickson

“We don’t keep permit copies that long.”

  “How do I get the names?”

  His chair creaked. “Perhaps if you made an appointment.”

  I was short on sleep, long on cranky. “Do I go upstairs to the mayor’s office to make one, or have one of the Board members at Crystal Waters make it for me?”

  I’d pressed the right button. His huge hands dropped to the arms of the chair, and he started to push. It was like watching birth, the slow way he emerged from the oak chair. “Come with me.”

  I followed him as he lumbered through the empty office to a small file room jammed with mismatched tan, black, and gray metal cabinets. He squeezed down the center aisle and stopped next to a gray four-drawer file. Steadying himself with one meaty paw on top of the cabinet, he aimed his eyes down to read the labels on the drawers. “Open that one,” he said, pointing at the bottom drawer.

  I knelt and opened a drawer filled with black vinyl ring binders labeled with white tags. I pulled out the one marked PERMIT RECEIPTS. 1966–1980. I stood up and handed it to him. He set the book on top of the cabinet and began thumbing through the ledger pages.

  “Here’s the first entry for Crystal Waters,” he said, pointing with a large thumb. It was the fifth entry on the 1969 ledger page, done in fountain-pen ink, and showed receipt of fifty dollars for a permit to demolish a barn. “This ledger will have the names of all the contractors who posted a bond for Crystal Waters.”

  We went back to the general office. He pointed to a vacant desk and shuffled, wheezing, back to his newspaper. I sat down, opened the book, and began making a list of every permit issued.

  I closed the ledger at two fifteen. Maple Hills had done very well from the sale of permits. From the first demolition to the final posting for the electrician who’d installed the pump in the pond fountain, they’d collected permit fees from one hundred and seventy-two different contractors for the Gateville project.

  I brought the ledger to the big man’s desk and set it down next to his newspaper. He was on the classified advertisements, his day well over half done. He didn’t look up when I thanked him and left.

  One hundred and seventy-two contractors. Leo was right. It would be impossible.

  Twelve

  I had two cups of machine coffee in the hall of the Municipal Building and went into the library to one of the computer stations. I logged onto the Internet and started searching the online yellow and white page listings for the names of the contractors that had gotten permits for Gateville. I searched by name, by geography, and by business type, when I could figure it from the name of the business. At five o’clock, I went out to the hall for more coffee. I’d gotten halfway through the list and had found current addresses for only twenty-eight of the contractors.

  Twenty-eight live names out of eighty-plus. Too many were gone—out of business, reorganized into other businesses, or just plain vaporized—and that was for openers, as Leo had warned it would be. Of those still operating, it was doubtful any would have employees or records going back to Gateville.

  I looked at my watch. Five fifteen. It was past midnight in Paris, too late to call, even if I did have a reason that would sound plausible. I finished my coffee and went back to the computer. Plodding was better than thinking.

  I worked the rest of the evening and finished just before they closed the library at nine o’clock. I’d found current addresses for sixty-one of the one hundred and seventy-two names.

  I drove back to the turret, microwaved something in a plastic tray that didn’t look anything like its picture on the box, and looked at things I didn’t care about on television. Sometime around four thirty, I went up the metal stairs to my cot, which is all one can do when one doesn’t have a bed.

  At six in the morning, fresh from ninety minutes’ sleep, I made a full pot of coffee, filled my travel mug, and went up to the roof to clear my head and listen to the dawn. By eight, I was ready to talk to the Bohemian. I called his office, got the machine. I tried his cell phone, got his voice mail. It was just as well. I left a message that I needed all the records he had on the contractors that had worked at Gateville, pronto. I ended by saying I’d stop by his office at two o’clock to look at them. Then I shut off my cell phone. I didn’t want questions.

  At eleven, I grabbed my blazer, khakis, and a blue button-down shirt and went to the health center. I said hello to the old boys draped over the machines, ran six laps as well as anyone can who’s only gotten ninety minutes sleep and has the coffee trembles to prove it. After I showered, I checked my phone for messages. The Bohemian had called. He sounded subdued. He said he’d have the records as I asked, at two o’clock.

