by S. J. Rozan
“You promised that?”
“No. But I said it had a better shot than anything else.”
“All right,” she said, after one more long look. “But I wouldn’t do this for just anybody.”
“I know,” I said again. “I owe you big.”
Lydia said, “You have no idea.”
We finished dinner. I filled Lydia in on everything else I thought, had seen, had sensed about the site and the people there. I had coffee; she had tea and a slice of peach pie. I kissed her good night, put her in a cab for Chinatown, and went upstairs to bed. I was sound asleep a couple of hours before I usually turn in. I had to report to work at seven-thirty in the morning, and I wasn’t twenty anymore.
five
through the dust and heat of the next morning, Mike DiMaio and I spoke very little. We had both called the hospital before work, so we both knew how Reg Phillips was doing: still serious but stable, still in a coma, swelling apparently going down. My back was sore and my shoulders ached, so I was slower than the day before, though I tried to find a rhythm I could stay with; and DiMaio, who didn’t seem to be watching me, threw me a pointer every now and then that pulled me through some difficult spot.
At coffee break we stayed by ourselves, near our work, but didn’t talk much. At lunch, we joined the other masons in the shade of the finished wall.
“Hey, look, it’s Mikey and his hero partner,” one of the guys called as we neared them on the scaffold. “We thought you was gonna keep him all to yourself now, Mikey, him being a hero and all.”
“Nah, I just figured he had a tough enough day yesterday without having to deal with you jerks.” DiMaio dropped himself onto the scaffold, opened his lunchbox. I put myself up against a pile of bricks near him. There were about a dozen guys there altogether, perched on mounds of brick or sprawled on scaffold planking. I introduced myself to the ones I hadn’t met yet. The ones I had, Angelo Lucca and Sam Buck, sat together in the deepest shade. Buck was already halfway through his sandwich.
“That was quick thinking yesterday,” a sandy-haired guy named Tommy told me as he shook my hand. “I’m sure Reg is gonna appreciate it.”
That drew a moment of awkward silence as everyone’s thoughts went to the unspoken “if.” I took a bottle of juice from my lunchbox, uncapped it. “Not really thinking,” I said. “While I was laid off I worked on an EMS team. Some things get to be instinct.”
“I don’t know,” someone else volunteered. “I was a medic in the army, I never got used to it. Always had to think, ‘What do I do now?’”
“Christ, Frankie, way you think, you probably killed more guys than the enemy,” Angelo Lucca said.
Frankie grinned cheerfully. “Luckily, wasn’t no war on. I never left San Francisco.”
“Jesus, you did your service at the Presidio? Son of a bitch. I was bit to shit for three years by every mosquito at Fort Bragg.”
That started a discussion about the military, a game of one-upmanship whose subject was the worst base to serve on, worst weather, worst drill sergeants, fewest girls. A couple of these guys, near my age, had been drafted; most were too young for that, but some of them had enlisted, looking for excitement, the American way.
“Hey,” somebody said in the middle of it. “What about you, Smith? Your age, you must’ve been in Vietnam.”
They all quieted, waited to hear what the veteran had to say.
I shook my head, taking in the last bite of roast beef on rye. “Navy,” I said. “They kept moving us around the South China Sea, but we never got close.”
“Too bad.” Some guys made sympathetic noises. What good was a war if you didn’t get to fight it?
“You was in the navy, isn’t that right, Mike?” someone asked.
DiMaio nodded. “Lousiest years of my life,” he said. “Tried to get away from bricklaying, look where it got me. You like the navy, Smith?”
“I hated the damn navy,” I said. “Three years busting my butt doing work you can’t see, then doing it over.”
“Yeah. And now you’re gone, some other dumb jerk is doing the same shit. Ship didn’t care, didn’t even know you was there.”
“And what, you think this building cares?” That was Sam Buck, from the shadows. “You think it sees you coming in the morning, says, ‘oh goody, Mikey’s here’?” He cackled as he lifted a can of Coke.
