Man at Work

by Elaine Fox

  “Gimme the camera,” he repeated, this time with one meaty paw outstretched.

  She tried to look rueful. “Listen, I would, if it were mine. But I can’t becau—”

  At this he leaned over and she thought for a second he was going to grab her by the throat. Instead he placed his fist on her plate, flattening what was left of her fries.

  “Because it belongs to the paper and they’ll charge me for it,” she squeaked quickly.

  Dimly, in the back of her mind, she’d heard the bells on the diner’s door jingle as Guido had leaned over. Still, she was surprised when a body stopped next to their table. From the corner of her eye she saw the torso of a man, but she dared not take her gaze from Guido’s in case he went for her camera, or her throat.

  “Hey, Arthur,” a low voice said.

  Arthur?

  Guido straightened slowly and Marcy took her first breath in what seemed like twenty minutes. They both turned to the man beside the table.

  Marcy couldn’t stop the smile that burst upon her face at the sight of Truman Fleming. He wore jeans and a black shirt under a jean jacket that made him look broad-shouldered and rough, every bit capable of calling off Guido, even if he wasn’t nearly so…girthsome as the thug.

  “What’re you doing here? I thought you was fired,” Guido said, brushing flattened french fries off his knuckles. The tone of his voice was caught between belligerence and timidity. It was an odd combination.

  Marcy took the opportunity of his distraction to snake her hand down her side and into her pocket. She gripped the little silo of Mace tightly.

  “The real question is, what’re you doing here, Arthur? Something tells me you’re doin’ somethin’ bad. You ain’t doing nothing bad, are you, Art?”

  Guido flushed again, only this time a deeper red. His beady eyes darted to Marcy, then back to Truman.

  “Come on, Harl,” he said in a stage whisper, almost as an aside. “I ain’t doin’ nothing. I just gotta job here, okay?”

  “Then you won’t mind if I join you, will you?” Truman pushed the table back to its original position and started to take the seat beside Marcy. When he looked down he saw the camera and his gaze sat heavily on her for a moment. I told you so, it seemed to say, and she felt herself flush just like Guido. Uh, Arthur.

  “Harley,” Arthur whined, sounding like a kid not getting what he wants.

  “Not now, Arthur. I think you’ve done enough for today. How ’bout if the lady and I leave, that make you happy?” Truman glanced at Marcy. She made an acquiescent face and began packing up the camera.

  “Yeah, just leave, okay? And leave quick, he’s watchin’ me.”

  “That’s your problem, Art,” Truman said, but he helped her move more quickly by picking up the camera bag.

  She slid out of the booth and they started for the door. Just before they reached it, however, she stopped and Truman nearly collided with her back.

  “I haven’t paid!” she whispered to him, pawing at her purse.

  “Forget it,” Truman growled.

  “No, I had a whole lunch. I’ve got to pay for it.” She stepped toward the counter, still foraging for her wallet.

  Truman leaned over, slapped a twenty on the counter, and nodded once toward the waitress. “Now come on,” he said, taking Marcy by the elbow. “Let’s go before they send someone really scary.”

  Truman walked fast down the sidewalk, his grip hard on her elbow. Marcy practically had to trot to keep up. Her purse kept sliding down her arm and the camera bag bumped uncomfortably against her backside. All the while a feathery drizzle dampened her hair and wet her face.

  “Wait a minute,” she said breathlessly when they were half a block away. She yanked her elbow from his grasp and pushed her purse back up onto her shoulder. As she pulled the camera bag to her other shoulder she looked up at him. Her savior. Again.

  “I guess I owe you another thank-you. This is the second time you’ve saved me from an overbearing thug.” He seemed to get more handsome every time she saw him, but maybe that was just because she was getting used to the hair that was a little too long and the face that should have been shaved today and wasn’t.

  “I’d’ve thought you’d stop going back to the place all the thugs hang out after the first time.”