  I swung through McDonald’s on my way to the Eisenhower for a large coffee and a Big Mac. Big Macs are good for road grub because they pack so many basic food groups—proteins, carbohydrates, and special sauce—into one pucklike cylinder that, if handled gingerly, is ideal for driving. Midday traffic was light enough to dodge most of the potholes that could launch the coffee, and I got to the Bohemian’s building at ten to two without a drop of coffee spilled and just the merest orange hint of special sauce on my shirt sleeve. I parked, slipped on my blazer, crossed the street, and rode the elevator up.

  The tanned blond was gone. In her place, the dour Griselda perched, sucking the light out of the reception area like a black hole in space. She looked up as the elevator doors opened, resisted the urge to throw herself at me in frenzied abandon, stood, and motioned for me to follow. The office was quiet, hushed like a place abandoned by people gone to the funeral of a child. She opened the door to the small conference room, told me the Bohemian would arrive shortly, and left without the offer of coffee or a magazine. I didn’t mind. The wait would give me a chance to study the lagging dog in the English oil painting, for what it was seeing that I could not.

  I didn’t have much time to study. The Bohemian and Stanley came in a few minutes later, each carrying two yellowed cardboard file boxes. They set them on the credenza against the wall.

  “Excuse our tardiness, Vlodek.” The Bohemian brushed his hands against the sides of his trousers. “We had to go pick these up. One of the developers’ widows had them in the attic of her garage. These are the last records of Safe Haven Properties, as you requested, and without question. Now, if you please,” he said as he and Stanley sat down, “tell us what this is about.”

  “I think Crystal Waters was laced with explosives when it was under construction. I think D.X.12 has been buried there, at the Farraday house, underneath the old school bus shelter, and in other places we don’t know about, since 1970.”

  The Bohemian’s face remained impassive; we could have been discussing the weather. But Stanley’s face had turned crimson, and beads of sweat sprouted on his forehead, big, like raindrops on a waxed car. He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief.

  Neither of them looked surprised.

  “Why do you believe this?” the Bohemian asked in an even voice.

  “Because you believe it.”

  His face stayed expressionless, his eyes fixed on mine. A hell of a poker player, I would have bet.

  “And because it fits the facts,” I continued. “Old paper, most likely with old writing on it. A type of explosive that hasn’t been available since then. And old dollar values: the fifty thousand, even the half million you just paid. Not huge dollars by today’s standards, but big bucks in 1970. But mostly,” I said, looking right back into the Bohemian’s unblinking eyes, “I believe it because you believe it.”

  “Suspected,” he said then, without hesitation. “No, even that’s too strong a word. We’ve had an irrational fear of it, like a nightmare.”

  “Yet you did nothing for all those years.”

  “What would you have had us do, Vlodek? Dig up all of Crystal Waters on an irrational fear? Send everyone into a panic, launch a thousand lawsuits, ruin the developers and the people who bought the homes, and then probably find nothing? We paid the ten thousand dollars in 197
0, and he went away. Don’t say we did nothing. There was nothing to do.”

  Stanley put away his handkerchief and leaned toward me from across the table. “We thought it was over long ago, Mr. Elstrom. Like you, we thought it could have been a construction worker, but there had been a thousand men at Crystal Waters. As for him burying D.X.12 throughout the place … it was too farfetched to consider. How could we have found it, or him, without throwing everything at Crystal Waters up for grabs?”

  “Stanley, you didn’t even try.”

  The Bohemian knocked his knuckles on the table twice, quick, sharp. “No need. The man went away.”

  “He left behind stashes of D.X.12.”