“Shove it, Sam,” said DiMaio, not looking at Buck. He crumpled the wrapping from his sandwich; his face was flushed with more than the heat.
“Hey, come on, don’t get DiMaio started,” the sandy-haired mason, Tommy, called out. “He comes over here to break your ass, Buck, I’m gonna have to get up and get out of the way, and I’m tired.”
“I’m not breaking anybody’s ass,” DiMaio muttered. He popped the top on his own Coke can, took a long gulp. “I don’t give a shit.”
No one who says that ever means it, and it was too hot for a fight. I lit a cigarette, rubbed out the match on the scaffold boards. “There was one good thing about the Navy,” I said, as though I’d been musing on the subject. Eyes turned to me. “There was always a poker game going, or if there wasn’t, a crap game. You could always find action on shipboard. Only thing, in those days ship-to-shore was a bigger deal than now, especially halfway around the world. Three years I didn’t bet on a horse.” I shook my head in wonder. “I missed out on Secretariat. Can you believe that?”
The only black mason on the crew, a huge muscled man named Ray, grinned at me. “You troubled that way, Smith? Ponies your weakness?”
“Hey, I do all right. I have a system.”
That brought an even bigger grin from Ray, and a few from some other guys too.
“Believe what you want,” I said. “I have a natural-born sense for horses. Learned it from my grandmother.”
“Yeah?” one of the younger guys asked. “Who do you like?” Men turned to look at him. Ray, still smiling, shook his head.
I ignored the doubters, looked at the kid as though weighing whether or not to let him in on a good thing. “Well,” I finally said, “there’s a filly running at Santa Anita tomorrow could pay your rent. You got any spare cash, I’d recommend Maribel, in the third. It’s a beautiful horse.” I felt Mike DiMaio’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look his way.
“Yeah?” Frankie said. “How much you got on Maribel yourself?”
With a disgusted toss I threw the wrappings from my sandwich in the general direction of the barrel inside the window opening. “Me? I’ve got a problem.”
Frankie laughed. “Oh, I get it. You could spend Joey’s rent, but you’re not gonna crack open your own wallet for this great horse, huh?”
“I sure as hell would. I’d put the rent on her in a minute, if I could find anybody up here in your great state of New York who’d take my bets. You boys don’t take easily to outsiders.” Shaking my head over the unfairness of it all, I said, “I don’t suppose … ?” I looked around, was met with smiles and shrugs.
I shrugged too, and sighed. “Well,” I said, looking at DiMaio, “I guess there’s nothing to do but get back to work. Right, Mikey?”
Without waiting for an answer, I picked up my lunchbox and gloves, threw my cigarette over the scaffold, and headed back to my bricks.
As I got to the other end of the building, to my side of our bay, I heard DiMaio come up behind me. “Santa Anita,” he muttered, moving past to where his own work was. “So you’re a handicapper, huh, Smith?”
“Every man has his vices, Mike. Some of us play the horses. Some of us are hot-tempered sons of bitches who’d start a fight on a six-story scaffold—”
“Hey—”
“Tell me something.” I smiled as I buttered a brick, placed it carefully, laid a level on it.
“Yeah, what?”
“Am I really that bad?”
“What, as a bricklayer?”
“Uh-huh.”
Pulling on his gloves, he looked over at my work. “Nah,” he said. “Clean, neat, and strai
ght. Just goddamn slow.”
Slow or not, I’d laid what I thought were some pretty clean courses by the time afternoon coffee break rolled around. I went inside then, partly to use the can, partly just to be wandering around, to see who else was wandering around.
DiMaio was right about the portable john. It stank, but business was business, so I used it anyway. Gratefully stepping back out of it, I lit a cigarette and let my eyes wander over the wide horizontal spread of bare concrete and the tall steel columns moving across it in stately procession like trees in a formal garden. I watched the comings and goings of men, each focused on his own narrow task, the combination of all these small jobs somehow making a half-block-wide, forty-story building rise around us.