  “I’ve got a job to do.” She shrugged, then eyed him speculatively. “You didn’t seem very afraid of him. Do you know him? Is his name really Guido, or Arthur?”

  “Honey, his name is whatever Chuck Lang tells him it is. And believe me, you don’t want to mess with Chuck Lang.”

  Marcy frowned and looked back down the street toward the site. “Chuck Lang is the superintendent?”

  “That’s right. Now let’s get going.”

  At that moment Arthur emerged from the diner.

  “Listen,” she said, pulling the camera bag around front and unzipping it, “if you don’t want to mess with Lang, I understand. But I’ve got…” She pulled the camera from her bag and put the viewfinder to her eye. “…a job to do and that man—”

  Truman grabbed her arm. “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”

  She fired off a couple of quick shots then started to stuff the camera back into the bag when she heard shouting. She looked up to see Arthur lumbering toward her.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, her pulse accelerating with his every step. She turned quickly.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked.

  “Right there, at the end of the block.”

  They crossed the road quickly and Marcy punched the button on her key. The satisfying sound of doors unlocking met their ears just as Arthur’s voice carried to them on the breeze.

  “I know who you are, Miss Paggalousy.”

  Marcy’s blood ran cold and she stopped, the door handle in her hand.

  “And I want that camera,” Arthur yelled, poking a finger down at her through the air.

  He was getting closer, and Truman looked at her over the roof of the car.

  “Give him the film.” His eyes were hard as diamonds.

  “What?” She looked at him incredulously. “Are you crazy?”

  “Just give him the film,” Truman said, walking quickly around the front of the car toward her.

  Arthur’s labored breathing was audible now. “I can find you, Miss Paggalousy.”

  Truman grabbed the camera from her, popped open the back and pulled the roll out, exposing every shot she’d taken that day.

  “Hey!” She made a grab for the camera. “Truman, what the—why are you—”

  He pulled the last of the film out and handed the camera to her. Then, heading back around the front of the car he threw the film canister down the street toward Arthur.

  “There you go, Arthur. Go back and tell him to leave the chick alone.”

  Arthur hove to a heavy halt in front of the film canister, the negatives hanging out like a long dark tongue. Bending over and placing his hands on his knees, he breathed like a man who’d just caught a cannonball in the gut.

  Truman turned and growled at her, “Get in the car.”

  Marcy flung the door open and flopped into the car, tossing her purse and the camera bag onto the backseat.

  Truman got in the other side and slammed the door shut.

  “Get going,” he said.

  “I hope you realize—”

  “You can berate me later. Just, right now, get going.”

  She started up the engine, fury making her heart hammer. She’d been home free. She had the pictures and was leaving. Now she’d have to come back. What the hell was he thinking?

  “Go back that way,” he instructed, directing her away from the construction site.

  She threw the car into gear and pulled a three-point turn in the middle of the road.

  “Turn right down here, then right again on Third.”

  She glanced over at him. They were heading back toward the site.

  She pulled onto Third Street.

  “Slow down and park
right behind that van.” He pointed to a primer-gray van on the right side of the road. “Now give me the camera.”

  She looked at him dumbly. “What?”

  He turned his gaze to her face and her heart did a somersault. No doubt the result of all the adrenaline of the last fifteen minutes, she thought.

  “You do have another roll of film, don’t you?”

  She looked back as he reached for the camera bag. “Of course.”

  He opened the car door and got out, then bent back down to look in at her. “I’ll be back in two minutes. Keep the car running and be ready to bolt, got it?”

  “Are you taking more pictures for me?” she asked, amazed.

  “Yeah. I’ll be right back.” He started to close the door.

  “Wait wait wait!” she called, leaning as far across the passenger seat as she could. He bent back down to look at her with exaggerated patience. “I need shots of the scaffold—”

  “I know what you need.” He slammed the door and walked off down the street, looking much more at home in the environment than she did.

  She had the brief thought that he might be absconding with the camera—after all, there was still the possibility that he was an ex-con—but shrugged it off. She knew where he lived, for one thing. For another, she was pretty sure he’d shown up at that diner today solely to check on her.

