Chin - 04 - No Colder Place

by S. J. Rozan

  I moved to his table, sat across from him. He twitched as I pulled my chair in, as though he were about to jump up and run away, but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything, either.

  Well, I could start us off. “I’m Smith,” I said.

  He nodded. “I figured that.” His words came out weak and gravelly, caught in his throat. He coughed, said in a voice he tried to make stronger, “What do you want?”

  “I just want to talk,” I said. “Relax.”

  A waitress came over, asked me pretty much the same question Hacker had just asked, though the subject was different and the answer didn’t matter to her one way or the other.

  “Just coffee,” I told her. Nothing else seemed like a good idea here. Coffee might not be, either, but chances were I’d survive it, and Hacker seemed to need some sense that the universe was not about to end, that things were close to normal. Coffee was a normal thing to order in a coffee shop.

  “Talk about what?” Hacker said, staring into his soup after the waitress was gone. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “What I said on the phone. The Armstrong site. The construction inspections.”

  “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I told you that, too. I’m a private investigator.”

  “Can you prove that?” he suddenly demanded, looking up, fear creating courage. He was trying to catch me out, to find a way to stop what was about to happen.

  I was tempted to ask him what he’d do if I couldn’t, but instead I reached for my wallet, showed him what I’d shown Mike DiMaio when he’d asked the same question. I decided they were close in age, these two men, a year on either side of thirty; I wondered how Hacker felt about the work he did.

  The waitress brought my coffee as Hacker was looking over my license. He handed it back to me fast, glanced around the room as though he was worried someone else might see it also, might know why I was there.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “Let’s get it over quickly. It’ll be easier that way.”

  “About what?” he tried. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If that were true you wouldn’t have agreed to meet me. You want me to start?”

  He shrugged, stared back into his soup, so I started.

  “Your office,” I said. “I mean, Bernard Melville’s office. How long have you worked there?”

  “Six years,” he muttered without looking up.

  “Well, you landed a good job. I checked around; you people have a good reputation. Clients come to you looking for a quality job. That’s what I understand Denise Armstrong wanted, on the Ninety-ninth Street site. Quality.”

  Hacker’s pale face, it seemed, was getting paler, but he still didn’t speak.

  “I’ve been around a little,” I went on. “I can read architectural documents. I’ve read yours.”

  I tried my coffee. It was terrible: weak and bitter.

  “And it’s true,” I said. “Everything Mrs. Armstrong could have asked for in terms of quality, especially in materials. Sound insulation in the interior partitions. And heavy-gauge brick ties, for example. They’re in the documents.”

  Hacker swallowed, sipped water from a scratched plastic glass. He didn’t look at me.

  “But they’re not on the job,” I said. “Are they?”

  “Sure,” he said, too quickly. “Everything the specs call for.”

  “I’ve seen the job, Hacker.”

  “Well …” he said. “Well, of course, there’ve been field changes. You’re not in construction, you don’t know how we do it.” I heard a touch of contempt in his voice, but he still didn’t look at me. “A lot of times we make changes during construction. It’s normal.”

  “It’s normal,” I agreed. “And it’s documented.”

  He flushed red, neck to forehead, like a container filling up.

  “So if I went to your office,” I said, “if I looked in the files, I’d find the memos where the architect agreed to the substitution of this for that? Agreed to leave something out of the job entirely? I’d find those, if I looked?”

  “Of course,” he insisted. “All that stuff. It’s all in the …” He didn’t even finish. That little burst of lying energy was all he had in him. He slumped back in his chair. “Oh, God,” he said, in a voice so soft I barely heard him.

  I sipped some more of the rotten coffee and put the cup down. “When I came here,” I said, “I didn’t know if you were crooked, or stupid. The cheater or the cheated. Now I know. Are they paying you? Or is it blackmail?”

  He sat motionless, his eyes on the water glass. He was silent so long I began to think he hadn’t heard me. I was about to speak again, to demand an answer, when he said, in a quiet but clear voice, “Both.”

  He still wasn’t looking at me, but that was all right. He sounded as though something had shifted in him, like a machine that grinds its gears until it suddenly coughs itself back into running order. “They paid me,” he said quietly. “At first. At first it wasn’t anything important, either. The brick ties; common nails instead of galvanized ones. Never anything big, anything structural.” He looked up suddenly, met my eyes for the first time. “Not even now, I mean. Not the concrete or the steel. Not the rebar. Nothing that mattered.” He looked away again. “Just this little shit. Small, picky stuff. What the hell difference would it have made?”

  “It seems to me those things are the difference between quality and mediocrity.”

  “Oh, come on,” he snapped. “You sound as pompous as my boss. You really think those nails will rust through before someone knocks that damn building down in thirty years? You think heavy-duty ties will keep the walls from moving when the subway goes by? It’s expensive stuff, that’s all. It makes guys like my boss look like they know what they’re talking about. Or think they do.”

