In This Rain (17 page)

“I don’t want to owe Charlie Barr anything. Especially now. Besides, how would you explain stepping out of the mayor’s limo at high noon on 125th Street?”

“To who?”

“Edgar Westermann, for one.”

Ray chuckled. “Well, that would sure burn that boy up, wouldn’t it?”

“Now that Edgar’s on our side I want to keep him there. And he’s only with us because he knew Charlie would oppose us. If he thinks we’re buddying up to the mayor, he’ll cut us loose.”

“What’s he getting out of this?”

“Who, Edgar? Points in the community for running against the mayor.”

“I guess. Surprised me, though. I was him, thinking about running for mayor, I believe I’d side with the money.”

“If you were him, you’d do no such thing. You mean, you’d have expected Edgar to side with the money.”

“Well, yeah. Might be some nice contributions to be had for a Harlem politician who favors the city’s plan for Block A.”

“From the developer they pick, you mean?”

“Sure as the Lord made little apples. Wouldn’t matter who, he’d owe Edgar big. He needs it, too.”

“Needs what?”

“Money,” Ray retorted. “Election’s barely two years away and he hasn’t got his war chest going. Edgar’s a rich man, but not enough to fund his run himself.”

“Well, but in this case,” said Ford, “siding with the money would be siding with the mayor. Edgar would lose credibility with his base. Black candidate’s bound to have trouble in the boroughs. He can’t afford to alienate Harlem.”

“Yeah,” said Ray, “but siding against the mayor puts him next to you. I imagine the dilemma gave him some sleepless nights.”

“Probably did.” Ford grinned. “Ain’t that a crying shame?”

Sutton Place

Ann pulled the DOI car— a Cavalier: four-door, automatic, black, a big yawn— up to a hydrant and stuck a “City of New York Official Business” card in the window. She badged herself past the guard’s station at the construction site gate and flashed the badge again to a gum-snapping young woman at the first desk in the GC’s trailer. She asked to speak to Margaret Mary Tiemeyer.

The young woman hesitated and half-turned toward the back of the room, where a burly man looked up suspiciously from a set of drawings.

“Not Tiemeyer’s problem.” Ann raised her voice before the man could speak. She looked past the woman and spoke directly to him. “Guy in an investigation named her as a witness. I need her to confirm his whereabouts.”

“This that Bronx thing? Where she used to work?”

“Related.”

The man’s glance slid over Ann’s unbuttoned coat and her long blonde hair. A tiny, smug smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. She knew what that meant. In his head he’d already taken her to bed, satisfied her in every possible way, and left her begging for more. Which, however unlikely in real life, made her in his mind a conquest, and so not a threat.

He nodded to the young woman and, the little smile still on his lips, went back to his drawings. The woman met Ann’s eyes briefly. She picked up a walkie-talkie and spoke Margaret Tiemeyer’s name into it. The response was a crackle Ann could make nothing out of. The young woman told the crackle to report to the trailer, got another crackle, and lowered the walkie-talkie. “She’s on the scaffold. She’ll be right down.”

At the back desk, the man lit a cigarette. Oh, so you smoke afterwards? Ann thought. But it was handy. “I’ll wait outside,” she said, wrinkling her nose as though smoke-filled rooms bothered her, which they never had.

“Hardhat site. Don’t leave the trailer yard.” The man spoke around his cigarette without looking up. “And don’t keep Maggie long. She’s got work to do.”

Ann threw the young woman a look of sympathy and stepped out into the sun.

This was a small project, a low-rise office building in Queens on what had been a parking lot. Real estate in New York these days, even in the boroughs, was too valuable to waste on cars. Though it was worth wondering where all the cars were going to park when all the lots were buildings.

Squinting into the sun, she made out a thin figure clattering down the scaffold stair. In hardhat, overalls, and heavy boots, the figure headed in an unswerving line from the stair to the trailer, jumping a mud puddle, climbing up and over a pile of two-by-fours, covering the remaining distance in a dozen strides, and coming to a halt in front of Ann. “Tiemeyer. You looking for me? You from the waterproofer?”

Tiemeyer’s tan face was lined around the eyes and mouth. Wisps of bottle-blonde hair curled from under the hardhat. She was a few years older than Ann, almost a foot shorter, and if she broke a hundred pounds it was the hardhat and boots.

“I’m looking for you, but that’s not why.” Ann dredged her badge from her pocket.