  The thought sent a spiral of pleasure through her. He was going to help her, she thought. He was going to help her with this case.

  She could get him to testify. Even if he did have a record, it would be irrelevant to his knowledge of the worksite. And he’d tell her all about what was going on at the site. Why else would he be taking pictures for her now? He would know what she needed, even better than she did.

  She took an uneven breath, momentarily thrilled by the idea of all the things she needed that Tru Fleming could take care of.

  But those things were beside the point, she told herself firmly. He would help her with the case, not…uh…personal issues.

  Still, she smiled and crossed her arms over her stomach, where an entire flock of butterflies had for some reason set up camp. Even if he just worked with her she’d get to see him. It was inevitable.

  4

  Thursday, October 10

  WORD-A-DAY!

  SOTERIOLOGY: n., the theology of salvation; or the many ways in which one can save and be saved

  Truman was a fool. No doubt about it. He was getting himself into a tight spot, and for what? A pretty girl. Anything done solely for the sake of a pretty girl was inherently foolish.

  Marcy had dropped him off at his truck after the photo incident and taken off like a shot, her sleek silver Lexus hissing away on the rain-wet street like some sort of vehicle from another planet.

  A meeting, she’d said. And she was late. Busy woman, very important, he thought resignedly. Thankyouverymuch and seeya.

  This was exactly the problem with girls like her. They chased the almighty dollar like it was the Holy Grail and believed that everyone around them should behave the same way.

  Had she known what Truman was doing—running from that very dollar as if it were the plague—she would no doubt be even more horrified by him than she already was.

  He exhaled heavily and glanced down Pennsylvania Avenue. He was definitely a fool.

  Behind him, Grandview Construction was erecting a twelve-story office building on the site of the old Bilge-more Tavern, a pub reputed to have hosted numerous politically significant conversations in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Grandview’s concession to this historical importance was to erect a plaque inside the cold gray marble vault they were calling a lobby.

  In addition to this insult to Pennsylvania Avenue, the American people, and history in general, they were not looking for carpenters with Truman’s limited work experience. He could be a laborer, the foreman had said. For seven dollars an hour.

  Truman sat in the driver’s seat of his truck with the door open and his feet on the running board. A clean autumn breeze blew from the south and the sun warmed him enough to keep him from wanting to return to his apartment. He’d spent yesterday and most of today looking for work, with no luck, but he wasn’t worried. He knew he’d find a job eventually. He just didn’t happen to have two nickels to rub together at the moment, so finding one today would have helped, at least as far as lunch was concerned. As it was, he didn’t dare spend his cash on a burger lest he not be able to buy gas to look for work.

  It didn’t help that after the photo incident with Marcy he was out a badly needed twenty bucks. Not only that, but Chuck Lang could easily have seen him that day, standing under the dubious protection of the thrift shop’s torn awning, taking pictures of the construction site. That King Kong of cameras Marcy had was not exactly inconspicuous. Even if Lang hadn’t seen him, he’d bet one of the dozens of other men on that building had and had immediately sent word to the superintendent. After all, nobody liked his work scrutinized, and there were enough shady personalities employed by Planners Building and Design to be paranoid that the camera was there specifically to nail them for one thing or another.

  Still, better him than Marcy, because they knew who she was, too, and coming to get him was better than going after her. He could tell by the look in her eye as he’d ripped the film from her camera that she had every intention of going back for more pictures. Better to nip that right in the bud, he’d told himself.

  But now here he was, twenty dollars poorer and the object of Chuck Lang’s wrath. Again.

  What he ought to do, he thought, was go talk to Arthur, try to find out exactly what the threat was against Marcy. If they knew who she was, they probably knew what she was there for, so they wanted her to drop the suit. But why wouldn’t they be going after Burton in that case? Maybe they were doing that too, but it was a heck of a lot harder to go after a man who never left his bedroom.

