by Jim Geraghty
Bader explained that defective drywall had been made in China and imported to the U.S. for about a decade, and that the stuff could emit various noxious gases, including hydrogen sulfide, creating a stink and other human health issues. In addition, the gases could tarnish and damage copper pipes, wiring, air conditioner coils, and some types of jewelry.
“What’s more, last year the EPA found some types of drywall were particularly vulnerable to a mold that originated in Southeast Asia,” he continued, consulting a pile of papers from a folder he brought in his briefcase. “Something where the mold grows at faster rates, spews spores, aggravates asthma and respiratory problems—your basic health and lawsuit nightmare.”
Ava chuckled. “Gee, somebody should get the Agency of Invasive Species right on that.”
“I know, right?” he said, eyes bulging. “Here’s the problem. If I or this staffer go to the EPA, and say, hey, we saw something … there’s no guarantee they’ll take it seriously. I’m on record as saying the building is a disaster, my opinions on how that agency should be eliminated are well known, and apparently some blogs are spreading the rumor that I’m obsessed and unhinged!”
“I can’t imagine why,” Ava tried really, really hard to not sound sarcastic.
“Anyway, if we want the EPA or General Services Administration to take this seriously, we need evidence. And the AIS isn’t just going to hand it over.”
Ava wondered when Bader had become so comfortable with the pronoun “we,” and she had a feeling Bader’s idea was going to get very complicated.
Ava thought that Bader’s plan was particularly insane—perhaps losing office had left him seeing conspiracies all around him, or devising elaborate plans of action to right a wrong turn of political history—and so her first step was to try a much simpler approach.
She called Lisa.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you,” Lisa greeted her rather icily.
“Yes, I know, we haven’t talked in a while, and I’m sorry. But something big has come up, and it involves your job.”
“What?” Lisa said, with a hostility that Ava didn’t seem to pick up on.
“So, if I heard the new office building you’re supposed to move into next year was a public health hazard, you would want me to do something about it, right?”
Lisa dropped her hostility for a moment. “What?”
Ava repeated the question.
“That … question was in English, but the words make no sense in the order you put them.”
“I heard a rumor that they used Chinese drywall in the building.”
“Well, I mean, how seriously do you take the rumor?” Lisa asked. “I spend my days knocking down all kinds of nonsense rumors.”
“Let’s say, serious enough. If I told, say, Wilkins, do you think he would take it seriously?”
“Well, Ava, you’re not exactly a popular person in the office right now,” Lisa said, letting a bit of festering anger flare. “After all, it is spin to argue we ‘generate anything more than mediocrity at best, offering abysmal value, with little inclination to improve our performance.’ ”
Ava cringed, having momentarily forgotten how her friend would greet the high-profile denunciation of her employer and life’s work.
“I’m sorry. Lisa, you know that no matter how much that place drove me nuts, I always thought you were the best. In everything.”
“Ava, you trashed my work!” Lisa fumed. “It was harsh, it was demeaning, it was insulting, it was … it was …”
“All true?” suggested Ava.
“That’s beside the point,” Lisa said. “I mean, yes, we’re a very bureaucratic institution, and yes, this place could drive Mother Teresa into a swearing rage, but it still—”
“Listen, we should talk about this in detail, face to face, sometime soon. But right now I’m sort of in a pressing situation. Do you think I would need evidence to persuade Wilkins or whoever that the new building is a health hazard?”
Long pause on the other end. “Ava, what do you mean, ‘evidence’?”
“Someone else I’m dealing with is … very determined to go in and check the drywall.”
Lisa’s pause was long enough where Ava wondered if her cell carrier had dropped the call.
“When you say ‘go in and check,’ I’m getting a distinct ‘break and enter’ vibe.”
“Your vibe assessment skills have not dulled with age,” admitted Ava.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“I’m sorry, Lisa, I don’t know if I trust the usual channels on this. If there’s a health hazard in there, it would stop the construction, and a lot of people will want to sweep it under the rug.”