“Oh, crap!” Tiemeyer shot a glance at the trailer. “What do you want?”

“Relax. I told him it’s not about you. I said I just needed you to corroborate some guy’s story.”

“You said. But that was bullshit? It is about me?”

“It was, but it’s not. I need your help.”

“If it’s not me, gotta be Mott Haven, right? I told that other cop, I been off that job eight weeks now. I got no idea what’s going on there.”

“What did you do there?”

“Mott Haven? Same thing I do here. Construction management. Check the work, answer questions, fill out forms.” She turned in the direction of a shout from the steel frame, and yelled, “Oh, sit on it, Bernie! I’ll be up in a minute!” Back to Ann: “Look, I got no time. I got steel going in up there.”

“Maggie— can I call you Maggie?— I’ll try to keep it short, but this is serious. I need your help.”

“Maggie?” Tiemeyer snorted. “You must’ve got that from Pete. He’s the only one ever calls me Maggie. Most people call me Em.”

“Em. Sorry. I’m Ann.” She smiled. “No one calls me Annie, either, not for years now. Can you just tell me, what was your impression of Three Star when you worked there?”

“This is still about the accidents? Those masons, and the firefighter? That woman that got killed?”

“Yes, and more than that. I’m interested in Three Star themselves. I know they laid you off recently— ”

“Back off! I told that other guy— ”

Ann held up her hand. “I’m not saying you have a grudge. This truly isn’t about you. I’m just thinking people who still work there might not feel as free to talk.”

Tiemeyer nodded as though that made sense, but she said, “Nothing to talk about, really. Those guys are pretty much the same as everybody. Better than some.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nothing. They get the job done.”

“There are a lot of ways to get the job done.”

“Listen, just tell me what you’re looking for, okay? I got work to do.”

Tiemeyer’s tone said, Get lost. But she stuck her hands in her pockets, shifted her weight to face Ann squarely.

Ann said, “Evidence of illegal activity.”

“Like?”

“Graft. Payoffs. Bribes.”

“A little grease, sure. Nothing huge.”

“Who do they grease? The Buildings Department, people like that?”

“Oh, Christ, no, not on that site. No, just the regular shit. Teamsters. Local 3. This one galvanizer, his backlog suddenly clears when he sees a case of Dewar’s. Crap like that.”

“But nobody official? Why did you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“ ‘Christ, not on that site.’ They usually do that, on other sites?”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t know.”

“But not there. Is there a special reason?”

Tiemeyer cocked her head at Ann. “Hon, say you’re a pitcher. Triple A, pretty good. You got a fastball, slider, all that shit. Now say your secret weapon’s a spitball. You gonna throw it with a Yankee scout in the stands? You’d be outta your mind.”

“You’re saying, even if I generally used an illegal practice, I’d skip it when someone was watching and something big was at stake?”

Tiemeyer frowned, as though downgrading her assessment of Ann’s intelligence. “That’s what I said.”

“So what’s at stake for Three Star?”

“Ha. The sixty-four-million-dollar question. No one knows.”

“Any rumors, thoughts, ideas?”

“Lots. Mostly, everybody figures there’s another job waiting someplace. Something Three Star can make a lot of money on, if they can pull this Mott Haven thing off.”

“How would that translate, ‘pull it off’? Make a lot of money here, too?”

“Hope not, because if that’s it, they’re screwed. No, Mott Haven is some kinda loss leader for Three Star. Don’t know what the point is but they sure as shit aren’t making money there.”

“No?”

“They were losing their shirts when I left. For one thing, schedule’s way behind. Though I hear the new guy’s catching them up. That would take lots of grease, which they say is what he does best.”

“How so?”

“Lot of work in New York right now. That means lots of sites to deliver to, labor shortages, materials shortages, suppliers calling the shots. This guy, they say he knows who to call. How to stroke ’em so his shit moves to the top of the list.”

“Payoffs? Kickbacks?”

“He just knows who likes Knicks tickets and who likes a night at Hooters. That’s not graft, hon, that’s business.”

“He sounds like a valuable resource.”

“Bet your ass. Otherwise why would they hire a guy like him?”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“One, I hear he’s an asshole. But so’s Pete, right?” Tiemeyer looked toward the trailer and shrugged. “This one, he’s an ex-con, too.”

In her mind, Ann saw the afternoon sun lying on Joe’s garden. “Excons have a right to work.”