I remembered having the eerie feeling, on a construction job I’d worked years ago, that none of us were actually building this building: that the jobs we were doing were rituals to invoke the magic, to invite the gods, the way priests lit candles and burned incense. The building would grow and become what it was meant to be if we did these jobs, but the work wasn’t making it happen. The building just needed to see the work, the way the gods needed to see the candles: as an expression of faith.
I’d said that to Phyllis when I’d gotten home that night, but the apartment was hot and the baby was crying and she’d said she had no patience for my bullshit. It surprised neither of us when we separated as that hot summer turned to fall. We were divorced by spring, but we tried for seven years after to be civil to each other, at least in front of Annie.
Then Annie died in a car crash. She was supposed to be spending the weekend with me, but I was in Chicago on a case. I’d promised to make it up to her, another weekend. She’d said it was okay. I didn’t think much about faith after that.
I started heading back to my work through the cool of bare concrete and exposed steel. From across the floor the skinny figure of Sam Buck approached me, ambling just about as aimlessly as I was.
“Smith,” he said in greeting, as our paths brought us face-to-face. “Hey, you got a cigarette?”
Why not? I thought. An opening’s an opening. “Sure.” I tapped a few up from the pack, he chose one, and I gave him a light from the tip of mine.
“So,” he said, drawing in smoke, streaming it away, “you really looking for action?”
“I’m so desperate I’d bet on the goddamn Yankees,” I said. “I’m just holding myself together till payday. I met this guy downtown, he’ll take my bets, but he won’t carry a stranger. To start, he wants to see cash.”
“That’s a pain.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Shame payday’s not till Thursday. Because of your horse tomorrow, I mean.”
I nodded. “Maribel. I’m telling you, that’s some horse. It’s you damn unfriendly northerners. Wouldn’t be like this back home. A word and a handshake, there.”
“I’m crying for you. But I might be able to help.”
“Help how?”
“I know a guy who’ll take your action.”
“Before he sees my cash?”
“Anytime.”
“No shit. Lead me to him.”
“Just go back to work. I’ll send him to you.”
“Here?” I acted surprised.
“Yeah,” he said. “Here.”
So I went back to work, and Sam Buck went on his way, and twenty minutes later Joe Romeo was standing by my side.
“How you guys coming?” was his greeting as he stopped on the scaffold, hands in his pockets, and scanned our work.
“Need some more ties,” DiMaio answered without turning around. He tossed one of the steel tabs he was talking about to the scaffold planking at Romeo’s feet. “And what is this shit? Might as well be using rubber bands. Get me some decent ties, Joe.”
“Other guys aren’t having trouble with ’em,” Romeo answered. “Other guys aren’t falling behind, either.”
DiMaio straightened up, turned. His face flushed; but after a glance at me, all he said was, “Christ, Joe, you gotta give us a day or two to get used to each other.”
Romeo fixed DiMaio with a narrow stare. “This is day two. Be used to each other by tomorrow. I don’t want you two fucking up my schedule.”
“Shit!” DiMaio started, but Romeo cut him off.
“See you a minute, Smith?” He motioned with his head, started down the scaffold. I cut DiMaio a look, then followed.
Romeo stopped where no one was working. I stopped too. He turned to me, rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets again. He said, “I hear you’ve been talking about finding some action.”
I put suspicion on my face and in my voice. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I even hear you’re trying to get the men to drop their paychecks on some glue factory out at Santa Anita.”
I shrugged like a nervous man. “Subject of racetracks came up. We were just talking.”
“Talking, huh?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well,” Romeo said, “could be I can help you.”
I took a second, then said, “You?”
“Yeah, asshole,” he said. “Me.”
I didn’t say anything, as though I didn’t know what to say. He went on. “Here’s how it works. I’ll take any action you want. I don’t need to see the color of your money, because I know where to find you.” He smiled, showing me a row of white, even teeth. “You want to lay odds on the number of cars coming through that red light, I don’t care. But I don’t carry you. You lose, you pay, or you don’t work anymore. And I don’t mean just on this site, pal. You understand?”