“You sound like a conspiracy theorist.”
“Well, call me crazy for thinking that Humphrey and Wilkins might ignore something that could delay opening up their precious new office!”
Lisa was quiet again, and Ava found that this time her carrier had indeed dropped the call.
That night, after dark, Ava found herself standing with a former congressman outside a construction site as he walked the perimeter, a leather satchel full of tools, determining the easiest way to sneak into the site.
“What if you’re caught?”
“I thought this was a ‘we’ project,” Bader grumbled, examining a chain-link fence gate and concluding that the years of fundraising dinners had made squeezing between them a physical impossibility. “This will be real simple. Get in, get to where my old staffer said he saw the bag, take the samples, get out. Piece of cake. Security is minimal.”
“This is breaking and entering a federal facility!” Ava whispered. “This is the sort of thing they send people to Gitmo for!”
“Oh, they’ll have Gitmo closed any day now, I’m sure,” Bader said. “You coming or not?”
After waiting for a moment, Bader shrugged, and started to climb over the chain-link fence.
Ava watched him, shook her head, and pictured the cover story she would write on the insane ex-Congressman who broke into a construction site to blow open a giant Chinese drywall scandal.
“Wait for me!”
“If I wasn’t so terrified of being arrested, I’d be screaming at you for your insanity,” Ava whispered. “You never said we had to go up to the fifth floor!”
Their night had presented only one hitch so far, when Bader awkwardly cleared the chain-link fence and didn’t stick the landing, tumbling on his butt in a puddle. Other than the embarrassing stain on the seat of his pants, he had managed to navigate the construction site with a penlight, and he and Ava ascended ten half-flights of railing-free concrete stairs, navigating concrete pillars, piles of rebar, and plastic orange fencing.
From this height, they could see the trailer office by the vehicle entrance to the construction site, and the faint flicker of light within.
“If that guard comes out and sees your flashlight or hears us, we’re screwed!”
“He’s watching the Nationals,” Bader said confidently, even though he was only guessing. “Hope it’s a good game and he’s focused on that.”
In several spots on the fifth floor, Bader had removed a chisel and scraped plaster from unobtrusive corners of the drywall, near the floor and ceiling. He deposited the plaster granules in between two thick sheets of paper and put the material in a small Ziploc bag, labeling each bag’s source location with a permanent marker.
“Okay, almost done,” Bader whispered, and Ava exhaled. But only for a second.
“I … AM … SPEECHLESS!” a familiar voice boomed behind them.
Bader and Ava swirled, caught in the glare of another pair of flashlights. They squinted as two figures approached: Adam Humphrey and Jack Wilkins.
Lisa told them, Ava realized.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Bader demanded, in a tone of indignation that was entirely inappropriate for someone who had just hopped a fence and trespassed on federal property.
“I was just about to ask you that,
you lunatic. And you, Ms. Summers—what, the op-ed smear wasn’t enough?”
“Everything I wrote was true, Humphrey,” Ava responded defiantly.
“There’s Chinese drywall on this site, Humphrey,” Bader said. “Preposterous, Mr. Bader,” Humphrey said firmly. “Your obsessive vendetta against me has driven you mad.”
“I am not obsessed!” barked Bader.
“Well, you kinda are,” Ava said beside him. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong. This is worth checking out, guys. If Bader’s right, there could be serious health issues for people who work here down the road.”
“Do you believe these two?” Humphrey asked Wilkins. “Breaking and entering out of sheer concern for our coworkers, after sneering about them for years. This facility is being made of only the finest materials by the finest construction crew, held to the highest standards—”
“HA!” scoffed Bader.
“You’re going to work in this building, Wilkins,” Ava warned. “Really want to gamble with your health, and that of all of your coworkers? Hundreds, maybe thousands of people eventually?”