  He drank some more water, this time looking as though he wanted it. “No contractor in his right mind would use half the stuff we spec.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, they said so,” he said smugly.

  “Who?”

  He hesitated. “They did.”

  “Who’s ‘they,’ Hacker?”

  He looked up at me. “Do I have to?”

  “Why the hell do you think I’m here, Hacker? You think I’m interested in you, come to track you down? You think if I lock away a punk like you, that’ll be enough to make me happy?”

  “Lock me—” His face lost all the belligerence, all the smugness, sagged into the miserable look it had had when I’d first walked in.

  I didn’t think I actually could lock him away based on what he’d done; taking a bribe to ignore deviations from the documents might be something you could get fired for, maybe even sued, but it didn’t sound like a crime to me. That was speculation, though, and I didn’t see any reason to share my speculating with him.

  “What’ll happen to me?” he asked quietly.

  “That depends on how well you cooperate.” Clichéd question, clichéd answer; but it worked.

  “Well, shit, how hard can it be to figure out?” he muttered, then said, “The contractors. It was their idea.”

  “Crowell, you mean?”

  He looked at me contemptuously. “Of course not. The subs, the subcontractors. Old man Crowell’s a real straight-arrow type. He’d never go for this shit.”

  “What about Junior?”

  Hacker shook his head. “He’s the one who’s stupid. That’s the only reason the whole thing worked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He comes around with me, twice a week, up on the scaffold, through the building, but he doesn’t see a damn thing. He’s an accountant.”

  “What’s that, some sort of architect’s insult?”

  His look was uncomprehending; then he caught on. “No, no, that’s what he does. That’s what he went to college for. He doesn’t even like construction. He just came into the business because his
father needed someone.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Sure. The old man looks like a brick shithouse, but he’s sick. Someone said he’s got leukemia or something, but I don’t know. I do know he can’t keep going on the way he’s been. He needs help.”

  I thought of Crowell Senior, red-faced, clinging to the ramp railing, breathing hard but yelling orders.

  “So he brought Junior in?” I asked.

  “Well, he didn’t put it that way. The old man didn’t. Not that he needed help. That Junior needed a good job with a future. Security. That the business would take care of Junior for the rest of his life.”

  “So Senior was doing Junior a favor, taking him into the business?”

  “Says Senior. But that’s not why Junior did it. He did it because the old man needed help, whether he’d admit it or not.” Hacker gave a sour laugh. “The pair of them, doing each other favors. What a joke.”

  “What’s the joke?”

  “The joke is, Junior probably is set up now for the rest of his life.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Because a geek like Little Danny Junior can make eighty thousand a year and be fixed for life as a contractor even though he’s so dumb he can’t see what’s happening right under his nose. But I’m six years out of architecture school, with a master’s and a license, and I’m barely making thirty thousand a year, and if we don’t get another project into the office soon I’m going to get laid off.”

  “I see. So you’re poorly paid, and that makes it okay to do what you’re doing?”

  “I’m telling you, it wouldn’t have mattered! It won’t matter! No one living in the building will ever have any idea, and the contractors are saving a fortune.”

  “Tell me about the scheme.”

  “What the hell is there to tell? The contractors buy and use cheaper stuff than we specified. I don’t see it. I sign off the requisitions and I collect my payoff. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it, a payoff?” He said that with a sneer, maybe at me for knowing what to call it, maybe at himself for collecting it.

  “Anyone else in your office involved?”

  He stared at me. “What are you, crazy? This isn’t exactly the kind of thing you discuss over the lunch table.”

  “Not even your boss?”

  “Especially not the boss.”

  “When I asked you if it was blackmail or bribery, you said ‘both,’” I said. “Why?”

  He rolled the empty water glass between his hands. “I wanted to stop. In the beginning, not long after we started.”

  “Why?”

  “I was nervous! I could lose my job, and it’s a bad time. Jobs aren’t that easy to get.”

  Especially, I thought, with the reference you’d get from your boss. “But?”

  “I was told that might not be such a hot idea. That I had a good thing going and I should keep it going.”

  “Who told you?” I asked. “Which contractors are involved?”

  “I think they all are.”

  “All?” I asked. “Emerald? Mandelstam? Lacertosa?”

  He nodded. “I never talked to any of the supers, or anything. But I’m approving cheap crap in all the trades.”

  I thought about the Lacertosa field trailer, about John Lozano’s kind blue eyes. I reached for a cigarette, was about to light it when the waitress caught my eye. She shook her head, pointed to the No Smoking sign. She brought me more coffee, with a sad smile.

  “Who did you talk to, Hacker? And who was it who told you not to stop?”

  “The same guy who came to me with the idea in the first place. A masonry foreman. I’m up on the scaffold one day, Dan Junior’s wandered off someplace, and next thing I know this masonry foreman’s buddying up to me. He said this was what they wanted me to do, this was how it was going to work. He had a hundred-dollar bill right there for me. Right there.” Hacker stared emptily through the room, seeing something else, another day in another place. He brought his eyes suddenly back to me. “To tell you the truth, I was a little afraid of him. That’s one of the reasons I did it.”

