by S. J. Rozan
I took a breath. When I spoke, it was in calm, reasoned tones. “Can we start over, Mrs. Armstrong? Give me five minutes. You know what happened on your site this morning?”
Her mouth curled contemptuously. “Of course I know! I just got back from there. I talked for a long time with the police and Dan Crowell, Sr. And your employer, as a matter of fact.”
“Chuck DeMattis?”
“I told him you’d come to see me.” She added, with a cold smile, “He said that behind your manner, you were actually one of his best men.”
Leaving as a matter between me and Chuck just whose man I was, I asked, “My manner? I came here with a polite lie. You were the one who locked me up. Did you tell him that?”
“No. Believe it or not, we didn’t talk much about you. Everybody was more interested in the dead man.”
Maybe that meant my cover, on the site, hadn’t been blown. I’d have to find that out, later.
“You wanted five minutes,” she said. “I’ll give you three. What for?”
“I’m trying to help you,” I repeated. “To do that, I need you to help me.”
A joyless smile bent the corners of her mouth. “If I had a nickel for every man who said he was trying to help me when he was trying to screw me, I’d be a very rich woman. What do you want me to do for you?”
All right, I thought. We’ll do it your way. “I want to talk to the coordinator who brought those men to your site this morning.”
“And why did you come to me?”
Her eyes told me she knew, and told me that if I tried to sweeten it I’d end up thrown out of this office again.
“Because you’re black.”
The hard mask of her face seemed to soften just a fraction, with something like the relief you feel when an anticipated pain has come and gone. But nothing showed in her voice. “Am I the only black person you know?”
“The only black person I know in this business, in this neighborhood. The only one whose building site this coordinator’s men rioted at.”
“That alone could make him not interested in talking to me. And I think they call that a job action.”
“They can call it whatever they want.”
“The police are looking for him. Why not just wait?”
“I’m betting they won’t find him.”
“Why not? They’ve arrested five of the men he brought.”
“Those men won’t talk. They’ll never be charged with anything. There’s no way you could prove they were on those buses. I’ll bet they all had a story set before they got there, in case of trouble: ‘Gee, officer, I was just there looking for a job. What buses?’”
“Is that what you would say?”
“In their shoes, I probably would.”
“Well, you may be right. So the police won’t find him.”
“But I still want to talk to him.”
“Then find him if you can. Why should I get involved?”
“I would have thought,” I said, “that finding out what’s going on on your site would be important to you.”
“You would have been wrong. What’s important to me is that we get that job back on schedule.”
“More important than finding out who killed a man there and why another man was buried there?”
“Yes!” She perched against the edge of her desk, regarded me levelly. “A lot of people’s jobs—living people—depend on that project. As does my future in this business. Those things are what’s important to me. Neither of those dead men is anything to me one way or the other.”
“That may be true. But someone killed them.”
“And that’s supposed to upset me? Get me all riled up in the name of justice? You must be joking.”
“Share the joke with me.”
She smiled a cold, slow smile. “It’s the one about how a white bully wants a black woman to forget her own interests and help him find out what happened to two other trashy white men. What’s behind it is the idea that whatever happens to white men is more important than anything else. It’s pretty funny; it always gets a good laugh around here.”
“Lenny Pelligrini and Joe Romeo aren’t laughing.”
“I’m sure when they were alive they found plenty to laugh about that I wouldn’t have thought funny.”
“So they deserved to die?”
“A lot of people die who don’t deserve it. Lenny Pelligrini, from what I’m told, was a heavy-metal punk who occasionally came to work stoned. Joe Romeo was probably one of your white macho types who just had to stand up to a mob of black drunks instead of having the sense to run. That was stupid, they responded as you’d expect, and it’s his problem.”
“Not anymore.”
“So it’s no one’s problem. It’s certainly not mine.”
The ivy on the shelves behind her trailed gracefully down the window. It was well tended; carefully watered and fed, all the brown leaves picked off. These were all plants that would do well in the kind of light she had here; she clearly hadn’t given in to the gardener’s urge to try to grow something the conditions were wrong for, just because she loved it.
I asked, “Hasn’t it occurred to you that this all might be aimed at you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Her words were clipped and contemptuous. “If things had worked out for whoever killed Pelligrini, his body wouldn’t have been found. Joe Romeo’s death couldn’t look any less related to my building unless he’d been killed off the site. If someone wanted to compromise me, there are much more direct ways.”
“So you don’t care if these murders are ever solved?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“A minute ago—”
“What I said was, I didn’t care who killed those men. I don’t. But I would prefer it if the media and police attention these things have brought, were to end. It’s not the kind of publicity I want for this project.”
“Then will you help me find this guy, this coordinator?”
She sat silent, watched me. She rubbed a finger back and forth on the wood of the old oak desk. Maybe it had been her grandfather’s desk.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Maybe I will. If I find him, I’ll call you.”
“How will I know whether you’ve decided to try?”
“If I call you, it will be because I have the answer. If I don’t call you, I didn’t try.”