“This is paranoid, conspiratorial nonsense,” Humphrey declared, attempting to cut off any doubt on Wilkins’s part.
“Adam, why didn’t we check in with the guard when we came in?” Wilkins asked.
“Maybe he didn’t want the guards knowing they might be exposing themselves to toxic drywall,” Bader said, holding up the plastic bags. “You may not care, because you’re heading off to your fat pension, but the EPA is going to care. They’re going to care enough to stop construction immediately—and then God knows when it gets started again.”
Wilkins’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “I feel like I’m surrounded by crazy people.”
“There’s only one crazy person up here, Jack, and he’s the one waving around plastic bags full of drywall, rambling that they’re tainted with the Andromeda Strain or some such nonsense!” Humphrey shouted.
“What if he’s right?” Ava asked.
“What if he’s wrong?” Wilkins retorted.
“Mr. Bader, I insist you give me that bag right now!” Humphrey said emphatically.
“Like hell I’m doing that.”
Humphrey stepped closer.
“You want it?” Bader said with a certain glee. He backed away a few steps toward a pile of construction supplies, and picked up a three-foot-long piece of rebar, a grooved steel rod that looked positively alien in his soft, wrinkled, pale hand.
Humphrey couldn’t stifle a giggle. “You must be joking.”
“Come and take it!” Nick Bader was convinced that he looked as daring and strong as King Leonidas at that moment … but he didn’t.
“Do not threaten me,” Humphrey said, awkwardly shifting to a hunched-over posture, his notion of a combat stance. He waved his flashlight around and found another span of rebar, this one about five feet long, and grabbed his own. He picked it up and realized he had absolutely no idea how to use it as a weapon, other than simply swinging it at his target as hard as possible. The heavy metal staff was almost too long to be of any use.
Wilkins and Ava stared, jaws agape. “Uh, guys, before we do anything we regret—” Wilkins stammered.
Bader hadn’t expected Humphrey to actually rise to the dare, and now he had his long-hated rival almost begging to raise their conflict to physical combat. His eyes widened as he realized that maybe God was going to make up for all those injustices over the decades by giving him the opportunity to knock the stuffing out of Adam Humphrey.
The pair circled each other, staring, sweating, in disbelief of the sudden potential—even likelihood—of violence before them.
Bader realized the last time he was in a physical altercation was in his teen years. Humphrey nervously shifted his grip on the bar, trying to figure out whether it was better to grip it overhand or underhand or chest level or eye level or OHMYGODHE’SCOMINGTOWARDME!
Humphrey yelped as Bader’s body suddenly surged forward; unbeknownst to him, Bader was actually stumbling from a surge of adrenalin coursing through fifty-nine-year-old muscles and mildly arthritic knees. Bader’s bar CLANGED against Humphrey’s, sending a reverberating shockwave through Humphrey’s arms.
Humphrey’s terrified yelp gradually turned almost primally aggressive, meaning it dropped one octave until he ran out of air. “YEAARR—AAAAAAAAR-ARR-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAR-ARGH!”
Bader tumbled to one knee but rose quickly, and Humphrey’s face registered a sweet, surprised delight that he wasn’t dead or even hurt much at all, turning to indignation that Bader had attacked him (as far as he knew). He pushed his bar against Bader’s with another loud CLANG ringing through the night air.
“ARGH!”
“ARGH YOU!”
“RARGH!”
Bader flung the plastic bag toward Ava, and began swinging his rebar, offering what he was certain would appear to be a demonstration of elaborate swordsmanship. In fact, Bader looked more like he was having an aneurism or acting out the “Y-M-C-A” dance.
Ava stared at two retirement-age men, tentatively thrusting or swinging pieces of rebar at each other, both secretly terrified of actually hurting the other but also refusing to back down.
“I would say I need a drink, but what I’m seeing makes me doubt my sobriety as is,” she muttered.
She reached down for the plastic bag and found … Wilkins was holding the other end.
“Ava … you can’t do this,” he said firmly.