  “We don’t know that.” The Bohemian’s eyes were shiny with anger. He took a long breath. “What we do know is that our predicament today is the same as it was in 1970, except that our financial risk has gone up. Today, the homes at Crystal Waters, with the common acreage, the community house, and the other amenities, are worth collectively over one hundred million dollars. Dollars that will be gone forever if there is public speculation that explosives are buried at Crystal Waters.”

  “So you sit back and hope the man will stay away more decades, now that he’s been paid?”

  “It’s what happened the last time,” the Bohemian said.

  “It’s time to go to the Feds.”

  “With what?” The Bohemian waved his hand at the yellowed boxes of records stacked on the credenza. “Do you really think the authorities will have time to sift through all those records? And what would they be looking for?”

  “The name of an old worker, recently paroled after spending the last thirty-five years in jail.”

  The Bohemian leaned in. “You think his name is in those records?”

  “If your bomber is one of your old construction workers, then the name of the company he worked for probably is. But if the bomber is somebody else …” I let it hang.

  The Bohemian took it. “You mean if it’s one of the Members, or myself, or Stanley here, or even you, Vlodek, then the search through those old records will be pointless?”

  “I think it’s probably pointless anyway,” I said. I took out my list of contractors and slid it face up to the center of the round table. “One hundred and seventy-two contractors paid for permits to work at Crystal Waters. I found current addresses for only sixty-one of them. More might exist under changed names, but it’s a safe bet most are out of business. We’ll never get a complete list of the men who worked there.”

  “It’s a place to start,” the Bohemian said. He looked at Stanley. “Can you get information on recent parolees from your old police buddies?”

  “I’d have to go to Chief Morris.”

  “Be discreet. Tell him we’ve received some vague threats that we’d like to investigate ourselves, and remind him of our generosity with his charitable efforts.”

  “Will do, Mr. Chernek.”

  The Bohemian looked at me. “How about it, Vlodek?”

  I turned to Stanley. “Is there any way to start searching for the D.X.12?”

  “There’s ground-penetrating radar,” Stanley said. “Law enforcement uses it to locate all kinds of things buried beneath the ground. But it’s nondiscriminating. It shows shapes and masses that could be anything: buried bricks, solid refuse, pipes, whatever.”

  “Would it have shown the D.X.12 buried beneath the bus shelter lamppost?”

  “As a separate shape, maybe, if it was buried alongside the lamppost base. If it was buried directly beneath the base, then maybe not.”

  “And the Farraday bomb?”

  Stanley shrugged. “The same. The radar might have picked it up if it was buried alongside the foundation, but no way if it was inside the cement, or inside the house.” He turned to the Bohemian. “The problem is the radar doesn’t tell us what is under the ground, only its shape. We would have to dig down to examine each shape we pick up. We could end up digging up the whole community.”

  “And find most of it,” I said.

  They both looked at me.

  “How will you ever know if you’ve found it all?” I asked.

  “He’s got a point, Mr. Chernek,” Stanley added quickly.

  “Check out the feasibility of it, anyway,” the Bohemian said to Stanley. “It’s worth trying, especially since it doesn’t require the police, and we can pass off any digging as electrical or sewer work.” The certainty was back in his voice; the captain was back at the helm. He turned to me. “So we’re back to those boxes. What now?”

  Once again I marveled at the smooth way he was sidestepping my insistence on bringing in the Feds.

  “Find the bomber.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “Vlodek—”

  I cut him off. I’d been Vlodeked enough. “You can’t do this yourself. Ground radar won’t find all the D.X.12; your security won’t keep your man out forever. Eventually, he’ll be back, and he’ll find a way in. You have to find out who he is before he does that, and that means going to the police. Let them go through the records.”

  “Is there any harm in us conducting a preliminary search first? The police can only benefit from our efforts.”

  “How much time are you thinking?”

  “With my staff somewhat diminished, say a month.”

  “Today’s Wednesday. Friday afternoon, at whatever point we are in those records, I’m going to the Feds.”