As I left Mrs. Armstrong’s office, the beeper on my hip beeped.
I flicked the switch but kept walking, didn’t lift it off for a look at the readout until I was out of range of the Armstrong Properties windows. I didn’t want anyone in there thinking someone was checking on my progress with them.
The digital red phone number the beeper gave me was Lydia’s, at her office. I found a pay phone and called.
“Oh, good!” she said when she answered. “I was wondering how long I should wait.”
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “I’d wait forever for you.”
“For a phone call?”
“Well, maybe not. Buy you a drink?”
“Sure,” she said. “Even though I just had one.”
“You did?”
“Uh-huh. With the nicest guy.”
“There’s such a thing as a nice guy?”
“I may have to reconsider. A construction worker, too. Who’d have known?”
“You’re kidding. Who?”
“Your buddy Mike DiMaio.”
That stopped me. “You’ve been drinking with Mike DiMaio?”
“Isn’t that what construction workers do when they get off work—drink?”
“Come on. Really?”
“Of course, really. It wasn’t like a big deal. He asked me.”
“Asked you what?”
“Out, you birdbrain. For a drink.”
“I thought you didn’t like construction workers.”
“I wanted to see what one of these guys is like when he’s trying to show a woman his good side.”
“And what was he like?”
“He was very nice, but that’s what you’ve been saying about him. We talked for a while and then I came down here, where I’ve been sitting in my office doing my paperwork and taking very calmly the fact that you haven’t called to keep me informed—”
“Haven’t called? I spent my last quarter to hear some cop tell me you’d left the trailer, and then my last dimes to hear your machine babble in Chinese, and now—”
As though I’d paid it and given it a cue, an electronic voice interrupted to demand more cash for more phone time.
“Come down here,” Lydia said.
I answered, “I’m on my way,” and the phone cut us off.
I caught an express train to Canal Street, to reach Lydia’s office on the fringes of Chinatown. The downtown streets were glazed with heat as I came out of the subway, but somehow it didn’t seem as warm as it had just a few minutes ago.
Lydia buzzed me in and stood waiting at the door at the end of the hall. She still wore the blue-and-tan blouse and pale linen skirt she’d had on at the site, but she’d traded in the mud-caked shoes for white sneakers.
“You’re all sweaty,” she said. She kissed my cheek anyway, and I felt a little warmer.
“It’s hot out there,” I said as we entered her office. “You haven’t noticed?”
Lydia’s small office is tucked away in the shadowed back of the building, on the ground floor. The window’s pebbled glass cast a muted light on the deep-green walls while an ancient air conditioner gurgled in the corner like the rush of a mountain stream. It was the urban equivalent of a cool, secluded forest grove, where a man and a woman could be alone at the slow finish of a hot summer’s day.
Either that, or it was a one-room low-rent rear office in Chinatown.
“It’s not as bad as yesterday,” Lydia said, closing the office door.
“We’re not really going to talk about the weather, are we?”
“Hmmm.” She appeared to consider that. “Well, you could fill me in on the case.”
“I don’t know,” I said, reaching into the tiny office fridge. “When a man’s partner is out drinking with his partner, he kind of wants to know—”
“Whatever he wants to know is none of his business. And his partner wants to know where we stand on a case where our subject was murdered in front of us eight hours ago.”
A cold breeze swept from distant mountaintops into the forest grove. I took a bottle of grapefruit juice from the fridge, clinked some ice into a glass, settled on the junior-sized sofa. I stretched my feet onto the coffee table.
“You probably know more about where we stand than I do,” I told her. “You and Chuck and Mrs. Armstrong talked to the cops together, am I right?”
“Is that just a logical guess, or do you know all about it?”
“It’s not a guess, but I don’t know anything about it except that it happened.”
“You haven’t called Mr. DeMattis?”
“No. I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
“I saw two people. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. First tell me about Chuck and the client and the cops.”
She nodded; that was a reasonable request, since what I was asking about had happened first.
“Well, it wasn’t so very interesting,” she said. “Mr. DeMattis and Mr. Crowell Senior explained to the cops about Crowell’s interest in Joe Romeo, and what I was there for. Mr. DeMattis said he’d been looking into things from the office end, too, and hadn’t found much. I think the word he used was ‘bupkes’; is that Italian?”
“Yiddish. Literally, it means ‘chickpeas’; figuratively, it means ‘nothing.’” I took a swig of juice, tried to ignore the image that rose in my mind of Lydia and Mike DiMaio in a cool and quiet bar.
“Anyway,” Lydia said, “he offered to share what little he had with the police.”
“Including me?”
“Not Mr. DeMattis. Mrs. Armstrong asked him about you, and Mr. DeMattis admitted you work for him, but he made it sound like you were just one of a bunch of people doing backgrounds. She said you should work on your approach. He agreed and apologized.”
“Oh, great. But he didn’t say I was on the site?”
“No. I was a little worried that Mr. Crowell would remember your name from the time in the trailer.”