Her face hardened, and she yanked the bag away.
“Why not?”
She turned, wondering if all of the men up here were going insane in the night air, and started walking away briskly. Wilkins followed alongside, not quite threatening … but not friendly, either.
Through the open spaces in the walls, she could see the Department of Agriculture building. “I spent way too much of my career in that building fighting paperwork and reviews!” she told Wilkins angrily. “This time you guys can get to fight the bureaucracy.”
“You drop that on the EPA’s desk, it’ll louse up everything!” Wilkins shouted. “They’ll want to test every corner of this place, and God knows when this building will ever get finished!”
“Good!” Ava shouted. “Red tape, bureaucratic delays, lawyers—now it’s all your problem!”
She jabbed a finger in his chest. “You can watch your dream get tied down like Gulliver by a thousand little …” She couldn’t remember what the little people in Gulliver’s Travels were called. “Little …”
“Lilliputians?” Wilkins offered.
“Yes, those little guys, thank you,” she said quickly.
Wilkins glowered.
“All this time—long before you came along—I was Humphrey’s prize pupil … his protégé. He taught me everything I know about how the system worked—and how it didn’t—and how to navigate it, use it, steer it … And now I see you’re worse than any of us ever were, because you’re willing to wreck it all because you never felt appreciated.”
Ava bristled.
“Here I am … thinking I know how to get things done … and now I am helpless, as you take the capstone of my career and tie it up in knots of red tape for … years probably.”
Wilkins shook his head. He held up his hands in a surrendering pose.
“Well done, Ava. Well done. I mean it when I say, neither Adam Humphrey nor I could have used red tape to louse things up on anywhere near the scale you’re about to!”
Now it was Ava’s turn to shudder. She looked at the sample bag in her hand.
“All of this,” Wilkins motioned around, “is going to stand around, unused, a monument to you. Ava Summers—that bright-eyed, cheery, idealistic chick in fishnets who walked into our office, going on about how she and these computers were going to change the world … well, she grew up to be Washington’s most petty vendetta artist. You never changed the world, Ava. The world changed you.”
Sh
e closed her eyes for a moment. She opened them upon the noise of Humphrey and Bader emerging from around the corner, each one with one ugly bump on the head and bloody knuckles. Their direct combat appeared to have ceased once they actually hurt each other.
“You were the idiot who picked up the steel bar!” Humphrey complained. “I could have told you they hurt!”
“What the hell are you doing up here trying to stop me anyway? You’re a bureaucrat, not a cop,” Bader snapped. They looked down the hallway at Wilkins and Ava, and the bruised Bader immediately smiled upon seeing she still held the plastic bag.
“That’s my girl!” he said, pointing, and jutting his chin at Humphrey beside him. “With the samples in that bag, we get the last laugh!”
She continued to look at them, and the bag.
“Congressman, that’s not what either of us came to Washington to do,” she said firmly. “Not like this.”
She tossed the bag through the opening in the scaffolding, and it plummeted out into the abyss.
Bader looked on in horror.
Wilkins looked on, genuinely surprised, and exhaling a bit of relief.
Humphrey stared, trying to understand why she had thrown away her advantage.
The private security contractor found the quartet when they emerged from the stairwell on the bottom floor.
“I have a key to the site. I, uh, left my wallet when we were touring the site the other day,” Wilkins explained, holding up his wallet. “I’m so embarrassed, officer, I’m so sorry.”
“All four of you are here to look for a wallet?” the guard asked skeptically.
Bader and Humphrey instinctively threw arms around each others’ backs. “We’re a close-knit group of friends.”
Frowning skeptically, but not eager to begin a round of paperwork, the guard escorted them to the gate and told them to come back during regular hours next time.
A half block away, when the quartet was sure the guard had returned his attention to the Nationals game, Bader turned to Ava in fury.
“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he screamed. Wilkins and Humphrey shrugged and walked back toward their cars.