I nodded my understanding. I doubted Romeo had the muscle to back up a threat like that, but a bet-hungry mason just up from Texas wouldn’t know that.
“And you don’t tell anyone who’s backing you,” he said. “Anyone wants to know where your action comes from, you tell me, and I find him, if I want to. Sometimes I don’t. My business, not yours. Got it?”
I let myself grin. “Jesus. This is great. The foreman. And here I thought you were going to ride my ass about my bad habit.”
Romeo didn’t smile back. “I love your bad habit, Smith. Guys like you lose more than they win. But remember this: I got a sweet thing going here. My crews don’t produce, it ain’t so sweet. First thing you are to me is a bricklayer. First time you call in sick on race day, you’re fired, you’re cut off, and you’re unemployable. We understand each other?”
I agreed, as I put fifty dollars on Maribel—running at eight to one—that we did indeed understand each other. Or, I amended silently as I headed back to where I belonged, at least we understood each other as much as any two people, one of whom is being paid to lie to the other, can.
I found a reason to stop by the field office in the trailer on the first floor at quitting time. Something about my insurance, some paper I didn’t know if the union needed, since I was from out of state. Something John Lozano didn’t have the answer to.
“Crowell could tell us,” he said, rising from his chair, slipping a pencil behind his ear. “They got a new girl over there, to keep the files straight. Come on, I’ll go over with you.”
“She’ll still be there? It’s after quitting time.”
“Oh, yeah. Crowell’s girls work eight-thirty to five-thirty. She’ll be there.”
And thrilled about it for sure, I thought. “I’ll go,” I said. “You don’t have to come. They won’t be able to tell me today anyway. Anything you want from anyone, you always have to come back tomorrow.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” he sighed. “Okay, go ahead. Let me know if you need me.”
Across the hall in the fluorescent-lit trailer, the new girl was standing behind a gray metal desk. She looked up, a file in each hand, as I opened the door. She was short and Chinese, wearing a green silk blouse and a set of flea-market glass beads with little painted fireworks on them that I’d bought for her last Christmas. She scowled evilly as I approached her.
“May I help you?”
Completely contradicting her expression, her voice was well-modulated and ever so polite.
The other secretary, an older black woman, lifted her eyes from the computer screen in front of her, but must have decided to let Lydia handle this one. She went back to her work as I said, “I have some questions about insurance forms.”
“Talk to your Allstate agent,” Lydia muttered, not loud enough for the other woman to hear. Then she tossed her head and said, in a clear and syrupy sweet voice, “I’m not sure I can help you, but I’d be delighted to try.”
With an uneasy feeling that I’d be paying for this for a long time, I started to explain what I wanted. Lydia put on a face of such earnest anxiousness to be helpful that I had to cough to keep from laughing.
We could have gone on for a while, parrying and thrusting, before the other secretary caught on, but our stride was broken by a loud voice coming from the conference room to Lydia’s left.
“What the hell’s the difference?” The voice, one I didn’t know, was gravelly and annoyed. “Tell Lozano that Lacertosa has to put on two more crews, for chrissakes. Call Gilbert, get the steel here next week instead of August. If we have to do it, let’s just do it, Daniel, come on!”
That was said in a way so dismissive and disgusted as to sound unarguable to me, but another voice answered.
“John’s crews aren’t producing now, Dad. He doesn’t need more men, he needs men working harder.” That was Dan Crowell, Jr., which told me who the other voice was.
Lydia gave me a little smirk, so I guessed she knew who was on John’s crews.
“Then get on his case! That’s your job, Daniel. You heard what the problem is.” The gravelly voice softened; I sensed a reassuring smile in it. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Armstrong. We’ll give the bank what they need. Daniel, light a fire under Traco, maybe we can even have some windows in.”
“You can’t light a fire under those guys. They’re too big and too far away to give a damn. If we were using someone local—”
“We’re not, and there’s reasons for it! Call them, or I will. And you know what else? Let me call O’Brien. I got an idea about that stone trim, maybe we could get it in fast and save a bundle besides. Hold on a minute.”