“Not likely, and especially a dull name like mine. A GC wouldn’t know the names of the guys who work for the subs unless they make a real strong impression. I just have to be careful Mrs. Armstrong doesn’t see me there.”
“Mr. DeMattis,” Lydia said, “now I remember him, from the picnic. He’s kind of obnoxious, isn’t he?”
“Besides apologizing for me to a woman who almost had me arrested, what did he do that was obnoxious?”
“He was pushy, fast, and loud, offering to do this and that for everybody. The cops’ best buddy.”
“Did he know them?”
“The cops? Yes. Bzomowski and Mackey. Homicide detectives from the Twenty-fourth Precinct. The same ones who came about Pelligrini. They seemed like okay guys, but they’re not happy.”
“Why would they be? Two open homicides in three days.”
“Anyway, Mr. DeMattis wants me to stay on the case.”
“Chuck? But there isn’t any case anymore. Joe Romeo’s dead.”
“Yes, and it seemed to me Bzomowski and Mackey really want it to be what it looked like, something that just happened as a result of a fight.”
“That’s what they want it to be. What do they really think it was?”
“Right now, that’s what they say they think. Do you think something else?”
My shoulder was stiffening up; I moved it around, trying to loosen it. “I think it’s a hell of a coincidence that one of fifty drunks randomly picked one of fifty guys to toss off the scaffold, and it happened to be Joe Romeo.” I took another swig of grapefruit juice. “On the other hand, Romeo seems like he might be the type of guy to go right up in their faces, get them so pissed off they’d do something like that.”
Lydia tilted her head. “‘Seems like.’ You knew him. Do you think he was?”
I rested my eyes on a framed Chinese brush painting of mountains and pine trees and mist. “No. He was a bully. Bullies are cowards. He pushed the masons around because he was a foreman, so he had authority. I don’t think he’d have gone up alone against a bunch of wild drunks like the ones off those buses.”
“So you think this was deliberate? Someone taking advantage of the situation?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wonder what Chuck thinks.”
“He must think the same; that must be why he wants me to stay.”
“How did the cops feel about that?”
“They liked the idea.”
“What about Crowell?”
“Mr. Crowell doesn’t mind, either, for now.”
“He doesn’t?” I considered that, swirling my grapefruit juice around in my glass. “His Joe Romeo problem is solved; why would he come across for this?”
“I think Mr. DeMattis made some sort of arrangement.”
“Arrangement? Chuck’s picking up the tab?”
“I think so.”
“So how can you think he’s obnoxious? He’s paying your salary.”
“When I work for you, you pay my salary. That doesn’t stop me.”
She had me there.
“Anyway,” she said, “you might want to call him. I’ll bet he wants you to stay, too.”
I’ll bet he does, I mused. And he’s picking up the tab.
“How about the rest of your afternoon?” I prompted as Lydia went back to her club soda.
“How about yours?” she countered.
“You go first.”
“I already went first,” she pointed out.
It was easier to give in than to argue. I pushed the dark, cool bar of my imagination away, told her about Hacker.
“My God,” was her response. “Do
you think it’s true, that there’s nothing structurally wrong with the building now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But probably. With concrete and steel, there are all sorts of other checks: testing labs and sign-offs, papers at the Building Department. And big liability if anything goes wrong. I think this is probably just about what Hacker says it is, materials substitutions that make a good building into a chintzy one.”
“Still, it’s pretty serious, isn’t it?”
“It is if you’re the person paying for the quality materials. I felt guilty talking to Mrs. Armstrong, knowing this.”
Lydia’s eyes widened, and I thought I heard the rumble of thunder over the mountaintop. “You talked to her, too? You’re holding out on me.”
“On the contrary,” I said innocently, “you’re holding out on me.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said. I felt the air growing thick and sticky as I heard myself say, “You were out drinking with a bricklayer. Italian, too. I mean, what would your mother say?”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re kidding. You can’t possibly—”
I held up my hand for her to stop. “Wait,” I said wearily. She was right, and she was right about why I’d dropped the news about my chat with Mrs. Armstrong the way I had. I lit a cigarette, reached onto the windowsill for the ashtray she keeps there in case smokers come by.
“Don’t start,” I said. “It’s been a long day. I’m a deeply flawed human being. You knew that.” I drew in a lungful of smoke, wondered why the things that comfort us are the things that kill us.
“I’ll tell,” I said. And I told her, almost word for word, about my talk with Mrs. Armstrong, who didn’t like me very much.
She asked a few questions, all of them good ones. When I was done, she said, staring into space, “I wonder if she’ll look, and I wonder if she’ll find him.”
“I don’t know. I can’t read her. She hates me, but I don’t know if it’s personal, or because I’m just another piece of low-class, ham-fisted white trash trying to push her around.”
“You’re not so bad,” Lydia said softly.
I looked at her in surprise. “I’m not? I thought you were about to throw me out of here a minute ago.”
“I was. And you can’t do that, Bill. You know you can’t.”