  He shook his head again. What the hell was he getting involved for? He wasn’t a cop. He didn’t even play one on TV. Did he really think he’d be able to burst onto the scene like DeNiro and threaten them all with tough talk and a mean face to leave the girl alone? And then they’d do it?

  No. He heaved another sigh. There was something he could do, though. Something that would ultimately get Chuck Lang and his minions off everyone’s back. He didn’t want to do it, but now it seemed like he had to.

  Damn it.

  Tru turned back to the steering wheel and pulled the tooth-marked pencil from the rubber band on the visor. After rustling up some paper—a miraculously clean napkin from Burger King—he set about making a list. A list that would almost certainly get him in trouble and had the potential to expose him completely.

  Why was it that the right thing to do for someone else was always the wrong thing to do for yourself?

  Not that he was doing this for Bob Burton. No, what motivated him more than anything, he was ashamed to admit even to himself, was that he was doing this to see Marcy again. Marcy, with her designer wardrobe, luxury car, spa-pampered skin, and six-figure paycheck.

  He was a fool.

  Ten minutes into his list making, Truman heard the low hum of a car slowing in the lane next to where he was parked. From the corner of his eye he noticed a dark sedan creeping up alongside his truck. He lifted his eyes to see the tinted window of a black Mercedes descend, like an inverted stage curtain, to reveal the grinning face of his old friend Palmer Roe.

  “By God, I thought it was you!” One of Palmer’s hands was draped across the leather steering wheel and the other turned down the volume on his Alpine stereo system. He leaned across the glove-leather interior to see out more clearly. “Truman Fleming, as I live and breathe. Where the hell have you been? I haven’t seen you since last Christmas, when you did me the favor of lightening my wallet of several heavy bills with that stupid elf bet.”

  Truman grimaced at the memory of the scene. Christmas shopping at Georgetown Park. Truman was reaching the critical point in his disgust wi
th his way of life and had made a bet with Palmer mostly to see if the two of them were as reckless and dissolute as Truman was starting to believe. A thousand dollars on whether or not the reindeer in front of the mall Santa’s sleigh was male or female, and which elf they’d trust to make the decision for them.

  Truman had said male, not caring either way. Palmer, female, with a fervent, “Look at those eyelashes!”

  The elf had said, “Who gives a shit?” then sided with Truman just to get them out of the way.

  Palmer had paid him in cash on the spot and Truman had stuffed the entire wad into the bucket of a startled Salvation Army Santa on Wisconsin Avenue.

  “I guess you could say I’ve taken a little vacation,” Truman told him now.

  “Well, it obviously hasn’t done you any good. You look like hell. Get in the car. Let me take you to lunch.”

  Truman glanced down at the Burger King napkin in his lap. He was about done. And he was famished. Should he consider this cheating? he wondered. Lunch with Palmer would be a far cry from Burger King or the cheap canned food he could afford at home. At the same time, however, he felt an overwhelming urge to talk. Not about anything in particular, just to someone who knew him, someone with whom he did not have to pretend to be somebody else.

  “Come on, Tru. Don’t tell me you have to be somewhere. You look like you just came from the landfill.” Palmer’s brow furrowed. “Is there a landfill in D.C.?”

  Tru chuckled. “You’re not asking in terms of lunch options, I hope.”

  “Get in,” Palmer said again, with a grin. Truman heard the thunk of the electric locks opening. “I’ll take you to Old Ebbitt’s.”

  Truman sighed. He was a flawed man, he thought, tempted by a steak and martini lunch and unable to resist.

  “So give me a hint, Tru. You just dropped off the face of the earth,” Palmer said, sliding onto a stool at the bar. Chin up, he shot the cuffs of his dark blue suit and straightened his yellow tie in the mirror behind the bar. “What happened to you?”

  Inside, the Old Ebbitt Grill was cool and rich. Dark wood contrasted elegantly with glittering bar bottles and flickering gas lighting. The bartender wore a white apron and polished the already gleaming wood with a soft, thick cloth.