  He looked at me hopefully: Maybe fear would excuse what greed hadn’t.

  I didn’t soften. “Who was this guy, Hacker?”

  Hope faded, replaced by resignation. “His name is Joe Romeo.”

  So I was the one who got to tell Donald Hacker about Joe Romeo. I watched him grow rigid, watched the color, which had returned to his face, drain out again.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God. Off the scaffold? Just right off the scaffold?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s going to happen now?” he breathed. “Oh, God, it’ll all come out. Oh, shit, oh God, I’m screwed. Now I’m really screwed.”

  “And another man’s dead,” I said. I tried to keep the disgust out of my voice, but I could hear its echoes. “Jesus, get ahold of yourself, Hacker. Why would your little scam come out because some drunk threw Joe Romeo off the scaffold?”

  “Because … because—” He blinked, looked around him as though trying to remember where he was. “I don’t know,” he finished lamely. “Because … Won’t you tell them?”

  “Tell who? The cops?”

  He flinched. That obviously was even worse than what he’d had in mind.

  “Or your boss? No, not right away, Hacker. I have to think about this. Just make sure you don’t leave town. That would piss me off.” I checked his face, to make sure my threat had registered; in his condition, I didn’t think it needed to be any more specific. “I’m working on something else,” I told him. “I want to fit it all together. Meanwhile, go back to work. Keep your head down.”

  “Something else?”

  “You didn’t kill Joe Romeo, did you, Hacker?”

  “Me?” He barely choked the word out.

  “Well, somebody did. Maybe somebody connected with your little scheme, maybe not. Watch your back.” I stood to go.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Do you really think—?”

  “No,” I said. “But you ought to choose your playmates more carefully next time, Hacker. You’re not ready to be in the game with the big boys.”

  I turned from his table, turned back when I heard his whispered “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For not… not…”

  “Don’t think I’m doing you any favors. If I blow the whistle on you now it could mess up the other thing I’m working on, which, believe it or not, is more important. Try to stay cool, Hacker.”

  I left the greasy-smelling but air-conditioned coffee shop, stood on the sidewalk in the blazing sun. Heat radiated up from the concrete as I lit a cigarette. It was true, what I’d told Hacker: that I needed to know how his scam fit in with the case I was working on.

  But more than that, I thought, eyeing the traffic as it streamed uptown, I needed to know, exactly, what the case I was working on was.

  twelve

  my next goal was back uptown. I headed for the subway, a block over and a block down; but first I stopped at a pay phone, to call Lydia.

  I dialed the construction trailer number. A voice answered that could only be a cop’s.

  “Who wants her?” he demanded, as though any call to anyone in the trailer might be a major break in the case.

  “The plumber,” I said. “I’m in her house. I got the leak stopped, but I gotta know what she wants me to do about the valve.”

  “Well, she’s gone,” he told me. “Left about half an hour ago. Probably on her way there now.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” Hell, I thought as I dialed Lydia’s office. I would have been interested to know what had gone on in the trailer this morning, what the cops and Lydia and Chuck and Dan Crowell, Sr. had found to pass the time with. I left a message on her machine and took the subway back to upper Broadway.

  The two-story white Armstrong Properties building looked just as handsome in the gleaming afternoon sunlight as it had yesterday in the deep overcast after the rain
. The freckled secretary, Dana, looked at me just as coolly and professionally as yesterday, too, when I walked in.

  “I want to see Mrs. Armstrong,” I said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Dana said calmly. “Yesterday she threw you out of here. I don’t think she’s expecting you back.” She made no move toward the phone.

  “Yesterday I pretended to be a reporter. Today I called one who’s a friend of mine. He was interested in this whole setup.” I let that linger, vague and unpleasant.

  Hesitation blinked in her eyes; that was enough. “Buzz the boss,” I suggested. “Ask if she’ll see me.”

  She did that, in a brief, low conversation. She rose, frostily, and showed me into the office in the back.

  Denise Armstrong stood in the center of the room, lips in a tight line. The sunlight picking out a square of courtyard in the window behind her was warmer, more golden, than yesterday, but my reception was the same.

  Dana, with an angry look at me, left us, and the door closed behind me.

  “Why are you back?” Mrs. Armstrong asked icily as the door clicked shut. “Didn’t I make my point yesterday?”

  I turned to look at the door. “Did she lock that?”

  “Not this time. I have no reason to keep you here today. In fact, I had no reason to let you in at all, except to ask why you keep trying to lie your way in.”

  “I told her the truth: I wanted to see you.”

  “You told her you’d spoken to a reporter. That was a lie.”

  I shrugged. The movement made my shoulder ache, sore where the rebar had caught it. “I thought it was better than pushing past her and charging in here.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Are you telling me I should be grateful you didn’t use force? You’re out of your league, Mr. Smith. Get out of here.”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I doubt that. Or else you’re not very good at it.”