  We started right away. The Bohemian and Stanley sorted through the old invoices, waivers of lien, warranties, and receipts, calling out the names of the contractors. I made the notes, comparing the names with those on my list, and wrote down the kinds of work each contractor had done. It was slow, tedious work, but as the Bohemian said, we had to start somewhere.

  By seven o’clock that evening, we’d gotten through three of the four boxes. The Bohemian sent Griselda out for sandwiches, and we continued working. At nine thirty we closed the last box. Adding the contractors that hadn’t needed permits increased my list to a total of two hundred and forty-nine names.

  The Bohemian leaned back in his chair. “Not all of these would have had the means and opportunity to plant multiple explosive.”

  “We have to rank them by the access they had,” I said.

  Stanley glanced at his watch.

  “Time to leave, Stanley?” the Bohemian asked.

  “I think I better.”

  “Go ahead. Vlodek and I will finish up. We’ll reconvene here tomorrow morning, say at eight.”

  Stanley said good night and left.

  “Stanley’s wife is not well,” the Bohemian said. “Some minor neuroses and a couple of dependencies. They lost their son a year and a half ago. They have a neighbor who stops in when Stanley is at work, but the neighbor works nights, and Stanley must be home with his wife.”

  I wondered if there was anything that pulsed in Gateville that the Bohemian did not know about.

  We worked through my expanded contractor list, highlighting with yellow marker the ones we guessed might have had the opportunity to plant explosives at the guardhouse, the Farraday home, and the bus shelter lamppost. Our prime candidates were contractors that had reason to be working in the ground—road installers, cement workers, landscapers, electricians, plumbers and sewer outfits—but there were dozens of other potentials as well.

  I stood up to stretch. It was eleven o’clock, and I was starting to suspect the kitchen hardware installers and the interior decorators. “According to the dates on these records, Crystal Waters must have been one huge beehive, crawling with workers.”

  The Bohemian set down his fountain pen. “It was. Because all the houses went up at the same time, only contractors large enough to handle several structures at once were used.”

  “Why was that? Why didn’t the developer treat the project like other residential projects: sell the lots individually and build the houses one at a time, according to the purchaser’s specifications?”

  The Bohemian smiled,
but it didn’t reach to his eyes. “Security. Crystal Waters was always about security. The plan was to build the houses all at once, then lock out the world. If the houses were built one after another, the project would have gone on much longer. Workmen would have been coming and going for years, and there would be no chance for tight control until the last house was finished.” He shrugged at the irony of it.

  We finished the revised contractor list at midnight. By our estimate, at least one hundred and six contractors had had opportunities to plant multiple bombs at Gateville. The Bohemian said he’d have the list researched for current addresses by the following morning.

  He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingertips together behind his head. “Let’s say we get lucky and we find a just-paroled ex–Crystal Waters worker and the police capture him with D.X.12 dust on his fingers. Say he confesses and tells us where he buried all the D.X.12, and we go and dig it up. Could we be sure we’re safe then?”

  I shook my head.

  Thirteen

  As arranged, we were back in the Bohemian’s conference room the next morning at eight. As I’d come in, I passed a young man leaving the office, carrying a cardboard box filled with desk items and pictures in frames.

  The Bohemian wore a crisp, muted glen plaid suit with a soft beige shirt and a perfectly knotted, tiny-figured maroon tie. With his silver hair, glowing tan, and sparkling teeth, he was burnished and polished like a man who’d won the lottery for the second time. Except for his eyes. They looked haunted.

  Sitting next to him, Stanley fidgeted in his rumpled security uniform like he’d slept in it. I’d been on the roof all night. I felt like Stanley looked.

  The Bohemian tapped a thin stack of stapled papers with a different fountain pen than the one he’d used the day before. Today’s pen was fat, like a torpedo, with an iridescent blue barrel and a cap that looked like solid gold.

  “I had Buffy come in early to run these contractor names against the State of Illinois active database. She also searched nearby states for the same names, in case any had moved.”