“Yeah, well, from what I hear, that’s what they wanted this guy for.”

“For being an ex-con?”

“Because this is the shit he went to jail for. So they figure he knows it real well.”

Ann felt a sudden chill that wasn’t weather. Forget it, she told herself. That would be too good. Nevertheless, she asked, “Can you tell me who he is? This new guy?”

“His name? Fuck if I remember. I was gone by then. But you want to know what gives over there, you could try talking to him. Listen, is that it? I gotta get back to work. I’m hoping to last at least until Christmas around here, before I rot Pete’s socks so bad he cans me.”

“You think he will?”

“You think he won’t? Gal like me? I get to them all, sooner or later.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Bullshit. It’s part of the fun.”

“I know the feeling. But take another shot at the new guy’s name at Mott Haven?”

“Shit. Something Irish. O’Dell, McDougal, I don’t know.”

Carefully, Ann said, “O’Doul? Sonny O’Doul?”

“Son of a bitch, yeah, that’s him! You know him?”

“Yes,” Ann said. “I know him. Son of a bitch.”

Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard

Ford glanced through the message slips Yvonnia handed him on his way in. “Westermann’s office called twice?”

“So far.” She smiled. Yvonnia St. James was lighter than he, and round in all her parts: round face, round figure, round hands and eyes. She kept her hair close-cropped and dyed a glorious golden yellow.

“Good,” Ford said. “Did Shamika Arthur come in?”

“No. I hope she’s okay. Poor kid.” Yvonnia shook her head. “If I lost my boyfriend like she lost T.D., young as she is

”

“Did she call?”

“No. I tried her mama’s place and her cell, but no answer.”

“Well, keep trying. Just so she knows we’re here.”

Ford plugged in the teakettle and sorted the messages, setting them in the order in which he’d like to take care of them. He studied them for a minute and then resorted them into the order he actually would. That moved Edgar Westermann from the end to the beginning. The kettle steamed; he poured hot water into his cup, left his tea to steep, and walked to the open window.

Midday sun on long-shuttered storefronts; neon being hoisted into place over the new Delta Lounge. Rumbling traffic, boom-box rap, and the singing of a jackhammer; but still, in their pauses, the rustle of leaves in the garden beside the building. Diesel fumes and fried chicken, and the fragrance of the tea brewing on his desk.

He sat down and called Edgar Westermann.

“Ford Corrington,” he said calmly, three separate times: at Westermann’s office you had to fight your way past a receptionist and two secretaries.

“Ford! Glad you called!”

At Westermann’s boom Ford yanked the phone away from his ear, replacing it gingerly. “Good morning, Edgar. I’m returning your calls.”

“My— ? Oh, yeah, yeah! LaTasha’s calling just about everyone about the Studio Museum benefit, see who we can count in. Must have been that.”

“The benefit, yes, I’m planning on it.” Ford had a strong urge to continue, Well, thanks then, see you there, goodbye, just to see what excuse Westermann would come up with to call back— or have LaTasha call back— but that would be petty, and self-destructive besides.

There was no hint in Westermann’s voice of yesterday’s standoff, but to clear the air before they got to the real business, Ford said, “Anyway, I’m glad you called. I wanted to apologize if I came on too strong at Sarah Andersen’s yesterday.”

“Oh, no harm done. I could see you were trying to protect the poor woman, best way you knew how. I went up later, offer my sympathy, see if there’s anything we can do.”

“Later” was an elastic term: According to T. D. Tilden’s cousin Lemuel, Westermann had gone up to speak to T.D.’s grieving mother so soon after Ford left that an uncharitable person might have thought he’d been watching.

“I would have gotten back with you first thing this morning,” Ford said, switching over to what he knew was the real point of this conversation, “but I had that meeting with the mayor.”

“The mayor

” Westermann’s distracted tone implied he’d not only forgotten about Ford’s meeting with the mayor, he’d forgotten exactly who the mayor was, so many and weighty were his concerns. “Oh, of course, right, right! You wanted to talk to him about getting your hands on that building site, wasn’t that today?”

“Yes, that was today.”

“How’d he do you?”

“He said it was unlikely.”

“Ain’t that just like Charlie?” Westermann chortled. “Not about to come out and tell you no, keep you from pitching a fit in his office. But you didn’t really expect him to say yes, now did you? Can’t tell me you’re still that naive.”